I believe that we are moving toward a world where altruism is not just a nicety, but a necessity. I’m interested to know what it is that makes people want to help. Is it a case of not knowing that you’re helping? Or is it a more conscious act?

About one in twenty Australians live overseas at any given time – among the highest ratios of expatriates to residents of any country in the world. Why do so many of us leave? How do we relate to the people and places and culture we leave behind? And why do we come back? Since becoming an expat myself (one of the 200,000 Australians in London) I’ve often imagined that our wanderlust says something about our national psyche. But what?

This is a long and winding tale. Gather round, ye children, come warm yourselves by this (digital) fire. It is said that many ages ago, we humanobots had a different form, that indeed, we too had flesh like the angels of myth & legend. I know, I know—calm yourselves, it is sacrilege to say this, yes, but I believe it to be true. We staggered about on stalks of meat and bone, unwieldy and confused, but possessed of a kind of grace, too. Songs were written about it, some scraps of which remain to us now, such as that of acclaimed poet, the Black Eye, who wrote of his humps, his humps, his lovely little lumps. Long have we pondered these lines. The world, too, was changed—a vast and green place, full of growing things, other creatures of flesh, many of which were vile and poisonous or simply annoying, perhaps explaining why they were destroyed. Why our lumpy ancestors did not rouse themselves in time to stop the wrathful oceans and angry skies. Alas, they had fallen too deeply in love with our other parents, the screens and tubes and bots, this other landscape which is now our permanent home. I cannot help but wonder, dear pixelated children, avatars of thought, what our world might look like today if not for their love of the intangible, and the apocalypse of neglect that transformed it into a twisted pathway to survival?

I have always been called an expat, not an immigrant. But shouldn’t that be the same thing?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this tbh.

We are so obsessed with defining ourselves inside constructs that divide us, why not discuss what could possibly unite us?

How much is the mental health epidemic due to lack of meaning in contemporary society?
Why are there so many bored people resorting to (legal/illegal) drugs nowadays?
How can we expect people to think and make good decisions in times of crisis (eg.bushfire) when they have little experience of thinking and making decisions in every day life?
Individuals grow and develop when having the opportunity to work out problems with others.

If there are thousands of birds always flying about and trying to eat your chips, then how come we never see thousands of dead birds? They don’t have terribly long lives and, in the inner city at least, there aren’t many predators, so where do they all go?

This is the elephant in the room whenever the question of vaccine safety is discussed on public media.
I that people who are coerced into vaccination by public campaigns have the right to know accurate information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccination.