██████████ ██████ ██████████ ░░███░░░░███ ███░░░██░░███░░░░░ ░███ ░░███ ░███ ░░ ░███ ░███ ░███ ███████ ░███████ ░███ ░███░░███░░ ░███░░░ ░███ ███ ░███ ░███ ██████████ ░███ █████ ░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░ ░░░░░
I started out the year (or rather, finished last year) with the goal of writing, and publishing, regularly.
I have been writing. A lot! Publishing, less so.
I've recently dropped some big commitments that will allow me a little more time to write and reflect on this blog a little more often.
I'm going to experiment with taking a break from adding audio episodes to each post. You can continue to catch me on Async, Crossword, and Pirate School.
I have a deeply personal post I need to write, but it won't make sense without the context. So I'm going to break it up into multiple parts. They might seem disconnected to begin with.
This is part two. Part one is here.
On the 22nd of September, 1949, Ronaldo Fabri got on a boat, leaving behind a country on the brink of revolution.
Egypt in 1949 was a country with a long history and fresh wounds. The second World War had ended just four years earlier. One year ago, Egypt and her allies had lost an all-out war against Israel in a humiliating defeat. The Muslim Brotherhood had grown into a powerful political force. Anti-British sentiment was surging.
By this time, Egypt had undergone many waves of colonisation. The native people of Egypt, the Copts, had been ruled by invaders from Meshwesh, Nubia, Persia, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Turkey, and Britain. Now, it seemed, the Arab colonisers wanted Egypt back.
But Ron wasn't thinking about any of that as he watched the busy streets of Cairo drift into the distance. It was a perfect day– 74° and clear, open skies.1 Sunlight reflected off the Mediterranean, interrupted by the fishing dive of a Caspian Tern. The warm, salty air was filled with the splash of oars, circling gulls, and the huffs of the Arab man hired to row their small wooden boat. Ron was with his father, and their luggage was weighing them worryingly down. They had just said a final goodbye to the wooden quay of Port Said, and the country they had called home for generations.
Ron had been born 17 years earlier, in Alexandria. It was a bustling, cosmopolitan port city, full of Greeks, Italians, French, Jews, Armenians, Syrians, British, and Arab Egyptians. The city’s architecture reflected this mix: grand Belle Époque mansions, colonial clubs, Ottoman villas, and dusty souks sat together along the boulevards. At home, Ron's family spoke their native Italian, and he went to a French school, where he learned to speak fluent English.
The small wooden launch carrying Ron and his father now bumped gently against the gangway ramp of the Continental, a grand passenger ship anchored offshore. The two men climbed aboard, leaving their luggage to be winched up after them. Three passenger decks and a huge smokestack towered above.2
Intellectually, Ron knew that it was far too dangerous to stay in Egypt. Arab sentiment towards Europeans and Jews had taken a sharp turn. Revolution seemed inevitable. Ron's mother had already departed for England with his older brother, Edwin. Ron had different plans. He was to seek work in the farthest corner of the world: Australia. Should things work out well, he would send word to the Italian consulate in London, where Edwin would regularly visit in hope of news from Down Under.
The Continental would arrive in Sydney one month later. Ron would be offered a job the moment he stepped off the boat. He would soon send word to Edwin. Eight years later the Fabri family was reunited. They settled in Melbourne.
In 1958, a year after his mother and brother's arrival in Australia, Ron would marry Giuseppina Di Stefano (Pina for short). They moved to a small house in Caulfield, and in 1960, welcomed their first child into the world. They wanted to name her Maria-Louisa, but the priest deemed that name too foreign, so they chose Marie-Louise Victoria Fabri instead.
Marie-Louise, or Marlou for short, is my mother.
I have a deeply personal post I need to write, but it won't make sense without the context. So I'm going to break it up into multiple parts. They might seem disconnected to begin with.
This is part one.
In 2009, Talia and I went on a Contiki tour of Europe. Despite being the only married couple (we were only 22!) on a Contiki tour, we managed to have a great time touring Europe without getting too sloshed along the way. I even set the Contiki record for the number of double-scoop gelati eaten in a single, beautiful, Venetian day.
One of our stops was a little more sombre. Mauthausen.
Mauthausen was one of the cruelest of the Nazi concentration camps. Operating from 1938 to 1945 (when it was liberated by the Americans), the camp was notorious for its harsh living conditions, brutal treatment of prisoners, and the sadistic "Arrow Cross" guards. After about 2 hours drive north from Vienna, our tour group was expecting a sombre day. The group arrived, and lead by a tour guide, surveyed the camp learning about its various functions. Everyone was appropriately gloomy.
But something different happened for me.
The moment I walked into the camp, before even seeing a single plaque, room, or photograph, a heavy presence settled over me. I began crying uncontrollably. For the entire tour, I followed behind the group at a distance, barely hearing a word from our guide, just sobbing. It's hard to describe the sensation. It was like a weight was hooked to my soul. It was a sudden-onset desperate grief.
The moment I left the camp, the depression lifted. I stopped crying almost as suddenly as I started. I was on the bus again, confused, trying to describe the experience to Talia. What just happened? Was that normal? I wouldn't stop thinking about it for days.
But eventually, of course, I did. The whole incident became a wasn't that strange? story which we recalled a few times over the years. Almost forgotten.
Until last week.
We're spending the last days of pesach in Mullumbimby. There's an amazing Jewish community here, full of young families and friendly faces. The Rabbi was kind enough to let us park our caravan in the yard of the shul, so we'll be very close to services over the next two days.
This morning I was up early with Zohar and we went for a 6am walk down Burringbar Street, which is the main street of the town.
The people here are so friendly. Every person I passed, without exception, said good morning. Most stopped to chat a little longer. The street was full of smiles and people going about their morning routines in a relaxed manner. We saw people stopping in the street for a hug, cars stop in the middle of the road to wave to friends, and a busker with bunny-ears improvising a song about the easter bunny. A dog-walker saw Zohar waving to his puppies, so he crossed the street to say hello (and let Zohar have a little pat). We talked for a good five minutes about how great dogs are at helping children process complex emotions.
Mullumbimby is also a very difficult place for me to be.
Not only does Mullumbimby have a huge Jewish and Israeli population (we even encountered a couple chatting in Hebrew at 6:30), but it's also a very hippy town. Posters are plastered on muralled walls for Grief Dancing, Integrative Healing, Zenthai Bodywork, Face Yoga, Soul Healers, and Transpersonal Reiki. The streets are full of loose clothing, beaded jewellery, dreadlocks, and dream catchers.
A couple of years ago, this would really have been my speed. But since the conflict in Gaza, the progressive narrative has been infected with a pro-terror mind virus that you just can't escape. The Australian Greens are actively hostile toward the Jewish Community. And here in Mullumbimby, I can't help but wonder whether people would be so friendly if I took my cap off to reveal my kippah. How many Mullum hippies harbour resentment toward the native homeland of the Jews? How many have chanted "from the river to the sea"?
At the community Passover seder (back home on the Sunshine Coast), I was chatting with a woman who has close ties to the Liberal party (Australia's mainstream conservative party). We've debated progressive vs. conservative policies before, with me always on the progressive side. But seeing her at Passover, I told her that even though deep down in my heart I'm still a progressive, there's no way I could vote for anyone but the Liberals this year.
The Farmer's Markets we attended this morning had a strong Greens party representation, and even a "Friends of Palestine" booth. But the one thing stood really shocked and angered me was a man wearing a dual-flag badge: the Aboriginal flag alongside the Palestinian flag. I consider myself a supporter of Indigenous issues and Aboriginal ownership of our lands. I teach my children that we live in Gubbi Gubbi country. I feel like Jews and Aboriginal / Torres Strait Islander people share a spiritual connection to their homelands. That we understand each other in that small way. Why does that have to be linked to the Pro-Palestinian movement, politically tearing support away from Jews?
I have Jewish family in Mullumbimby. They said that the antisemitic ones are only a loud minority. Most people are supportive of the Israeli's living here, if not of Israel directly. There's been a lot of quiet words of acknowledgement and support. I hope that's true.
I guess we'll find out at the Federal Election in a few weeks. Labour and the Greens have moved radically to the left. Has the rest of the population gone along with them?
When was the last time you were offline?
Like, really offline. Not just signed out of Slack. Not Do Not Disturb. Not even airplane mode. I'm talking phone entirely off for a good 24 hours. Stay at home, with no internet, and no screens.
It's a forcing function for your mental health.
I challenge you to try it. Once a week, or once a month, or once a year. Some sort of schedule helps set the right expectations with friends and family.
Just think of all the things you could do with 24 hours of screen-free time.
No news. No plans. No chores. Just time at home, dedicated especially to you.
Out of sheer curiosity, I applied for a job that had a really interesting cross-over between Education and AI. I flubbed the interview. I felt very out of practice, but also, the CEO had very silicon valley vibes. She was operating at a way faster speed to me.
Come to think of it, people often say that I'm calm or relaxed. Do they mean it as a compliment? It only happens when I'm on work trips. I think it might be less to do with my personality, and more to do with the semi-rural beach town I come from.
I'm studying, and I'm behind. I've overcommitted. I have another commitment that ends in a few weeks which should help relax things to something more manageable.
I also have an iOS app that I want to build. But I need to figuratively clear my desk first.
We're camping over pesach. Everyone we speak to says it's a great idea, and I agree. We've shut up the house, chametz and all, and taken off on a road trip in the caravan. Our first few nights were in Mooloolaba, to be close to the community seders. It was really nice waking up to an ocean sunrise each morning with Zohar. After that we aimed west, and found a beautiful free camp just outside Dalby. The kids had a blast swimming in the creek.
CC about to jump into Oakey Creek at Bowenville Reserve.
Tonight we're parked up at Girraween National Park. It's jaw-droppingly pretty here.
But! Work to do. Assignments to complete. Blogs to distract me from actually being productive.
Travelling in the caravan gives me strong "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome. Especially caravan parks, where rich city folk show off their fancy setups. I know it's unhealthy, but it's hard to suppress. Especially as a few small things on our caravan begin to need repair. We've had her about two years now.
Talia's pesach cooking is unrivalled, even with camp-kitchen limitations! Her matzah-crack is the most moorish thing I know. Aptly named.
After hiking Girraween tomorrow we'll head back to the coast, in the direction of Mullumbimby. Excited to see family there, and spend the last days of pesach in services with the community.
I received a proposal today. Someone asking me to invest a decent chunk of money into their work.
But the proposal was kind of hard to parse. It was written well, but the concepts weren't well organised. The structure was too complex, and poorly formatted.1
Of course, it was AI generated.
I spent 30 minutes going over it with a colleague, call it an hour between us. The damn proposal probably only took 5 minutes to generate.
Now listen, if you're using AI to improve your productivity, well good for you. Go for it! Just follow this one golden rule:
Your productivity gains must not come at the expense of others.
This has been happening with plugin review, too. Someone spends an hour in Cursor throwing together a rough cut WordPress plugin. They submit it, and I spend 15 minutes reviewing it. I send back a list of requested changes, which they just copy / paste straight into their AI. And does the AI fix all the problems? Of course not! It's just rinse and repeat, over and over, until I've worked on your plugin longer than you have!
G-d forbid we end up in an agentic2 nightmare where our personal AI assistants tirelessly bounce off one another in an eternal cycle of enshittification.
It shouldn't have to be said, but if you're going to send a proposal, at least check the formatting first. And for the love of all things proprietary, don't send me a Microsoft Word document. If your proposal is poor quality, what sort of expectations am I supposed to have about your actual work? ↩︎
This will be the 2025 word of the year. Calling it now. ↩︎
Normally I start with a blog post that I then convert that into a podcast. But this is a podcast first, and I'm going to turn it into a blog post later. I don't have a script that I'm reading from. This is all sort of off the cuff. There's something that I've been meaning to talk about. To speak out loud. And I hope you find it interesting.
I've been thinking a lot about academic integrity lately.
I've started university, and one of the first courses that they get you to do is all about academic integrity. Of course, in this age of artificial intelligence, academic integrity is more vital than ever. The university puts a lot of emphasis on AI in this academic integrity course. They call it the other kind of AI. You've got Academic Integrity (AI) and the other kind of AI: Artificial Intelligence.
The rule is simple. Don't use AI, unless your course specifically allows you to. Not even for grammar checks, not even for proofreading. Unless your course work specifically says you can. Which, I mean that's a different blog post isn't it?
So back to academic integrity. What is it? We all know the basics right? It's about plagiarism, referencing your source material, and giving credit where credit's due.
That's what we typically think about when we're talking about academic integrity. But there was something different that came up in my last assignment, a research report on ADHD in junior secondary education.
And as part of that report, I had to discuss "what are the recommendations for schools, teachers, and students", in the context of ADHD research. What's beneficial for managing ADHD in the classroom. And for the first time I encountered this different kind of academic integrity because, well, my first response looked like this:
Specialised ADHD training is an important first step for supporting classroom teachers. The ADHD Australia Education Survey Report (2024) revealed that 55% of teachers are unsure or do not know how to support students with ADHD.
Porter et al. (2023)1 found that after participating in targeted ADHD training, teachers reported a significant increase in confidence in supporting students with
ADHD. It was noted that teacher attitudes, understanding, and compassion toward ADHD students improved, as well as the implementation of learning strategies and
supports. A study by Ohan et al. (2008)2 showed that teachers with average to high levels of ADHD knowledge reported more supportive behaviours toward students with
ADHD, and held more positive views of intervention strategies.
And I provide the sources for that. It's all true. Well, it's all technically true. If I just submit what I've written here, I'm confident I'll get marked pretty well.
But it's missing an important nuance.
The truth is that we don't have any good answers for how to deal with ADHD in the classroom.
Teacher training, for example, is effective at making teachers feel confident, but no study has linked that to better outcomes for students with ADHD. And in the end, that's what matters. In terms of engagement with the school, in terms of post-school success, none of the research points to better outcomes. In fact, some research shows that teachers with more knowledge of ADHD differentiate less in the classroom.
So, I feel that it's disingenuous of me to leave that part out. There's a lack of Academic Integrity.
However, according to the assessment criteria of my research assignment, if I don't provide any good recommendations, then I'm not going to get marked well.
So, how does academic integrity apply to me here? What's the right answer? What should I do?
Should I write according to my assessment criteria? Say things that are true, that have research backing them up, but essentially are disingenuous?
Or, should I tell the truth and, in so doing, not directly answer the question I'm supposed to answer?
Because the truth is, in this case, there isn't a good answer.
Porter, M. A., Briscoe, L., Blackwell, H., Sach, L., Tsoumbris, S., Hoang, A., Tice, M., & Cheng, S. (2023, October 6). The impact of a teacher education course in ADHD on perceived teacher knowledge and confidence, and improved teaching practices: Some preliminary findings [Conference presentation]. Global ADHD Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia ↩︎
Ohan, J. L., Visser, T. A. W., Strain, M. C., & Allen, L. (2011). Teachers’ and education students’ perceptions of and reactions to children with and without the diagnostic label “ADHD.” Journal of School Psychology, 49(1), 81–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2010.10.001 ↩︎
Welcome to Pirate School! A new podcast hosted by me and Talia Carbis, about the chaotic, messy, wild world of home education.
This podcast is basically just a chat about how we homeschool. We're both trained as teachers, so we do know a lot of those foundational education principles. And, of course, we have opinions.
We just released episode 9, which you can find on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've appended a short sample of the show to the end of the audio version of this post.
Quick sidebar on how we record:
We've tried a few different approaches, including separate lapel mics, and speaking together into a condenser mic (with a splitter cable for headphone foldback). What we settled on was simply sitting on the couch and speaking directly into our iPhones! We open Voice Memos, clap (to sync the two separate recordings in post), and begin.
The audio quality is nothing short of terrible. So to compensate, I simply combine and sync the audio files in Garageband, then upload the result to Auphonic. I'm no audiophile, but I don't think you can tell much of a difference between episodes we recorded with a fancy condenser mic in a baffled recording booth, and the iPhone microphone in the lounge room.
Say something profound
Say something profound
Say something profound
Say something profound
Pull it down from the heavens
Pull it up from the ground
Say something,
Say something profound
Say something oblique
Say something oblique
Some obscure reference
Something antique
The less that they get it
The better it sounds
Say something obscure and profound
Say something brand new
Say something unique
An utterance that I’ll decode in a week
Say something brand new
And say something blue
With tongue firmly planted in cheek
Just say something
Say something
For G-d’s sake
Say something!
Somebody,
I wish that you would
If they don’t enjoy it
You’re misunderstood
Say something,
Say anything good
Say something frightful!
Surprising, delightful!
Make me squirm,
Make it gross
Make me smile,
Be morose
Speak a truth
Swear an oath
Make it real
Never lie
Make me hurt
Make me think
Make me feel
Make me cry
Say something immortal
Cast a spell that will open a portal
And take me away
Send me on vacation
To find inspiration
Because I have nothing to say