Walking through the park in the unexpected sunshine yesterday I realised suddenly: strolling through summer in Berlin is like strolling through an off-duty circus. People are riding bicycles with no hands, they are taking turns practising walking slack rope, one man is playing the tuba and another is set up with his slap box between […]
It fascinates me how people invariably preface racist statements with the words, “I’m not a racist or anything, but: [other people are inferior or flawed].” As they say, you have to ignore everything that comes before the “but.” The thorough-going unseen privilege of those who feel most entitled to thus pronounce on other people’s worth […]
The number of times I have been sitting in some cafe and have said to the staff or even the owners, Gee, guys. Since you have all of this organic stuff and social justice ideology going on…. wouldn’t it be great to provide actual glasses instead of plastic cups at your water station? Imagine if […]
How amazing that we merrily use some products of industrialization without stopping to think that they are filling our bodies with toxins, our water table, our soils & seas. How amazing that we snobbishly question other products of industrialization without stopping to think they have saved us from a childhood death rate that was vicious. […]
“The local press spoke with the unrelenting language of a war front. ‘We have seized their country by the right of might and by the right of might of whites will continue to possess it’, promised the Moreton Bay Courier in 1847. Aboriginal retribution, conducted ‘in the mere wantonness of patriotism’, it reasoned, simply forced […]
It’s very nice to “take time every day to think through your day and see if there’s anything you can be genuinely grateful for”. But such advice also makes me a little sick. Why don’t our social-media lists of “today I am grateful for…” start with breathable air (thank you, Shanghai), clean running water (thank […]