Reading

Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 04:54
Last week the government launched a media campaign to “build awareness, trust, and use” of the system of aged care star ratings. The launch came a week after the Commonwealth Ombudsman told the Senate inquiry into the Aged Care Bill that “I am concerned that the current star ratings system is not sufficiently meaningful to Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 04:52
Dr Geoff Raby AO, Australian Ambassador to China 2007-2011, Chairman, Geoff Raby & Associates, will Address the National Press Club of Australia on “Great Game On: China’s ascendency in Eurasia and the West’s Chussia Anxiety”. China has incrementally, but deliberately, built its influence and dominance over Central Asia and beyond that to Eurasia more broadly. Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 04:51
South Korean novelist Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, beating short-listed literary heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, Gerald Murnane, and the all-odds-favourite, Chinese author Can Xue. Han Kang was as shocked as anyone else after receiving the call notifying her that she had won. When asked what she would Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 04:41

Join us THURSDAY, October 17 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits.  Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone. 

Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 04:00

The referee

This person has been taking their children to the playground since the 1930s and has developed an elaborate game that involves constantly running from one part of the playground to another. You will occasionally hear them yell out instructions like “Red alert!” “Back to home base!” and “Snarl time! SNARL TIME!” but still leave the playground with no understanding whatsoever of what this game is or how it’s played. You will get in the way of whatever it is they’re doing and force them to start over at least three times.

The mom looking at her phone

She will make you feel like such a better parent than her that you will have no choice but to get out your phone and post about it.

Created
Thu, 17/10/2024 - 00:00

One of the many things that makes Catherine Barnett’s work so compelling is her willingness to look doubt and ennui and abjection squarely in the face. To make it, in fact, a part of the beauty. To welcome it into her lines. It is the grace and candor in the act of that curiosity and attention that makes the beauty. Never to make what is ugly or fallen a morbid delicacy, but to draw an honesty out of writing, a dispassionate and disposed truth-telling about the relentlessness of everyday suffering and sorrow and being. There is a buoyancy, a joy even, in the telling—that’s part of the gift of Barnett’s lyrics. Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space is her fourth collection, and it has all the power of her clarity, but with a new layer of sobriety, somehow, as plainspoken as it is mysterious.

Created
Wed, 16/10/2024 - 23:00

Thanks for sharing your work, Glenn. It definitely engaged my imagination. However, there were a few instances where I found it hard to parse. Here are my notes:

“I wanna savage your spinal remains.”

Unless you’re one of those bone-crushing vultures, this doesn’t really make much sense for a character’s motivation. Consider revising.

“She walked out with empty arms. Machine gun in her hand. She is good, and she is bad. No one understands”

I appreciate that you’re trying to tackle the essential duality of human nature here, along with the existential crisis perpetuated by our inability to ever truly perceive the interior mental states of those around us, but how can her arms be empty if she’s got a machine gun in her hand? I don’t get it.

“We walk the streets at night. We go where eagles dare.”

Strong start here. Solid scene-setting and use of metaphor. But I’ll be honest, this part kind of lost me:

“The omelet of disease. Awaits your noontime meal. Her mouth of germicide. Seducing all your glands.”

Created
Wed, 16/10/2024 - 21:30

At 11 am on 17 March 2022, seafarers aboard vessels operated by P&O Ferries were told to attend a pre-recorded Zoom meeting. In the video, a besuited executive of the company announced: ‘I am sorry to inform you that your employment is terminated with immediate effect . . . your final day of employment is today.’ With that, the […]