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writer, singer, webwrangler, blogger, comedy tragic | about.me/vivsmythe

  • Bertolt Brecht: Questions from A Worker Who Reads

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    Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
    In the books you will find the name of kings.
    Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

    The 85 Richest people own the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest people…

  • Media Circus: shonks and salesmen masquerading as advisers edition

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    Photo of Australian Parliament House (APH) in Canberra

    This is about putting the interests of the thousands of Australians, many elderly and of limited means, second to the banks and retail funds.

    What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?

  • Today in Anti-Harassment: moving forward with #CoCPledge

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    #CoCPledge took off on Twitter after Ashe Dryden posted A year+ in: codes of conduct at tech confs on her blog and then initiated the discussion with this tweet: “I will not attend or speak at conferences or other events that do not have a code of conduct. #CoCPledge”

  • Today in Tangential Learning: the smell of chloroform

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    As part of following PZ Myer’s account of a campaign against him on campus from the editor(s) of a right-wing student newspaper, I have learnt what chloroform smells like, and it smells like something present in every office and classroom and most private homes.

    Then I searched online for a bit more information about chloroform…

  • Vale Pete Seeger 1919-2014

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    Some of the first songs I learnt to sing beyond nursery songs & school singalongs were Pete Seeger songs. I have no doubt that my politics today have largely grown from learning and loving these protest songs from an early age.

  • Media Circus: NSW govt goes into one punch crackdown edition

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    Photo of Australian Parliament House (APH) in Canberra

    Is any single one of Barry O’Farrell’s proposed new laws that are meant to curb alcohol-fueled violence evidence-based? Or is it all based on good old “common sense” knee-jerking?

    What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?

  • Sometimes I miss my USENet rotating .sig file

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    Because this would totally go in the collection: vivid imagery, concisely expressed in under 4 lines – the essence of a .sig quote.

  • Today in despair for the future of humanity: Caleb Hannan writing for Grantland

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    Caleb Hannan wrote a wanna-be-gonzo journalist-as-protagonist article outing a trans woman, shortly after that woman committed suicide after explicitly warning Hannan that his journalism was leaving her no other option: Hannan has committed an utterly reprehensible failure to emulate an ethical human being. Grantland’s ethical failure in publishing Hannan’s article is equally appalling.

  • Today In Things The Internet Just Told Me

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    I need sleep, but I can’t go to bed without sharing my newfound knowledge that Unicycle Hockey is a thing. A thing with leagues and tournaments and everything.

  • The ethics of scolding the dying

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    So what happens when a woman who has been blogging and livetweeting her treatment for breast cancer for many years decides to keep on livetweeting once she receives a terminal diagnosis of metastatic disease?

    Columnist Emma Keller decided that it was her place to get all finger-pointy about “the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness” on the opinion pages of a prestigious international masthead, that’s what. And then NYT columnist Bill Keller (her husband) decides to tag team on the finger-pointing and double down.