I didn't want to write this. I don't want to write this. I feel like I need to write something. I am writing this. I am not good at writing about my Jewish experience. I am still writing this, eight days after I started. -- All
The Albanese government's teen social media ban, which came into effect this morning, is perhaps the Platonic ideal of contemporary politics. It should make us all very angry. And then it should inspire us to get together and cultivate a better politics. With the kids this politics treats
The unintentional three week hiatus in publishing here at In Between Days, and the consequent further delay in finishing the promised piece on the necessity and limits of left populism, are (largely) due to my participation in another remarkable, energising but exhausting Rising Tide blockade of the world's
On the need to "Defund the COPs" The ACAB slogan has always jarred with me somewhat. I understand (and respect) it as a systemic critique, intended to reveal that it's impossible for any individual, no matter how genuinely committed to justice they are, to truly contribute
"The point, in short, is that we need to talk less about politics (in the sense of arguing with people) and instead build a world where those people are likely to encounter more and thus change their minds. This kind of work of organising and building social networks and
I was told once that it's rather gauche to make bilingual puns about ducks. But I think that's a terrible canard. And, anyway, Zohran Mamdani has just shown that it's no longer gauche to be left! Yes, this post is mostly an excuse for
On words without meaning, meaning without worlds The sheer inanity, the ecocidal banality of our current political discourse was encapsulated perfectly this morning on the floor of the House of Representatives, as reported thus in The Guardian's live blog: Labor MP Dan Repacholi ... rejects claims that net zero
I have an admission. And an admission. Both kinds. All this rabbiting on about Hannah Arendt, all this sharpening my thinking and writing skills by blogging regularly... There's an ulterior motive. Of a kind. I have just formally been accepted as a doctoral student at Sydney Uni, starting
On the adolescent inanity of politics at the end of the world as we know it There's something so banal about the way the latest "attempt" to "reform" Australia's "environment laws" is unfolding. [Is it really a genuine attempt? It&
On improvising our common future Today I learned* that Aufhebung, the word Hegel used to describe the seemingly contradictory (dialectical) process of world-historical political transformation - a process that is both abolition and transcendence, both destroying the old and preserving it in some higher form - is also the word
A shaky ceasefire holds in Israel-Palestine. And yes, thank whatever or whoever, this is cause for some hope and some celebration. Fewer people are dying today. This is good. But I am filled with grief. Grief for so much death and destruction. Grief for so many lives taken, stolen, destroyed.
On noticing that the ground has slid away It's like it was yesterday. 16 year old me bopping along to In Between Days at the back of the school bus, the jangly joy of the music jarring perfectly against the angsty lyrics to match my messy teenage emotions.
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Welcome to In Between Days, my new space for writing, for trying out thoughts and ideas, as I find my way from here to there, or there to here, or then to now... floundering about in this in-between space, in life as in the world. Hannah Arendt (and yep, it