Tell me again about how these Liberal politicians are "ordinary blokes". They live in a world where a phone call to a minister is a normal way to sort out childcare. So what's normal about them?

Racism, I guess.

Quick writing session listening to the 12" 'I Feel Love' because fuck yeah. "Cooing ascending couplets of an almost banal ecstasy, Summer’s breathy vocals still dwelled in the stratosphere of her own manufactured sensation." slantmagazine.com/features/artic…

I too like to practice in the “small area” of international life coach for millions. Petersen’s message is explicitly antipolitical: that is, advising us to avoid the community in favour of the self.

But what kind of self is wholly preoccupied with itself?

I’m cool with festivals hosting performances. They’re rarely about reading anyway. But I agree with @text_publishing’s M Heyward: “I work with people who sit by themselves in a room for three years not knowing whether they’re wasting their time entirely” theguardian.com/culture/2018/a… I mean, if it’s a choice between “perform the usual authorial advertisement for your book” or “perform a mock funeral for yourself”, the latter might be fun for everyone.

As long as a wide range of books gets into a wide range of hands, I genuinely don’t care.

I’m seeing more “reading fiction makes you empathetic” tweets, and ugh.

Yes, we can certainly try to comprehend others, and to feel something like what they feel. But note the “try”. It’s a *labour*.

We can be empathetic without fiction, and we can have fiction and be wholly aloof (e.g. because the story doesn’t move us).

Check out this yob on the tube. Also: hello, England! Though I assure you I welcome the gestures at Australian comfort, you really don't have to be hot.

Currently awaiting my flight in Singapore.

It's been [don't do it Damon, don't do it] 19 hours since I left my home in Hobart.

14 hour flight to Heathrow to go.

✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈✈ This flight is delayed an hour. Perhaps more.

Sky News has utterly lost the plot. Or, rather, its plot is now a narrative of white male victimhood & outrage. Cottrell is a thug with delusions of political comprehension. He believes schoolkids should be given Mein Kampf, and Hitler's portrait should be in schools.

I ought to be delighted that Jean-Luc Picard is returning.

But there's always the danger that the whole show will be Junior Lieutenant Picard; the one who avoided the Nausicaan. #StarTrek Star Trek has had an enduring problem: playing it safe, avoiding nasty consequences, cheating death and grief of their consequence.

The whole of Voyager should've been "Year of Hell". Instead, we got a space drama/sitcom, and Moore made BSG.

Men are screaming together somewhere nearby. I want to be generous enough to welcome their happiness.

But if they keep me awake, they are my sworn enemies and I wish them harm.

Do you ever feed yourself increasingly small crumbs of a novel in order to make it last?

I did this with Mantel's Beyond Black and I regret nothing. I felt myself speeding up, salivating for narrative satisfaction.

But no. Rushing it would give me the whence and whither -- but not the resonances and atmospheres.

Friends, I have been shelling boiled eggs wrong *my whole life*. I always thought you made one big crack, which allowed the shell to separate cleanly. No bits. No shards.

Note the performative pearl-clutching about Christianity. As we pay billions to torture innocents.

https://twitter.com/jason_a_w/status/1024882259256459264

Also, notice how Bolt simultaneously accuses “identity politics” of weakening Australia—in the middle of a piece *wholly about Australian identity*.

The biggest growth area right now is conservative faux-rebellion. Absolute mediocrities saying "we're not allowed to say this" to paying crowds. "We're not allowed to say this," they lament in their newspaper column.

"We're not allowed to say this," they shout to huge audiences paying $700 a seat.

Cory Bernardi is right. All cultures are not equal.

The culture of right wing conservatism, for example, is often anti-intellectual, homophobic, misogynistic, and greedy.

In short: Bernardi is one figurehead of a lesser culture.

https://twitter.com/skynewsaust/status/1019546994023358465

In what way is this lesser? Misogyny and homophobia needlessly increase suffering, while decreasing opportunities for valuable contributions to family and community.

Western civilization, you see: "Its Christian foundations placed the individual at the centre, and gave us the notion of equality of man and individual dignity." afr.com/opinion/column… This is bunkum. Christianity is a frighteningly complex tangle of traditions. The idea that it simply gave us individualism and dignity is nonsense. (To say nothing of the supposed uniqueness of these.)