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Hi there - thanks for inviting the Missive into your inboxes. It's been the better part of a year since I started sending out these things, so I thought it might be nice to change up the look of it. Let me know what you think. As always, if you enjoy these emails, spread the word. 
"The other life of Annastacia Palaszczuk" by Frances Whiting, QWeekend, July 2014
Reading time: 17 minutes
I was working as a journalist in Queensland during the 2012 election, when the LNP had a landslide win. I thought it'd take Labor a decade, if not a generation, to get back into government. Last night's barnstorming Labor win in Queensland surprised many people, particularly since premier-elect Annastacia Palaszczuk seems to be a bit of an unknown entity. This profile does a good job of filling in the blanks around Palaszczuk's history, personal life and motivations. 

“Do I want to be premier? Yes, I do. I have thought long and hard about this, and I do. I believe I now have the experience, I’ve been a member since 2006, I’ve served in Cabinet, and now I’ve had two-and-a-half years as leader of the Opposition, and I think I’ve articulated our focus — jobs and not selling assets — effectively.” Palaszczuk dismisses talk she has not had enough real-life experience outside the Labor Party. “What does that actually mean? There are lots of different perceptions of real-life experience. My first job was at the Inala Plaza selling jewellery; I’ve seen all sorts of life; I’ve studied overseas; I’ve worked hard in my community; I can sit down with anyone from any sort of background and have a chat; I’m involved in community organisations. How do you measure those things?”

"Claudette: remembering 'the oldest living transsexual in captivity'" by Meshel Laurie, The Monthly, July 2014
Reading time: 8 minutes
Comedian Meshel Laurie's stint as a receptionist in a brothel has given her plenty of material for her stand-up shows, and this piece about the rocky start to her friendship with a middle-aged transsexual sex worker named Claudette is funny without belittling its subject. 

"Claudette often professed her love of drinking and was equally honest about how nasty it made her. She joked about waking up to find her beloved white, fluffy cat, Bridget, covered in red lipstick – the victim of a late-night kissing attack from a very drunk Claudette. She also told me about the beautiful Jag she used to drive around town. One night, as Claudette attempted to make it home from the pub, the car ploughed right over a fire hydrant. The resulting water fountain shot 30 feet up, she reckoned, but was angled just enough to spray gallons of water into the lounge room of the nearest house."

"If you don't understand how people fall into poverty, you're probably a sociopath" by Lucy Mangan, The Guardian, 24/01/2015
Reading time: 4 minutes
Clickbaity title aside, this is the most succinct explanation of how poverty becomes entrenched that I've ever read.  

"Listen, I always want to say, if you’re genuinely mystified, answer me this: have you never had a really bad day and really wanted – nay, needed – an extra glass of Montrachet on the roof terrace in the evening? Or such a chaotic, miserable week that you’ve ended up with a takeaway five nights out of seven instead of delving into Nigella’s latest? You have? Why, splendid. Now imagine if your whole life were not just like that one bad day, but even worse. All the time. No let-up. No end in sight. No, you can’t go on holiday. No, you can’t cash anything in and retire. No. How would you react? No, you’ve not got a marketable skills set. You don’t know anyone who can give you a job. No. No."

"The likely cause of addiction has been discovered, and it's not what you think" by Johann Hari, Huffington Post, 20/01/2015
Reading time: 12 minutes
What if the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, but human connection? That's the question Hari asks in his new book Chasing the Scream, which looks at the science of addiction vs the war on drugs. Really interesting idea.  

"This has huge implications for the one-hundred-year-old war on drugs. This massive war -- which, as I saw, kills people from the malls of Mexico to the streets of Liverpool -- is based on the claim that we need to physically eradicate a whole array of chemicals because they hijack people's brains and cause addiction. But if drugs aren't the driver of addiction -- if, in fact, it is disconnection that drives addiction -- then this makes no sense."
Karen Joy Fowler - "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves"

"As a child, Rosemary used to talk all the time. So much so that her parents used to tell her to start in the middle if she wanted to tell a story. Now Rosemary has just started college and she barely talks at all. Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone - vanished from her life. But there's something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern. So now she's telling her story; a looping narrative that begins towards the end, and then goes back to the beginning. Twice."

"If you didn’t want to engage with the [music] business, you could just play songs in your garage. I always wish someone said that to Kurt Cobain, or that he could hear it. … He was a guy who wanted to be Ian MacKaye and Michael Jackson at the same time. He wanted to be the biggest star in the world, entirely on his own terms. And that’s just not how things work."
— Singer-songwriter Kevin Devine, speaking on the Ally Coalition podcast.

Zac Farro used to play drums in pop rock band Paramore, but left the band in 2011 along with his lead guitarist brother Josh. Since then, he's been living in New Zealand and making music under the name HalfNoise, which shows just how wasted he was in Paramore. If you like The Postal Service, Chet Faker and Bon Iver, you'll probably like this. 
"What should I do about YouTube?" by Zoe Keating, Tumblr, 22/01/2014
Reading time: 9 minutes
Google's Music Key is the tech giant's answer to Spotify. As part of this, they'll make every single song uploaded to YouTube streamable through its service, and while it sounds like a great idea for consumers, it means that artists won't have control over the ads and revenue they've previously received on the site. This blog post by cellist Zoe Keating explains the system (something Google has been loath to do publicly), laying bare the lack of choices for musicians who want to upload their work to YouTube. 

"Is such control too much for an artist to ask for in 2015? It’s one thing for individuals to upload all my music for free listening (it doesn’t bother me). It’s another thing entirely for a major corporation to force me to. I was encouraged to participate and now, after I’m invested, I’m being pressured into something I don’t want to do."

"A life apart: the toll of obesity" by Lisa Krantz and Jessica Belasco, San Antonio Express-Times 27/12/2014
Reading time: 20 minutes
A moving longform article and photo essay about the life and death of Hector Garcia Jr, an American man who struggled with morbid obesity his entire life and died of complications from his weight at the age of 49, despite gastric bypass surgery and many attempts to lose excess weight. 

“He came into the world with the cards stacked against him,” Wadden said. “If you had taken the same individual and placed him in Afghanistan or Iraq, he probably would have been one of the heavier individuals in those countries, but they just don't have the food supply, they don't have the multibillion-dollar marketing campaigns that would have led him to weigh 500 pounds.”

"Why do Australians hate thinkers?" by Alecia Simmonds, Womankind, 30/10/2014
Reading time: 6 minutes
The title says it all. 

"There’s no doubt that Australia is a vast, sunny intellectual gulag. The question is why. It’s certainly not for of want of thinkers. We’re home to some brilliant minds ... yet how often do we hear them speak? Why aren’t they chased down for their opinions on policy and social issues rather than wheeling out ageing politicians and professional laypeople again and again?"

"The recurring problem with Tony Abbott's 'captain's picks' is that they're all duds. "
— Bernard Keane over at Crikey. 

 
The City of Melbourne council has outdone itself with this fantastic interactive data visualisation of every single tree within council boundaries. The Melbourne Urban forest map categorises trees by species and lifespan using colour and shape -- it's alarming but not surprising to see the trees next to major traffic areas are in the poorest health. As cool as this interactive map is, the the feature that has really got people talking is the ability to email individual trees and have them write back. It's the kind of Melbourne creative wankery I love -- it's got people caring about trees and given some of Melbourne's many underemployed writers work writing emails pretending to be trees. One of my colleagues emailed a tree asking if it thought Tony Abbott would be prime minister in six month's time. The tree replied: 

"You’ll have to visit me and listen to the rustle of my leaves to understand which way the wind is blowing. Enjoy your day. Yours sincerely, London Plane."

Mixing whimsy with science and data visualisation is so great. I love my city.
"'That's Not All!' Kevin Trudeau, The World's Greatest Salesman, Makes One Last Pitch" by Aaron Gell, Business Insider 21/01/2015
Reading time: 50 minutes
I'd never heard of Kevin Trudeau before I read this article, but to thousands -- maybe millions -- of people, he's a weight loss and finance guru, famous for his many infomercials. He's also a liar with a history of fraud, and is serving a hefty prison sentence for misrepresenting the facts in many of his infomercials. Gell speaks to Trudeau, his devotees, ex-wives and past business associates as he tries to work out who exactly is telling the truth. Quite a long read, but worth it. 

"People need to be inspired. They need faith. And this may be the central paradox of Kevin Trudeau’s story. Yes, he lied about his book and probably a lot of other things. He sold a bill of goods. He created a pastiche of well-worn motivational bromides and sold it as new. He made promises he could never hope to fulfil. He peddled conspiracy theories and manipulated gullible people. He got very, very rich doing it, and then he scrambled to place his money beyond the reach of the government. And yet, he also helped thousands of people."

"Welcome to McKell, Sydney's most notorious public housing block" by Dan Box, The Weekend Australian, 31/01/2015
Reading time: 17 minutes
Last year, Harriet Wrann (daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wrann) made headlines for killing a man while high on methamphetamine. The murder happened in a block of housing commission flats in Redfern, and this article is a "day in the life" look at what life is actually like for residents of this public housing block.  

"Over homemade orange cheesecake and custard tarts, the ladies, who are in their 60s, 70s and 80s, talk about suicides, murders and the tenants found dead inside their units after a few days in the heat. No one knows how many ­suicides there have been in the past 10 years, though there was another attempt a couple of months ago. Once, one body landed right beside ­Denise. She was going to hose the mess down, but Housing NSW (the Housing Commission’s successor) told her to leave it to someone else."
Legendary English grindcore (a subgenre of heavy metal, for those playing at home) band Napalm Death made headlines recently for a slightly unexpected reason -- vocalist Barney Greenway wrote to Indonesian president and fan of the band Joko Widodo, asking him to spare the lives of two Australians set to face the death penalty for drug smuggling. The media coverage reminded me how much I dig this song -- hopefully they'll bust it out when they tour Australia later this year.

I'm not really into video games at all, but not because I think they're stupid. I just know how strong my compulsive tendencies are, and if if I started gaming, I'd stop playing music, reading, showering and leaving the house to participate in society. That said, sometimes I do need something to keep my mind off the hideousness of the world, and this iOS game Shades is excellent for doing just that. It's Tetris-inspired, beautiful to look at and only $2.50. 
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