Links, various

Another scratch list, assembled in transit.

Current and stale affairs, hot and lukewarm takes
*ABC news: Pro-China death threat posters guarded by university security. In a really simple demonstration of how ill-prepared Australian universities are for dealing with the large Chinese student population (although immensely prepared to take their $$), University security at UTS, who do not speak Chinese, zealously guarded a Lennon Wall associated with pro-Hong Kong protestors, unaware that nationalists had got there first and plastered death threats.
*Ben Doherty and Yang Tian (Guardian AU): Instagram censors Melbourne artist’s anti-Beijing posts but ignores trolls
*Matt Keely (Newsweek): Cathay Pacific new CEO pledges to comply with Beijing, while Taiwan media says previous CEO refused.
*South China Morning Post: Cathay Pacific staff warned over social media use.
*Simon Jack (BBC): Supermarket considers rationing small business buyers.
*SMH: Three quarters of refugees on Manus and Nauru seriously ill, doctors claim.

Good news
*Judi Lowe (The Conversation AU): Filipino fishermen are making millions protecting whale sharks. “Our research<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0964569118303909> involved investigating what effect the whale shark tourism has had on livelihoods and destructive fishing in the area. We found that Oslob is one of the world’s most surprising and successful alternative livelihood and conservation projects.”

Longer political essays
*Denis Muller (The Conversation AU): It will be money, not morality, that turns the tide on Alan Jones. Provides a good history of Alan Jones’ career and close relationship with Liberal PMs going back to Howard.
*Jordan Baker (SMH): Begging for chairs: grant competition reveals schools’ funding struggle.
*Krystian Seibert (The Conversation AU), Get Up fights for progressive causes, but it is not a political party and is not beholden to one:

Groups like GetUp are now subject to even more regulation than third parties, thanks to legislative changes<https://www.aec.gov.au/parties_and_representatives/index.htm>introduced by the government last year. Because of the amount they spend trying to influence elections, they fit into a new category called “political campaigner<https://www.aec.gov.au/parties_and_representatives/financial_disclosure/guides/political-campaigners.htm>”. Political campaigners are required to register with the AEC and submit a more detailed annual return than “third parties”, similar to the returns required of political parties.

So, when Morrison calls for GetUp to be accountable like a political party, that’s already the case. However, despite being regulated in a similar way to political parties, they don’t receive the same benefits.

Any further restrictions on GetUp will also harm conservative lobby groups like Advance Australia, but the liberal government doesn’t care about that because those groups are negligible to its support base, whereas GetUp is an effective threat.

*Youyou Zhou (Quartz): China’s fangirl culture mobilising against Hong Kong protests:“Using language heavily influenced by China’s fan-girl culture, a post on the social network Weibo personifies the nation<https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/weibo-post-hk-idol.png> as a “little brother” (link in Chinese) who needs to be protected”.

*Salvatore Babones (The Conversation): Australian universities can’t rely on India if funds from Chinese students start to fall.

*Fileborn, McCann, Mitchell and Kunjan (The Conversation): Victorian changes to birth certificates will not increase sexual violence: here’s why. Good news: the changes passed last week, although I don’t think I saved a link.

*Samantha Maiden (The New Daily): Key study misrepresented in NSW abortion ‘gendercide’ claim:

Ugly claims that the decriminalisation of abortion in New South Wales will lead to “gendercide” and a generation of missing girls have raged for weeks, with the La Trobe study often cited as the sole research evidence<https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/47/6/2025/5057663>.

But now the report’s authors have said politicians had been “misinterpreting” the findings, which they say offer no conclusive evidence that women are aborting children based on gender.

Longer other: historical, cultural, natural historical, etc
*Rebecca Woods (The Conversation): ’Like’ isn’t a lazy linguistic filler. ‘Like’ is used for emphasis and clarification more than as a filler word.
* Leah Rupanner (The Conversation AU): Women aren’t better multitaskers than men, they’re just doing more work.
*Hamilton Nolan (Splinter News): People are convicted based on one witness all the time. This is a bit old, and US-focused (it’s context is Kavanaugh) but it came up again in the context of the Pell appeal. Useful overview of the many kinds of cases where a single witness would not be unusual.
*Lee Kaufman (Meanjin blog): What I’m Reading. Notable for being one of several mentions of Tsiolkas lately that are making me reconsider not bothering with The Slap.
*Kirsten Tranter (Overland): An inherently stupid prize of our own. Takes issue with the Stimson essay we had Issues With in the comments here a few weeks ago.
*Naaman Zhou (Guardian AU): Why Australia should be enchanted by the long-haired rat

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