The paddocks lie in their hard light— Australia’s promise and parody. Politics here is a family trait: the drunk uncle returning to the table, the steak knives glinting like inheritances no one deserves. I woke to the news as if to a summons— another bargain struck in the dust, another man rehearsing his public shame….
This article connects with my emerging research focus on AI, discourse, and the reshaping of institutional and public narratives in contemporary society. The possible new dawn A decade into the age of automation, cities hum, but differently. The glass towers of former corporate districts now host shared studios, learning hubs, community care centres and civic…
If you stop to listen to yourself speaking English, you’ll hear something remarkable. Almost every sentence you say — from I’m running late to I would have gone if I’d known — spins three hidden gears at once: tense, aspect, and modality. We don’t notice them most of the time. They hum beneath our words like the gears of a quiet electric…
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, roughly the size of Texas, drifts a vast patch of gyres—so dense with liquified microplastics there’s no chance it will ever be cleaned up. I mention this because of what happens at Venice Beach. Walking up from behind the beachfront, kids (and adult kids) skate along a cracked…
Sometimes the best things happen by accident. In my case, it was Google Maps. Rather than sending me to the wrong destination (or over an unfinished bridge), Google conspired to take me on a delightful detour—through the grounds of a palace. Not just any palace, but the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich—entered from entirely the wrong…
If you’ve ever tried to explain English to someone learning it for the first time, you’ll know that phrasal verbs are everywhere — and that they’re maddeningly unpredictable. We “pick up” a language, “take off” on a journey, “turn down” an offer, and “get by” on little sleep. Each combination of verb and particle creates…
One of the most common challenges English learners face is modal verbs — words like can, might, should, must. They seem simple on the surface, but each carries subtle shades of meaning. Learners often confuse them because their own languages may use completely different structures. For example, in Vietnamese or Thai, obligation and possibility are expressed with separate…
The Walter Benjamin Memorial takes you from a sunny Spanish postcard to oblivion. The top is a lonely doorway, appearing unexpectedly, brutally, at the gate to Cementerio de Portbou; a traditional graveyard overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s straight down. Inside there is nothing but downto a sudden clear glass panel; a literal and metaphorical dead end….
Sitting outside of Jimmy Watson’s in Lygon Street Carlton, each of us nursing a glass of wine, my friend is adamant: Too many Australians simply jump on the train between Paris and Barcelona without discovering the delights of the Mediterranean coast. We are sitting there with his large folded maps tracing out the Canal Midi…
