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Taylor Swift does something transformative to people like my sister that other pop stars don’t. Other musicians have fans, Taylor has disciples. So what is it about Swift that evokes a sort of conversion experience? Is it just the music?
Threatened with the closure of the local nursing home, leaving elderly residents stranded, locals in Dimboola are selling home-grown produce to raise money to save the facility. And at the same time, they're breathing new life into the local sharing economy.
What causes racism? How does it start? Perhaps that’s at the heart of the matter: the difference, and the fear of it. Historically, we have tried to manage the fear via labels and categories: think of the ancient Greeks and their idea that anybody who did not speak Greek was a barbarian because of the bar-bar sounds that they made.
The story of colourism has roots that go back many generations; it has trickled relentlessly through time and is still evident in many ways today. In many countries with a colonial history, light skin was perceived, for a long time, as belonging to the upper classes, constituting power and wealth.
On the face of it, Miquela is the same as any other ‘influencer’. But behind her normcore sunglasses, Miquela is dead. Orchestrating her content is Brud, an LA-based tech startup masterminded by Sara DeCou and Trevor McDefries. The more interesting question is not who Miquela is, but why she matters. Because Miquela holds up a mirror to how we construct our own online personas.
Some of my South Asian 'aunties' are very much opposed to wearing any religious head covering. Mum has only recently started wearing a tiny Egyptian number she picked up during her last Haj. Like many South Asians, she has become a bit more religiously observant as she gets older. She grew up in the Indian university town of Aligarh, some 140km South East of Delhi. Aligarh was a very conservative town, and her father, a professor at the local university, was a rather conservative chap.
'Pull the levers, scoop the coffee, flatten it, steam fragrant liquid into white cups. My lever-pulling right arm has huge muscles from my coffee ballet. Around me: the buzz of conversations about people's plans for their day. No one knows I am lonely.' Short story by former Eureka Street editorial assistant Mary Manning, who died on Tuesday 8 November 2016.
How was the funeral? The wooden pews had been waxed and she found it hard to breathe without gagging. The incense incensed her. What rot to swing that horrible stuff around the place. What did the semi-trailer driver see, she wondered? How was Rob thrown out of the vehicle, if his seat belt was fastened? Why did he join the main road, when he could have gone down the old highway, free from any traffic?
There are efficiencies in the fictions of right. The glee, that honest toil of looting other lives. Each tumble clears the view, just a bit. Years are nothing, what's rebuilt doesn't work — just as effortlessly as the dirty little system before that so many died to defend. But don't worry, time is a grader. Alongside the quacking of historians all mistakes will be buried under new initiatives.
The general lessons from the conflict of interest that claimed Alastair Furnival, chief of staff to Assistant Health Minister Senator Fiona Nash, are about the often-hidden world of political insiders. The numbers of Coalition aligned lobbyists has grown greatly, and include many former senior Howard Government ministers. But Labor supporters should not feel smug. There are plenty of examples on that side of politics, too.
Within an hour the shop is humming with talk and movement. Mac is courteous, but has some iron rules. A woman who talks ceaselessly into her mobile phone receives a steely glare and silence. Someone with both ears plugged into his iPod finds Mac has also suddenly gone deaf. Each new arrival is threaded into a sort of endless conversation which functions at two levels — greetings to the customer and side-of-the-mouth asides to me.
My daughter, at seven, imagines a Barbie doll that does not exist, one that has 'a very cool gun and real lipstick'. My son, at five, asks for 'a Jeep, a hot air balloon and real false teeth'. These preserved Christmas lists record my children's growth more accurately than their physical measurements.