Last night’s incident outside Rod Laver Arena during the Billie Eilish concert has left me fuming. Two grown men thought it would be hilarious to intimidate a 10-year-old girl, shoving a phone in her face and demanding she name Chicago Bulls players because she was wearing the team’s merchandise. This isn’t content creation - it’s harassment, plain and simple.

The digital age has transformed our relationship with public spaces. Every moment seems to be fair game for someone’s social media feed, turning casual outings into potential content without consent. What’s particularly disturbing is how these self-proclaimed content creators specifically target those who seem vulnerable - young girls at a concert, people working out at gyms, or anyone they think might give them the reaction they’re hunting for.

My recent coffee catch-up with an old mate from the tech industry sparked some interesting thoughts about corporate culture. He’d just made the leap from a small dev shop to a big corporate gig, and his observations hit surprisingly close to home.

The corporate world often feels like watching a carefully choreographed performance where the actual work sometimes takes a backseat to the art of being seen doing work. Picture those endless meetings in the glass-walled rooms at Collins Street, where people seem more focused on crafting the perfect email response than solving actual problems.

The headlines are trumpeting that Australia has finally ended its per-capita recession, with GDP growth outpacing population growth for the first time in 21 months. Break out the champagne, right? Well, not so fast.

Standing in the queue at my local café this morning, I overheard several conversations about rising costs, and it struck me how disconnected these GDP figures feel from everyday reality. Sure, the numbers might look good on paper – a 0.1% increase in GDP per capita – but try telling that to anyone who’s recently done their weekly shop at Coles or Woolies.

The intersection of AI and politics never ceases to amaze me. This week’s entertainment comes from Trump’s peculiar stance on AI-generated content, specifically his comments about the “Take It Down Act.” The irony is thick enough to spread on toast.

Let’s get something straight - the actual legislation is about protecting people from non-consensual intimate imagery, particularly targeting the growing problem of AI-generated explicit content. It’s a bipartisan effort that deserves serious consideration, given how AI technology is rapidly evolving and being misused.

The news of a private company successfully landing on the Moon has sparked quite an interesting discussion online, though perhaps not entirely in the way you might expect. While this achievement marks a significant milestone in commercial space exploration, what caught my attention was the peculiar way people started discussing it - with an amusing focus on the word “landed” being accidentally repeated in various news headlines.

Looking through the comments, it’s fascinating how quickly the discussion evolved into a mix of movie references, memes, and genuine curiosity about the technical aspects of the landing. Some questioned whether they actually “landed landed” or just “landed” - a distinction that became increasingly humorous as the conversation progressed.

Reading about Sergey Brin’s recent comments suggesting Google employees should work 60-hour weeks to achieve AGI faster made my blood boil a bit this morning. The tech industry’s toxic “hustle culture” seems to be reaching new heights of absurdity.

Remember when tech companies at least pretended to care about work-life balance? Those ping pong tables and free snacks were meant to create the illusion that working in tech was somehow different from the corporate grind. Now we’ve got billionaires openly demanding their already well-worked employees sacrifice even more of their lives for the noble cause of… making their employers even richer.

The shopping receipt sitting on my kitchen bench tells a story that’s becoming all too familiar. Desiccated coconut, that humble baking staple, has jumped from $2.70 to $4.00 at Coles - a staggering 48% increase. Looking at the prices across our major supermarkets, it’s the same story: Aldi at $3.90, Woolworths matching Coles at $4.00.

This might seem like another example of supermarket price gouging, but digging deeper reveals a more complex story. The Philippines, a major coconut producer, was hit by six devastating typhoons in just 30 days last year. These natural disasters didn’t just destroy crops; they took hundreds of lives and devastated communities. It’s a stark reminder that behind every price increase, there’s often a human story we don’t see on the supermarket shelf.

The housing debate took an interesting turn this week when a property investor with 26 properties tried to blame immigration for Australia’s housing affordability crisis. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone, but it highlighted a deeper conversation we need to have about property distribution in our country.

Living in the inner suburbs, I’ve watched perfectly good houses sit empty for months or even years, while desperate renters compete for increasingly scarce rentals. Within a kilometer of my home, I can count at least ten vacant properties - some waiting for redevelopment, others seemingly forgotten by their investors. It’s a pattern repeated across Melbourne, where approximately 50,000 properties are tied up in short-term rentals like Airbnb.

The internet never ceases to amaze me with its peculiar discoveries. This week, social media has been buzzing about an unexpected cleaning hack that’s both fascinating and slightly concerning: using Irish Spring 5-in-1 body wash as a bathroom cleaner.

Looking at the before-and-after photos flooding my feed, I must admit the results are impressive. People are claiming this humble body wash transforms grimy bathtubs into gleaming sanctuaries with minimal effort. The procedure seems straightforward - apply the product directly, cover with plastic wrap overnight, and give it a light scrub in the morning. The results speak for themselves.

The scenes at Cranbourne’s newly opened Panda Mart this week have been nothing short of chaotic. Picture this: a 200-meter queue stretching to the main road, frustrated shoppers yelling at each other, and staff eventually forced to close the store’s doors. The whole situation reads like a Black Friday horror story, except this isn’t even a sale - it’s just Thursday in suburban Melbourne.

The store, essentially a physical manifestation of online marketplaces like Temu, promises rock-bottom prices on everything from kitchen gadgets to party supplies. But watching the mayhem unfold, I’m struck by a deeper concern about our society’s relationship with consumption and value.