On San Francisco Shit Patrol
The progressives love the frisson of imagining dystopias where a few plutocrats enjoy their own private paradise while the masses are condemned to a Hobbesian life of squalor, poverty, violence …
Read MoreMonth: August 2018
Good News from Everywhere
If you are depressed from reading the daily news, it’s nothing new – “if it bleeds, it leads” as an editorial philosophy that much predates the Trump presidency or for …
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Canberra: Things will get worse before they get much worse
And so the Canberra circus rolls on. Perhaps it’s unfair to call it that, as with real circuses people actually willingly pay money to enjoy the spectacle of skill, agility, poise …
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Are sexy selfies a sign of gender oppression?
All those bedroom eyes, duckfaces and cleavages splattered all over Instagram, Facebook and other social media (not to mention Tinder), and I bet you have been all wondering whether it’s …
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Big Zuck is watching you
We get to rate websites (well, pretty much everything), it’s only to be expected that they rate us back: Facebook is rating users based on how “trustworthy” it thinks they …
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Finding love in all the wrong places
There has been a large shift in how we find partners: As early as 2010 the internet had overtaken churches, neighbourhoods, classrooms and offices as a setting in which Americans …
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Fighting racist stereotypes with gangsta rap
I don’t know how well thought out this strategy is: The video for KUDZAI’s 4 Deep In The Suburbs starts off menacingly — a police siren wails, and four figures …
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Crisis of the 21st Century
In a long and often bloody and tumultuous history of the Roman Empire, there are few periods like what has become known among scholars as the Crisis of the Third …
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Crisis of masculinity, now in its 150,489th year
“The Guardian” publishes something called The Week in Patriarchy, “a weekly roundup of what’s happening in the world of feminism and sexism” complied in the current week by Arwa Mahdawi. The …
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The motive remains a mystery
Something mysterious is going on in Spain: Three people have been injured after a car mounted a footpath and ploughed into pedestrians in the Spanish city of Zaragoza, it has …
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Ramsey Bolton becomes a Polish pilot
For the sake of the movie I hope that Iwan Rheon who played the arch-bastard (literally and metaphorically) Ramsey Bolton in “Game of Thrones” is good enough actor to go …
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The casual sexism of a mononym
Damn the men and their… (spins the wheel) …habit of calling other men by their surname only. Gender gap discourse tends to center around unequal wages and limited upward mobility …
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It’s a Muslim “no go” zone – but for trees
Another instance when you should probably pay a qualified lawyer to engage in statutory interpretation: Hawkesbury City Council has launched civil action against Dr Mustapha Kara-Ali and Diaa Kara-Ali in the …
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Germany unprepared for alien landing
It’s good to know that the Greens politicians everywhere around the world like to pursue issues of keen interest to the voters: The German government says it has made no …
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Satan skips Victoria, goes to Arkansas
A little coastal town in Victoria manages to escape with all its residents and guests unharmed: A festival in a small coastal town in Victoria sparked rumours that a bizarre …
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Twelve Scared Men and Seven Angry News Organisations
High drama at the intersection of politics, judicial system and the media: Paul Manafort’s trial will stretch into a fourth week, as jurors headed home Friday without reaching a verdict …
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Will there be a sexbot trade war?
Probably not (sorry I asked), but China is certainly looking to dominate the American market: WMDOLL, based in China’s southeastern Guangdong province, develop AI-powered sex dolls that can move and …
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The 1st Amendment Freedom of Leak
It’s a fact little remarked upon that in 1976 one current and one future leader of their nation’s top intelligence agency both voted communist: KGB’s Yuri Andropov in the Soviet Politburo …
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The school shooting school case just gets weirder
Because the original story of five people, including a son and two daughters of an imam who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre …
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Pigs can’t fly, but horses can
Does this mean we can call them Pegasus? Come September 17, people will be able to carry miniature horses onboard Southwest flights as trained service animals, according to airline officials. …
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