Someone sent me a photo last week of a Telstra payphone booth done up with a Futurama theme, Bender’s face grinning off the side of it. Cute, I thought. Nice bit of nostalgia marketing. Then I read the thread underneath it and realised half of Reddit was having a small existential crisis over the fact that in the actual first episode of Futurama, phone booths aren’t phone booths at all. They’re suicide booths. That’s how we meet Bender, standing next to one, offering Fry a nice quiet way out of 1999.

The Royal Australian Mint has done it again, stirring up quite the conversation with their latest release featuring everyone’s favourite Blue Heeler pup on our dollar coins. Well, technically it’s Bingo on one coin and Bluey on another, creating a delightful scene when placed together - they’re playing with a balloon, which is quite clever when you think about it.

The recent news about 40,000 stolen Bluey coins and their subsequent recovery (in an operation aptly named “Operation Bandit”) reads like something straight out of a heist movie. The irony of stealing coins featuring characters known for teaching moral lessons isn’t lost on me. Sitting here in my home office, watching the morning trams roll past, I find myself pondering how we’ve arrived at this peculiar moment in Australian history.