Democracy, anarchy, and tyranny are three very different organising principles people use to make decisions, allocate resources, and define culture. There are others. Wikipedia's list of forms of government has many more.
"I could have just been six million and one"
My Oma's words.
These words have been coming back to me in recent days. Not even a week has passed since shots shattered Chanukah celebrations in Bondi last week.
Anti-semitism. Hatred of Jews. It's unfathomable to me, and yet, and yet? It's here, and made all too tangible in blood on the beach.
And yet conflict churns in my broken heart - what makes this hatred different to the other kinds of murderous insanity? Is it different?
I do not understand, I want to understand, I will never understand.
Transactional Analysis helps us understand how we communicate.
If we assume everyone is ok, including, and especially ourselves, we can relate calmly, openly, and with positive intent. Too often we get caught out assuming that's not the case in one way or another, letting our worst fears manifest in the world.
Learn more
In a recent LinkedIn post, Katherine McLennan has perfectly articulated something that has been bubbling in my mind since the Government announced it was holding an economic reform roundtable, which has been informally dubbed the "productivity summit." But what is productivity? The productivity commission definition says:
"Productivity measures how good we are at producing output.
30 June 2025 - End of the financial year, 9 days past the solstice.
Earth - Turning on its access, orbiting around the sun.
Humans - Connections of care and consideration.
The moment is always now, here, with us.
Before open source, and app stores, there was share ware. Trying new tools, games, and extensions was effortless. The AI landscape is feeling a bit similar.
Long ago I lost track of how many conference talks I've given. The first step for most of those was taking a deep breath, logging in to the conference website, and writing a short description about what I would talk about.
The first step on the journey is responding to a call for papers, call for sessions, or call for talks. So, I learned to ignore the fear of rejection, and just throw my idea in the pot. There was so much more to gain from the risk the organisers would say yes, than the risk they would say no.
Hello. Nothing much to say, but I want to mark the start of another year. 2025. Hello 2025.
The image, is a weird artefact that was generated when scanning some old family photos. It's a fragment of a larger photo - somehow auto-detected by the scanning software. It's a snippet of a painting done by my grandmother Ruth Benjamin
She said "A bit of painting, that's all I'm good for," so perhaps that's why I felt urged to save and share this scanning glitch.
What's the difference between a practice, and a method? How do they related to theories and philosophy?