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Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.

Real men eat meat

Men eat meat. And if a man does not, his masculinity will be in question; emasculation shall be his malnourishment. Many of us today mock the ‘real men eat meat’ refrain. Yet society still insists that meat consumption is a marker of manliness – and the redder the meat, the manlier the man.

No place like home

There are more than 4.4 million disabled people in Australia. We constitute 18 per cent of the population, and over 90 per cent of us live in private dwellings. Yet only 5 per cent of private houses built here meet national accessibility standards.

Being David Cohen

Recently, I typed ‘David Cohen’ into Google Books, just for the modest thrill of seeing my name appear. The thrill quickly gave way to dismay when I saw how many other writers there are named David Cohen: dozens of the bastards.

To speak or not to speak

What does silence say about our views, the way we use our platforms, our moral capacities, our ethics, our willingness to be silenced or the (always unstated) pecuniary and reputational purposes for which many use public social media profiles? It’s also helpful to consider the implications of silence.

Mix ’n’ mash 

There's a huge amount of luck and discovery involved with the collage technique where – if it’s not reaching the randomness of aleatory music – it’s pretty darn close to genuine randomness and dumb luck.

A less artificial future 

Humans have been making automatons since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Disruption due to technology is nothing new. We need to think critically about this fourth industrial revolution, remembering the lessons of the past. The rapid scientific discoveries, exponential technological advances and widescale job losses have all been seen before.

Navigating truth

Libraries have always played a huge role in my life. Now, in a different city far from the lakeside town I grew up in, I still have my routine, my favourite spot, a fondness for DIY signage. And yet, I never saw myself as a librarian until a few years ago.

I think in movies

When I remember stories, I remember films – how they made me feel, what they made me think about, and often the experience of seeing them. Eli needed the bathroom in Phantom Menace, and Dad took him, reluctantly – they were only gone for five minutes, but that was long enough.

Acknowledgements, mon amour 

From there, this acknowledgement fetish expanded to my leisure reading. Novels, memoirs, narrative non-fiction – they all contained these tantalising windows into the person and story behind the book. Whenever I picked up a new tome, I would head straight to the back to find out what the author had to say for themselves.

Orwell everywhere

George Orwell is trending. But why?

No doubt the answer is complicated, but one reason, perhaps, is that Orwell anticipated the deepening epistemic crisis signified in the phrase ‘post-truth’. We are living through a time of thoroughgoing confusion as to what kind of information counts as evidence, and this is something Orwell came back to time and again in his novels and essays.

Killing the poets 

When asked in an interview what he feared most during this war, Palestinian writer Khalil Abu Yahia responded, ‘I fear that I will die without achieving my dreams. I want to complete my PhD. I want to rebuild my family’s house… And [my] biggest dream – to meet my [international] friends in person, to shake hands, to hug them. It sounds very simple, but colonialism disconnects people from the rest of the world.’

Rainbow flag ibis by Scott Marsh, Chippendale, NSW, photo by Paul Allatson

Bin chicken wonder 

While often playful and ironic, the bin chicken phenomenon has a more serious side. Like an ‘animal familiar’, the humble ibis is helping us navigate changing times, including the question of who belongs and who does not in modern Australia. A vast array of bin chicken merch celebrates a decidedly kitsch Aussie aesthetic that champions a working-class or bogan sensibility.

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