Chris Sharp > Recent Status Updates

Into and Chapter 1: Some very practical stuff around creating a framework for surveys and identifying both your research questions and survey questions. Also interesting from perspective of a consumer, contextualising the format of some surveys we're all exposed to.

Fuck me, euthanasia's 'on the free list' at the chemist. Is that unintentionally hilarious or what? I mean, given my occupation and all.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7HXPhj...

Actually started this a few days ago, forgot to record. 5 stars alone for poem title 'Acknowledgement of Cuntery'.

Couldn't help it, skipped over a bunch of have-copy-will-reads to start this, couldn't wait to get back into the world that got me all teary-eyed about spiders.

Thoughts of the past two chapters:
-Ask Australians what January 26 commemorates, more answers will be wrong than right
-Jan 26 doesn't meet aims of the day to celebrate (would any date?)
-British right to sovereignty isn't clear through conquest, occupation, cession or prescription.
-Australia wasn't a true nation at 1901; it was a blend of nation, protectorate and spheres of influence

It contrasts contemporary narratives about the history of Sovereignty and treaty-making in Australia with historical accounts, informed by how international law was practised at the time. In short, the British colonisation of Australia was a shitshow led through misinformation and malpractice, sustained by a lack of oversight between pastoralists and settlers on the ground, and the Colonial Office in London.

Chapter 2: The Ancient Sovereignty.
Joseph Banks told the British that the continent was practically empty, *must* be empty, because surely people without British knowledge of agriculture couldn't survive? And definitely no sovereign nations.
Colonists then spent the next 50 years in frontier wars with large groups of people, skills adapted to the land, with their own clearly defined borders and languages.

Chapter 1: Taking Possession.
Did the British follow the law of the time when it came to 'claiming' Australia?
Well, no, and they seemed to know it.

Book gonna make me cry in the preface

Haven't read a Max Barry novel since Jennifer Government; always jarring to have some dude in the US referring to Broken Hill, but I guess part of the point of that previous novel was to imagine a near-future near-Americanised Australia. It's fleet-footed like that novel too, so far. Don't yet know if I'm dealing with sci-fi or magical realism.

Beth just got her cabinet piano; had to look that up and if you're wondering, it's a very tall upright.

jesus christ did not expect to get weepy at a book about intelligent spiders

This is a wild ride. Love when someone tries to infer culture from anatomy and physiology

Revisiting the dark, fearful heart of cyberpunk with older eyes. First thing I noticed: The opening takes place in the sort of interstitial cultural space that Gibson explored thoroughly in his later Bridge Trilogy.

That reminds me: Wrong Trilogy to discuss it, but the Sandbenders technology/PC in Bridge, would that be seen as a solarpunk concept? Only heard about this yesterday.

The gut feeling I get is that, while as not practically useful at the weird questions that come up in psychopharmacolgy and therapeutics, this offshoot of the Maudsley guideline does a better job of stating the actual rationale for antipsychotic use and how to think about antipsychotic decision making (though to be fair, I've never done a page-by-page read of the main Maudsley text)

It's a great salad recipe book, but it's on hold while I complete Total Wellbeing Diet

Gonna sound silly, but I never thought of lack of insight as the cardinal symptom of psychosis, and yet it should be obvious, as by definition psychosis is a fundamental transformation in how someone experiences lived reality. If you can't tell what's not real, you're going to have trouble with understanding or seeing there's a problem.

Little Women won't fit in my bag (Chlo has an oversized copy), so I've decided to make a thing of 18th century Western women and add Alias Grace simultaneously. Can't remember the last time I had 2 books going.

Am I Meg, or am I Beth? I'm definitely not Jo or Amy. Am I trying to make this call too early, being only one chapter in? Louisa May Alcott shows such fondness for her little women.

So far I'm getting a slice of life view of the Cultural Revolution; a part of history I know nothing about.

I am determined to finish this before New Years; it now discusses the ascendancy of Hilary Clinton (Note: This was published prior to November 2016). It focuses on the Hilary Doctrine (US as world's defender of women and girls), arguing the rhetoric didn't match the policy. He rips into microlending as a practice founded on poor evidence, advanced by neoliberal principles, resulting in poorer outcomes for women.

He's taken on the cult of innovation now; most significantly, how 'innovators' and 'disrupters' like Amazon, Google, Uber have tacit permission by liberal politics to erode the last century's progress in worker's rights in the name of meritocracy.

From the last update, he outlines key people and ideas responsible for repudiating a working-class orientation for the Democratic Party post-New Deal through to its culmination in the about face towards pro-business policy like the Clinton administration repealment of Glass-Steagall and the failure of the Obama administration to use the GFC bank bailouts as leverage for banking reform. Interesting; very American.

So, points so far:
Liberalism has become identified with technocracy through the participation of the professional-managerial class.
This class has exploded over the past century, and values meritocracy as a guiding principle
By definition, meritocracy is opposed to the working-class/union principle of solidarity
As a result, the professional-managerial class are not motivated to advocate against economic inequality

Not something I would have chosen for myself, as it appears to be written with an American audience in mind, but a friend was insistent I give it a shot. I can see similar changes in both representation and policy as a casual observer of ALP politics, so perhaps it'll have some carryover.