THIS WEEK ONLINE – Who's Afraid of the Proletariat?

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"Ari" here, welcoming you back to This Week Online. 

Hello.

• “Customers are feeling the strain” say Big 4 banks amid grotesque profits
• Taxes will never be sexy but this information is interesting I promise
• A really big read !
• The reason cinema is SHIT
• An interview with our favourite glory hole artist
• yehhh

Excellent. So good. Claps for self-awareness. Australia’s big four banks reported record profits this week, off the back of the violent inflation and erupting interest rate we’ve seen decimating the fabric of society. 

As Aleks Bliszczyk reports for VICE Australia, National Australia Bank announced a $4.07 billion profit in the six months to March 2023 [a 17 per cent increase from the same period a year ago]; ANZ revealed its profits for the same term, a record $3.8 billion, up 23 per cent; Westpac reported a 22 per cent rise to a six-month profit of $4 billion; Commonwealth Bank reported a $5.2 billion half-year result, up 9 per cent from a year earlier. 

The combined sum is about $16 billion, or about $88 million per day of wet, juicy profit for the banks’ shareholders.

Not sure what can be done about it though [revolt] [arm the proletariat] [seize the means] [burn it to the ground].....

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The $243 BILLION price tag of the government's stage 3 tax cuts is a fuckload of money. The ABC has delineated it in an engaging and interesting way to understand. For instance, with that, we could build 100 Royal Adelaide Hospitals. At the price of $2.4 billion, it is one of the most expensive buildings in the world. And we could build o n e  h u n d r e d of them with still $3 million to spare. 

But why would we build 100 $2.4 billion dollar hospitals?? WHY WOULD WE GIVE $243 BILLION DOLLARS’ WORTH OF TAX CUTS TO PEOPLE WHO DO NOT NEED THE MONEY. 

I particularly enjoy the mention of the $220K cost to rename the BOM that everyone’s knickers got in a twist over. And the perspective that, at that price, for $243 billion you could rename the BOM every day for 1000 years. And perspective is what it’s really all about. They haven’t even gotten to who benefits from it yet. Perspective! Read on!

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The headline reads: THE BILLION-DOLLAR PONZI SCHEME THAT HOOKED WARREN BUFFETT AND THE U.S. TREASURY. I understand some of this. I know some of these words. I know some of these phrases, even. But stringed all together, I do not know what this is about. My editor recommended this one for the newsletter. I’m not going to read it but you can. 

I’m just playing with you, I read up to “Carpoff had no training in solar engineering. After sketching his idea on a napkin, he’d asked Paulette’s younger brother, Bobby Amato, a former Ford auto mechanic, to build it. “I had no idea how solar worked,” Amato told me. “Good thing they got Google and all that.” 

Then I read up to “when he pulled into work in the morning, a hard-rock version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” thundered from the speakers of his red pickup truck. He later installed a massive, six-panelled photograph of the American flag on his factory walls and claimed that his family said the Pledge of Allegiance, in lieu of grace, at holiday meals.”

And then I read the rest. It’s really, really good.

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If you’ve been wondering why the fuck there are so many god-awful adaptations poisoning the cinema these days... wonder no longer. It isn’t just because we have become a society of spoiled, unoriginal hacks without a single pure thought nor grain of joy nor dreg of creativity left in our trodden souls. 

It is also because of greed. Duh. I particularly enjoy this part of the article that includes a quote from a thread by Writers Guild of America board member John Rogers, re: the writers’ strike: “‘The new robber barons of Hollywood are on a suicide run’ – tech-bro economics, Wall Street-fellating “vulture capitalism” here to feast on the industry, not further it.”

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS DESTROYING FILM. Sure. But what’s really destroying film is greed, greed, greed, greed. We’ll never see an original film again, I’m afraid. 

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This week, I had the divine pleasure of interviewing the artist known as @babydilf. In 2021, a glory hole came to them in a dream. They woke up, messaged their cute queer tradie friends, and the next day, they had a glory hole installed in their home. This was the beginning of what has become a long-form art project, displayed on fan sites and teased on Instagram – videos from either side of the hole, complete with a social sciences-informed investigation on babydilf’s part. Visitors to the hole primarily identify as straight men, many of them are tradies, married men, business men. 

The chronicling of visitors has brought babydilf notoriety, but better yet, through the hole, they have been able to access self-actualisation, exploring their transness, their femininity, and their sexuality from a place of safety. In our discussion, babydilf revealed to me many fascinating insights about identity, straightness, and masculinity in modern Australia, as revealed to them through the hole.

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DON'T UNDERSTAND THE BUDGET? ME NEITHER.

UNTIL I MET ALEKS. ALEKS WILL EXPLAIN. WATCH! LEARN! FOLLOW! EDIFY YOURSELF!

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