THE STARS are THE PARIS END’s fortnightly rated review section of unbridled opinion and lifestyle advice, bringing you the best and worst in trends, books, dining, and more.
★★★★★ Underground
This extremely compelling 1997 book about hacker culture at the end of the twentieth century is a must-read for people following the Julian Assange extradition trial, as well as anyone generally interested in digital surveillance, privacy, and statecraft. Melbourne academic Suelette Dreyfus wrote the book in collaboration with Assange in his pre-WikiLeaks days. All the figures profiled go by names like "Electron" and "Trax" and "Theorem." They do stuff like “phreaking” (cracking telecommunication systems), and stash their hardware in beehives. Neurodivergent teenage boys attend high school in suburban Melbourne by day and slip into NASA networks by night. Hearts and security systems are broken. The feds go wild. The book is a crazy time capsule and, in keeping with cyberpunk ethics, it’s free to download on the World Wide Web. Get it, phreaks.
★★★★ Cash Out Day
Not since the 2020 Richmond vs Geelong grand final and its attendant Dusty Martin-fever have inner-north sex workers, outer suburban tradies, #scamdemic paranoiacs, bikies, mums of three, ethnic dads, and VCA graduates united so fervently over a single cause: cash. This Tuesday just passed, if you didn’t know, was Cash Out Day—a day to protest the declining use of fiat currency in this country. According to several Facebook groups, the cashless agenda is being pushed onto hard-working Aussies by the Banks, the Government, the Tax Man, Silicon Valley, and the CCP. They must be stopped. The plan? Withdraw some money from an ATM to show ‘em that #CashIsKing. Your editors stand with the pro-cash faction, particularly because we’ve recently learned (by watching Hunted: epic; an education; surprisingly ACAB: 4 stars) how easy it is to track one’s every move through phone, card, and Myki. Aside from a trying life of crypto and dark web machinations, cash is still the best way to stay anon. With all this in mind, on Tuesday we visited our local ATM to take out $20. There was a line. “Are you here for Cash Out Day?” we asked the woman ahead of us. “What’s that, love?” she asked. “Is that a festival?” A man joined the queue. “Cash Out Day?” we inquired again. He looked uneasy and checked his Apple Watch. We scrolled through the “Cash is King Australia” Facebook page while waiting: selfie of a purple-haired middle-aged lady holding a fan of fifties; wads of hundred dollar bills on a table captioned, “That must of hurt.” We reached the front and withdrew our twenty bucks. Now…time to stimulate the economy. At a cafe, we ordered a half-strength latte. “We’re out of change,” the cashier sighed. “Sorry.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Paris End to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.