December 2008
47 posts
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2008: The Year in Tumblr
Tumblr Awards, you say? Who can be bothered voting in those when barely anyone you read has been nominated?
It goes without saying that if I follow you or click the little love hearts next to your posts, I like your Tumblr, but I wanted to take this opportunity to give props to a few Tumblrs that this year excelled in areas I value.
So, without any further ado…
Best conversation starters...
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2008: The Year in Media and (a little bit of)...
Think of it as my version of the Walkleys. Or maybe the Logies.
Favourite magazine: CLEO. Yes, I know it won’t be a popular pick (and I know I’m biased because I, uh, write for them - although I only write for publications I like), but ever since Sarah Oakes took over as editor earlier this year, I’ve looked forward to it each month for my dose of fun, girly fluff. The articles are a little...
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2008: The Year in Pop (aka "Yes, I have crap taste...
With only one and a half days left in 2008, I (like everyone else, it sees) am itching to do some end of year reviews.
The days where I’d methodically record and review virtually every song released are about 10 years gone, so I’m not going to attempt a definitive ‘best of’ list for music (although if you really care, my favourite albums were Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke, Feed...
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Looking at And The Band Played On's Don Francis's...
me: He did a fellowship in infectious diseases at Harvard.
Akshay: That's hot.
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The Not Rape Epidemic →
Powerful and heartbreaking, this essay (by Racialicious’s Latoya Peterson) is a serious contender for ‘Best Piece of Writing I’ve Read All Year’. And on December 29, that means something.
From the Yes Means Yes anthology, which I’m now planning on buying multiple copies of - for myself, and for younger women who I think could benefit from reading it - it’s...
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Watch‘Are You Popular?’: an instructional video for teens circa 1947.
It’s, shall we say, a little “different” from my Girlfriend article on the same subject. Cara from Feministe explains:
While discussing dating etiquette for boys to a small extent, it mostly explains how good girls and bad girls each behave — with good girls of course going out of their way to “look...
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“First, it’s absolutely not about sex and sexuality. We’re all for...”
– Jean Killbourne, author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualised Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.
As I argue regularly, often when we’re talking about “sex”, we’re not talking about the act of sex itself at all. It does strike me as quite a muddy use of...
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Don’t Let Me Down - No Doubt
I love me some...
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My friend Anna Rose has been Hendo-ed →
From his SMH column today:
Writing on the New Matilda website, Anna Rose, co-ordinator of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, accused Rudd of having “just betrayed our entire generation”. She depicted the Prime Minister as blowing “Australia’s chance … to avert catastrophic climate change” and maintained that Earth “is being deliberately destroyed”...
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Akshay: What is the moral of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?
me: Don't take apples from strangers?
Akshay: No!
me: What then?
Akshay: I don't know.
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Akshay: You're looking more and more attractive these days. What is it that you're doing?
me: Photoshop?
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Looking forward to all the 'Alice in... →
(via Style Amor)
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News you should take note of →
Instead of infiltrating breaks in the skin, HIV appears to attack normal, healthy genital tissue in women, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that offers new insight into how the AIDS virus spreads.
They said researchers had assumed the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, sought out breaks in the skin, such as a herpes sore, in order to gain access to immune system cells deeper in...
“Self-help books are like religion — fueled by people’s fears and not science.”
– an email lenachen wrote to a friend advising her to not buy He’s Just Not That Into You
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Gay penguins the best daddies in the zoo →
via Yahoo Australia:
Penguins caught stealing eggs from straight couples in an attempt to become fathers have been given their own to look after following protests.
Zoo keepers moved the male birds away from the rest of the penguins to avoid problems as hatching season approaches.
But angry visitors to Polar Land in China complained it was not fair for the males to stop becoming...
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“You may not be able to be hot when you’re seventy-five in a conventional...”
– Oh, Paris Hilton.
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Oh wows! So, it turns out young people aren't big...
The worst thing about writing feature articles (and, I would wager, books and thesises - when I finally finish them) is that you almost always stumble upon new information and ideas you could have included after the fact. (The best is picking them up from the newsstand and seeing the pretty, pretty layouts.)
In this case, I refer to Charles M Blow’s New York Times column on “The...
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Further to the below article...
A couple of weeks after submission, I was running around my suburb at around 7pm on a Saturday night.
I live in an area where a lot of people like to go out, and seeing all the women in their cocktail dresses and immaculately applied make-up while I was red-faced and sweaty in my tracksuit pants made me feel conspicuously frumpy.
Now, I’d like to think that the only reason I felt...
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I'm pretty sure Tumblr makes you stupid →
(via thegurglingcod)
Linked because it uses the word “discursive” and references the Frankfurt School, which makes me feel like I’m back in first year media. (For the record, this is a positive thing.)
See also: Robot Heart’s response.
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Most of what you experience happens inside your...
I almost skimmed past this post on my Google reader because frankly, I suspect that if anything I need to have a less good social life and a better, say, study life.
The first point really struck me, though:
Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not...
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At the work Christmas party last night, dressed as...
me: Hi, we're here for the ninemsn function.
bouncer: Do you have ID?
me: Sure! *removes company ID from handbag, shows to bouncer*
bouncer: I mean proof of age ID.
me: *baffled look* Oh, I don't have that with me.
bouncer: You don't have it?
me: Well, I left it at the office. I can go back and get it if you like.
*silence*
me: I'm 26!
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“Thrift is of course the latest middle-class indulgence; where once we spent on...”
– Alex Renton: Humbug to a thrifty Christmas
I asked the same question at work (where we write about the financial crisis every day) yesterday. In Australia, at least, the real threat is unemployment, which is created in part when people stop buying stuff.
I know some people who’ve lost their...
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Another take on that whole beauty-as-artifice...
From Hell on Hairy Legs:
I hate that there is a bunch of white, middle-class, able bodied women that buy into beauty who can afford not to. I hate that they shave, wax and put on makeup in search of an impossible goal. That these actions change them, remove some of their individuality and turn them into symbols. I hate that the consumption of the products used will put money into the pockets...
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Nobody likes someone who walks around 24/7 with a... →
Or at least they didn’t back in the 1990s.
James Fallows wrote yesterday of an interesting project IBM is working on:
Information overload keeping you up at night? Forget about it. In the next five years, it will become much easier to remember what to buy at the grocery store, which errands need to be run, who you spoke with at a conference, where and when you agreed to meet a friend,...
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Check out Gossip Girl's latest promo campaign
It’s no ‘OMFG’ or ‘Mindblowingly inappropriate’ (I think it’s the mismatched fonts that let it down), but still worth a look-see.
(via frangry) (via JustJared)
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Me Plus One - Annie
Annie is one of those rare...