The news channel’s prickliness after a BBC presenter made a passing joke about ratings only made it funnier
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Howdy, folks! With all the terrible events unfolding in Ukraine right now, I figured everyone would like a little bit of a break from doomscrolling. Not wanting to add anymore negativity to the timelines, I’m going to share something on-topic but decidedly more cheery than the McMansions of rich people who suck.
As some of you may know, I recently visited Oman as a cycling journalist covering the eponymous Tour of Oman. (You can follow all seven days of my travels via my cycling newsletter derailleur beginning here.) While I was there, I came across some of the most fantastic houses I’ve ever seen and had to take photos. Admittedly, I’m not a great photographer. I just bought a camera (a Panasonic Lumix) last year. Still, I tried to do these houses justice with my limited talent, a difficult task considering I was photographing from a moving car chasing bike racers around. These photos were taken during the Tour of Oman stages one and two, which traveled along routes from Al Rastaq to Muscat and from Barka to Suhar, respectively.
A music video for our song "If I was alone"
This was adapted from an original short film called Aperture - by Raphael Cohen-Demers
The film was released under Creative Commons License - CC-BY
View the original Aperture film here - https://vimeo.com/217413267

We are about to find out whether we’ll lose a tax break worth up to $1,080 a year.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says he hadn’t “made any final decision” on the A$7.8 billion per year low and middle income tax offset ahead of next month’s budget.
He also says it was never intended to be “a permanent feature of the tax system”, which is true enough.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 essay on economic justice calls out issues that linger today and that are linked to Black health and wellness.
As always, if you enjoy this work, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List!

Australia’s leading economists have overwhelmingly endorsed a return to the highest immigration intake on record, saying Australia should aim for at least 190,000 migrants per year as it opens its borders, up from the target of 160,000 per year set ahead of COVID.
More than a third of those surveyed believe 190,000 isn’t enough, arguing that a “catch up” will show Australia is open to the world.

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Written By: Ian Hunter
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Tracking employment growth is one way to see how the U.S. economy—in particular, the labor market—is performing. An economist outlines why different sources can show different data.

If you told someone a year ago unemployment was about to dive below 5%, to just above 4%, they wouldn’t have believed you.
If that person was an expert, and you said it would happen despite a Delta outbreak and lockdowns in our two biggest states, they might have said you had little idea of how the economy worked.
At the beginning of last year, The Conversation asked 21 of Australia’s leading economists what would happen in 2021 and 2022. At the time, the published unemployment rate was 6.6%.
None of them thought it would slip below 5% in 2021 or 2022.
Asked when the unemployment rate might eventually even touch 5%, none nominated 2021. Only two nominated 2022. The rest picked dates years into the future. Three picked “not for the foreseeable future”.