This erm… month, I have been mostly reading:

• Centrelink duty of care has failed, regardless of Information Commissioner ruling — Peter Tonoli at Electronic Frontiers Australia. Oh, my! Stay classy, Centrelink: Privacy rights groups Digital Rights Watch, the Australian Privacy Foundation and Electronic Frontiers Australia have slammed a statement by the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner that their investigation found no wrongdoing in the release of personal information by a government department. In February 2017, writer Andie Fox wrote an article that was critical of Centrelink’s controversial debt recovery program. In response, the office of the former Human Services Minister Alan Tudge released Ms Fox’s personal details (including details of Fox’s relationship and her tax and claims history) to another journalist, who subsequently published an article countering Fox’s claims.
• People Can't Pay Rent, Debt Is Insane, and the Economy Is Somehow 'Great' — Matt Taylor at VICE: Unemployment, as President Trump took care to remind us with another unhinged and hyperbolic tweet this week, is at an almost 50-year low. After a spectacular 2017 and iffy early stretch this year, the stock market is once again trading high. Banks just enjoyed their most profitable quarter ever, encouraging the chair of the Federal Reserve—Wall Street vet and Trump pick Jerome Powell—to declare the economy in "great shape" Wednesday, and even raise interest rates on the debt owed by millions of Americans. On the surface, things look good, right? Maybe that's why a new report from the Low Income Housing Coalition, a liberal advocacy group working in partnership with Senator Bernie Sanders, landed with such a resounding thud Wednesday. The chief takeaway wasn't even the most breathtaking, even if it still felt like a gut punch: There is not a single county in America where someone earning minimum wage can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment while working a normal 40-hour week. More shocking: You would have to work 122 hours a week for all 52 weeks of the year to afford rent on a two-bedroom at the national average rate on the federal minimum wage of $7.25. You don't need to be a democratic socialist firebrand or an advocate for the poor or even a policy wonk to see that something is deeply, deeply out of whack here.
• Recycling crisis exposes the market’s failure — James Supple in Solidarity Online: Previously, collection companies could make money by selling recyclable waste to Chinese companies. Now that they have stopped buying it, the price waste companies can get from selling the materials has plummeted. So companies are asking for higher fees to collect recycling from local councils—with no guarantee the waste will actually be recycled.
• Cave Art — Bizarro! by Dan Piraro: