018: Depth and Breadth | 27 April - 3 May
Hyperbaric firsts, three Jungian lenses, Jung's Red Book in person, Kae Tempest new releases, and the surveillance hiding in your grocery app
The week wrapped up my 10-day pass at P3 Recovery Springwood — compression, saunas, contrast therapy — and I finally tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy (Bluesky | TikTok) for the first time. The weekend social calendar was full, too!
On Friday night, Tane and I attended the Jung Society of Queensland presentation exploring Three Jungian Lenses to Meet Ourselves (Classical, Archetypal, and Developmental) with Brittain Garrett and Aditee Ghate. It was also the first time I’d seen Jung’s Red Book: Liber Novus in person! I loved the calligraphy throughout.
The weekend brought a Vietnamese dinner and deep chats with Adele and Tane, the Buddha’s Birthday Festival at Chung Tian temple in Underwood, and the new Arts and Vego Fest at Griffith Uni’s Logan campus — genuinely good community energy, and the weather cooperated beautifully on Sunday.
Kae Tempest threaded through a lot of my week: a great interview about his latest book, a feature on the new KNEECAP single, and a pre-order I’m still waiting on.
Saturday would have been my mum's birthday. I was a bit sad, as you are, but having friends and family close made all the difference — and I know I wasn't the only one carrying something like that this weekend.
Here’s what I’ve been reading and listening to:
📚 BOOKS
Kae Tempest’s new book “Having Spent Life Seeking” was released this week, but I’m still waiting for my pre-order…
To get me through, Claire Nichols on ABC Radio National interviewed Kae on Monday (from 19:27)
British poet, performer and novelist Kae Tempest explains why he “writes what he can’t bear to admit” in his second novel. Kae’s second novel, Having Spent Life Seeking follows Rothko who’s newly released from prison and has returned to the hometown where everything fell apart. Claire also speaks to Kae about the challenges of writing a novel while maintaining a demanding schedule of live performances and musical projects.
I can’t wait for his tour in June!
🚗 ELECTRIC VEHICLES
The EV industry needs a proper policy to help invest in, build, operate, and expand the EV public charging infrastructure in Australia. They are calling on Commonwealth, state, and territory governments, and energy regulators to:
Provide policy certainty and protect competition
Enable a coordinated, partnership-led rollout of EV charging infrastructure
Fix grid connection bottlenecks
Reform tariffs and technical settings
Unlock private investment
Why is this important?
Our message is simple: the fuel crisis should be a catalyst for action. Industry is ready to invest. Government now needs to provide the policy settings that allow Australia’s EV charging network to be built bigger, faster and better.
🧘🏻♀️ HEALTH, FITNESS, & LONGEVITY
Hold Still: What Does the Evidence Actually Say About Isometric Training for Strength and Hypertrophy? from Stronger by Science
Isometric training — holding a position under tension rather than moving through a range of motion — doesn't get much attention compared to conventional strength training, but the evidence is more interesting than you'd expect.
This long article covers:
Different muscle actions and how they are usually defined throughout the literature
Different types of isometrics
Evidence on isometric training for strength and hypertrophy (as well as other applications such as tendon rehabilitation and pain management)
The most important programming variables to consider
An overview of the literature comparing isometric vs. dynamic/isotonic training (as well as versus other muscle actions)
How to practically apply isometrics in your own training
♫ MUSIC
Another early week drop from the KNEECAP album and it’s Kae Tempest!!
KNEECAP: Irish Goodbye (feat. Kae Tempest)
Their new album, FENIAN, was released at the end of the week:
🗳️ POLITICS
So many people say to me they are not interested in politics. I say that everything IS politics, whether you want to accept that or not, whether you understand what politics can do for society or not.
Also, from a Stoic perspective, it is our duty to be engaged (political) citizens, which includes understanding and knowing about politics and politicians.
From Stoic Sisterhood:
Here’s what the Stoics understood: citizenship isn’t a hobby or something you do when it’s convenient. It’s a fundamental part of being human. We live in communities. We benefit from infrastructure, laws, institutions, and the efforts of countless others. That creates an obligation to participate in the life of that community.
And right now? There’s a lot that needs our attention.
✊ What You Can Do Right Now:
Pay attention locally
Show up in person
Use your voice strategically
Vote in every single election - voting is compulsory in Australia
Build real community
Support credible journalism - independent journalists such as TrueNorth are a great place to start
Run for something or support someone who will - see the Community Independents Project and Climate 200
The time-strapped, working mom isn’t a natural phenomenon. She’s the product of bad policy
The exhausted working mother isn't a personal failing or a natural state — she's the product of policy decisions that were never designed with her in mind. The fix isn't nostalgia for the 1960s; it's collective care systems that distribute the load across all parents.
Zara Rahman writes:
As these political forces move from the margins into the mainstream, it is essential that we remember that there is nothing natural about the expectations placed on women. The “good mother”, ever-present and attentive, and finding delight in her husband’s shadow, is a story we are being told to push women back into their homes, out of public life and into the private work of childbearing and childrearing.
But here is where those who fear women’s agency have miscalculated: mothering isn’t only a site of control, it can also be a site of resistance. The connections I forged (and continue to forge) during my motherhood journey don’t only sustain me, they provide opportunities to build connections based on a transformative shared experience.
👨🏼💻 TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Kill the corporation in your pocket – re-evaluating the place of smartphones in our lives and communities
Stu from Slingshot writes from a radical anarchist perspective about corporations creating dopamine-release inducers for decades - they know how the brain works, but the core argument translates: our relationship to our phones is an addiction, and shame won’t fix it. Communities erode when we turn to devices instead of each other for even our most basic needs.
It is time for us to reimagine the tech resistance. New ways of living must be found in our current version of the techno-hellscape if our movements are to be successful.
How?
Ground yourself in Reality
Kill your Shame, for it does not belong to you
Adjust your Expectations and Embrace Sacrifice
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
Within recent memory, people who made software and hardware understood their job was to serve their customer. It was to identify a need, and then fill it. But at some point following the financial crisis, would-be entrepreneurs got it into their heads that their job was to invent the future, and consumers’ job was to go along with that invented future...
At some point, our Silicon Valley overlords forgot that in order for their vision of the future to be adopted, people had to want it. That’s why NFTs, the metaverse, and the Oculus and Vision Pro never really found their customer base. AI is, admittedly, more useful … at least as long as they remain free…
How is it that all these wunderkinds trying to build the next product to take over the world haven’t thought about this?
The reason, the author suggests, is straightforward: these founders don't have much in common with normal people, and increasingly don't think about them either — more focused on VC podcasts and AI anxiety than on what an ordinary person's day actually looks like. A VC who can't reflect will never notice his bets are failing in the same way every time.
Woolworths Rewards exposed: What they’re really tracking | Gruen Pt 3, Ep1 | ABC iview
“Everyday Rewards is Woollies’ loyalty program / spying system” and they discuss their latest advert - gee, I’m glad I have ad blockers so I never see such adverts. Love that Wil linked to the song by EGE - I Love Stealing From Woolies too!!
Of course Russel loves the advert, but Todd is our technology truth-teller:
It’s weird to see how these supermarkets are selling surveillance and data collection and how they’re sort of repositioning that it’s not surveillance, it’s helping you.
So nobody says, “Would you like to be in a long-term behavioural monetisation program that’s going to mine your data for their profit for the next 20 years?” What they say is, “Would you like $3 off dog food?” And we go, “Yeah.” Because they know two simple things. Immediate rewards are valuable. And with the law of reciprocity, when they give us something, we are willing and often give something back to them…
It’s still remarkable how willing we are to give all our data for an inequal reward. So the reward is often one point for $1. So, it takes $2,000 of groceries to get one pan on your reward system.
To me, the cost is not worth the benefit.
📺 TV SERIES
Mint
8 Episodes
BBC One + 🏴☠
This is a wonderful-looking series that I was really into until the halfway point - episode four was spectacular - then I wasn’t as impressed.
From Ed Power at The Irish Times:
Combine The Godfather with Trainspotting and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet – then sprinkle in full-strength David Lynch-style suburban surrealism and out of the microwave pops Charlotte Regan’s piping hot, deliriously strange new crime drama
If you like the sound of any of those, you might like this.
Unchosen
6 episodes
Netflix +🏴☠
I watched the first three episodes of this with Tane. Some of the content hit a nerve around the hierarchical power structures that organised religion tends to reproduce, but it’s a gripping story so far. Always good to see the juxtaposition of “good” vs “bad” people and how there’s really only the grey in between all of us.
Virgin Island S2
6 episodes
Channel 4 + 🏴☠
This is a really out-there show that, if you can get beyond the weirdness, is actually a really good show to teach - not just the participants - but also the viewers on intimacy, touch, consent, confidence, interpersonal skills and much more.
Here’s the trailer for Season 1 and an interview with three of that season’s participants, who travel back to reunite
Cat, LC, Tane, and Sylvia at Arts and Vego Fest — behind the Meadowbrook Golf Course next to Griffith University's Logan campus.
I’m grateful for quality time with Tane, Adele, and Cat, a social calendar that delivered the kind of weekend that reminds you why getting off the computer is always worth it.