Les Liens du... Samedi?

Current and stale affairs, hot and cold takes: -

• Elphick and Taylor (The Conversation AU), The religious discrimination bill is a mess that risks privileging people of faith about all others.
  
• Rebecca Ratcliffe (The Guardian), Millions in assam brace for loss of citizenship
  
• Josh Robertson (ABC), Adani native title anger prompts police enquiry about 'senstivity' of removing protestors. Which is how I found out that the QLD government has just... extinguished native title over the site of the Adani mine.
  
• Amanda Meade (Guardian AU), Leigh Sales angered after unwanted kiss in front of crowd at charity dinner.
  
• Ko and Yu (Guardian), Lam withdraws extradition bill. She didn't meet the other demands; protests ongoing.
  

Good News:

• NZ Herald: Cook Islands to change name to avoid association with Captain Cook. The government is considering alternatives, and will then put it to a referendum (a similar referendum in the 90s was rejected).
  

Amusements:

• Londonist has A map of Fake Britain, which I first found in a simplified version via queen_int_north on twitter.
  

Longer political analysis:

• Greg Jericho (Grogonomics for Guardian AU): The ABS's shameful distortion of the truth shows why good journalists see beyond spin:
  

  This survey was unusual in that, as it was a special release with a massive amount of data and nothing that can actually affect markets (given the figures relate to a survey from over a year ago), some journalists (including myself) were given an embargoed copy. This gave us time to write up stories that would give readers a good sense of what was contained in the data.
  I must admit when the stories went up as soon as the embargo was lifted I was slightly surprised to see a few media outlets suggest that we are now apparently a nation of millionaires.
  I had a bit of a cold chill run down my spine as I worried I had missed an obvious point, because at no stage when I was going through all the spreadsheets did a figure like that jump out at me.
  And then I realised why this was the lead – the ABS had also put out another media release – with its own headline: “Average household wealth tops $1 million”.

  
  
• Malcolm Knox (The Monthly): Hellraiser: how evangelical footballer Israel Folau lit a fire under the culture wars. This piece has a good meaty chunk of rugby union history / cultural analysis, which I was missing from my grounding to this situation. I invite you to also google the cover image from the August issue of the Monthly, and just... appreciate how good their cover designers are. (September is pretty great too)
  
• Jock Serong (The Monthly): Surf and turfed: the Australian surfers battling Chinese developers in Fiji. Yes, I did buy an issue of The Monthly and thought almost all of it worth linking to.
  
• Sophie McNeil (ABC): On the frontline of Hong Kong's democracy protest movement.
  

Longer cultural / historical / other pieces:

• William Manners (Guardian): The secret history of 19th century cyclists:
  

  For the majority of those living in rural areas, owning a bicycle dramatically increased the number of potential marriage partners, as for the first time they possessed their own means of travelling beyond their local communities. The widening of gene pools which resulted from this process means that the biologist Steve Jones ranks the invention of the bicycle as the most important event in recent human evolution.
  However, the most noticeable social change brought about by the bicycle was in the lives of women. At first, most female cyclists were from middle-class backgrounds, but as the price of bicycles decreased as the 1890s progressed, it became increasingly possible for working-class women to purchase machines.
  As the ranks of female cyclists grew, conservative opinion which stated the ‘unbecomingness’ of a woman being sat astride a machine which she propelled with her legs began to be overridden. Self-powering a bicycle and travelling where you wished was both a symbol of, and means of achieving, freedom and emancipation.

  
  
• Alan Wheedon (ABC): Fa'afafine, fakaleitī, fakafifine — understanding the Pacific's alternative gender expressions. What I found most striking about this is that most missionary churches in the Pacific, until fairly recently, had no problem with third-gender Islanders.
  
• Marina Kamenev (The Monthly): The Sperm Drought: Dwindling stocks of Australian sperm have fertility clinics looking overseas and couples looking online .
  
• Robert Skinner (The Monthly): How I fought off a robodebt.
  
• Sam Vincent (The Monthly): Swan Song: documenting the Adam Goodes saga.
  
• Joelle Gergis (The Monthly): The terrible truth of climate change.
  
• Drew Rooke (The Monthly): On the Rocks: people are risking their lives for a selfie at Figure Eight Pools.
  
• Anwen Crawford (The Monthly): Happy Trails: Lil Nas X's Old Town Road.
  
• Helen Elliot (The Monthly): Review of 'The White Girl' by Tony Birch. I need to read this; also I need to read many other Tony Birch works.
  
• Isabel Cole (Electric lit): How a book trilogy about killing god helped restore my faith. (NB: by 'faith' the author does not mean her Christian belief is restored.)
  
• Annie Blanks (USA Today): The Waffle House Index is a real thing: how does the restaurant chain do it?:
  

  When any of the stores are in danger of being hit by severe weather, so-called “jump teams” are activated to be ready to deploy wherever needed.
  Jump teams are made up of Waffle House contractors, construction workers, gas line experts, restaurant operators, food providers and other associates who are assembled and ready to go wherever needed at a moment’s notice. Their purpose is to help relieve local Waffle House operators and employees who need to evacuate, be with their families or tend to their homes when a storm hits, and help make sure restaurants are able to open quickly after a storm or stay open during a storm.

  
  
• Alexis Hall (Frolic Media): The best sex I ever read. This is actually a phenomenal close reading of the garden scene in Jane Eyre.
  

Disclaimer: the distinction between 'longer political' and 'longer cultural' is very arbitrary, I'm sorry. I do feel like chunking that list in two is a good idea, for ease of reading, but the actual split is fuzzy. (Eg: the Knox piece on Folau is actually cultural analysis, and the Kamanev piece on sperm banks is all tied up with privacy law and other reproductive law, but here we are.)