Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day. My impression is in recent years it's been about equally split between "Invasion" (commemorating) and "Survival" (celebrating), whereas this year seemed firmly on the side of "Invasion". It makes sense to me that this comes first, because there is no other day to commemorate the losses that dozens of nations experienced when white people arrived. The losses that white people deliberately inflicted. There were fewer calls for "Change the date", because t...

The soundtrack for climate dread is surely Radiohead's Amnesiac. "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case"... There was a moment before New Years Eve where I felt surrounded by fire. Most of the Great Dividing Range and Adelaide were burning. I felt keenly aware of the leafy Dandenongs and Black Saturday areas, twelve years regrown and ready to burn again. A fire broke out in an outer suburb of Melbourne and it seemed there was nowhere safe. I felt a sensation that I had previously only felt whil...

After attending an info session about Nightingale Housing I found myself searching for accounts of other buyers, trying to figure out if the whole thing was an elaborate scam or legit. But the buyers were silent, or private (I do miss the era of blogging) and all I could find were borderline puff pieces about how revolutionary and stunningly architectural it all was. So here is my account. In June this year a friend mentioned Nightingale Housing to me. They happened to have the last info sessio...

I recently went to Canberra for four days for a family visit, so it precipitated a lot of reading!Content note: rape, institutional abuse"The Natural way of things" by Charlotte WoodThis work of horror fiction is set in the now, described as The Handmaid's Tale meets Wake in Fright, which is apt. But scarily, the book is tamer than our own recent history. Wood has described how she was partly inspired by listening to the Radio National story "Exposed to Moral Danger", which describes the Hay Ins...

I came up with this name ages ago and didn't have a particular project for it. I figured it would be vaguely satirical feminist goings-on. Since this won't be quarterly not purely focused on enraging things, it's a perfectly misleading name, why not. ...

Level 0. At least some of the speakers are women. Negative experiences are not acknowledged. Cheerleading efforts. 'Girl power' Level 1. Speakers specifically discuss the experience of (some) women and suggest ways women can be more successful within the existing system. Negative experiences may be acknowledged briefly but not examined. 'Encourage and empower' Level 2. Speakers acknowledge stereotypes and other 'passive' biases affect women. 'We all have unconscious bias' Level 3. Speakers ac...

(I don't know if this is really a review. Maybe just a spotty recap. But it strikes me people rarely share their experience of meetups, when I think it would be super interesting and useful!) I have been to a few YOW! events. Tbh I still don't know what their deal is. Are they a NFP? Or it's really a business based on running tech events? Or is there some other agenda? I'm used to the open source world where nearly everything is run by volunteers and on a shoestring budget. At any rate, I find ...

Content notes: death, dementia, disability (Spoilers ahead.) "Prognosis" is a memoir by Sarah Vallance, recounting her experience of suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI), her recovery and her life afterwards. It's a pretty incredible story of survival, but what stuck out to me was her attitude and almost preoccupation with euthanasia rather than living in a nursing home or similar care. It starts with her father, who died from cancer. In his final days he asks Sarah for help to die, which s...

When I've blogged in the past, I've tended to write myself into a corner by creating a self-expectation that my posts be novel, insightful, fully referenced and 'complete'. So the name is not a self-deprecation, but a deliberate setting of low expectations to myself.Names under consideration: Hackneyed, Dull, Unreferenced & Incomplete (sounds like a cool gang)Worn out, witless & wantingDull & trite ...