Valhalla Island

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:28:09 +1000

To valorize agency without also emphasizing its purpose allows us to ignore harder questions like:…

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:14:54 +1000

To valorize agency without also emphasizing its purpose allows us to ignore harder questions like: How do I live a good life? And what about the collective good?

All the Worst People Seem to Want to Be ‘High Agency’

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:04:33 +1000

theminimalisto:

Katter Breaks Silence On Childhood Autism Being Carved Out Of The NDIS Saying That Back In My Day We…

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 05:21:32 +1000

Katter Breaks Silence On Childhood Autism Being Carved Out Of The NDIS Saying That Back In My Day We Didn’t Have This Spectrum Business Because Every Single Bloke On The Railways Was Of That Way And That Was The Whole Bloody Point Of The Railways In The First Place Because The Nation Knew That If You Had A Kid Who Was A Bit Quiet Or A Bit Funny About Routine Or Who Liked Counting The Rivets On A Bridge Instead Of Playing Footy You Didn’t Send Him To A Therapist You Sent Him To The Railway Camp And He Was Thankful For It Because The Entire Backbone Of Queensland And Indeed This Nation Was Built By Blokes That Eat Pizza With A Knife And Fork Who Were Put To Work Swinging Picks And Lining Up Bolts With Mathematical Precision And That Was Their Therapy And Their Purpose And Their Identity And I’ll Tell You Something Else The Only Reason We Even Built Railways On That Scale Was To Entertain And Employ Those Men Who Saw The World Differently And Enjoyed It In Their Own Time And To Give Them A Place Where Their Talents Were Respected And Where Their Repetition Wasn’t A Disorder But A Bloody Asset Because If You Needed Someone To Hit A Spike Two Hundred Thousand Times Without Complaining You Went To The Different Boys And They Delivered The North Coast Line The Great Northern Line And The Rest Of It On Time And On Budget Without An Acronym Or A Consultant In Sight And That Was The NDIS Before We Even Knew What An NDIS Was And The Politicians Down South Can Laugh But Every Station Every Rail Bridge Every Bit Of Track You’ve Ever Ridden On Exists Because Autism Built It And The Least We Could Do Today Is Show The Same Respect To These Kids Instead Of Cutting Them Loose And Leaving Them To Be Lost In The Inescapable Darkness That Is Real Life

From The Betoota Advocate

Thu, 29 May 2025 02:26:27 +1000

04k96:

It’s my 16 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:56:33 +1000

It’s my 16 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

The technology currently lavishly fucking up your grocery order in a supervised setting will soon…

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 03:57:23 +1000

The technology currently lavishly fucking up your grocery order in a supervised setting will soon make you breakfast and drive you to work and help raise your child and manage both your glucose levels and those of your pet.

The Future is Too Easy

Making friends is a process that does not lend itself to visual documentation.

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 14:38:33 +1000

Making friends is a process that does not lend itself to visual documentation.

— Kathryn Jezer-Morton in When Lonely Children Go Viral, Should We Rejoice?

Did I sleep? Did I connect deeply with people I love? Did I get some time to myself? Did I make…

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:42:34 +1000

Did I sleep?
Did I connect deeply with people I love?
Did I get some time to myself?
Did I make choices for my body that felt good?

Ezra Klein’s four things that are gonna decide if he has a good day.

"All of the post-truth factions of culture see fact-checking (and its usual attendant tone of..."

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 05:42:17 +1000

“All of the post-truth factions of culture see fact-checking (and its usual attendant tone of sneering elite condescension) as proof of their own correctness, with cynical community leaders exploiting vulnerable true believers. Same playbook over and over.”

- Anil Dash on Twitter in reference to LuLaRoe but applicable to so much.

"I realize it’s boring to list all this. Journalism thrives on unconventional narratives. It may..."

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 03:50:56 +1000

“I realize it’s boring to list all this. Journalism thrives on unconventional narratives. It may appear that Republicans are a threat to democracy, but the true threat lies on the left is a more compelling story than things are what they seem.”

- Michael Hobbes on The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism
There seems to be something irresistibly appealing about the idea that you have uncovered a secret underlying truth. It’s so strong that events clearly, obviously, unequivocally bad get ignored.

"This is laughable. Buruma, the senior editor of a national magazine, suffered a reputational hit..."

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 03:45:01 +1000

“This is laughable. Buruma, the senior editor of a national magazine, suffered a reputational hit after publishing an article that invited widespread public backlash. This happens in journalism constantly. Jonah Lehrer didn’t break any laws, but he was effectively banished from journalism after making up Bob Dylan quotes. Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana stepped down after retracting the infamous University of Virginia rape story. Applebaum is arguing that these consequences are not only unjust— regardless of the underlying facts — but evidence of creeping totalitarianism.”

- Michael Hobbes on The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism
Apparently only things that are illegal can have consequences.

Sadly a rendering. No one’s courageous/reckless enough to actually follow through and build…

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 06:36:15 +1000

Sadly a rendering. No one’s courageous/reckless enough to actually follow through and build something this cool and impractical.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County School District said that the district’s rules for…

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 04:23:13 +1000

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County School District said that the district’s rules for student dress “encourage a focus on learning for all 110,000 students in Cobb, not on what students prefer to wear.”

NYT on a 13yo rightfully protesting school dress codes in Georgia.

Bullshit like these dress codes, the inability to coordinate an effective covid policy and the ensuing psychotic school board situation has me thinking that it’s the scale that’s the problem. It’s just impossible to do school at scale like this.

I support Sophia Trevino’s protest but even better would be not having to spend precious childhood years on a protest.

A virtual world where literally anything is possible and Facebook creates a meeting room in an…

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 04:09:14 +1000

A virtual world where literally anything is possible and Facebook creates a meeting room in an office. One of the most boring places that exists. The lack of imagination is devastatingly sad.

Getting into the Delta Variant Mindset:

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 03:59:35 +1000

Getting into the Delta Variant Mindset:

Vaccines are still the best way to protect yourself and your community from Covid-19. The vaccines are still really good, better than we could have hoped for. But they’re not magic and with the rise of Delta (and potentially worse variants on the horizon if the virus is allowed to continue to spread unchecked and mutate), we need to keep doing the other things (masking, distancing, ventilation, etc.) in order to keep the virus in check and avoid lockdowns, school closings, outbreaks, and mass death. We’ve got the tools; we just need to summon the will and be in the right mindset.

Emphasis mine on the last sentence.

Many people summoned the will a year ago while many others did less than nothing. It required everyone summoning the will to be effective. It’s been 18 months. The people who summoned the will are frustrated and tired. The people who did nothing aren’t going to do something now.

I don’t know how this’ll end but we have to be real: “summoning the will” isn’t it.

As a teenager I got The Darwin Awards book as a gift from an aunt. The first story was about a 16yo…

Sat, 29 May 2021 04:34:49 +1000

As a teenager I got The Darwin Awards book as a gift from an aunt. The first story was about a 16yo couple who were fooling around on a roof, slid off and died. I think you’re supposed to laugh or ridicule these people but I just found it crushingly sad. Death is too big a price to pay for a stupid mistake.

This guy’s situation is different. It’s far from a single mistake but it’s still sad. I wonder when (or if) he realized how wrong he’d been. 33 is young.

(Caveat: if you’re immunocompromised or living with someone who...

Fri, 14 May 2021 06:48:18 +1000

(Caveat: if you’re immunocompromised or living with someone who is or medically can’t get the vaccine or simply just want to wear a mask every day for the rest of your life I have absolutely nothing against it. You be you!)

Is continuing to wear a mask when the public health officials at the CDC say you no longer need to akin to not wearing one when the CDC says you should?

How to spot a crumbling society.

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 05:10:26 +1000

How to spot a crumbling society.

The disastrous healthcare landscape, the poverty minimum wage, the industrial-scale racism and the...

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:23:58 +1000

The disastrous healthcare landscape, the poverty minimum wage, the industrial-scale racism and the toxic politics are so bad in this country. If you’re privileged it can feel possible to insulate your family against those things (or, more likely, how those things negatively affect your life are indirect enough to make the connection harder to see).

But the relentless march of mass shootings with no response beyond “thoughts and prayers” is exhausting. It makes my choice to stay in this country feel like a horrific obvious mistake.