Archive for June 2025

I can’t imagine such blasé faith in public safety back when I last lived in China in 2013, but on this visit it was true: Cameras gawked from poles, flashed as we drove through intersections, lingered on faces as we passed through stations or shops. And that was just the most obvious edge of the ubiquitous, multilayered tracking that has come to define life in China. I came away troubled by my time in some of the world’s most-surveilled places — not on China’s account, but because I felt that I’d gotten a taste of our own American future. Wasn’t this, after all, the logical endpoint of an evolution already underway in America?

The idea is to decarbonise social housing – reducing Wales’ greenhouse gas emissions – by further upgrading insulation, adding solar panels and replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, for example. Above: Energy efficient council bungalows in West Cross

The Australian federal government wants 80% of workers to have a TAFE or university qualification by by 2050, up from the current 60%. A key part of this will be supporting more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go on to further study.

All my fleeting memories of my father from the acreage are of his anger, or of me in his shadow. In one strong memory, my sisters and I were in the back seat of the car, my mom was in the front, and my dad was in the driver’s seat. We were in some kind of work yard. This was years before my dad started selling drugs, or rather, this was one of the stints when he had a trades job. Our dog, Buddy, had just died after getting hit by a car in front of our property. My mother broke the news to my father, and I watched a flood of sadness wash over his eyes, but only for a second, until he covered it with anger.