Les Liens du ... Jeudi?

[highlyeccentric]

Supplement to monday links, occurs irregularly.

Short essays, current affairs, hot takes:

• Man lived and travelled for 25 years under a false identity, until the person whose ID he was using applied for a passport
  
• ABC fact check: Do Labor's proposed capital gains tax changes disproportionately affect households earning under 80 000 dollars?: answer, only if you think someone's declared taxable income is the same as their actual wealth, and only if you don't take into account the *amounts* typically declared as capital gains at different income brackets
  
• Rosemary Bolger (SBS news) Doctors say asylum seekers will get worse, not better, on christmas island (very much department of unsurprising news, there)
  
• You may have seen Alexandra Rowland's viral tweet thread in which she blames Beau Brummel for the lack of peacockery in men's clothing? Here is a much better thread by an actual material culture scholar, wherein she talks about several cultural factors in the 18th century that lead to unassuming colour/designs in men's clothing around Brummel's time: he 'made his name by wearing the hell out of what was already fashionable'.
  

  A longer thread on eighteenth/early nineteenth century men's fashion this morning! (Portrait of Jacob Willemsz de Vos ca. 1795, at the @rijksmuseum) pic.twitter.com/OwsnRyHuCQ

  — Cassidy Percoco (@mimicofmodes) February 26, 2019

  
  

Special list of George Pell related Links

• Melissa Davey (Guardian Aus), We sat in court for months, forbidden from reporting a word - not a report on the case per se, but observations on the experience of reporting on it, and on who did and did not attend the trial.
  
• Laine Sainty (Buzzfeed Aus) Why a Suppression Order Stopped Australian Reporting on George Pell's Conviction - has interesting info on the 100ish journalists and outlets who have been notified of possible prosecution for breaking the suppression order.
  
• Michael Douglas and Jason Bosland (The Conversation AU), also on suppression orders: this one offers a good introduction to the principle of open justice, and the author's thoughts as legal scholars on where/how the use of suppression orders could be improved
  
• Margaret Simmons (Guardian Aus), Suppression orders aren't perfect but journalistic hubris won't fix the problem
  
• The David Marr piece I linked to on Tuesday has been the site of some kind of behind the scenes shennanigans. Late in the evening Aus time, the final sentence ('this scource of sex was forcing chiorboys to suck his penis') was amended to 'was abusing choirboys', but by wednesday evening Aus time, the incendiary version was back. I have a screenshot of the original, but not of the amended version. There's no trace on the guardian site of any changes (no note of corrections, etc)
  
• David Marr (Guardian Aus), George Pell had not dressed for prison but that's where he went. Another spectacular closing line: 'He and Gerald Risdale will have so much to catch up on'.
  
• Re. the repugnant responses I didn't link to on Tuesday, this Pedestrian article has a good summary if you want to seek outrage without giving them links. Rumour has it that a Frank Brennan article (the Eureka Street one? Something else?) is being set out to Catholic school parent mailing lists.
  
• Sarah Keoghan (SMH), St Marys Cathredral defends decision to keep George Pell plaque
  
• Louise Milligan (book extract run in The Guardian Aus), The Kid and the Choirboy: extract from her book on Pell, drawn from interviews with the family of the second victim in the cathedral trial (who died before the case ever came to police attention). I'm not sure what I think about the book (MUP commissioned it based on Milligan's reporting on the royal commission, before charges were laid against Pell, and it was out and winning awards before charges were laid against Pell, but...
  
• Harriet Sherwood (The Guardian), Pope Francis beset by global sexual abuse scandal: usefully puts Pell in context of several other cases against high-ranking church leaders.
  
• Related, from last week: Kathleen McPhillips (The Conversation AU) The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #nunstoo speak up

Longreads - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• J.R. Ramakrishnan (Electric lit), What to read when you're infatuated. That this list does not include Call Me By Your Name is a heterosexual travesty. (Well. I don't know anything about the author, but afaik all the recommendations are for writing about attraction between men and women)
  
• Janet Christie (the Scotsman) interviews Jack Monroe on Tins, Twitter and talking about gender. Interesting in its own right, and also useful for probably the best statement the public is likely to get on pronoun use for Monroe (looks like 'she/her for professional/public purposes').
  
• Dami Lee (The Verge), Emoji are showing up in court cases and courts aren't prepared
  
• Laurie Penny (Pacific Standard), How Austerity Caused Brexit. I normally have limited patience for Laurie Penny, but this is right on the mark, esp the fatal role of the Brexit vote as a verdict on David Cameron.
  
• Callum Cant (Vice UK), Striking Workers are Bringing Back 1970s 'mindfuck' tactics - really interesting look at rolling strikes and other havoc-causing methods of industrial action.
  
• Noor Al-Samaarai (Atlas Obscura), Forcing People To Hold Hands Is Not A Great Way To End A War - on the failure of the Loveday Parade to end the wars of the roses.
  
• Jad Salfiti (The Saturday Paper), The reinvention of Christine and the Queens. No idea why they're only covering this now, but it's a good read.
  
• Chelsea Bieker (Electric Lit), How could a mother leave her child: moving memoir/book response on growing up with an alcoholic mother.
  
• Price, Hedenstierna-Johnson, Zachrisson, et al, Viking warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581: open-access academic article that breaks down really well a. the grave, b. the interpreation history of the grave, and c. the many and various reactions of the public and other scholars to the news (late 2017) that the body in the grave has a female genotype. It's a really good piece, and gets into the problematics of relying on genotype to determine gender (hint: just as problematic as relying on grave goods).
  
• Beth Jellicoe (Electric Lit), Sometimes the most feminist thing you can do is exist as a woman in public 'What Muriel Spark taught me about the subversiveness of female loitering'.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

thanks for posting these, they were interesting.

[meneltarma]

Rowland's thread which didn't discuss Bucks (Militaria, Simplicity, Masculinity) vs Dandies (lace, color, an association with being effeminate _as a gender presentation_) at all really... made me feel very sour, because dandy also is a Reclaimed Term by POC and a gender-diverse reclaimed term as well, shitting all over dandyism is kind of laden with racism when Afro-Dandy and "dandy-as-a-queer-gender" is a Thing.