A day late because yesterday I was at the Canberra #blacklivesmatter protest and got distracted. Sorry!
As always: paid subscriptions are available for US$5/month or much much cheaper at US$40/year. Have a lovely weekend.
Read
432 Indigenous people have died in custody in Australia since 2008. A national shame that many non-Indigenous folk aren’t aware of.
Emily Atkin’s HEATED newsletter is one of the best subscriptions I’ve ever taken out. This edition on the climate movement’s silence on racism is such a great piece of writing. The part where she quotes a man who unsubscribes from her newsletter because it is too intersectional made me throw my hands up in dismay.
Books to help you understand and fight white supremacy: a list from Readings, an independent bookstore in Melbourne.
I was rapt by the story of Marga Griesbach, a 92-year-old Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust as a teenager.
I had no idea there had been a huge misinformation campaign around HIV/AIDS led by the KGB in the 1980s.
How Jakarta became the code word for US-backed killings. Looking forward to reading Vincent Bevins’ book; it comes out in Australia in July.
David Carlin’s 'Refresh, New Update’: “2m ago: Online everyone was writing diaries about how life had changed, and how it felt, and how they were trying to think about it, and how we should think about it. The social channels spilled over with kindness, anxiety and gallows humour. The news expanded and expanded until it became a wall of noise. If you had ever wanted more updates in your life your time had truly come.”
Watch/listen
I mentioned Julia Gillard’s podcast here a couple of weeks ago when I discovered it. The most recent episode is a conversation with Cate Blanchett and I thought it was a wonderful discussion about telling women’s stories.
This was in my fortnightly newsletter last week but it’s a story not many know about unless they’re Indonesia watchers: the Sidoarjo mud flow, caused by the Lapindo company drilling for gas in 2006. This short film from Al Jazeera focuses on Dian, a woman fighting for justice for her community, whose villages are now under metres of mud.
Cook/eat
I made dan dan noodles for the first time and now I don’t want to stop eating them. I’d had them in restaurants before but I’d never made them myself - surprisingly quite easy to do so, it turns out. It just involves mixing a lot of different sauces together.
The recipe doesn’t seem to be online but if you own a copy of Austin Bush’s Food of Northern Thailand, I highly recommend the chicken and banana chilli curry. It’s sour but sweet and you grill/BBQ the ginger, turmeric, galangal and dried red chillies before making a paste. It’s superb.
If you live in Australia, Coles seems to have these Hong Kong Dim Sim Kitchen pork and chive dumplings on special every two weeks and they’re not bad for just $2.50 ($5 when not on special). Steam them and some bok choy, make a quick sauce of soy sauce, black vinegar, and chilli oil, and you’ve got a pretty decent lunch.
I ate a feijoa for the first time yesterday afternoon. Why did no-one tell me about them before?? They’re delicious! Like a sour, slightly creamy guava. Phenomenal.