Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website.
Madeleine Holden: ‘This is how you raise a rapist’: on the culture which created Brock Turner
“Mr Turner held attitudes about women, consent and entitlement that fed through to his son and helped to inform his behaviour. This became evident throughout the trial and sentencing, where Turner consistently betrayed a failure to grasp the severity of what he’d done and to consider the impact on his victim rather than just the adverse consequences he would face for his crime.”
Paul Brislen: The Skodafone deal is driven by the battle with the dumb pipe
“What happens if Sky/Vodafone (all right, Skodafone) buys the rights to That TV Series I desperately want to watch but Spark has the rights to Sportsball and I’m eager to see that as well? Will I have to buy two services from two telcos in order to access the content?”
Alex Casey: Why UnREAL season two is the perfect antidote to The Bachelor NZ
“Shit is meta. It’s a call to arms from an ex-producer frustrated with the problems of the show, poking the bear to see if they will ever step up and even the playing field. You’ll probably have your own opinions on whether The Bachelor is the right forum to straighten out the race and gender disparities in the media, but I’m on Rachel’s team.”
Madeleine Chapman: A cease-and-desist letter to Max Key: please stop stealing my look
“Upon seeing that her face was whiter than your fundamentally white body, my client, a half-Samoan woman, experienced a cultural crisis in which she questioned her ethnic makeup and the integrity of her allegedly Samoan mother. My client blames you for this episode.”
Ms X: Introducing ‘Hello Caller’, The Spinoff’s new advice column
“Whatever issue has crawled inside your head and/or heart and has gone rogue like an Australian squatter in a posh London house circa 1989, don’t despair. Write it down and give me as much information as you can. This is entirely anonymous so don’t fret. It’s a jungle out there so let’s hold hands and be kind and use our giant brains.”
Don Rowe: ‘The line was a snake of embarrassment’ – One man goes undercover for 75c Big Macs
“The line stretched around Mrs Higgins, cordoning in their customers and throwing serious wrong-neighbourhood vibes. The press circled, a One News camera searching like the eye of Sauron. The customers jockeyed to hide their faces. Beside me, a young man held an awkward kebab.”
The Spinoff: Job! The Spinoff seeks Social Media Manager
“Tone is critical – the successful applicant for this sweet job will need to maintain our slightly nasal and very specific voice across multiple platforms. They will work collaboratively with staff writers and editors to reach our audience with precision and energy.”
Janie Cameron: Throwback Thursday: Can you stomach Suzy Cato and the Giant Bean Poo?
“As a child of the ’90s, Suzy Cato taught me many things: the perils of headlice, how to water a person, and perhaps most importantly, that you’re never too old for a scrunchie. Despite being a total Suzy’s World fangirl, I somehow missed the episode in which Suzy demonstrates an unnecessarily graphic reenactment of what happens when you eat baked beans.”
Siouxsie Wiles: An open letter to Maureen Pugh, the new National MP who ‘doesn’t believe in pharmaceutical drugs’
“Congratulations on becoming the National Party’s newest MP! I’ll have to admit, though, that I’m a little nervous about your election after reading that you don’t believe in using pharmaceutical medicines and would apparently ‘like to see the government take a more holistic approach to how it allocates health funding.'”
James Dann: All aboard! A beginner’s guide to jumping on the Warriors bandwagon
“The players have had a bit of a rough time of late, especially on social media. Tweet your support at the players, telling them that you’ve got their back. They’ll never know that just a month ago, you were calling them useless and saying they should be sacked.”