RENEW NEWS
Upcoming events and insights into our community.
Where there's smoke, there's regulation
If you're sitting around your backyard fire pit, enjoying a winter evening with friends, you might want to throw a couple of sausages on the grill. Not because you're hungry. Because apparently it can help demonstrate that you're cooking. Folks around Canberra are being issued with environmental notices because, it turns out, a backyard fire is technically illegal under section 9 of the Environment Protection Regulation 2005.
Control and grace
The ACT Government has, recently, introduced laws to criminalise patterns of coercive control in relationships, to bring Canberra in line with other states.
This is a good step. Abuse within relationships is not always loud, sometimes it comes with a thousand tiny constrictions that amount to treating another person like a bonsai tree. If you’ve ever seen those kinds of patterns in operation, it’s awful – the isolation and surveillance, love-bombing paired with a loss of autonomy.
Enhanced
This week in Las Vegas, there was an international sporting event with a twist – athletes were encouraged to use FDA-approved performance-enhancing drugs. The competitors look incredible (which, I guess, they are). The event, it is claimed, is ultimately less about the sports – it’s about showcasing an upgraded humanity. Not merely athletes enhanced, but humanity enhanced.
Out and back
The news is wretched at the moment, which is why I got a bit gushy this morning when, at 9.35 our time, a small group of humans sat on top of a controlled explosion and rattled off the Earth.
