An alternative voice in search of truth and justice.
14/03/2020
I am partway through Daniel DeNicola’s Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know, and while it has been interesting (if, at times, stumbling over seemingly simple questions as philosophy often does), there are a few lines that have really stood out for me. Lines that instantly made me draw connections with other works and ideas, prompting some questions I thought worth exploring.
15/02/2020
The more varying anarchist literature and essays I read (which is, admittedly, not even that much overall), the more I realise that, beyond the central theme of “opposing” all forms of authority and hierarchy, anarchism only has one other uniting feature – it can’t really decide or agree on much more than that. One such field is that of technology, with anarcho-primitivists and crypto-anarchists essentially being on opposite ends of that particular spectrum.
Continue reading “Anarchism and the Neutrality of Technology”
03/02/2020
Oliver Thorn, better known as Philosophy Tube on YouTube, released his latest video Data recently. Much of the content was stuff I was already aware of, and some I have written a bit about before, but there were a few parts that really stuck out – partly because, the very next day, what happened in the scene happened to me.
03/02/2020
When I refer to the language used in academic circles as a “barrier”, I don’t intend it to be entirely negative. As someone who has graduated from university and has taken an avid interest in probably too many topics beyond my formal studies, I have no trouble understanding the complexity that oft times permeates academic prose, and I am somewhat exaggerating my point by throwing some relatively mild examples right here because I am guilty of the same. But another may read the same text and be overwhelmed by it, which is problematic when the ideas you are expressing are of great import to the wider populace.
13/01/2019
What I thought would be a rather small, local story in the South East Queensland area, having first seen the associated video on a Facebook group for QUT, has turned into a national story with the Guardian, the ABC, and social media (mainly Twitter) taking hold of it. I’m surprised that I’m surprised about that, and I decided against writing a post about it last night, but with more information coming to light and some interactions I have seen take place, I feel it’s worth discussing a few points.
Continue reading “The “Protest” Against the Brisbane Drag Queen Duo”
05/01/2020
It is question that has been circulating online for a couple of days now, with a video of a firefighter telling him to stand down and the hashtag “#ResignMorrison”. While it is certainly a sentiment I can get behind, that, or a “libspill” (another hashtag that has shown up a fair bit in the last 12 months), might have immediate benefits, to a degree, in the long run it could be extremely problematic.
31/12/2019
Admittedly, I thought I had read more books than the ones on this list, but alas it is much smaller than anticipated when I compiled it. I wasn’t expecting anything huge, and 16 books is still a reasonable feat, in my view, but I can’t help but feel a tinge of disappointment that I didn’t get through more. I would, however, suggest that finishing university and keeping up with news events and analysis probably makes up for that. Nevertheless, these are the books I read this past year, with a few thoughts looking back on them and links to piece that refer to them.
28/12/2019
I am currently reading The Vandemonian War by Nick Brodie. As always, when I learn more about Australia’s history involving the Indigenous peoples, I grow more and more disappointed with the shallow understanding that our education system throws at countless disinterested students. But I’ve written about that already, and there was a small point Brodie made about the press coverage that made me chuckle – rather cynically – at the parallels to today.
Continue reading “Media Hasn’t Really Changed: Colonial Tasmania”
14/12/2019
Having read the latest draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill, the Amendments made since the first draft, and rights groups/media reports on it, it is safe to say that the intent of this Bill is not to defend religious people against discrimination. Instead, it is a Bill designed to defend religious individuals and bodies in their own discrimination against others, using religion as a shield to do so. I will refer to Christianity/Catholicism in most examples, given they are the majority and are certainly the intended beneficiaries of this Bill.
Continue reading “Religious Discrimination Bill Is Just Hypocrisy and Contradiction”
11/12/2019
Whenever the word radical is used in any context, it almost always has a relatively negative overtone. The word, like many in political discourse, arguably has no legitimate definition anymore. Synonymous with disorder, dramatic change, intense, etc. we allocate it to people and events that don’t fit the current norm. I contend that it should be the opposite, and that what we have considered the “norm” throughout time is what’s really been radical.
