A man used a pseudonymous Twitter account to make a sexist comment about a woman. The woman took offence. She knew his real name. She presumably could do little to obtain a retraction or apology from him, and was dissatisfied with this. She also knew who his employer was, so she contacted them and asked them to harass him for her, and they appear to have complied.
Regardless of the tastelessness of his actions, her behaviour cannot be justified.…
Some time ago, perhaps a year or a bit more, I bought 4 Woolworths ‘essentials’ brand AAA 800mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries, made in China, from Woolworths on Smith St in Fitzroy. They recently failed to charge and are dead.
NiMH rechargeable batteries are supposed to be capable of dozens, if not hundreds, of recharge cycles, and should have a life of several years. I would have recharged these batteries only about 5 or 6 times. They can be reasonably considered to be faulty and unfit for purpose.…
As a pedestrian and cyclist I am acutely aware of the danger lazy selfish ignorant and negligent drivers place me in with deliberate reckless indifference. I’ve had enough. Drivers who use their mobile phones when driving distract themselves from paying attention to the road and therefore choose to undermine the safety of others. Their choice to behave in this manner indicates that they value their social circumstances more than the lives of others.
Whereas legacy media corporations are too afraid of offending their bogan audience to name and shame them, I’m not.…
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I’ve been getting steadily more bored and disinterested in current discussions about marriage in Australia. The debate about gay marriage is important in terms of equality, and I support equality. What I don’t support is stupidity and pointlessness. I wrote about the pointlessness of marriage laws five years ago and it has become more pointless since then.
Few of the participants in the marriage debate seem to recognise the difference between the social custom and the legal contract.…
Brunswick St Cycles shops closed during the week. The business appears to have suddenly collapsed, but I think that behind this the scenario was somewhat different. Reading the articles in the Age about it, a pattern of illogical capitalism emerges.
Cycling has become increasingly popular amongst the middle class as a form of transport and as a hobby, driven by such diverse forces as increasing traffic congestion and fuel prices, the need for sedentary office workers to get more exercise, and the coverage of cycle racing on SBS.…
Back in 2010, City of Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly opposed the construction of a new public toilet on the corner of Westgarth and Brunswick streets. He had no logical reason for this, but argued that the proposed location was a right wing conspiracy against the nearby Firefighters Credit Union office on Brunswick St.
This unfounded accusation only makes sense if you believe that public toilets are a bad thing, and that the other councillors considered this opinion to be normative and that it formed a sound basis for engaging in an unjustified attack on a small credit union housed in a nondescript high street office.…
The recent article Porn hurts women, so say the partners of users annoyed me greatly. Apart from the usual anti-sex, anti-porn rhetoric, what annoyed me the most was the rampant hypocrisy and double standards it espouses.
The author, Petra Bueskens, critiques Bettina Arndt’s 2011 article Porn is not a dirty word, wherein Arndt discusses men’s use of pornography and their confusion about why women appear to dislike this. Porn is a diverse form of media.…
Publishing nude photos of your ex partner on the internet as a form of revenge for them dumping you is terribly unethical behaviour, but apparently it’s not illegal. Nonetheless, in a recent case a man was convicted for publishing an indecent article in the form of nude photos of his former girlfriend that he uploaded to his Facebook profile. He then contacted her to taunt her about it. He violated her trust and her privacy, but this is not a crime either.…