(Image: Adobe/Private Media)

Cum along now The Aus Headline Bot is a fascinating tool — collecting the alterations made to headlines of various online publications. It can sketch the subtle shifts in framing and emphasis that go into selling a story, sometimes hinting at a desire to highlight divisive elements, sometimes the desire to avoid defamation, sometimes simply the task of shortening and clarifying what one is trying to say.

And then there are times when it allows you to imagine how the subeditor responsible justified briefly publishing a headline about long COVID symptoms with the word “cum” in it.

Lifting the vape When Sunrise described a segment yesterday thus: “There have been calls for army veterans to be recruited to help stamp out ‘out of control’ vaping in Queensland schools,” we assumed it was a beat-up, the use of a random tweet or a vox pop to peg to a story where actual experts suggest something sensible.

Sunrise, we owe you an apology. A minute into the interview with Teachers Professional Association of Queensland secretary Tracy Tully, she puts forward her central plank in combating robo-cigs: sending in a grizzled army vet with a thousand yard stare and the ability to fashion a deadly weapon out of stationery to sort it out. How? Alas, host David Koch merely observes that Tully is “thinking outside the box” and moves on before finding out.

Masking differences For your records, these are the Coalition MPs who dissented from the apparent party line yesterday that masks wouldn’t be worn in Parliament: Andrew Wallace, Angie Bell, Stuart Roberts, Karen Andrews, Michael McCormack, Andrew Gee.

Spin vision In the June quarter production report from Twiggy Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group (with record iron ore exports in the June quarter and for the 2021-22 financial year) the all important pricing details were revealed.

The June quarter 2022 report revealed that Fortescue’s average revenue of US$108/dry metric tonne (dmt) for the quarter, realising 78% of the average Platts 62% CFR Index and average revenue of US$100/dmt for the 2021-22 year. That sounds OK — revenue a little better in the final quarter than the year average, reflecting weaker prices over most of the year.

But go to the June 2021 report from Fortescue and it’s a very different story. The June 2021 quarter saw “record average revenue” of US$168/dry metric tonne (dmt) for the quarter, realising 84% of the average Platts 62% CFR Index, and an average price of US$135/dmt for FY21.

So the June 2022 average price was actually a fall of more than 35% — that will leave a hole in the accounts — on a 200,000 tonne rise in exports for the three months to 49.5 million tonnes. It is in fact a drop of US$2.4 billion or more in revenue for the quarter.

For the year, the fall from US$135 a tonne to US$100 a tonne was 26%, with the amount shipped rising 3.7% or 6.8 million tonnes — a small offset to the bigger drop. That’s a fall in revenue of more than US$6 billion.

Everybody needs … While Neighbours — drawing its last breath after 37 years — occasionally copped flak for refusing to engage with topical issues (which isn’t exactly the same thing as being apolitical), a tipster got in touch to note that it is very much a product of its history:

“[The show] arrived on our screen at about the same time as full-blown neoliberalism — Thatcher/Reagan/John Hewson. Shared values of:

  • Aspirationalism
  • Self-reliance
  • Getting ahead
  • Nationalism
  • Whitebread family as the central unit of society
  • Emotionally manipulative use of dogs
  • Good teeth and bad hair.

“Today Neighbours is dead and neoliberalism is not looking very well at all. It tried, too little-too late, to better reflect ‘real world’ and just highlighted how irrelevant it had become. Not unlike …”