The pursuit of happiness?

They've all come to look for America "Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping I'm empty and aching and I don't know why What do you get for the Empire that has everything, on its 250th

The Muskroom of a Trillion Possibilities

A spore-radical transformation (with apologies to Kafka) Mushrooms were popping up all over the city the morning Elon Samsa awoke to discover he was The Beatles. He was John, Paul, George, Ringo, and George Martin, too! He was the strawberry and the fields. He was a hundred trillion Pennies

Renovating the Master's House... while it's on fire

On stepping outside and rejoining the world It took me a while, years ago, to come to grips with Audre Lorde's famous dictum that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house". Investing so much of my life, my time, my

"My theory of change is to be"

"It's more powerful than a legally binding agreement" I have just had the immense privilege of spending the last week in the Yarra Valley on a Global Optimism Climate Leaders' Retreat led by Christiana Figueres - for six years the world's top climate negotiator

Submission to Royal Commission on Antisemitism

Posted below is my submission to the Antisemitism Royal Commission. I have thought long and hard about publishing this. I have decided to do so partly because I hope it will encourage others to make submissions. While I am deeply troubled by the highly fraught process that brought us here,

Direct Action for Degrowth

A transformative, liberatory political act of collective refusal and creation. This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation I gave last night to the Degrowth Network Australia (insta here) as part of its webinar series on Pathways to Degrowth. Thanks so much to the Degrowth Network Australia for inviting

Inexplicable monsters

Thinking about One Nation with the help of Rebecca Solnit (and Hannah Arendt) For [many people], the present seems to be perpetual, unchanging, unyielding, offering confidence or despair that the future will be like the present, a conclusion that seems to be drawn from the lack of recognition that the

Impunity still has some limits

Ben Roberts-Smith has finally been arrested for war crimes. If our laws and institutions are to have any meaning, then serious breaches, egregious breaches, high-profile and horrifying breaches must have repercussions. The seeming impunity of Ben Roberts-Smith, who has only today been arrested for war crimes the

Movements in time between Progress and Degrowth

On seeking direction in a directionless world Moments in time. Movement in time. Movements in time. As we spun past the autumn equinox, the darkness lasting noticeably longer each morning and edging closer each evening, the burst of winter weather turning the screws on my arthritic joints, I spent much

Globalise the how's-your-father

On language, coercion, and action "it is as though we were caught in a maze of abstractions, metaphors, and figures of speech in which everything can be taken and mistaken for something else, because we have no reality, either in history or in everyday experience, to which we can

Nukes for freedom, and other lies

A short post tonight because I can't go to sleep for thinking about this. I need to write some thoughts to help my mind slow down. And you get to read it. If you choose. Feel free. French President, Emmanuel Macron, standing in front of a nuclear submarine

Abolishing collaboration?! Can we discuss that?

On practising "soft skills" for a hard future Opposition education spokesperson, Julian Leeser, has apparently decided that the most important issue to weigh into on tertiary education right now is abolishing group assignments.* Funnily enough, I actually went to uni with Julian, at UNSW law school way back

On mushrooms, death, transformation... and Epstein

Wonderings on the echoing implications of our relationship with death When I die, compost me. Put me under a tree - a snow gum, if possible - and let it feed. Let the mushrooms and their mycelia unmake me into morsels, into molecules becoming free to become something otherwise. Consider this a

Zohran, Zack and the necessity - and limits - of left populism

💚 Zohran and Zack 💚 Is there a symbolism we can find in the fact that these two excitingly energetic, righteously angry, charmingly smiling outsiders shaking up global left politics both have names starting with Z?* Does it mean we've reached the end of the line? That, after this, we

Discomfiting heat

On sitting in discomfort or seeking simple solutions It's hot. It's hard to think when the heat is so intense. And we need to think. We need to think through some painfully hot challenges. Challenges to which there are no simple solutions, no shortcuts. And the

No one saw the Carney go

On the gothic absurdity of the geopolitical circus and the sovereignty salsa Far be it from me, who at primary school was forever "Tim Hollow Head", to make jokes about people's names... But Nick Cave is touring, and this blogletter is named for a Cure song.

Holding complexity amidst catastrophe

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 those

The social media ban and the end of politics

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

Becoming the Rising Tide

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

All (climate) COPs Are B*stards

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 Hitchhiker's Guide to Political Psychology?

"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

Ducks in a row

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

Net zero reality and the extinction of politics-as-usual

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

A bit of news - I have an admission

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