Annie in wonderland

When the Digital World Goes Quiet Modern society has quietly built a world where connection is assumed. The internet is assumed. Mobile phones are assumed. Online services are assumed. Digital communication is assumed. For most people, losing internet access or mobile service is frustrating. It might mean a missed message, a delayed payment, a few hours without entertainment, or the inconvenience of waiting for a service to return. But for many people living with disability, the failure of technology can mean something much bigger. It can mean the loss of independence. The loss of communication. The loss of routine. The loss of access to work. The loss of safety systems that most people never realise exist. The recent Telstra outage highlighted a reality that modern society is still learning to address: when communication networks fail, the impact is not evenly distributed. A person who can simply wait for a service to return experiences an inconvenience. A person whose daily independe...

Difficulty, Not Discrimination: Literacy, Critical Thinking and Learning to Question What We Think We Know Why difficult conversations matter One thing I have been thinking about a lot lately is literacy, media literacy, and the importance of critical thinking — especially within disability and support conversations. We live in a time where people are surrounded by information constantly. Headlines. Short-form videos. Social media debates. Opinion pieces. Algorithms deciding what we see. Outrage cycles designed to get attention. In this environment, one of the most important skills we can develop is not knowing everything. It is knowing how to think. Critical thinking does not mean automatically agreeing with someone. It also does not mean automatically rejecting someone. It means listening. Questioning. Researching. Comparing information. Looking at evidence. Understanding context. And then deciding where you personally stand. That applies to everyone. Disabled people. Non-disabled pe...

You’re right. I should have just started writing instead of repeating the plan. Here is the actual post. The Ultimate Cyclone Playlist You Shouldn’t Actually Play: Humour, Storm Preparation and What Happens When the Power Goes Out Cyclones are no joke. But sometimes, when the weather warnings start coming in, the maps get updated every few hours, and everyone is watching the sky, a little humour helps. This post originally started when Cyclone Alfred was approaching Queensland, with Brisbane, Toowoomba and surrounding areas preparing for possible impacts. People were charging phones, checking supplies, watching emergency updates, and wondering what the next few days would bring. When situations are stressful, humans have always used humour to cope. Sometimes you need a laugh while you are putting together the emergency kit. Sometimes you need something ridiculous to distract the kids. Sometimes you need to admit that hearing “cyclone warning” makes you immediately think of every disast...