While some are throwing oil over works of art by dead white men, a gallery in Western Australia has found that a simpler path to decolonization is to keep these pieces safely hidden from public view:

It owns priceless pieces of art by the likes of Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, Norman Lindsay, Tom Roberts and even Lucien Freud, as well as one of Australia’s most recognisable masterpieces, Frederick McCubbin’s Down on His Luck.

But if you were hoping to see any of these renowned treasures at the Art Gallery of Western Australia for much of the past two years, you’d have been disappointed.

Most of them haven’t been on display at all . . .

Historical collections curator at the gallery Melissa Harpley said she felt a keen responsibility to look at the gallery’s role in society in the contemporary context of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and climate change.

The next step will be to claim that the bad juju emanating from villainous works in storage is causing actual harm to whatever the trendy nomenclature for blacks is by then, thus they ought to be ceremonially taken out and burned.

Still among the Sandgropers, I once thought that the best possible way to own physical gold without keeping it in your own custody would be to do so through the Perth Mint. It’s state-owned, high security and had a sterling reputation. They also did gold-backed crypto, which again I thought ought to be as legit as you could get with such things. And they sell commemorative coins etc.

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Canadian federal government reveals plan to bring in 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025

That’s about 1.3% of Canada’s current population per year.

China’s war on COVID-19 spurs expat exodus, but lockdowns are only part of the story

Like the Beeb, the ABC has lately been publishing a lot of Five Eyes press releases, particulary on China. However, I’m a little more inclined to believe this one because (a) I know about a dozen people who’ve lived in China over the last decade and all but a couple confirm this, and (b) because they manage to provide some figures:

Official figures show the number of foreigners in Shanghai decreased from 208,000 in 2010, to around 163,000 in 2020.

The downturn was even starker in Beijing, where the number of foreign residents declined by 40 per cent over the same period.

However, since 2020, those numbers are thought to have dropped even more dramatically.

Excellent thread. Too few understand this is what happened everywhere, which means we’ll do the same tail-chasing next time round:

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