Mark Riboldi

Author: Mark Riboldi

  • Every corner of the multiverse

    When I say “science fiction”, some people may think of socially awkward boys with pale skin, Hollywood blockbusters where characterisation is sacrificed for special effects, or pure escapism that ignores the grim realities of the world we live in. Personally, I go for the intersection of philosophy, politics and popular culture. Like the dystopian critique…

  • The case against Bill Cosby

    There’s this mix of anger, disappointment and sorrow when an icon from your childhood is revealed to be much less the person you thought they were. I’m really grateful people like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Monique Schafter and many others continue to challenge Cosby publicly, giving the women who say Cosby assaulted them a voice that…

  • Happy New Year and all that [Jan 2015]

    Hello! Looks like the second half of 2014 really got away from me; The last time I sent out this monthly email was in mid-September. Back then I wrote about ‘chasing rabbits’ – about getting distracted from the things we want to be focussing on by all those things that pop up… yes, I realise there’s…

  • Two songs and two books with Gough Whitlam

    Like a lot of things with politics, I came to know about Gough late. I was of a generation who inherited his government’s landmark reforms – reforms I’ll forever be thankful for and hold as a model of progressive government – get in there and move things forward, don’t just tinker with the engine to…

  • Immersion in the familiar

    I flew north to attend the 2014 Byron Writers’ Festival in early August with some trepidation. A week earlier I’d returned from a research trip to Japan with the burning desire to write. I didn’t want to stand around in queues to hear writers talk about writing in a veiled attempt to boost book sales…

  • Chasing Rabbits – Help! [September 2014]

    One of the many things I learned about while working in politics is chasing rabbits. It’s a pretty simple game – every time you see a rabbit you must chase it. It’s a bit like those ‘whack-a-mole’ games they used to have at amusement parlours, or the talking dogs in the Pixar movie Up, who…

  • Monthly update – Shadows on the Wall [July 2014]

    Yes, this is an July update being sent at the beginning of August. It was either that or skip a month. That was entirely on the cards, but then for three nights in a row I dreamed I was in one of the various workplaces I’m in at the moment, and I was not delivering…

  • Shadows on the Wall [fiction]

    This week Australian online literary journal Seizure published a piece of flash (very short) fiction by me, called Shadows on the Wall.  Love0 Share Tweet Share Pin

  • Strength through struggle [June 2014]

    Hi everyone, Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about words, in particular the word choices that we make when we’re writing something or talking to someone. I’ve written a couple of pieces along these lines this month, a general article called Choose your words carefully and then a post examining language priming, particularly in relation to…