I’m a big supporter of the media. I’ve worked for several publications in both the old and new media and so have a reasonable understanding of how both work.

I get that any media organisation is under extreme pressure to publish content AS IT HAPPENS or miss out on precious clicks, views, likes, shares that bring in some of the ever-diminishing revenue. This means that copy and other digital content has to be produced with great speed and rarely gets a second look before it hits eyeballs. …

How often do you hear your most carefree, chilled friends or family (or maybe yourself?!) refer to “living in the moment”?

Or have someone bandy the term around if they want you or someone else to be a little bit more impetuous or spontaneous?

And, there are others again who use the term to justify actions that might be considered by those living more “mainstream” lives as foolish or reckless.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea over the past couple of years and even more so during a 2020 overshadowed by a global pandemic. This is because as…

I am no doctor.

Nor am I an epidemiologist or hematologist.

In fact, I have no medical training or background whatsoever — the bits of my brain that understand science are on holiday for the most.

Because of this, I rely on those brainboxes who do take Medicine and end up in healthcare roles where they help us in our medical times of need.

However, I do understand the concept of risk. …

Thursday February 18th was a historical and disturbing day in Australia.

Not because social media bully Facebook blocked Australian media (and, inadvertently, a whole lot of other non-media organisations) posts from appearing in feeds.

Rather, because of the hysterical reaction it prompted amongst politicians, journalists and commentators.

For those not across the situation, the Australian federal government is passing laws through its parliament that will force platforms like Google and Facebook to pay publishers for content.

Reuters has written a solid explainer about it here.

While the law isn’t perfect and needs some tweaking, Google saw the writing on the…

With so much new content to watch across the seventy bajillion streaming platforms, I’ve been making a concerted effort to spend a night each weekend watching classic films.

Last week, it was director Sam Mendes American Beauty.

My attention span is crappola nowadays, like seriously terrible, which isn’t great for someone who works mostly as an editor and needs to be able to focus for long stretches. When I’m watching TV, I tend to nearly always be mucking about on my iPad or checking my iPhone or just generally not super focussed on whatever show I’m meant to be watching.

…

While it’s a cliche to go the “we live in interesting times” path, it’s also the truth, right?

Can anyone remember a period where the world and our lives have felt so out of whack?

And no, I’m not pinning this all on COVID-19. Sure, it has sent life-shattering tsunamis through the lives of some — vale the COVID-19 dead and condolences to their families.

And COVID-19 has brought varying degrees of stormy weather to the lives of many others, although, conversely, some have profited from it, even advertently — here’s looking at you Mr Bezos and Mr Musk, and…

I’m no legal expert, nor am I a psychologist.

But I am a writer and by virtue of that, a student of the human condition — an obsessive observer who mentally hoovers up the goings-on of our world so these can be synthesised and repackaged into some semblance of information for consumption, discussion or otherwise.

And yes, I have worked for the (not-always-really-that) evil MSM which, contrary to the opinions of some, does not mean I’m some brainwashed regurgitator of the ideology of this side or that.

Having watched the train wreck that was the USA since the catastrophic 2016…

Today, January 6, 2021, there was an attempted coup in the United States of America.

Watching from Australia, it was stranger than fiction to see images of the nation’s lawmaking building taken over by an angry, raging terrorist mob determined to overthrow the natural process of the democratic transfer of power.

House of Cards, Handmaid’s Tale and Veep couldn’t have written a better (or, rather, worse) script.

Oddly, it made me think of the 1989 Tian An Men Square protests in Beijing, China.

Wait, how can fighters for freedom and democracy battling a totalitarian regime being mowed down by…