Changes coming

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since my last summary. I’ve been working on a few changes to my newsletters and other media.

The most important change is that this newsletter will now focus purely on work-related stuff (broadly defined). I’m starting a separate semi-private newsletter which will cover personal news, my (in)glorious sporting achievements and so on. If you would like to receive this newslette, leave your email in comments, or email me at john.quiggin@icloud.com

The only planned overlap is fundraising appeals, which I’ll spread as widely as possible. I ran two appeals in August, both very successful. Thanks to everyone who contributed

For the Brisbane to Gold Coast Cycle for Cancer, I raised $1357. The total amount raised was over $580 000, beating the target of $575 000. It wasn’t a race but I was pleased to cover the 100km distance inside 3 hours 30 minutes (drafting helped a lot, as did my beautiful Canyon, which attracted lots of admiration as usual).

In Fred’s Big Run, supporting the Fred Hollows Foundation, I raised $1183, and covered a bit more than the promised 150km.

I’ll be back again for both events next year, I hope.

The other big change is that I’ve finally abandoned X/Twitter. I should have done it a while ago, but with careful use of block and mute I was able to insulate myself from most of the awful stuff Musk is doing and enabling. But his open embrace of anti-semitism got past my screens and pushed me to act.

My microblogging is now all on Mastodon https://aus.social/@johnquiggin. I’ve looked at Bluesky and Threads, but they don’t provide me with compelling reasons to move to another advertising-funded platform.

For long-form writing, I’m mainly using Substack. Although I haven’t yet implemented a paid option, I think paid subscriptions, rather than ads represent the best way to finance publishing. And free newsletters like main benefit from the supporting infrastructure

I’m aware that Substack has its own problems, with some nasty users being allowed and even promoted. But at least for now, they don’t impinge on me, any more than users of Mastodon software like Trump, that aren’t connected to the Fediverse (explainer).

Now for the news!

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Having turned 67 a few months ago, I’ve started thinking about retirement. I’m looking at a part-time appointment where I wouldn’t teach any courses, but would continue with a tightly focused research program and with public engagement (traditional and new, or new-ish, media, submissions to public inquiries and so on). As a step in this direction, I took long service leave in August, and, unlikely my usual practice, tried to make it more like an actual holiday.

Despite my good resolutions, I ended up doing some media. Here are some articles I’ve published lately

The intergenerational report will try to scare us about ageing. It’s an old fear, and wrong The Conversation 23 August

We can talk about a higher rate of GST in Australia, but it will never happen, The Conversation 30 August

Albanese government’s close embrace of Qantas may no longer fly with the times Guardian 1 September

The ageing alarmists won’t let go, Inside Story 4 September

I have a few events coming up.

• An Anglicare conference in Cairns in September

• The Australia Institute Revenue Summit at Parliament House, 27 October

• An ANU seminar 26 October, also in Canberra

My media report for July (password quiggin)

My media report for August (password quiggin)