Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”

I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.

I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.

It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.

Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”

TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:

You do not respect their rights as an individual.

You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.

You probably haven’t been listening to them.

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/countdown/hottest100

We have SBS - the multicultural broadcaster - which is best known for broadcasting free-to-air porn every night before the internet became a thing. We have the ABC, which is largely a mix of BBC re-runs for Boomers and kids TV shows like Bluey (yes that Bluey) and Round The Twist - a kids show where one of the characters wins a swimming competition by spinning his dick like a propellor.

And finally, we have the radio station Triple J - the ABC's little brother with the government remit of making anyone over the age of 30 very angry.

Triple J is best known for using its government funding to get up to the most ridiculous shit it can think of, including events such as Requestival, a day where they let the public decide their entire playlist during COVID, leading to the station to air tracks ranging from "Adam Sandler - Somebody Kill Me", "The Wii Channel Theme", and "Music From The Motion Picture Association Against Copyright Theft Advertisement 'You Wouldn't Steal A Car'".

When not being downright tomfoolish, Triple J is also known for having an almost olympic level track record for unearthing new musicians, having discovered and supported acts like Lorde, Gotye, The Kid Laroi, Tyler The Creator, and even Billie Eilish when they were still fledgling baby artists that nobody had heard of.

(They're also responsible for making Dance Monkey a thing though, so swings and roundabouts).

On top of these hyjinx, every year Triple J holds a national poll that is effectively the closest thing this country has to a state religion. Unlike the less important national votes we hold every four years to decide which tosspots will be running the country, Triple J's Hottest 100 is considered the peak of democracy in Australia, amassing millions of votes annualy to decide on the greatest song of the last 12 months.

(To prove we're not joking: even the Prime Minister posted his votes to Facebook this year, and somewhat over-optimistically tagged Billie Eilish)

Once all the votes are in, a vast majority of the country tunes-in to hear the results on an annual public holiday. (A vast majority of the country also get angry at the results - to the point that "You're kidding, shoulda been higher" has become something of a national catchphrase.)

Previous performers to place in the poll include:

Denis Leary's Asshole, voted #1 in 1993

Premier Dan Andrews, when his speech about not going out to buy beer during lockdowns was remixed into a club dance track and landed at #12 in 2020, and

The Wiggles covering Tame Impala, which was voted to #1 in 2021

In recent years there's been a lot of dismay because the introduction of Spotify has effectively killed the Australian music industry, meaning the Hottest 100 has been getting dominated by American musicians, as well as killing off traditional radio stations like Triple J.

This poll is one last fighting chance for us to see some Australians actually chart for a change.

So chuck your votes in and give some Aussie musos some love, whether that's fellow tumblerite Troye Sivan, Tom "Have You Checked Your Butthole" Cardy, or some small niche indie artist like AC/DC.

1) they have a LOT of commercial breaks

2) i didn’t realize that ads for medicine were actually like this

Disabled Person: YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER FOOL!

The United States Government:

In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.

It doesn’t matter what it’s for.

You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?

For college?

To put a downpayment on a house?

Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?

Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.

And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.

So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.

“What if I spend the money that day?”

Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.

before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.

Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.

And here’s the funnest part of the story!

One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.

The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.

He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.

Begging everyone to please please please watch this Last Week Tonight episode about Disability Benefits and to get the full scoop on how fucked people like me are.

Things I learned from this video:

-the reason my total asset cap is $2,000 is because congress is a bunch of fuckasses who haven’t raised the limit in DECADES to go with inflation.

-It should be, if it was accurate to today’s currency value and inflation, $10,000