Sydney Opera House ordered to display horse racing advertising on its sails | Australia news | The Guardian: The NSW government has ordered the Sydney Opera House to display a racing trophy with the word Everest on it and jockey numbers and colours on its sails in contravention of a policy to prevent the commercialisation of the building. The decision by premier Gladys Berejiklian came late on Friday afternoon after intense pressure from the Daily Telegraph and 2GB's Alan Jones to accept a plan by Racing NSW to promote the Everest Cup on the iconic landmark. Turning an architectural icon into a billboard because Alan fucking Jones had a tantrum. What a shining vision Gladys has for the state. Gambling ads on the Opera House during Responsible Gambling Awareness Week.
Opera House must never again be used as 'billboard': Shorten: Opposition leader Bill Shorten says if Labor comes to power, he will review the laws protecting Australian World Heritage-listed sites such as the Opera House, to see if they need strengthening against commercial use.
Legion of lobotomized unices: This was back when the motd was likely to contain a pithy quotation from the fortune file, not just a dry legal notice about the Computer Misuse Act. This was a tiny yet significant reminder that the system was meant to be used by humans, all working together. Now there's no excitement when logging in, because there's nobody else there. It's just solitude, loneliness. None of the shared magic that made computing social in the first place.
Fold N Fly: A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions.
Metadata laws under fire as 'authority creep' has more agencies accessing your information - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): To allay privacy concerns, access to the metadata was limited to 22 specific police and intelligence agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and state police forces. ... The Communications Alliance told the parliamentary hearing telcos are getting around 1,000 requests for metadata each day. It is not clear exactly how many agencies are now able to request access to stored metadata. Precisely as every fucking expert in the field predicted.
We won't save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian: Amid the general incoherence, one contributor stated: “It comes down, I think, to us each taking responsibility for the personal choices in our everyday lives. That's all any of us can be expected to do.” This perfectly represents the mistaken belief that a better form of consumerism will save the planet. The problems we face are structural: a political system captured by commercial interests, and an economic system that seeks endless growth. Related: Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals | Martin Lukacs | Environment | The Guardian: While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.
The reality is more nuanced than NRL players being blokey boofheads | Catharine Lumby | Opinion | The Guardian: One of the issues is that when guys who are already perceived as “education proof” do the wrong thing, it is seen as confirmation that they'll never change. That it's futile to try. This wrong-headed belief is, I think, grounded in class prejudice. A guy in a suit at a corporate function once even asked me: “Why do you even try with these animals?”