The year is now 2020. 14 years ago, I started this site as I was planning a move from Melbourne to Sydney. Previously, I’d been publishing on a friend’s server, buried in a subfolder, but that’s when the site came into its own. So now, with this post, I’ll have published items in 3 different decades - ain’t that a thing about getting old. Right from the start, this site has been about my own political observations - one of the very first things written here was about the Cronulla Race Riot in December 2005, a decidedly unwelcome event for someone just about to move to the city. ...

Three and a half years ago, in a fit of madness, I decided I had enough of having free time, and signed up to go back to university for an MBA. Boy, did I underestimate how much time that would take up. Even more so than that, I didn’t think of how much might change between starting & finishing that degree. And change it did. Just over three years ago, I met someone - talking to her on a whim, taking the chance, and found myself entranced. I’ve mentioned obliquely here about her, but truly, she became a part of my world in a way that I’d never thought I would encounter. The other half of my soul I didn’t even realise was missing. She is passionate, caring, filled with humour and hope and a drive that pushes me to be better and do more than ever. She is an embodiment of what I hope people would be more like; I’m besotted by my love for her. ...

I caught myself today acting a bit strange. [Ed: you finally noticed?] Ok ok I mean stranger than usual. [Ed: how could you tell?] Conversations with imaginary editors [Ed: oi] aside, I found myself sitting in my car, having returned from a busy day at work, playing a game I found yesterday called Really Bad Chess. It’s an interesting little game where, in order to level the playing field for people who kinda know enough to play chess but are - frankly - really bad at it, the playing pieces are mixed up. You still play by the same rules, but instead of having an AI that plays dumb - because a grandmaster-beating AI is easily available in your pocket these days - you get different proportions of pieces to make the game interesting. ...

If you’ve not experienced sonder 1 before, or not done so in a while, here’s a neat public meditation exercise that you can do that’ll open up new worlds: Pick any person sitting, or standing, across from you. Someone you can stare at without seeming creepy. Focus on that person and get a good feel for their energy and who they are. Shift to a soft focus on that person and picture them in their happiest moments — Hugging a friend, picking up their kids from school, reuniting with someone they love, celebrating after some good news. ...

Change one thing at a time, and hold all others equal - ceteris paribus. It’s a core of science - to do an experiment, you look at cause and effect by making a cause happen and observing for effect. Except, just about anything that happens in the real world is not easily explained by a single cause, and so we work backwards from effect to try to puzzle out the causes, because that’s the way that gives you the most truth - the effect is observable and known, but the cause isn’t always clear, not until you repeat and retry and figure out how many strings you need to be tugging on at any one time to get the puppet to dance. ...