A story self-evident to anyone personally experiencing (or who knows someone experiencing) the effects of the Great Recession. However, it is a revelation to the editors at the Gray Lady:

Career Switch by the Jobless Can Lower Living Standards

[ABC]

On this most sacred of drinking days, it is our solemn tradition to observe that it is now midnight in Sydney, and declare everybody an honorary Aussie.

We’re not sure whether A.G. “Son of Pinch/Grandson of Punch” Sulzberger has a nickname yet — so let’s go with Ponch — and we can’t even get a precise fix on his age, although the New York Times heir clearly dropped in 1980 or 1981. We’re obsessing over that detail because of what appeared below his byline this week, regarding The Last Picture Developer:

In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING US?

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We regret to inform you that, near as we can tell, Asshole of the Year Pam Geller’s fingerprints aren’t on this one:

Mosque foes recently started a boycott of Bieber after he made comments in support of the mosque project in an interview with Tiger Beat, a teen fan magazine, [Park51 opponent Andy] Sullivan told WYNC earlier this month. Now, his 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son have been banned from attending Bieber performances.

“I informed them, ‘Hey guys, guess what? Justin Bieber spoke out for the ground zero mosque,” Sullivan explained to Salon in an interview. “My little girl took down his poster and said she didn’t want to have nothing to do with him anymore. These are my kids. They’re living this thing.”

Just one problem: Justin Bieber didn’t talk to Tiger Beat about the Park51 project, for or against. The source for Sullivan’s outrage is a satirical website.

Stinque apologizes for failing to mount an effective hoax during 2010. We’ll try better next year.

Mosque foes launch Bieber boycott [Salon, via TPM]

“Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced late Wednesday that he will grant an early release from prison to two sisters serving unusually long sentences for armed robbery. Gladys and Jamie Scott have each served 16 years of a life sentence. Their case had become a cause celebre among civil rights groups, including the NAACP, which mounted a national campaign to free the women.” [WaPo]

Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who as a young woman was the model for the Rosie the Riveter image of WWII, died on Sunday from complications of arthritis.  She was a 17-year-old metal-presser at a factory outside of Detroit when an Associated Press photographer took a picture of her at work.

She quit two weeks after the photo was taken, as she was a cellist and didn’t want her hands crushed like another woman’s were in a factory accident. She took a job at a soda fountain, where she met her husband. They had 5 children and were married 66 years.

A few liberties were taken with the image by a graphic designer (she wasn’t flexing her guns in the photo), and was used by Westinghouse as part of a campaign to deter strikes. In the mid-70s it was embraced by the feminist movement.

[WaPo and NYT]