Thanks so much to everyone who sent really lovely replies to my email about the return of the Missive. Now I know you’re all on board, I’ve moved from Mailchimp to Substack because I think it better suits my needs and audience. I’m also back on Twitter, God help me.
Online
Why do we even listen to new music? | Pitchfork
I read this mix of cultural criticism and pop neuroscience at the start of the pandemic and it inspired me to make an effort to listen to new releases, even though it meant my 2020 soundtrack was new releases that sounded like old music (Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Deftones).
Discord: Imagine A Place | Not Boring
My friends group chat moved to Discord earlier this year after 6 years on Facebook Messenger. It’s been a delight to use – I love the bots for organising events and the ability to have separate channels for different topics of conversation. This long read on the past, present and future of Discord is a great read for anyone wondering about the future of online communities.
Inside the Secretive, Semi-Illicit, High Stakes World of WhatsApp Mango Importing | Eater
I was fortunate to grow up in a part of the world where every second house had a mango tree. I have mangoes every Christmas even though my extreme fructose intolerance guarantees I’ll be in a world of pain. In the US, Pakistani mangoes are a sought-after delicacy and people are willing to drive to deserted airports in the middle of the night to pick up mangoes they’ve bought off a Whatsapp group for AUD$18 a pop. I loved this article and learned a lot about supply chains, mangoes in Pakistani culture and the ins and outs of fruit importing.
The North Face and Patagonia: saving the world one puffer jacket at a time | The Guardian
As a former Melbourne resident I became very familiar with puffer jackets. This article sets out the early days of the two most famous adventure wear companies and the prices of the paths both companies (and their founders) have chosen.
NFTs weren’t supposed to end like this | The Atlantic
”Most of the start-ups and platforms used to sell NFTs today are no more innovative than any random website selling posters.”
Substack: the future of news or a media pyramid scheme? | The Guardian
I couldn’t port my newsletter over to a new platform without doing a bit of research.
Offline
I stumbled across the books of Olga Masters1 through the Text Classics series. Masters was in her 50s when she published her first novel and went on to publish four more before her death, with a fifth published posthumously. I loved Amy’s Children and the short story collection The Home Girls - all of which are wonderful portraits of Australian life set between the 1920s and 1950s. If you like Thea Astley or Helen Garner, you’ll enjoy this.
There are a few Aussie s*x2 worker memoirs doing the rounds at the moment but Bella Green’s “Happy Endings” is a must-read (or listen, the audiobook is good too). She’s incredibly funny, self-aware and insightful and veers well away from lots of common tropes that come along with writing about her industry.
Listening
This Phoebe Bridgers cover of “That Funny Feeling” from Bo Burnham’s Netflix special “Inside” is devastating and better than the original. Don’t listen to it if you don’t want an existential crisis.
🎶 Female Colonel Sanders, easy answers, civil war
The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door🎶
This new song by Charli XCX is addictive. I love the “horny funeral”-themed video clip. The behind-the-scenes video is fun too - listen and watch out for the director joyfully and repeatedly hyping Charli up. “Yeahhh! Wooo! YES!”
Instagram meme account dumbbitchmemes69 put a prompt out to her followers asking “What songs make you feel crazy and sexy?” and the Spotify playlist “I am fucking crazy, but I am free” was the result. It’s great.
Nearly every Gen X and millennial music fan I know is listening to the podcast Who is Daniel Johns?. I enjoy Silverchair and knew Johns as a tortured genius but didn’t really appreciate just how much international fame as a teen harmed him. The podcast was made with his full involvement and it’s lovely to hear him sounding happy and content.
Life and unexpected places
I now work in design at a big tech company. This article by Content Design London explains what what I do. I never planned or aspired to work in software/website design for a multinational corporation but it’s transformed my life for the better.
I moved to Newcastle three weeks ago after nearly a year of planning. The move has given my household new professional opportunities (you’ll hear more about mine next year) and will allows us to be closer to nature and our families.
I have mixed feelings about being one of more than 34,000 people to leave Melbourne since the pandemic began. I’ve been an enthusiastic arty dork since birth and Melbourne was the only place I’ve ever lived where I didn’t feel like a fish out of water. I loved being surrounded by live music, having incredible food and coffee wherever I turned and meeting so many great people. I learned a lot about art, literature, politics, music, race, class, other cultures, economics and philosophy. I refined my palate and transformed my career. I lived in suburbs I was passionate about3. Most importantly, I made lifelong friends and met the love of my life.
More than 260 days in lockdown robbed Melbourne of everything that made living there enjoyable. During the first lockdown I walked through Kensington listening to Tonight Alive and noticing teddy bears and children’s drawings of rainbows in most windows. This was a way of giving the neighbourhood kids a game of “see how many teddy bears and rainbows we can spot on our daily walk”. The teddy bears and rainbows were long gone by lockdown six, and the removal of JobKeeper and JobSeeker covid supplements meant that the local free food pantry around the corner from our new place in Footscray was emptied by hungry people four times a day. There were always people waiting for food every time I went to donate, and many of them would tell me “oh, yeah, I was just finishing up donating too” out of pride despite it being clearly untrue. Heartbreaking.
This photo from the first day of protests in August shows just how much the pandemic response has diminished and fractured the city. “Meet you under the clocks at Flinders” is a Melbourne tradition and seeing militarised police facing off against anti-lockdown and anti-vax protesters outside what is usually a thriving pedestrian scramble broke something in me. A month later, those same protesters shut down all of the city’s arterial roads.
When the most recent lockdown ended, my partner and I went out to dinner in the CBD to celebrate. As we walked to the restaurant, a bus parked across the road and dozens of masked, black-shirted cops got out. They spent the next hour walking around menacingly through city streets with empty shopfronts, rough sleepers and huge noisy construction plants for new train stations. The protests are ongoing and the police presence is too: Victoria now has the biggest and most militarised police force in the country. The vibes? Grim.
I really hope that all the things that make Melbourne special are able to return, but I also think it’s cool that many people have discovered what I’ve been saying forever - regional Australia has a lot to offer! If you live in Newy or Sydney and want to catch up, please let me know. I’ve been in lockdown for nearly two years and have a lot of socialising to do.
Fellow Queensland history and journalism nerds may recognise the name Chris Masters for his Four Corners report “The Moonlight State” which was instrumental in the downfall of premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Olga is his mother.
I’m asterisking this out because I don’t know how much email clients and Substack flag content - not because I’m a prude.
I firmly believe Kensington is the best suburb in Melbourne, and Footscray is the best place to live if you love food.