nonfiction
The Welfare State Is Homophobic
Queers are outraged about the proposed regulation of poppers—and the restriction of its recreational use. And rightly so. The arguments against these regulations are convincing—it’s your body and your choice to ingest whatever substance you like. But every new prohibition on social behaviours comes from somewhere and we should ask what made regulating poppers possible in the first place, to properly critique these immoral policies.
14 September 2018
No Pens, No Paper
Demitra Lazarakis on why education matters to her Art by Nicola Dobinson I remember a moment vividly from when I was around 15 years old. I had spent the afternoon with my grandparents— Grandma Cornelia and Grandpa George, γιαγιά and παππού in Greek. On this particular day, I noticed one of my grandma’s […]
12 September 2018
Hello My Name Is…
Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” Although, he was probably referring to white names because we all know that Rose rolls off the tongue a lot easier than Mishti does.
27 August 2018
For & Against: Lockout Lockheed
IMAGE by David Zeleznikow-Johnston FOR by Lockout Lockheed Students at the University of Melbourne ought to be informed about a lot of things. First, that their university is making secretive deals with transnational arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and BAE. Second, that these partnerships incentivise war by institutionalising and normalising the presence of weapons […]
14 August 2018
Flystrike
By the end of it, Mary didn’t feel any love toward the sheep. She didn’t want to hold their slimy bodies, cold and wet, abandoned by their mothers. Most didn’t even know how to suckle properly. She had given up trying to help lost lambs.
13 August 2018
With GMOs, We Reap What We Sow
Roughly 9,000 years ago, somewhere around the Tehuacan Valley of present-day Mexico, a common local wildgrass began an extraordinary transformation. It probably started by accident: local foragers favouring those plants with larger, looser seeds, and inadvertently spreading them through their waste. But it wasn’t long before humans made art out of chance and began deliberately selecting the best grasses to sow—and unwittingly became the world’s first genetic engineers.
9 August 2018
Future Cities
In 2008, humans became a majority urban species for the first time. Today, up to 54 per cent of people live in cities, and that number is only set to rise. Climate change will impact the cities and towns we live in—many urban areas will have to change significantly, and rapidly, in order to withstand the pressures of increasing dangerous weather events, heat waves, and other climatic dangers.
9 August 2018
Bad News
CONTENT WARNING: EUGENICS, HOMOPHOBIA, TERRORISM The world didn’t end in 2012, but sometimes it feels like we would be better-off if it had. Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached due to climate change—and the Adani coalmine may soon be its neighbour. The president of the world’s most powerful country has sexually assaulted numerous […]
9 August 2018
E.T. Phone Home
Alien. That’s the best way to describe it. Being an immigrant often feels like you’re between a rock and a hard place. But the rock is the place you are now, and the hard place is fitting in. Always in between, always not quite there, mentally or physically. Physically, missing out on schoolies for a family trip back to the home that is spoken of at least once every family meal. Mentally, always worlds away, wrapped up in stories from family about faraway lands, of sights, smells and people that exist on what seems like an entirely different planet.
9 August 2018