A South Australian agtech company is using innovative new technology in an attempt to stop the rot and make food loss a worry of the past.
Key points:
An agtech company developed low dose hydrogen peroxide vapor satchets for shipping containers to stop food spoilage
Coolsan Australia co-founder Tom DeMasi says the goal is to get more food in mouths and less in landfill
A South Australian government grant will help take the invention to the next level
In 2005, rural New South Wales restaurant operator Merrill Erickson asked her husband, retired scientist Dr Gary Erickson, to come up with a solution to make her fresh produce last longer.
He developed a prototype which would go on to become ChillSafe, a hand-sized sachet that releases a low dose hydrogen peroxide vapor into shipping containers, reducing bacteria and extending the shelf-life of produce.
Food retailer and marketing consultant Tom DeMasi stumbled across the product at an international food expo and could see the value of Dr Erickson’s invention across the supply chain.
In 2010 they co-founded Coolsan Australia, and now they are tackling food waste one truck at a time.
More food into more mouths
Mr DeMasi says the technology has already saved truckloads of produce from going into landfill.(ABC Riverland: Sophie Landau)
It is a strenuous and labor intensive process to get produce from the farm to the plate with hours spent picking, washing, spraying, waxing, imaging, sorting, packing, storing, and then finally shipping.
Mr DeMasi, who is based in the Riverland town of Morgan, said bacteria can decimate a whole shipload of produce in a very small period of time if it makes its way into the container.
“Everything gets wasted — from the fertilizers to grow it, the time it took for the farmer, the petrol, the tractor. Anything it costs to create it is gone,” he said.
“What we’re trying to do is get as much product into more markets, more mouths, and less into landfill.”
Major horticultural company Costa Group first trialled the technology to solve an issue with overripe lemons coming out of storage.
After seeing the results, the group began using the sachets in its shipping containers to prevent food from spoiling during export.
Tom DeMasi’s (centre) product reduces food loss and is now sharing the bacteria-stopping technology with the agricultural world.(ABC Riverland: Sophie Landau)
Riverland packing operations manager Mick Trussell said the transit process is increasingly unpredictable due to the impacts of the pandemic, so protecting food from bacteria is more important than ever.
“With delays in shipping and transit times, and containers getting held out in the middle of the ocean before they can get into ports, it certainly helps,” he said.
Top of the food chain
Coolsan Australia took out one of nine AgTech Growth grants from the Department of Primary Industries and Regions SA in June, and will use the $100,000 in funding to develop a smaller version of the technology.
In its current form ChillSafe can be used in a shipping container for produce in partially open boxes, like citrus.
Mr DeMasi says orders for the new in-box technology are on a timeline of 6-12 months from now.(ABC Riverland: Sophie Landau)
Mr DeMasi said the newer technology will go inside boxes of produce that are enclosed such as blueberries, rockmelon, and table grapes.
“We have interest from EE Muir & Sons and other organizations like Costa to partner with us on a bigger scale moving forward,” he said.
“So maybe we’ll be making it here in Renmark, who knows.”
With 100 days to the midterm elections, Republicans still look well-positioned to retake control of the House and possibly the Senate—although some recent polls also suggest Democrats may be able to hold onto their narrow majorities.
Democrats wrestled back control of the House in the 2018 midterm election under former President Donald Trump. They then managed to regain control of the Senate in the 2020 election and the January 2021 Georgia runoff, although the liberal party also lost a substantial number of seats in the House. Democrats currently control both chambers of Congress with the slimmest of margins—meaning even a handful of losses will be enough to flip control of the legislative branch of government.
Analysts have predicted for months—citing polling data and recent historical precedent—that Democrats are likely to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate when voters go to the polls on November 8. As President Joe Biden remains deeply unpopular, many see this as an indicator that Democrats will perform poorly as well.
Republicans appear to have the advantage to take back the House, and possibly the Senate, ahead of the 2022 midterm election, according to analyst predictions and polling. Above, the US Capitol building is seen in Washington, DC on July 24. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Which Party Will Win the House?
On Sunday, CBS News released its 2022 Battleground Tracker, showing the GOP likely to pick up a significant number of House seats in the upcoming election. The news channel’s tracker currently shows that Republicans will gain an estimated 16 House seats, bringing their total to 230. Meanwhile, Democrats are predicted to lose those 16 seats, bring their total down to just 205.
News and polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight’s forecast shows Republicans are strongly favored to win back control of the House as well. The forecast gives the GOP an 83 in 100 chance of winning the majority, compared to 17 in 100 for Democrats.
“Even if Democrats were to win all the races currently designated as toss-ups, plus hold on to all the seats they’re favored to win, they would still wind up short of the number they need for a majority,” FiveThirtyEight’s analysis says .
Which Party Will Win the Senate?
Democrats appear to have a better chance of keeping control of the Senate, and possibly even expanding their majority. FiveThirtyEight’s forecast currently assesses that the party is “slightly favored” to maintain control of the upper chamber of Congress.
The site’s current prediction gives Democrats a 56 in 100 chance of winning the majority in the Senate, while Republicans have just a 44 in 100 chance. “The Senate race is close, and in a few key races, Republicans have selected weak candidates, hurting their chances of taking the chamber in November,” the analysis says.
What Do Recent Polls Show?
Recent generic congressional polling data is mixed, with some suggesting Democrats are favored by more voters, while many others show the GOP ahead. The margins vary significantly as well. The current Real Clear Politics average of recent national generic congressional ballot surveys shows Republicans with less than a 1-point advantage.
A poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports from July 24 to 28 shows Republicans with a 5-point advantage, however. That survey had the GOP at 46 percent and Democrats at only 41 percent. It included 2,500 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.
Another recent poll conducted by USAToday/Suffolk University from July 22 to 25 showed Democrats 4-points ahead. That survey had Democrats backed by 44 percent of registered voters compared to 40 percent who supported Republicans. Notably, the same poll carried out in mid-June showed Democrats and Republicans tied at 40 percent—meaning Democrats have gained 4 points.
The survey included 1,000 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.
Survey results from The Economist/YouGov from July 23 to 26 had Democrats 6-points ahead of Republicans. That poll showed the liberal party with 44 percent of support compared to 38 percent backing the conservative party. Again, that marked a shift in favor of Democrats. Earlier this month, the results were 43 percent for Democrats and 40 percent for Republicans, meaning Democrats gained 3 points.
The poll included 1,311 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points.
It’s important to point out that generic congressional ballot polls are an imprecise way to gauge which party is more likely to win in November. Each House race is decided in an individual district with its own particular dynamics, while race Senates are decided state-by-state. The national sentiments captured in these polls do, however, suggest that the country is fairly evenly split between the two dominant parties.
What About Historical Precedent?
The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics last June published an analysis of midterm elections going back to 1946. The report showed that the political party of a president serving in the White House, on average, loses more than 26 House seats during the midterm of their first term. The largest loss has been 64 seats, and the largest gain has been just eight seats.
That analysis showed correlated results in the Senate. The president’s party on average lost more than three seats in the Senate during the midterms. The biggest loss was 13 seats, and the largest gain was only four seats.
Elon Musk’s 76-year-old father has given a stunning interview to Australian radio, taking aim at his tech billionaire son and opening up about his controversial relationship with his 34-year-old stepdaughter.
South Africa-born and based Errol Musk, who has seven children including two with his stepdaughter from a second marriage, Jana, spoke with KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O this morning in a bizarre 20-minute interview, in which he dismissed his son’s success .
“Your offspring is a genius. He’s worth so much money and has created so many things, you can’t take that away from him. Are you proud? Jackie O asked.
“Nope. You know, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time, it’s not as if we suddenly started doing something,” Errol replied.
Elon is his eldest son with his ex-wife, model Maye Musk, who joined the Tesla CEO at the Met Gala this year. Maye and Errol also share are Kimbal and daughter Tosca.
Errol said his billionaire son feels as though he is running behind schedule in his career achievements. The father agreed with that sentiment.
“He is frustrated with progress and it’s understandable,” he said.
“I know it sounds crazy, but we tend to think like that as a family. He’s 50 now and I still think of him as a little boy. But he’s 50, I mean he’s an old man.
He went on to sledge his son’s body and diet while discussing recent shirtless photos of Elon on a yacht in Greece.
“Elon is very strongly built but he’s been eating badly,” he said, adding that he’s recommended a supplement called garcinia cambogia, which supposedly aids weight loss without additional exercise or dieting, to his son.
Jackie O then asked if the South African engineer drove a Tesla, to which he replied he instead drove a Bentley, Rolls Royce and Mercedes. He then told the hosts it was Elon’s younger brother Kimbal who was his “pride and joy” about him.
Asked about marrying his 34-year-old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout – who he had raised since she was four and now shares two young children with – Errol said the relationship was “completely normal”.
Last month, the 76-year-old revealed he had had a daughter with Ms Bezuidenhout in 2019, a year after they had their first child, Elliot Rush, now aged five. The children do not live with their biological father, with Errol telling The Sun they “get on their nerves” when they visit.
He refused to rule out having even more children, however, saying: “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce.”
According to The SunElon finds his dad’s relationship with Jana “creepy”.
Recently, it emerged Elon welcomed twins last November with a senior executive at one of his companies, 36-year-old Shivon Zilis.
The twins were born just a few weeks before Musk had a second child via surrogate with his on-off girlfriend, Canadian pop star Grimes.
The father-of-nine also has five children with his first wife, Canadian author Justine Musk.
What do Taylor Swift, Jay-Z and the Kardashians have in common? Well, according to data collected by internet sleuths, they’re among the celebrities racking up the most CO2 emissions thanks to their prolific use of private jets.
The regular use of private jets by musicians, actors and other celebrities has attracted more attention in recent years, both due to increasing concern about climate change and the mismatch between the “relatable” persona projected by artists like Swift and how they actually live.
Celebrities have been flying in private jets forever, right? Why are we caring about this now? A few months ago one clever coder named Jack Sweeney discovered open-source data that tracks where private plans owned by celebrities were travelling, and how frequently. And as any genius might do, he’s started a Twitter account tracking the data.
Taylor Swift’s plane racked up 170 days of flights in the first 200 days of this year.Credit:AP/Twitter
This week, a sustainability marketing firm collated that data and ranked celebrities by the amount of time their plans spent in the air.
Nice. Who’s on top? Taylor Swift.
A-ha. Data showed her plane racked up 170 flights in the first 200 days of this year alone, releasing 8,294 tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Wait, is that a lot? Well, yes. The firm that collated the data said the emissions from Swift’s jet since the beginning of the year represent more than 1000 times the average person’s yearly emissions.
The rest of the list is interesting, too: American boxing legend Floyd Mayweather comes in second, Kim Kardashian is seventh, and Oprah Winfrey is ninth on the list no one really wants to be on.
Olympic gold medalist Stuart O’Grady believes a varying ability of cyclists at the Commonwealth Games has contributed to spectacular crashes during the Birmingham event.
O’Grady made the claim on Monday after a spectacular crash saw three cyclists taken to hospital and spectators injured after a bike left the velodrome track and tumbled over the barriers.
“We have got a varying ability of athlete at the Commonwealth Games, more so than Olympics and World Championships,” O’Grady told Channel 7’s Sunrise.
“We may not be at the level as the big international superstars, so when you are racing on a few millimetres of tire on bikes with no breaks and high-pressure incidents, things can go wrong really quickly.”
England’s Matt Walls heads for the barrier trying to avoid riders who had fallen in a crash lower down the banking.(AP: Ian Walton)
The 24-year-old Englishmen heads into the crowd as his Canadian opponent approaches from behind. (AP: Ian Walton)
The crowd desperately try to steer clear of Walls.(AP: Ian Walton)
England’s Matt Walls and Isle of Man’s Matt Bostock were involved in the crash, along with several other riders.
Walls was catapulted over the barriers and into the crowd at the Lee Valley VeloPark. The 24-year-old received treatment for more than 40 minutes before leaving the velodrome in an ambulance.
“[Some riders are] just not used to the pressures of the Commonwealth Games, these guys don’t race together often,” O’Grady said.
“You get a mixed bag of riders and ability. That is all the ingredients you need to cause these crashes, which look spectacular, but people can get really badly hurt. And if you’re good, that would be annoying to get taken out by some bloke.”
Join ABC Sport each morning from 4am as we live blog all the early action from the Birmingham Commonwealth Games
The Victorian government will establish an Emergency Animal Disease (EAD) task force to prepare for an incursion of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which is currently circulating through parts of Indonesia.
Key points:
The Victorian government has developed a task force to prepare for a foot and mouth disease outbreak
Foot and mouth disease affects livestock such as sheep, cattle, goats and pigs
Three hundred biosecurity staff are being trained in disease mitigation
The task force would be co-chaired by Agriculture Victoria chief executive officer Matt Lowe and the Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp, taking advice from Victoria’s Chief Veterinarian Graeme Cooke.
The Australian government has ramped up biosecurity measures to prevent foot-and-mouth and lumpy skin disease entering the country, since it was discovered in Bali, Indonesia a month ago.
Experts fear the exotic livestock diseases could cost the economy billions if it made it into Australia.
“We want to get a focus and targeted government response to a whole range of things we need to put in place in terms of being prepared and to prevent an outbreak,” Victorian Agriculture Minister Gayle Tierney said.
“[The task force] will be looking at things like developing an EAD response plan and will also be looking at access to sufficient personal protective equipment and the supply chain issues that we have in respect to testing, tracing, destruction, disposal and vaccination.”
‘No delay’ in task force formation
Ms Tierney said there had been a “lot of work already underway” that would help mitigate any EAD threats, including coordinating with the national process for service and infrastructure continuity.
The symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease on the tongue of an Indonesian cow.(Supplied: Dok. Kementan)
“It’s clear that there is anxiety within the farming community, people are wanting to know more and we’ve been able to give very practical advice through webinars,” she said.
“This is a good time [to] have those conversations at a grassroots level that give farmers the opportunity to turn that anxiety into very positive practical measures.
“We have a very clear understanding of what the risks are and what we need to do to ramp things up to ensure our preparedness is the best it could possibly be.”
Three hundred biosecurity staff were being trained through Agriculture Victoria to prepare for an FMD outbreak in the state, learning about scenario planning and emergency exercises.
Ms Tierney said despite Indonesia having FMD present in the country for months, the taskforce was a “rapid response”.
“This is a whole of government response, not just Agriculture Victoria, and that’s a fairly quick landing in terms of getting this task force off the ground,” she said.
“Of course there has been lots of work that has been done all the way through, Victoria’s biosecurity measures lead the pack in terms of other jurisdictions.
“It’s been business as usual but then with this extra change that is required because of FMD being on the island of Bali.”
Agriculture Victoria was experienced and well equipped to handle biosecurity threats, Ms Tierney said.
“They did it recently in terms of the avian flu and Japanese encephalitis — there are so many biosecurity threats with us all the time,” she said.
“I think they have a proven track record of doing a pretty good job and the way they have ramped up preparedness for FMD — they should be congratulated for it.”
Arizona Republicans are on the verge of nominating two of America’s most prominent election deniers for governor and secretary of state, the latest in a series of primary contests with serious consequences for America’s democracy.
Kari Lake, a former news anchor, and Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker, are running for governor and secretary of state, respectively. Both have built their campaigns around the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Both are frontrunners in their races and if elected, they would take over roles with considerable power over how elections are run and certified in a key battleground state.
The Arizona primary on Tuesday is the latest in a series of contests where candidates who have questioned the election results stand a strong chance of winning the GOP nomination for statewide office. It’s a trend that is deeply alarming, experts say, and could pave the way for Republicans to reject the result of a future election.
“It’s a dangerous time for elections because you have a couple of people who are relying on people to vote for them but then will turn around and say the election system is rigged despite the lack of any evidence as such. There’s no talk of policy or anything. It’s all looking backward to 2020,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in the state. “This issue has staying power, much to my chagrin and a lot of other people.”
Even in an era when denying election results has become Republican orthodoxy, Lake and Finchem stand out.
Lake has said she would not have certified the 2020 presidential race in Arizona, falsely claimed Joe Biden lost the state (he carried it by more than 10,000 votes), and called the election “corrupt” and “rotten”. During a rally earlier this year, she claimed nearly a dozen times in the span of an hour that the election was stolen. She has called for the imprisonment of Arizona’s top election official for her handling of the 2020 race and jailing journalists. Lake wants to end mail-in voting, widely used in Arizona, and she and Finchem have both joined a lawsuit, supported by MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell to end the use of electronic voting equipment in Arizona.
Both Mike Pence and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey have endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real-estate developer, who is Lake’s most significant challenger in the polls for the nomination. In recent days, Lake has begun suggesting there is fraud underfoot to steal the election from her, but has offered no evidence to support her claim.
“We’re already detecting some fraud. I know none of you are shocked,” she said, according to the Washington Post. “We’re already detecting fraud, and believe me, we’ve got cyber folks working with us, we’ve got lots of attorneys. And I’m hoping that we have the sheriffs that will do something about it. We’ll keep you posted.” She has, however, recently encouraged her supporters to cast their votes by mail.
Taylor Robson has said the 2020 election wasn’t fair, but has stopped short of saying it was stolen. Lorna Romero, a Republican operative in the state who has worked for former Governor Jan Brewer and for John McCain, predicted that the winning candidate in the primary would be whoever could spread their message the most. About a third of voters in Arizona are not affiliated with a party and can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican nominating contests.
“This is populism. This is just pure populism for populism’s sake, and her desire to be popular,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in the state. “You have a referendum, if you will, in the governor’s race, on which part of the party are you supporting. The pragmatic, want-to-govern conservative – or Trump. You have a significant war going on there.”
Finchem is the frontrunner for the secretary of state nomination, a position from which he would oversee elections in Arizona.
Finchem was a close ally of Trump in the former president’s bid to overturn the 2020 race. Ali Alexander, a leader of the Stop the Steal movement, has credited Finchem with bringing the push to Arizona. “Arizona started with one man: State Representative Mark Finchem,” Alexander said last year.
Mark Finchem in October last year. Photograph: Rachel Mummey/Reuters
Earlier this year, Finchem introduced a resolution to decertify the election, which is not legally possible. I have signed a joint resolution of the Arizona legislature asking Congress to accept a fake slate of electors from Arizona (a plan currently under investigation by the Justice Department). He hosted Rudy Giuliani at a Phoenix hotel after the election for an event at which the president’s lawyer lied and said Biden won the election because he received votes from undocumented people.
Finchem is also a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, and was at the capitol on January 6. He has been subpoenaed by the committee investigating the capitol attack. He is a member of a network of candidates who don’t believe the results of the 2020 election seeking to be the chief election official in their state.
“Am I’m surprised that somebody who questions the 2020 election would want to run for secretary of state? No, not really,” Romero said. “His whole standpoint from him is he wants to eliminate the fraud from the system, and it’s a good talking point for him for those who believe the 2020 election was stolen.”
Secretary of state primaries are usually “sleeper” contests that few people pay attention to, Romero said. That means Trump’s endorsement is likely to be a major boost for Finchem in the race. Still, Romero said she was “disappointed” by the emphasis on a stolen election, because Republicans have a significant opportunity to appeal to voters on issues like the economy this year.
The secretary of state in Arizona is responsible for canvassing official statewide election results. Coughlin said he had little doubt Finchem would hold up certification of a race.
“He would not fall in line. He would follow the Donald Trump script of doing everything possible to be a disrupter if the election outcome is anything but what he wanted. I don’t see any go-along-to-get-along in Mark Finchem,” he said.
Until 2020, Finchem did not have much of an interest in Arizona’s election laws, and was known mostly for representing the issues of his rural district in southern Arizona. “His reputation of him was n’t great. People didn’t much like working with him,” Marson said. “He was a back-bencher is probably the best way to describe it.”
The political potency of election denialism was on display earlier this month at a rally in Arizona’s rural Prescott Valley, where Donald Trump came to stump for Lake.
Shawn Callaway, 34, a Republican party committee worker in Surprise, a small city near Phoenix, is supporting both Lake and Finchem. He supports Lake, he said, because of her efforts to halt the use of electronic voting equipment.
“It means a lot to me that she’s willing to fight against election fraud, because if our elections aren’t safe we don’t have anything,” said Callaway, who bagged front row seats with his wife and parents to see Trump.
Callaway, who plans to cast his vote in person, also said he was unfazed by Finchem’s connection to the extremist Oath Keepers. “The Founding Fathers wanted us to have militia groups – it’s what keeps us free. As long as they are law-abiding, I’m fine with that,” he said.
Kelly Ciccone, 58, who moved to Maricopa county from Florida a decade ago, also said she plans to support Finchem and Lake. “It’s a plus that he’s an Oath Keeper – self-defense is everything. Guns aren’t bad: crazy people with guns are the problem,” said Ciccone, who also attended the Trump rally. “Kari Lake is pure fire. She’s a dragon, just like Trump.”
The race underscores how Arizona continues to be a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 race.
Last year, the state legislature authorized an unprecedented partisan review of the 2020 race, championed by Finchem, of the 2020 race in Maricopa county, the largest county in the state. Even though the audit affirmed Biden’s win, Lake, Finchem, and other conspiracy theorists continue to insist that something was amiss. The state Republican party recently censured Rusty Bowers, the Republican House speaker Rusty Bowers after he testified to the January 6 committee about Trump’s efforts to pressure him to overturn the election.
The Guardian also observed a focus group with five Arizona Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, conducted as part of a series by the prominent anti-Trump Republican strategist, Sarah Longwell. The hour-long session offered a glimpse into how views of the candidates varied widely.
One woman who considers herself a moderate said she was inclined to support Lake because she grew up watching her deliver the news on TV. But for the other self-identified moderate in the group, Lake’s public persona gave her pause. Noting that Trump was also a media figure before turning to politics, she said: “I’m not certain I want to see Arizona go down that road.”
All were aware that Trump had endorsed Lake, but that wasn’t enough for some.
“I love Trump’s policies but not his rhetoric, and think Kari Lake would also be divisive when we need to come together,” said 81-year-old Arlene Bright, who attended the Trump rally in the Prescott Valley.
Two Woolworths customers have created controversy over their treatment of a toilet paper display at one store.
Posting on TikTok, the two shoppers shared footage that showed one of them crashing through a neatly stacked pile of Quilton Toilet Paper.
Watch the controversial Woolworth toilet paper video above
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The video shows one of the customers setting up his phone – which was recording the incident – inside a Woolworths freezer, situated opposite the toilet paper section.
While he held the freezer door open, the camera shows his friend emerging from behind the row of toilet paper packs.
The video starts with the camera pointed at the toilet paper display at one Woolworths store. Credit: TikTok
Crashing through the display, the shopper’s actions sent the stack of toilet paper falling to the ground.
The shoppers can then be seen smiling and dancing for the camera, as the packs of Quilton lie in disarray.
With toilet paper still in limited supply for some supermarket shoppers around Australia, a video showing packs being mistreated is sure to infuriate many.
Customers have taken to social media in recent weeks to complain of ongoing shortages.
“Can someone please explain why there is no toilet paper yet again?” said one Woolworths customer on Facebook.
One prankster can then be seen emerging from behind the rows of toilet paper packs. Credit: TikTok
“I have been trying for four weeks now to get toilet paper, going into the store twice a week. This is getting ridiculous!”
The incident is reminiscent of a similar incident in June 2021 which saw a female Woolworths shopper jump onto a pallet of toilet paper packs.
“She needs to be thrown out of the store,” said one TikTok user at the time.
“Pathetic,” added another.
Write a third: “Do you feel cool now?”
The shoppers then smile and dance for the camera, as the toilet paper packs lie in disarray. Credit: TikTok
One of the many confounding pleasures of The Rehearsal, the comedian Nathan Fielder’s elaborate social experiment/docu-reality series for HBO, is how often the show exposes its own illusions.
The central concept of the series is straightforward enough, if typically absurd: what if you could rehearse fraught conversations or situations in advance? How much could you control if you had every resource available to prepare? The show depicts both the tedious constructions of facsimile – building a replica bar, hiring actors, stress-testing potential conversations – and the unnerving, at times sublime suspension of disbelief.
With The Rehearsal and his prior show, Comedy Central’s cult hit Nathan For You, Fielder drew laughs (or secondhand embarrassment, or horror) as the ultimate committer to a bit – harebrained ideas carried far past the point of sense, with such deadpan absurdity that you couldn’t distinguish between silly and serious. Over four seasons, Nathan For You, in which Fielder coached real small business owners into audaciously inane plans (staging a massive celebrity tip at a diner for free press, rebranding a realtor as “100% ghost-free”, “Dumb Starbucks”) offered a decent litmus test for one’s tolerance for cringe. The typical Nathan For You viewing experience was some mix of awe at the grandiose stupidity of the scheme, amusement at the lengths to which Fielder would go, and genuine concern for the businesses.
The Rehearsal takes Fielder’s commitment and viewer trepidation to new heights. It takes a knowingly false notion – that one can control emotions, or life – and doubles down again and again until that notion looks like unhinged genius. There are the building blocks of reality-ish TV – participants both exposed and kept at a remove, the assumption that everything is quasi-real and quasi-scripted, crisp editing. (Fielder is an executive producer of the superlatively edited HBO’s How To With John Wilson, which transforms mundane city life into glorious fantasia.) Watching The Rehearsal feels like reaching the outer fringes of reality television – you’re not quite sure what to make of it, skeptical of going further, and can’t stop looking.
In the first episode, Fielder helps a trivia enthusiast practice revealing a low-grade, years-long fib to a friend with photorealistic accuracy, including a full-scale working replica of Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge. As all Fielder plots do, the second episode, which aired last Friday, escalates the stakes: Fielder unveils a two-month long simulation for Angela, a 40-something born-again Christian who put off having children, to test-run motherhood. We see the Truman Show-esque intricacy of Fielder’s set design – per Angela’s wishes, she lives at a farmhouse in Oregon with a garden, and rehearses the adoption of her son “Adam” from a real agency, handed over by his real mother de she. (Fielder also has the replica Alligator Lounge transported to a warehouse in Oregon – a good portion of the show’s entertainment is simply marveling at the amount of money he got out of HBO.)
We also see, sometimes simultaneously, the arcane scaffolding required to sustain this disbelief. Fielder, blurring the line between the TV producer persona and Nathan For You’s socially awkward, stone-faced disposition, edits the adoption scene in real time, asking the real mother to elaborate on why she’d be “unfit” to be a parent. Big Brother-style cameras film Angela and a cast of child actors – all playing the role of Adam – in the house, beamed to a control board in the production’s nearby headquarters. A giant timer on the living room wall counts down the four-hour shifts for the underage actors, as required by law. Staff members stealthily switch out carseats when Angela’s not looking, or crawl through a window to slip a motorized crying doll into the crib for the night shift. (It is uncomfortable, borderline disturbing, to see toddlers participate in a production they cannot understand, pretending Angela is their mother; it’s also indistinguishable from the work of a child actor on any other show, nor arguably as fraught as, say, a child’s Instagram account created by adults.)
For viewers, there is little distinction between on- and offstage, yet it’s disconcerting, and never less than fascinating, how quickly you take The Rehearsal’s bizarre terms as a given. That’s true even as the terms shift before us according to Fielder’s exacting vision and spiraling ego, itself extracted and fitted for TV. If, as Megan Garber argued in the Atlantic, the paranoid style of American reality television post-Survivor taught us to assume the awesome, all-knowing power of off-screen producers, The Rehearsal just levels up the visibility of the machinations. The producer’s contortions are plotted. When Fielder, who joins Angela’s simulation as platonic co-parent, feels trapped by the rules he has set for his own project, he changes them.
Photograph: Allyson Riggs/HBO
The Rehearsal’s second episode, in which Fielder outlines his plan for Angela, has renewed a critique of Fielder’s work as manipulative or mean. It is fair to say that Angela’s devout faith in her comes off as kooky, her participation in this delusional project; a potential simulation partner for her has since said he takes issue with his portrayal of her on the show, in which he smokes weed, drives, and fixates on spiritual numbers. But to dismiss the episode as manipulation feels like a misread of The Rehearsal, which consistently pokes at its own pretensions and sets up Fielder’s unfettered social anxiety as the butt of the joke. Of course it’s manipulation – the discomfort with a person’s portrayal, its perceived fairness or unfairness, is a core tenet and landmine of making television about real people appearing more or less as themselves.
All reality shows contain some dance between choreography and watchable chaos, between controlled variables and the power of editing, for a product that assumes the position of accurate summary, or at least best curation. No one, not even the camp creations of Selling Sunset, or the contestants on Survivor, or the staff on Below Deck, or the castaways on Love Island, have control over their edit. We are all performing all the time, with no final say on one’s perception; reality participants do so at a heightened degree, with a semi-public record.
The ultimate TV victim, to the extent that there is one, of this concept is Fielder himself. Over the course of the season, he grows trapped by the confines and gaps of his own experiment, which keeps dodging his grasp of him, especially as he becomes faux co-parent juggling work and life – in other words, childcare in the show and making-the-show Angela understandably has her own visions for the project and acts accordingly. A separate participant ghosts the production without explanation, though you can infer it’s related to emotions over a deception that does, in my opinion, bump up against an ethical line. (The Rehearsal includes his prior footage of him.) In the later episodes, Fielder’s attempts to control variables of perception spiral into an addictively meta, solipsistic Russian doll of impersonations.
The heart of another is a dark forest, but Fielder seems determined to try to map it anyway. At its core, The Rehearsal is deeply curious about why that is – why we act the ways we do, how we behave irrationally, the lengths we’ll go to avoid vulnerability, the amount we’ll watch other people try. To truly see people, their neuroses and inconsistencies and vanities, is messy. To know it’s being filmed for public consumption is discouraging. To have that meticulously edited, and shot through with an HBO budget carte blanche? That’s good television, a reality show in which extreme contrivances get to something real.
Police have launched an investigation after multiple flares were lit and a brawl broke out at the end of an Australia Cup soccer match in Sydney’s inner-west on Sunday night.
Police were called to the game at Leichhardt Oval in Lilyfield after Sydney FC’s penalty shootout win against the Central Coast Mariners following reports a fight had broken out outside the stadium.
Officers from Leichhardt Police Area Command arrived about 7.30pm alongside the NSW Police riot squad and the crowd dispersed.
Stefan, 40, from The Entrance, said he was walking to the car park with his wife and daughter about 15 minutes after the game ended when a flare flew towards them.
“We heard all this commotion outside as we were walking out to the car park… saw a barrier getting thrown and sliding on the road while I was holding my daughter and then saw a flare flying over and landing [two metres] away from us,” he said.
“There was a lot of screaming and shouting, there were objects flying around us, I saw some rocks going past us and then basically saw the security guards running away, it was just the families that were in the stadium on their own.”
He said no formal procedures were being followed after the brawl broke out and it took about 15 minutes for police to arrive.
“We were speaking to Sydney supporters so no idea who that group was, but there was no lockdown procedure, no cops, no security.
