Author: Mick

Just How Fucked Are We?

Posted on by Mick

I’ve tried to write about other things. But my mind keeps coming back to the one thing which has haunted me. Something which I said I wouldn’t write about, because it was just too damn depressing. Climate change.

The IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC was released two weeks ago, chronicling in exhaustive detail the impacts of worldwide studies on the impact of climate change. The relative impacts of holding warming to 1.5ºC instead of 2. Projected pathways to get there, and how many magic beans would be needed to keep us there. The long and the short of it is – we’re fucked.

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So It Has Come To This

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Once upon a time, I was an odd kid with all the potential in the world. Not just in my fevered imagination, but officially – as my high school proudly proclaimed through its Students with High Intellectual Potential program (which has probably changed acronyms several times in the intervening years). Not content with recording some of the top school results in the state, I went on to become a qualified rocket engineer. But what use is there for rocket engineers in a nation whose primary exports are shiny rocks, or even a society whose driving force is the accumulation of profit?

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Towards a New Photography

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In the 19th century, the development of the camera turned the art world upside down. Even the most technically skilled painters couldn’t compete with the precision and clarity of the photographers. So visual artists had to reconsider and contextualise their own role. They developed the more abstract and expressionistic styles we call modern art, turning away from the capture of the existing and finding a new niche in more interpretive, unconventional works.

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The Breakdown of Shared Reality

Posted on by Mick

(T)o describe the so-called ‘safe schools’ and ‘gender fluidity’ garbage being peddled in schools as ‘cultural Marxism’ is not a throwaway line but a literal truth.

-Fraser Anning, maiden speech to the Australian parliament

 

We have a senator not only peddling Nazi-derived conspiracy theories on the floor of parliament, but even calling for ‘a final solution to the immigration problem’. Sky News calls upon neo-Nazis like Blair Cottrell to share their opinions on immigration and policy. Our major papers decry Jews who form colonies. The ABC’s august Four Corners decided that Steve Bannon deserved their platform to gaslight the nation. This isn’t normal. How did we get here?

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