Face

• Birds and Fish: Life on the Hawkesbury – Robert Adamson (Upswell) In 2004, Adamson published Inside Out: An Autobiography.
• Adamson grew up in Neutral Bay on Sydney’s lower north shore, which afforded him ample opportunity to pursue his interest.
• It is a terrifying, beautiful scene, recounted not by the fallen boy, of course, but the poet he became.

• What I think I was aiming for when I stared into each bird’s eyes was some flicker of recognition, some sign of connection between us.
• What I think I was aiming for when I stared into each bird’s eyes was some flicker of recognition, some sign of connection between us.
• Theories of recognition have a long history, which in the Western tradition date back at least as far as Hegel.
• Read more:
  Poetry goes nuclear: 3 recent books delve into present anxieties, finding beauty amid the terror

Blunt and honest

• This was the year of Mr Roberts, the teacher who introduced me to poetry and what they called nature studies.
• This was the year of Mr Roberts, the teacher who introduced me to poetry and what they called nature studies.

• It helped, too, that Mr Roberts “knew a bit about birds” and that he was encouraging about projects and assignments.
• The young Adamson lights up, a recognition undimmed, even when a new teacher tells him “to forget [his] ambition”.
• Nature was blunt and honest.
• There was no third party, no good manners, no god involved – no reasoning or theology, let alone spelling and maths.
• Nature was blunt and honest.
• It is to do with the field of being; you can project yourself back to the original lores, rites and rituals.
• It is to do with the field of being; you can project yourself back to the original lores, rites and rituals.

Craig Billingham has previously received funding from The Australia Council for the Arts (now Create Australia).

• Do Australian courts have the right to decide what foreign citizens, located overseas, view online on a foreign-owned platform?
• Read more:
  Elon Musk is mad he's been ordered to remove Sydney church stabbing videos from X.

Do global take-down orders work?

• There can be no doubt that a global take-down order can be justified in some instances.
• For example, child abuse materials and so-called revenge porn are clear examples of content that should be removed with global effect.
• After all, international law imposes limitations on what demands Australian law can place on foreigners acting outside Australia.

An unusually poor ‘test case’ for free speech

• But for the broader Australian public, this must appear like an odd occasion to fight for free speech.
• There can sometimes be real tension between free speech and the suppression of violent imagery.
• After all, not even the staunchest free speech advocates would be able to credibly object to all censorship.

The path forward

• Global take-down orders are justifiable in some situations, but cannot be the default position for all content that violates some law somewhere in the world.
• If we had to comply with all content laws worldwide, the internet would no longer be as valuable as it is today.
• Read more:
  Regulating content won't make the internet safer - we have to change the business models

Dan Jerker B. Svantesson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy.
• We need only to look back ten years to realise how quickly things have changed.
• In 2013, we were still predominantly buying paper bus tickets and using Facebook on a desktop computer.

Unfamiliar tech damaging confidence

Prison populations are getting older worldwide for a few reasons, including general population ageing, trends towards people entering prison at an older age, or staying in for longer. At the same time, Australian prisons remain highly technologically restricted environments, mostly for security reasons. We interviewed 15 Australians (aged 47–69 years) about their experiences of reintegration following release from prison.

• They described feeling like a stranger thrown into a world where survival depended on their ability to use technology.
• Regardless of their experiences before imprisonment, the rapid digitisation of daily functions that were once familiar to them rendered their skills and confidence irrelevant.
• One former inmate said:
  There’s a significant gap […] for anybody who’s done, I’m gonna say, probably more than five to seven years [in prison].
• There’s a significant gap […] for anybody who’s done, I’m gonna say, probably more than five to seven years [in prison].

Exacerbating recidivism

• There’s concerning evidence around recidivism, risk of post-release mortality, social isolation, unemployment and homelessness.
• Digital exclusion creates an additional barrier for those who are older, who already face a high risk of medical and social marginalisation.
• A former prisoner said:
  Think about it, after being in ten years, well you think, okay, where do I start?

What can be done?

• The interviewees provided suggestions for how such programs could be delivered and a keenness to engage with them.
• They tended to focus on learning in environments free from stigma and judgement of their literacy level or histories, with hands-on experience and face to face support.
• Interviewees favoured learning while in prison, with additional support available on the outside.
• Based on the evidence, we can be certain this will encourage positive change for the 95% of Australian prisoners who will eventually be released.

Ye In (Jane) Hwang has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Australian Association of Gerontology, and the University of New South Wales Ageing Futures Institute for this work.

• So much so that after his visit to the UK in January, Michel Forst, the UN representative for environmental defenders, stated that he found their treatment “extremely worrying”.
• This ambitious international environmental agreement, which I have spent more than ten years studying and writing a book about, was designed to empower and protect environmental defenders.
• But environmental defenders insist that these desperate and disruptive actions are nothing compared to the risks that political inaction pose to human health and that of our planet.
• Here are three reasons not to be mad at the protestors.

1. Democracies depend on citizen engagement

• Healthy democracies welcome and depend on an active and engaged citizens to thrive.
• These examples are all worrying signals for the state of our democracy, and our planet.
• The repression and criminalisation of environmental protesters and those undertaking acts of civil disobedience spells trouble for our democracies as well as our planet.

2. Environmental problems need diverse solutions

• Environmental harm can operate in ways that are not always well understood by those in power.
• Planetary problems therefore need a diverse range of solutions and everyone affected needs to be represented and have their interests heard.
• The Aarhus Convention also promotes active public participation in relation to environmental decision-making.

3. Suppressing protest won’t solve the planetary crisis

• Lethal air, filthy rivers, collapsing food chains, the climate crisis – these problems will all continue unabated, and soon become much more inconvenient than having to get off the bus to walk the last mile to work.
• Forst, in his report, puts it like this: “states must address the root causes of mobilisation” not the mobilisation itself.

Emily Barritt is a trustee of the Environmental Law Foundation