1026 posts tagged with australia.
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I just crossed the barrier. I'm not afraid anything!
This is the story of how a low-budget Australian film – The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – changed the course of history, loudly and proudly bringing a celebration of gay culture to the world that continues to resonate 20 years on. Narrated by Terence Stamp, Between a Frock and a Hard Place [57m] is also a social history of gay culture in Australia, drawing on footage from the famous movie as well as Sydney in the 80s. [more inside]
The end of "the end of passwords"?
At this point I think that Passkeys will fail in the hands of the general consumer population. We missed our golden chance to eliminate passwords through a desire to capture markets and promote hype. Corporate interests have overruled good user experience once again. Just like ad-blockers, I predict that Passkeys will only be used by a small subset of the technical population, and consumers will generally reject them. To reiterate - my partner, who is extremely intelligent, an avid computer gamer and veterinary surgeon has sworn off Passkeys because the user experience is so shit. She wants to go back to passwords. And I'm starting to agree - a password manager gives a better experience than passkeys. That's right. I'm here saying passwords are a better experience than passkeys. Do you know how much it pains me to write this sentence?Aussie software engineer William "Firstyear" Brown pours one out for the "shattered dream" of passkeys. [more inside]
Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, Found
Who knew convicts could organise
The forgotten history of Australia's convicts - Radio National, from the Australian ABC. [more inside]
Ewe wouldn’t believe it’s shear size
Ewe might not expect 8000 year old technology to undergo a revolution, but in the 1990s Australian scientists invented BioClip, a way for sheep to practically shear themselves (tiktok). [more inside]
how does it swing like that?
It is one of the most devastating weapons a fast bowler can own — but the art of swing is steeped in mystery and myths that only science can explain.
Inside the science of what makes a cricket ball swing - A(ustralian)BC [more inside]
Not simply a Victorian-era curio
"1980 was an ambitious year for the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union (VSU), the largest and oldest Spiritualist association in Australia, and the world’s longest continuously running Spiritualist organisation. That year, the VSU hosted the Australian visit of renowned British spirit artist, medium and author Coral Polge (1924–2001). The VSU had been trying as far back as 1975 to bring her out and finally succeeded five years later. Polge appeared in two shows at the Kew Civic Centre, a large venue in Melbourne’s affluent inner eastern suburbs. The VSU advertised these in a short-lived New Age newspaper, Ziriuz, alongside articles on alternative medicine, astrology, yoga, vegetarianism, biodynamic gardening and Buddhism." [more inside]
“I don’t know anyone who loves them.”
Behold, the bin chicken: Sydney’s stinky, grimy but (mostly) beloved bird (WaPo gift link) Meet the Australian white ibis. It's not pretty, it smells bad, it poops huge, and it's always in your trash. Of course, some humans have now become fans of it, dressed like "sexy bin chickens," and made a rude song and a fake documentary about them, previously mentioned here in 2017.
Where All the World’s Vegemite Comes From
Vegemite is a thick, dark brown Australian food spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract with various vegetable and spice additives. The New York Times says, "First concocted a century ago, the spread is widely adored by Australians — and loathed by almost everyone else" and reveals "The Corner Lot Where All the World’s Vegemite Comes From" (ungated & archive). Oh, and there's a song. [more inside]
armed with her questions
Community science helps us unlock some pretty quirky aspects of the natural world, and those discoveries often come from unlikely places. Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and wound up conducting some cutting-edge research almost by accident. 8-year-old Emma wanted to know: is there anything about people's appearance that connects people most often swooped on by Australian magpies defending their nests? When 30,000 people answered her question online, she found that people with thinning hair or no hair at all are much more likely to have been swooped on. (She also found out that Australians in her survey really love magpies, despite the swooping.) [more inside]
The dude who pioneered Australian erotica
Lindsay’s bawdy portrayal of myth and pagan beliefs fueled his art and created controversy in his time. [NSFW] [more inside]
Winner of the Feline division
The last Sydney to Hobart yacht race participants have arrived safely in Hobart, including Oli the cat. [more inside]
Call it culinary literature
The golden light on the tracks
Travel from Southern Cross Station to Warrnambool terminus with Driver 667 [SLYT, 3hr20m] For railfans, lovers of slow media, and anyone else who needs some brain brillo for the upcoming festive season, this early Spring morning journey from Melbourne's Southern Cross Station to the south-western coastal city of Warrnambool offers a unique perspective on the landscape of Australia, suffused with the glorious gold of the southern sun... [more inside]
Trains are made out of steel, you are made out of feelings
Laurence Hewson has charmed commuters at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia with his irreverent station announcements. He has become a local and international celebrity despite only being in the job for 3 weeks thus far.
How animals beat the heat
While the northern hemisphere is heading into winter, in Australia we are gearing up for a long, hot summer. Australian animals have some surprising ways of beating the heat, including mucus, saliva and tree-hugging. [more inside]
ODI cricket not dead yet
Why the 50-over Cricket World Cup is more vital than ever in modern era. In the moments after Australia’s historic victory over India on Sunday, a euphoric Pat Cummins described how this Cricket World Cup had made him “fall in love with ODI cricket again”. Going by the numbers at least, it appears he wasn’t alone. [more inside]
A global disruptor of classical music
How TwoSet Violin is shaking up classical music | Brett Yang + Eddy Chen | Australian Story [31m] is the story of two young immigrants who took their ambitions for classical performance careers and forged their own path together to global fame, pulling new fans into the genre along the way.
Australia's loooong train journeys
While not even approaching the world's longest train journey of 18,755km, Australia offers a number of journeys by train that ask us to consider the opposite of how we mostly travel - the journey is the thing, not the destination. [more inside]
provoking, funny and more than a little bit freaky
"A literary journal? Well I guess so..." Going Down Swinging is one of Australia’s longest-running and most respected literary journals: publishing digital as well as print and audio anthologies since 1979. For all of their past editions in one place and freely accessible to readers, visit their digital archives. [more inside]
"Amazingly talented and amazingly kind"
Comedy legend Cal Wilson has died, surrounded by family and friends, after a short illness. She had just turned 53 and was, as Rebel Wilson described her, "amazingly talented and amazingly kind". [more inside]
"The height of this surprising bird is 2 feet!"
The Naturalists Companion, Containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; &c accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Dublin Society "This volume, of a miscellany of museum artefacts, natural history specimens, and material culture, exemplified the way many Europeans encountered natural history from the new world: not with Enlightenment rigour but with eclectic and unsystematic enthusiasm." An article about this unusual book from the State Library of New South Wales and, of course, all the photos in one Flickr album and a keyword searchable set of page scans. [via]
28 animal sounds
Women's World Cup of Soccer 2023
Maybe it started with this viral French telecom ad (you don't need the subtitles), but we're halfway through the World Cup going on in Australia and New Zealand. The group stage is over, and the round of 16 begins this weekend... [more inside]
They Came From Outer Space to Become a Show's New Face
[MLYT] In 1989, Australians John Thomson and Mark Shirrefs began planning a children's magazine series hosted by crash-landed aliens learning about Earth. Ten years later, they pitched it... as a children's sitcom ABOUT such a show, hosted by characters the network doesn't know are real alien schoolchildren. It went straight to series without even a pilot order, and got a second season. This is Kid's Breakfast... or rather, Pig's Breakfast.
What is a pademelon?
Echidna Bachelorette
There is...one more thing we could try...
Moon Dog is a fun little short from young Australian filmmaker Nat Kelly. If it's a gloomy day where you are, try this charming distraction. That is all.
Are you ready for some football?
The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off in 30 days. Predict the winner at The Telegraph. [more inside]
2023 Mens' Ashes Series
The first match of the 2023 Men's Ashes series is underway, at Edgebaston in England. So far Australia's Usman Khawaja has made 141, dismissed by England's Ollie Robinson. Previously, previously, previously, previously. [more inside]
Ben Roberts-Smith Loses Defamation Action
Ben Roberts-Smith, an Australian Victoria Cross recipient, has lost a defamation action he brought against the Sydney Morning Herald and Age, which accused him of being a murderer, a war criminal, and a bully.
"Azt mondja, hogy az angyalok a mennyországban magyarul beszélnek"
Many persons are fluent in more than one language, but my setting out some years ago at the age of fifty-six to teach myself Hungarian provokes comments and questions from those who get to hear of it. Like much else seen in hindsight, my enterprise seems to me now to have been inevitable. In my early years I envied various persons for various reasons, but my strongest envy was always directed at those who could read and write and speak and sing in more than one language.—The Angel's Son: Why I Learned Hungarian Late in Life by Australian writer Gerald Murnane.
Slappy the Shoe Frog
Here's the story, sonny Jim... and I swear, every word is true...
It was the 90's. The Australian Prime Minister had begun a program to increase the amount of distinctly Australian media. The Australian Children's Television Foundation embarked on an Australian-French co-production that couldn't possibly work - a show about Elvis without his likeness, his surname or a single Elvis song, costing $11.5 million, and made by people with no experience with production on that scale. The result? RUN THE THEME SONG! This is L'il Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers, and you can watch the whole thing here (playlist is missing episode 4). (article 1, article 2)
Australian soldier charged with murder
An Australian soldier has been charged with murder over the 2012 shooting of an unarmed man in Afghanistan, in a case that may have precedent for other Western allies. The Office of the Special Investigator has said that ‘40 or 50’ other offences are being investigated. [more inside]
Honest Government Ad: Visit Western Australia
In the ongoing tradition of satirical Honest Government Ads by The Juice Media, this one about a new gas project that, if approved, would be be very bad for climate change. Honest Government Ad: Visit Western Australia.
This is beautiful.
This is beautiful. This is an ad asking Australian people to Vote Yes to support a Voice to Parliament, so that Australia's First Nations people can have a say on matters that affect them. [more inside]
Pretty but misty, you can't see very much
On 27 August 1961, a BBC reporter interviewed four Australians boarding a ship in Melbourne for Tilbury, Essex, about what they expected to find in England. The answers included Tudorian houses, dirty petticoats, the world's last remaining class society with drawing-room manners and a population of neuter men and their suety womenfolk sitting in the fog eating crumpets. (SLTwitter)
‘We welcome Murdoch’s writ’
For almost two months Crikey has faced the threat of legal action by Lachlan Murdoch over an article about Fox News, Donald Trump and the Jan 6 Washington insurrection. Last night, Lachlan Murdoch finally issued his writ. We welcome it. Today, we continue our coverage of Mr Murdoch’s legal letters and related issues. The letters show how media power works in this country. Crikey will not be silenced. [CW: contains Trump & Murdochs]
it's BUNYA NUT season in the northern hemisphere right now
There was a bunya nut on the side of the road next to a bunya bunya (or, false monkey puzzle tree) the other day. I knew monkey puzzle tree nuts are edible, so I took it home and read up on it and checked a sledgehammer out from my local tool library and cracked it open and harvested its kernels. It's unusual around these parts (California) and, like me, my neighbors had questions, so I thought you might, too. Here's some articles on the bunya nut and its trees and history. [more inside]
Though they be but little, they are fierce!
Meet the Kowari. They weigh up to 175 grams (less for females) and hunt invertebrates, small mammals, reptiles, rodents and even birds. And they're cute as fuck. Arid Recovery has just translocated 12 kowaris from the Birdsville Track to its reserve near Andamooka Station in an effort to conserve the species. It is the last known population of the species in the state. [more inside]
Mr "That's Not My Job" awarded himself FIVE extra jobs
Australia's former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, famous for saying "that's not my job" about everything that a Prime Minister was supposed to do, and running away to Hawaii for a holiday when Australia was on fire, has just been caught awarding himself FIVE additional portfolios while he was in office. The way in which he did so may have been illegal - portfolios are supposed to be public knowledge, and he kept it secret.
Flicker ghost-like through space, and collect the news of other worlds
Rebecca Giggs (Emergence Magazine, 06/27/2022), "Noiseless Messengers": "THE MOTHS, when they came, were said to appear first like sea fog massing above the ocean." ABC News - Australia (12/11/2022), "Why bogong moths are now being classified as an endangered species." ABC Indigenous (07/04/2019), "This Place: The Journey of the Bogong Moths." Birgitta Stephenson, et al., (2020), "2000 Year-old Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) Aboriginal food remains, Australia." Eric Warrant, et al., (2016), "The Australian Bogong Moth Agrotis infusa: A Long-Distance Nocturnal Navigator." David Dreyer, et al. (2018), "The Earth's Magnetic Field and Visual Landmarks Steer Migratory Flight Behavior in the Nocturnal Australian Bogong Moth." Ken Green, et al. (2021), "Australian Bogong moths Agrotis infusa (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), 1951–2020: decline and crash" [PDF].
Somerton Man mystery solved?
Somerton Man mystery ‘solved’: Professor identifies man found on beach in 1948 The Somerton Man (previously 1, 2, 3), was an unidentified man found dead on a beach outside Adelaide, Australia in 1948. His identity has been a mystery ever since.
Professor Derek Abbott from the University of Adelaide claims to have identified the man as Carl “Charles” Webb, from Melbourne. Professor Abbott used DNA from hair found in a plaster "death" mask police made in the late 1940s. Abbott supervised a review of the case in 2009. [more inside]
Chinese and Australian governments, protests, and digital privacy
Bail conditions for climate change activists linked with Blockade Australia have clauses "that would prohibit the use of encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. [New South Wales] police also imposed conditions forcing the activists to hand over any communications device to police and provide passcodes upon request." Elsewhere, "A protest planned by hundreds of bank depositors in central China seeking access to their frozen funds has been thwarted because the authorities have turned their health code apps red", which left them unable to travel. (Previously.) [more inside]
Birthing on Country
Women’s business -
Meet the Black matriarchs changing the narrative of First Nations births. (Australia) [more inside]
let's never go back to dinosaur island
Tom Cardy: Jurassic Park 12: It's Dino time! slightly NSFW for some lyrics + closed captions, tom cardy [previously]
anonymous Aussie twitter poster PRGuy unmasks himself to Friendlyjordies
anonymous Aussie twitter poster PRGuy17 unmasks himself to youtuber Friendlyjordies The man behind the formerly anonymous Twitter account PRGuy17 has unmasked himself, after far-right figure and convicted wife beater Avi Yemini attempted to use the courts to reveal whether the account had ties to the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews.
Interestingly, PRGuy17 had the facts of the case that Avi Yemeni plead guilty to over the top of his video interview as a watermark, these being "avi yemini threw a chopping board at his ex wife" [more inside]
From Dok, The Potato Planet
An Oral History of the Gobbledok
And thus Australia met the Gobbledok: a ravenous extra-terrestrial who, to some witnesses, is still synonymous with Smith’s potato chips, and an icon of millennial Australiana. From 1987 to 1994, his rubber face and pot belly featured in a healthy handful of prime-time TV commercials that were charming, bizarre or downright terrifying, depending on who you ask. But to ad man John Finkelsen, this snack-happy critter was simply ‘the perfect consumer’.[more inside]
Bandit Heeler – lovable larrikin, or just a bad dad?
Bandit Heeler is a hero. The cartoon father of Bluey and her younger sister Bingo, Bandit is the much-loved dad dog at the heart of Australia’s favourite four-legged family. He balances the drudgery of housework with the creative escapades of his daughters, repurposing everyday objects and actions for imaginative play and engagement. [more inside]