Michael Dare

You’re a deadset legend Amy. Your work and strength of character are inspiring. Thanks for continually turning up!

If anyone is looking to mark off a bunch of squares in quick succession, there's a bloke spouting off in the LEAN FB discussion group who will give you A1, B2, C2, C3, and a whole lot of E5...

If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements across every main immigration route.

Spain, you could do the funniest thing right now...

Okay, but my memories of being told that putting Plibersek in charge of the environment portfolio was a sign that they were taking it seriously are still pretty fresh…

So, who’s holding the levers for 2? Assuming it’s not quite as simple as passing a motion at my local branch!

An attack on the PBS would be enough to turn half the conservative voters in Australia into Maoist insurgents.

On the basis that evidence, that particular battle is already lost 🙃🤣

I think every AEC official should get to vote for their favourite (kind of like the Archibald packing room prize), with the winner reproduced at A3 scale, framed, and presented to the incoming PM by the governor general upon forming government.

It was the most concerning part, only a handful of informal votes, and all really low effort stuff. Our elections might be fine, but a key pillar of our democracy had vanished!

I was a scrutineer for the first time at the state election and it left me enormous faith in our elections (although the promised dicks drawn on ballots never materialised). Seems like more people should do a shift and learn how it works.

Makes sense, more like a set of guiding principles then. I really like the focus on the unified story and plotlines.

Apologies if this is a silly question, but have these lessons been properly captured (or has someone considered doing a PhD on it)?

A great yarn, and just what I needed to read today 🙏

ynicism is first of all a style of presenting oneself, and it takes pride more than anything in not being fooled and not being foolish. But in the forms in which I encounter it, cynicism is frequently both these things. That the attitude that prides itself on world-weary experience is often so naïve says much about the triumph of style over substance, attitude over analysis. Maybe it also says something about the tendency to oversimplify. If simplification means reducing things to their essentials, oversimplification tosses aside the essential as well. It is a relentless pursuit of certainty and clarity in a world that generally offers neither, a desire to shove nuances and complexities into clear-cut binaries. Naïve cynicism concerns me because it flattens out the past and the future, and because it reduces the motivation to participate in public life, public discourse, and even intelligent conversation that distinguishes shades of gray, ambiguities and ambivalences, uncertainties, unknowns, and opportunities. Instead, we conduct our conversations like wars, and the heavy artillery of grim confidence is the weapon many reach for.

I'm exhausted by all the people out there who are trying to prove they're each the most cynical world-weary disillusioned person who's not gonna ever do a fucking thing ever except dump on everything and expect to be admired for that. Wrote about that in 2016:

🤯 good grief, not giggling at that would have cost me all my self-control!

Absolutely! Very keen to learn about it out of general interest, and because I’d like to know what is actually useful when it comes to political participation