#Australian high commission

[wisteriagoesvroom]

T-1 day to the sg gp and feeling like i need to put one of those blinders on like a race horse to stay focused on my Office Tasks so that i don't get overly excited when it hasn't even started yet (challenge level: impossible)

[batshit-auspol]

February, 1994: The New Zealand government's official Wizard is invited by the Mayor of Tamworth, Australia to perform a rain dance (approved by the local Aboriginal Commission) in an attempt to break the region's ongoing drought.

The Wizard travels to Australia on a special passport provided by the British High Commission stamped "The Wizard of New Zealand", over concerns that his claim he is 'not subject to mortal laws' may cause issues at immigration.

Three days after his dance, the town was inundated with rain, with the wizard reporting that the subsequent flooding "produced many letters of complaint".

Following his success, the Wizard announced he would be staking claim to the title of "Wizard of Oz".

Follow for more Batshit Moments in Australian Politics

[fatehbaz]

The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

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Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

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The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

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He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

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[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

---

Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[iliveforaussiegrit]

Oscar and Mark at Australian High Commission this week.

[salmonsnakerune]

Commissions open- link in post

With a few extra expenses coming up this month, I'm finding myself a little short of cash- and with work no longer offering overtime, I'm putting this out to gauge interest in the possibility of fic commissions.

I'm a third year Psych major/Literature minor currently, with previous semesters in genre writing, classic literature, and poetry. I can write romance, horror, or general prose, depending on your needs. Poetry isn't ideal, but I can do it depending on the request. My older pieces are here for some brief, oneshot-style examples of my work. I also have original pieces available for view, originally from University assignments that have been submitted and graded at Distinction and High Distinction levels already from previous semesters.

My price is AUD $0.05 per word (industry standard) through a few choices of platforms- Ko-fi, PayPal, bank transfer (for Australians) or Revolut. Updates will be given periodically (no drafts sent), and the final piece will be uploaded after payment. As a rule of thumb, I take 2-3 business days for 500 words depending on fandom, and will give you a timeframe for when your piece will be completed after the form has been filled. The final piece will be sent to you as a raw Word file, and also uploaded to my AO3 account.

Here's the request form link, and fandoms I'll write for are under the cut. If you aren't interested in any of these or don't have anything to spare, please consider reblogging this post for more traction.

-Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss -Fire Emblem Awakening/Fire Emblem Fates -Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea/The Gray Garden -Pokemon (any gen, preferably games, anime/manga compliant will take longer) -Fear & Hunger/Fear & Hunger: Termina -Trauma Centre/Trauma Team (any game) -Undertale/Deltarune -Starbound (please include a detailed description of your character if not focused on the named main characters) -Splatoon (all 3 main games)

For anything not on this list, please reach out to me to talk about whether I can do it for you. I don't charge extra, but if I'm not familiar enough with the source material, I'd have to decline the request. The Danganronpa series isn't ideal, however I have written for it before and might be willing depending on your request- again, please reach out to me and I'll talk one-on-one with you about it.

[f1archives]

Oscar Piastri speaking at an event for the Australian High Commission, Singapore - 18/09/24

[aus-wnt]

_clarehunt | a wonderful night spent at the Australian High Commission and a privilege to share the stage with Ange and Scott 🇦🇺

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[morbidology]

Martin Allen was a 15-year-old boy living in Kensington, London. He had grown up in a council flat before his father was employed as a chauffeur to the Australian High Commissioner. This new career meant that the young family could move to a cottage in the grounds of the Australian High Commission in the prosperous Kensington area.

It was the 5th of November, 1979, and Martin was travelling home from Central Foundation Grammar School on the London Underground. The last time anybody saw Martin was at King’s Cross station at around 3:50PM when he said goodbye to one of his school friends. Afterwards, he walked into the short tunneled passageway that leads to the west-bound Piccadilly Line train that would take him towards his home. Some reports would later say Martin’s brother saw him at home at around 5PM before he headed straight back out.

What’s known, however, is that Martin disappeared at some point during this day.

Within days of his disappearance, the police launched a major enquiry. A witness came forward to say that they had seen a suspicious man accompanying a boy that looked like Martin at the Gloucester Road underground station at around 4:15PM. The witness said that the man had his arm around the teenage boy who appeared to be distressed.

Afterwards, he saw the two board a West-bound train at the tube station despite the fact this station was the one closest to Martin’s home. He described the strange man as around 6 feet tall, in his 30s, well built and wearing a denim jacket. The witness heard the man tell the boy: “Don’t try to run.” Following the witness coming forward, an investigation found five other witnesses who saw the blonde man and boy.

Despite an exhaustive search, the man was never identified.

Early on in the investigation, Martin’s brother alleged that the detective told his family that there were “high-up people involved” in his disappearance and that they should stop looking for Martin and “not take it further because someone will get hurt.” Over the years, theories have abounded.

In 1998, police found a shrine to Martin in the house of an alleged pedophile who had a headstone engraved “In Memory of Martin Allen.” No evidence could tie him to the disappearance, however. At one point, police questioned serial killer Dennis Nilsen but again, no evidence could link him to the disappearance. There was even some speculation that Martin was abducted and murdered by a local pedophile ring, operating out of a local hotel.

To this date, the whereabouts of Martin Allen remains a mystery. Both his parents have passed away without knowing what happened to their son.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The 388-page report featured 32 recommendations on how transgender care should be conducted within NHS England. It incorrectly claims that there is “no good evidence” supporting transgender care and calls for restrictions on trans care for individuals under the age of 18, although it does not advocate for an outright ban. The report endorses the idea that being transgender may be caused by anxiety, depression, and OCD issues, despite the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological association in the world, rebutting this as lacking evidence. It also claims that transgender individuals can be “influenced” into being trans, a nod to the discredited theory of social contagion and rapid onset gender dysphoria, rejected by over 60 mental health organizations. Lastly, it seemingly endorses restrictions on transgender people under the age of 25, stating that they should not be allowed to progress into adult care clinics. To support these recommendations, the report was released alongside “reviews” of the evidence surrounding transgender care, using these reviews to assert that there is "no good evidence" for gender-affirming care. A closer inspection of the reviews released alongside the Cass report reveals that 101 out of 103 studies on gender-affirming care were dismissed for not being of "sufficiently high quality," based on the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale—a subjective scale criticized for its flaws and potential unreliability due to a high risk of bias. This critique is particularly significant given the contentious political nature of the subject and connections between reviewers, Cass, and anti-trans organizations.

[...]

Immediately after the release of the Cass Review, experts in transgender healthcare from around the world voiced their opposition to its findings. Dr. Portia Predny, Vice President of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health, criticized the findings and recommendations as “at odds with the current evidence base, expert consensus, and the majority of clinical guidelines worldwide.” Similarly, a statement from the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa condemned the review, noting, “The Review commissioned several systematic reviews into gender-affirming care by the University of York, but appears to have ignored a significant number of studies demonstrating the benefits of gender-affirming care. In one review, 101 out of 103 studies were dismissed.” It is important to note that gender affirming care saves lives, and there is plenty of evidence to show for it. Numerous studies have demonstrated that gender-affirming care significantly reduces suicidality, with some showing a decrease in suicidality by up to 73%. A review compiled by Cornell University, which compiled over 50 journal articles on the topic, shows the efficacy of transgender care. These findings were echoed recently in an article published by the Journal of Adolescent Health, which found that puberty blockers dramatically lowered depression and anxiety. All of these studies and more have led to The Lancet, a medical journal with international acclaim, to publish a letter stating that gender affirming care is lifesaving preventative care. The largest and most influential medical organizations support trans care. A recent and historic policy resolution passed overwhelmingly by the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological organization in the world, states that gender affirming care is a medical necessity and that being trans is not “caused” by things like autism and PTSD.

[axolotlgifs]

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jacob Ogles at The Advocate:

A new study in Australia shows puberty blockers are both safe and reversible, undercutting arguments leveled against providing transgender health care for minors. The latest findings come from a Sax Institute review. That was commissioned by the government in New South Wales amid local controversy about gender-affirming treatments offered to minors. A Four Corners report found a massive drop in the number of patients seeking care at Westmead Children’s Hospital, according to ABC News (the Australian equivalent of the BBC).

The Four Corners study cited "high rates of adverse childhood experiences including family conflict, parental mental illness and loss of important figures via separation," looking at a group of less than 80 patients at a single hospital. But the Sax Institute study looked at a wider research set and scientific literature from 2019 to 2023. While it said further research should be done in the field of gender dysphoria treatment, existing data shows “positive results across the domains of body image, gender dysphoria, depression, anxiety, suicide risk, quality of life and cognitive function.” The reports seem to suggest further advances in the field can address the shortcomings of treatments available today. It recommends further study of any potential association between gender-affirming care and child bone density, but said any evidence treatment compromises bones “remains low.”

The Institute did find that data remains scant on certain aspects of the benefits or drawbacks of gender care for children.

A new study from the Sax Institute in Australia reveal that puberty blockers are safe and reversible, countering a myth that anti-trans forces use to justify bans on gender-affirming care.

[paraesol]

More Monster High redesigns!!

Part 1 | Ko-Fi | Commissions

Details under the cut:

Lagoona definitely ended up being the furthest removed from any canon design of hers

I went in knowing I wanted to keep g1’s curly hair and kinda sporty style, but besides that I didn’t have much of a plan

I gave her a swimsuit under the hoodie and shorts, mainly to add some layering and to fit in the scale pattern somewhere

I also kept g3’s octopus sandals because I thought they were really cute, but not much else came from gen 3

I shortened her hair and went back and forth between making her hair blond or a different color, and eventually settled on the purple because it felt less human and tied the color palette together better

I really like where her design ended up, though it took a while to make it feel cohesive

I like to think my version would keep the Australian accent, but as far as her background goes I’m really not sure what she’d be, so it’s open to interpretation

Cleo’s design took a LOT of different drafts before I was happy with it

Cleo’s gen 3 design is one of my favorites and I really wanted to emulate it while keeping the Queen Bee vibe of gen 1, but it was hard to make her look like a believable teenager while also making her regal and glamorous

I tried giving her a skirt but didn’t like it, so I settled on pants kinda similar to g1

I shortened her hair on a whim and then kept it, I kept trying to give her g1’s bangs but it wasn’t working with her makeup and face shape so I gave it up

I wanted the top part of her shirt to be semi-transparent and the bandages to be asymmetrical without being distracting

I gave her as many accessories as I possibly could without cluttering the design too much

I also gave her as many triangles in her design as possible

I tried to lean into Hollywood depictions of Cleopatra rather than go for historical accuracy, since that seems to be more what canon Cleo is based off of

Ghoulia is one of my favorite Monster High characters and I had a lot of fun putting my design for her together

I leaned pretty hard into the emo/scene inspirations and ended up losing much of the rockabilly vibes from g1, which is a bit of a shame, but I enjoyed where the design landed so much that it was a sacrifice I was willing to make

I gave her tousled scene hair, and tried to make her look a little disheveled/roughed up so she’d read more like a zombie

The only thing I really ended up borrowing from gen 3 was the pink in her color palette and some brain/goop imagery, but I don’t really like g3 Ghoulia so I largely stuck with g1

I don’t think I changed much in the end, just gave her some extra flair and made her look a little nerdier

My Ghoulia would still speak in the same manner as g1, though I like the idea of her being non-verbal rather than her speaking in Zombie so I’m going with that

[poetlcs]

sharing some books I read recently and recommend for women in translation month!

for more: @world-literatures

Two Sisters by Ngarta Jinny Bent & Jukuna Mona Chuguna (Translated from Walmajarri by Eirlys Richards and Pat Lowe)

The only known books translated from this Indigenous Australian language, tells sisters Ngarta and Jakuna's experience living in traditional Walmajarri ways.

2. Human Acts by Han Kang (Translated from South Korean by Deborah Smith)

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice.

3. Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez (Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell)

Short story collection exploring the realities of modern Argentina. So well written - with stories that are as engrossing and captivating as they are macabre and horrifying.

4. Portrait of an Unknown Lady by Maria Gainza (Translated from Spanish by Thomas Bunstead)

In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she seems especially gifted at forging canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentine high society. On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed.

5. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente (Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein)

My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.

6. Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen (Translated from Danish by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman)

Tove knows she is a misfit, whose childhood is made for a completely different girl. In her working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen, she is enthralled by her wild, red-headed friend Ruth, who initiates her into adult secrets. But Tove cannot reveal her true self to her or to anyone else.

7. La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono (Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel)

The first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English, La Bastarda is the story of the orphaned teen Okomo, who lives under the watchful eye of her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. Forbidden from seeking him out, she enlists the help of other village outcasts: her gay uncle and a gang of “mysterious” girls reveling in their so-called indecency. Drawn into their illicit trysts, Okomo finds herself falling in love with their leader and rebelling against the rigid norms of Fang culture.

8. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge (Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang)

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

[thehopefuljournalist]

According to a new survey, lawmakers are playing an increasingly important role in holding corporations and governments accountable for failures to tackle the climate crisis.

The research was done by Columbia Law School, and was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). It revealed that the number of climate-related court cases has more than doubled since 2017 and is steadily rising around the world.

Their report confirms a trend highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, which claimed that individuals and environmental organizations were, more and more, turning to the law, as it became clear that the pace of transition to net-zero emissions was too slow.

“Climate litigation is increasing and concerns about emissions under-reporting and greenwashing have triggered calls for new regulatory oversight for the transition to net zero,” the Forum report said.

The UNEP report catalogues a number of high-profile court cases which have succeeded in enforcing climate action. In 2017, when climate case numbers were last counted, 884 legal actions had been brought. Today the total stands at 2,180.

The majority of climate cases to this date (1,522) have been brought in the US, followed by Australia, the UK, and the EU. The report notes that the number of legal actions in developing countries is growing, now at 17% of the total.

Climate litigation is also giving a voice to vulnerable groups who are being hard hit by climate change. The report says that, globally, 34 cases have been brought by children and young people, including two by girls aged seven and nine in Pakistan and India.

Here are five of the climate breakthroughs achieved by legal action so far.

1. Torres Strait Islanders Vs Australia

In September 2022, indigenous people living on islands in the Torres Strait between northern Queensland and Papua New Guinea won a landmark ruling that their human rights were being violated by the failure of the Australian government to take effective climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruling established the principle that a country could be in breach of international human rights law over climate inaction. They ruled that Australia's poor climate record was a violation of the islanders’ right to family life and culture.

2. The Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty

In July 2022, Brazil's supreme court ruled that the Paris climate agreement is legally a human rights treaty which, it said, meant that it automatically overruled any domestic laws which conflicted with the country’s climate obligations.

The ruling ordered the government to reopen its national climate mitigation fund, which had been established under the Paris Agreement.

3. Climate inaction is a breach of human rights

Upholding an earlier court ruling that greenhouse emissions must be cut by 25% by 2020, the Netherlands Supreme Court ruled that failure to curb emissions was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The December 2019 ruling stated that, although it was up to politicians to decide how to make the emission cuts, failure to do so would be a breach of Articles 2 and 8 of the Convention which affirm the right to life and respect for private and family life.

4. Companies are bound by the Paris accord

Corporations, and not just governments, must abide by the emissions reductions agreed in the Paris climate treaty. This principle was established by a 2021 ruling in the Netherlands brought by environmentalists against energy group Royal Dutch Shell.

The court ordered Shell to cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 bringing them in line with Paris climate targets. The judge was reported as saying there was "worldwide agreement" that a 45% reduction was needed, adding: "This applies to the entire world, so also to Shell”.

5. Courts overturn state climate plans

Up until now, three European governments have been defeated in the courts over their climate plans.

In March 2021, Germany’s highest court struck down a climate law requiring 55% emissions by 2030 cuts, ruling it did not do enough to protect citizens’ rights to life and health. The same year, the French government was ordered to take “immediate and concrete action” to comply with its climate commitments. And in 2022, the UK’s climate strategy was ruled unlawful for failing to spell out how emissions cuts would be made.

[arcanarubinaito]

Headcanon Post (1)

“Leech Barometer”

Okay so we all know about the Leech Barometer right? No? Okay well if you don’t, it’s a contraption that utilizes leeches to create a storm warning system. You heard me right: leeches.

The Leech Barometer—originally named the “Tempest Prognosticator”—used natural leech behavior as a warning system for incoming storms. When atmospheric pressure falls and the oxygen content in the water drops, the leeches instinctively try to move to the surface. It’s a neat little trick to predict bad weather, so George Merryweather (talk about names reflecting one’s job lmao) created a device that took advantage of that fun little fact. The Leech Barometer essentially consists of twelve bottles in a circle under a bell. Small hammers would strike the bell once the leech climbed high enough. I’ll link the Wikipedia article below, it goes into more detail about the mechanics.

The leeches used were presumably medicinal leeches since that’s what Merryweather refers to when talking about their sensitivity to weather conditions, and the device was more or less inspired by poetry. (“The leech, disturbed, is newly risen, / Quite to the summit of his prison.” Edward Jenner, Signs of Rain) It was fairly accurate but couldn’t actually tell you when the potential storm would hit. The more rings from the bell, however, the more likely it was for a storm to show up.

I have such a strong mental image of Julian kicking down Nadia’s door one evening, as a storm is brewing on the horizon, and aggressively pointing at a jar he’s holding. It takes Nadia a minute or so to realize what Julian is saying, but once she does he has her full attention. The leeches climb when a storm is approaching? What a fascinating concept.

The two of them immediately start discussing how they could create a storm warning system with the leeches. One could always look at the jar, but when you’re as prone to getting lost in one’s work or thoughts like Julian and Nadia are? They’d completely forget.

Julian is the one to suggest bells. The actual logistics on how to get the leeches to ring said bells, however, was Nadia’s idea. They spend an entire night working on a prototype, but by the time it’s finished the storm had passed and the leeches had settled. It isn’t until the next storm rolls along—they don’t have to wait long, it is a costal city after all—that they get the chance to test it out.

By the Gods, it worked! Only… well now there are pieces of whalebone floating in the water, and it is difficult to set back up again. Far more of a hassle than it needs to be. Once they fish out the whalebone and realign everything, Julian makes sure to tie the whalebone up with a string so that they can easily place it again after the next storm.

For areas like Nopal, it would make a great signal for when rain water would come. And Vesuvians in areas prone to flooding could use it as a signal to prepare. It was a brilliant invention!

Just, ah… perhaps not very streamlined. It takes up quite a bit of space and producing the prototype alone wasn’t cheap. They have the device moved into the new research laboratory Nadia had commissioned a while back, and now the question they both share was why the leeches behave this way.

(Asra and Portia frequently stop by to make sure they’re both eating, drinking, and taking breaks whenever they have the time to go on a research binge.)

Links & Inspiration

Wikipedia - Tempest Prognosticator

Australian Museum - Leeches

Atlas Obscura - The Rise and Fall of the Leeches Who Could Predict the Weather

Here’s the inspiration for this post. I couldn’t find the original, so here’s the crappy cropped version from Reddit. If you can find the original, please send me the link!