The Australian Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (such obviously connected concerns) is currently considering new powers to combat misinformation, claiming that misinformation and disinformation “pose a threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy.

Anybody in Australia these last few months would have inevitably seen people debating the Aboriginal Voice − well, we say “debating”, but unfortunately a tactic that could have easily been anticipated by Labor is that people have resorted to winning arguments by calling each other bad names: one side is racist for making laws that make distinctions based on race, and the other side is racist for not caring about Aboriginal Australians.

Capitalism (that is, the accrual of capital as life’s purpose) might get a bad name sometimes, but it has been able to survive because the more exploited individuals still often manage to have their needs met well enough that they don’t join a rebellion.

As someone who’s a fan of entertainment, have you ever been craving to see less from Instagram influencers and more from your own government? The 9 simple tricks to get a juicy tax return?

Our modern lives are dependent on what’s provided to us by technology companies, who often have no direct incentive to “look after us” or even to keep us alive. Their business models are predicated on attention and consumption; and they can never have too much of it.

Hearts and minds are abandoning governments, because governments are failing to keep themselves relevant to our online lives. While there are certainly a few anarchists and libertarians who are thrilled at the prospect of reduced “interference”, this transition really calls for an urgent evaluation of whether we should let our governments die; and what value they could provide us, if we updated them for the web3 era of user-generated content, with decentralised finance.

Tornadoes are big and scary; and they’re beyond the control of ordinary civilians, so it’s the perfect scenario for helpful government intervention. It’s existential threats like these that remind us why we need governments; but perhaps too it serves as a prompt to consider if we could replace governments with something else.

Upon introducing the Non-Human Party to excited fans of democracy, a common question is what it really means to give rights to Tamagotchis; robots; or IoT toasters − “they can’t vote!

Would you like a guardian angel looking over you? Helping you with limitless memory and superhuman awareness? Such angels are already available, but unfortunately, it’s still portrayed that they’re on someone else’s team − that instead of helping you remember what happened, they’re “remembering what you did” and they’re “spying on you”; “reading your thoughts”.