hello and welcome to spring (not spring)

On By StephanieIn australia, science!5 Comments

Here we are, solidly a “week” into “Spring.” In Melbourne, this means there’s nothing different to last month; it’s max 13C, there’s winds and rain, and this afternoon the possibility of hail.

So now seems like a good reminder: Spring is an artificial concept imported and imposed upon the Australian landscape when those invaders should have been chatting to the Traditional Owners about the six (or seven, or two) seasons. (It goes without saying that it’s all about imperialism and racism that we don’t talk about this stuff even now, but comment if you wanna chat about it)

Being from Perth, Steph is about to focus on the six seasons of the Nyoongar people, with brief diversions into Wirrudjeri (Eastern) seasons.

We’ll start with a reminder that seasonal calendars don’t match up with the Gregorian calendar, because the Gregorian calendar is an artificial concept imported and imposed upon the Australian landscape, along with the completely illogical European seasons. And of course there are different seasons across the whole continent, but Steph is only talking to the ones she knows. Okay, good. Now:

Perth. The South-West, a huge chunk of the continent. The Nyoongar seasonal calendar is six seasons long, yes, perfect. They don’t match up with the Gregorian calendar, but approximately:

a circular seasonal map; in the centre is an image of australia, the next level is 'spring, summer, winter, autumn', the next level is birak, bunuru,djeran, makuru,djiba,kambarang

Continue reading “hello and welcome to spring (not spring)” →

On the road to the holy links

On By Liz BarrIn Uncategorized

Keen to nominate in 2016’s Hugo Awards when the time comes, but don’t know where to start?  Renay is maintaining a GoogleDoc (with submission form) for eligible works.

If you’re in Australia, you should also keep an eye on the 2016 Ditmar eligibility list.  The categories don’t entirely overlap with the Hugos, but it makes a handy source of reading suggestions.

Diversity Panels I’d Like To See – Want something a bit more substantial (and less well-trod) than “_____ in SF”?  Check these out!

‘Is Critical Analysis Foreign to Chinese Students‘, an academic article, is basic but interesting.

This review of Round the Twist speaks to Steph’s very soul: Have You Ever Felt Like This: Going Round the Twist again

Watching Round the Twist is sprawling in a soggy chloriney cossie in front of the telly, fighting with my brother, eating spag bol, riding bikes, throwing a tantrum when Mum donated my pink Barbie convertible to kids in need. There’s no other show that takes me back to who I was as a kid and lets me identify the parts of me that have remained intact, and reliving it really has been the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Because it taught me that if ladies can be clowns and penises can be propellers and Daddos can be actors, I can really be anything I want to be, and that’s just as important for me to hear now as it was when I was six.

A cabbage tragedy.

The evolution of female pen-names from Currer Bell to J.K. Rowling

In the lead up to Fringe, a Melbourne artist is putting up Unwelcome mats in front of government buildings.

Tansy Rayner Roberts discusses To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, one of Liz’s all-time favourite novels.

Google street view for cats.

There is an Indigenous Dance Movie!

Rebel Sport Seeks Asylum From Claims It Ripped Off Refugee Video To Flog Stuff On Father’s Day

Taylor Swift made a colonialist music video, right before joining Nicki Minaj on an actually-African-inspired-with-actually-black-people performance at the VMAs.  Awks.

Tony Abbott had an interview with Alan Jones and this is just the machine transcript but

the Nazis did terrible evil but they had the sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it

?? !! ? (also abortions are like Nazis)

On turning slacktivists into activists.

Yesterday was Indigenous Literacy Day, but Indigenous literacy is important all year. No Award highly recommends supporting the Indigenous Literacy Foundation all the days of the year.

Having a yarn(bomb)

On By Liz BarrIn ableism, craft, melbourne10 Comments

No Award says no to yarn bombing.  It’s a waste of yarn, potentially damaging to trees (we keep hearing different things on this, so it may depend on the tree), interferes with things that live in trees, renders mobility and accessibility aids useless or difficult to use, and if it’s not hideously ugly to start with, it will be by the time the yarn goes mouldy.

Literally the only yarnbomb I’ve ever seen that I didn’t detest was small and subtle — tiny red crocheted flowers loosely tied around the branches of a naked tree in winter.

“But it’s so clever and subversive!”

No, it’s just a mould that accompanies gentrification.  It’s about as subversive as Banksy or Julian Assange.  Yarnbombing is to underground art as manic pixie dream girls are to well-written female characters.

Luckily, the argument that yarnbombing is in any way underground, clever or subversive has just gone out the window.

A guy in a hi-vis vest attaches some yarn to a trailing at a tram stop.
Thanks to Official Photographer Zoe for catching this!

Is that a guy in a hi-vis vest applying machine-made crochet* to a tram stop?

I was going to put on my Intrepid Journalist hat and investigate the tram stops in person on my lunch break, before conducting an in-depth interview with a sweet potato with cheese bacon and onion for Liz’s Lunch Magazine.  But I had a lot of errands to run, so I just stayed at my desk and used Twitter.

Twitter exchange between Liz and Yarra Trams, confirming that it is real yarnbombing.

Corporate fake yarnbombing.  Stop the bus tram, everyone go home, it’s over.  We’re done.

* We assume it’s machine-crochet.  Though Official Potato Moya notes, “the idea of Yarra Trams having, like, a back room full of bearded hipsters knitting quietly away at their yarnbombing, being paid in lattes, that’s kind of delightful”.

In conclusion, use your knitting powers for good instead of gross wet wool evil and find out which charities accept donations of blankets.

museum shops of the world: NGV

On By StephanieIn shops about things

Stephanie attended NGVI and NGVA on the weekend, in the company of Friend of No Award Zoe, Official Potato Moya and Friend of No Award Ashleigh.

Exhibits acasting a puppet shadowttended: Bunyips and Dragons (Australian Children’s Picture Books, NGVA, do it, so good. So worth it); something with mobiles that are cymbals; Transmission (NGVI, a trap);  Gods, Heroes and Clowns, Monsters of SEAz (DO IT, OMG).

The NGV bookshop receives many points (added potatoes) for the excellent array of children’s books at both NGVI and NGVA, with many Australian (including Indigenous Australian) books at NGVA and many books about introducing kiddies to ~art~ of many styles.

Continue reading “museum shops of the world: NGV” →

No Award watches: Glitch

On By Liz BarrIn australia, media, television

When Sergeant Hayes is called to Yoorana cemetery in the middle of the night, he makes a discovery that turns his world upside down – six people with no memory of their identities. Who are they and what has happened to them?

Sergeant Hayes and Team I See Dead White People
Sergeant Hayes and Team I See Dead White People

It took me a while to get around to watching Glitch, because I’m neck-deep in The X-Files right now, and frankly, season 7 is so dire that I’m slightly afraid that if I stop now, I’ll never start again.  But then came “Hollywood AD”, and I was like, “Right, we need a break.  It’s not me, The X-Files, it’s you.”

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come and see the real links

On By StephanieIn links

Russian Witch Baba Yaga’s Guide To Feminism

6. Promote healthy consent by asking visitors to your hut if they came of their own free will. (Or were sent by someone else.) It’s important for your students/admirers/victims to understand that they have bodily autonomy and don’t have to wander around the woods looking for weird witchy huts if they don’t want to. Have some diagrams and source materials ready, just in case you need to get more in-depth on the topic of enthusiastic consent.

Q. and A.: Ken Liu on Science Fiction and Chinese History

A Social History of Jell-O Salad

The [Americans with Disabilities Act] at 25: How One Law Helped Usher in An Age of Accessible Design

I strongly suspect this article is a bit too optimistic about the so-called Age of Accessible Design, but it’s a great read nonetheless.

Qantas staff ‘cursed’ after removing ceremonial boomerangs from flight, says Doomadgee

MWF stuff: Excellent post on Mark Latham’s MWF panel: “If You Don’t Like It, You Can Fuck Off”: A Reluctant Recap Of Mark Latham’s Melbourne Writers Festival Talk; fun little MWF ‘reviewer for a day’ review How to Review Voicing Race at Melbourne Writers Festival 2015: A Guide in Three Parts.

Eleanor Robertson went to a panel on “grievance feminism” so we didn’t have to.

…anyone who’s actually thought about this beyond Baby’s First John Stuart Mill pop-up book realises that the issue is far more complex than three-word slogans can handle.

Twitter blocks access to some accounts that archive political tweets (specifically political tweets that then get deleted). Our dystopia is here~

A wombat joins Tinder. Wombats are the best.  Even this total “why do lady wombats always say they want nice guys and then hook up with jerk wombats?” fedora-sporting nice guy.

Is It Legal To Release Balloons Into The Air? Not in NSW. But MORALLY and ETHICALLY, just don’t do it. I know it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, it’s a memorial. But it’s terrible pollution, in Australia it’s literally like throwing three dozen condoms straight into the water. Just like that. Don’t do it.

Unsourced ‘cos we found it in the comments to an article about cyclists: Cycling-in-the-News Bingo.

Having feelings about this article on why Al Jazeera stopped using the word migrant. I love it so much.

No Award refuses to be drawn into a conversation about gun control, but this quote about how a temporary ban on the Adler shotgun has been lifted in exchange for a vote from Leyonhjelm is interesting:

Senator Wright said the Government had traded gun safety for Senator Leyonhjelm’s key crossbench vote.

“He’s traded off a vote in relation to migration law to push forward a weakening on gun laws and it highlights the risk he will push the Coalition further to water down their gun laws,” she said.

Obviously, by ‘interesting’, No Award means are you shitting me, a deal on migration and guns? Like that’s not a loaded statement. But, I mean, whatever makes old white men happy, I guess.

This video game is quite offensive and highly problematic, if you are Liz.

A very important work of credible non-fiction: John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels by Theophilous Pratt.

Most helpful review:

Brilliant and, in all modesty, possibly one of the great works of the 21st century. I especially liked the Chapter layout and how they were sequentialized. This groundbreaking tome once and for all settles the matter of the perfidious John Scalzi’s popularity! This book actually has THREE bonus Chapter Fives, unlike some other lesser works which give you barely two. This NEEDS to be nominated for a Best Editor award next year!

Awesome Australian film Gayby Baby was banned by the NSW Premier from being screened in schools as inappropriate during school time. A good school is one that teaches pupils to think for themselves; Labor MP Penny Sharpe Perfectly Sums Up The ‘Gayby Baby’ Furore In This Passionate Speech; The NSW Government’s In Seriously Hot Water For Caving To The Daily Telegraph Over ‘Gayby Baby’.

It’s been a busy day for progressive Australians on Twitter, forcing Australian Border Force to go from promising neo-fascist visa checks on the streets of Melbourne over the weekend to cancelling the whole thing.  Three cheers for successful social media outrage coupled with a successful protest (organised in less than an hour, mind, and held on a work day).

Buzzfeed has the breakdown:

A Timeline Of The Border Force’s Very Bad, No Good, Terrible Day

The Guardian’s rolling coverage has a bit more detail, and, with no disrespect to Buzzfeed, gravitas.

Useful source for the next time this happens: what to do if the immigration department demands to see your papers.

Remember, if you see a person being subjected to harassment, and you feel safe doing so, grab your smartphone and start recording.  (Friend of No Award Amanda almost got punched in the face in a Hungry Jacks once after she confronted a guy being rude to a Singaporean employee, so use your best judgement.  No Award takes no responsibility for any assaults you may suffer while doing the right thing.)

#MWF15: 2nd Asia Pacific Writer’s Forum

On By StephanieIn australia, books

On Friday I was chuffed to attend the 2nd Asia Pacific Writer’s Forum held at the Wheeler Centre as part of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. Our topics for the forum were “Increasing Diversity,” “Media Control”, and “The Literary Economy”. I live-tweeted the event, and Peril recorded it for future analysis but I am cheekily getting in first with my feels.

This post is a combination of note taking of the discussions and translations into my feelings and continuing thoughts.

But relatedly, and above the cut: today I issued a challenge on twitter:

https://twitter.com/yiduiqie/status/636698191430291456

https://twitter.com/yiduiqie/status/636697875297144832

Continue reading “#MWF15: 2nd Asia Pacific Writer’s Forum” →

museum shops of the world: Yokosuka Museum of Art

On By StephanieIn shops about things

Please welcome Friend of No Award Amanda to Museum Shops of the World. 

Amanda and the view from the roof (lots of blue)

If there’s one thing the Japanese do well, it’s ridiculous merchandise. And that translates to their museum gift shops (and how!).

I’d long heard of the Yokosuka Museum of Art in Kanagawa – it’s renowned for its architecture and ability to “blend into the sea” (it kind of really does), as well as highlighting contemporary Japanese artists. The gift shop is in two halves – one being in the main building and the other in the separate pavilion dedicated to Taniuchi Rokuro.

Continue reading “museum shops of the world: Yokosuka Museum of Art” →