The Monday Mix (11/10/2021)
Hi friends,
I’m a bit late with this sending this email out. Commitments, a late-night trip to the supermarket and a fascinating documentary got in the way.
So without further ado, here’s this week’s email.
Rotting Oil Tanker in The Red Sea
It’s not often I see a story that makes the eyes jump out of my head and say ‘what the f*ck!?’ But this story achieved that. It’s a crazy story about how an oil tanker has been marooned in the Red Sea since 2017 with an estimated 1.1 million barrels of crude oil on board.
If the hull of the ship continues to corrode, it’s only a matter of time before that oil leaks into the Red Sea causing an environmental disaster. Politics can be fraught at times, but it’s situations like this that make you wonder where the leadership that’s so lacking in the modern world is.
With the loss of these barrels likely to result in many people in Yemen going without clean water, it’s astonishing this issue hasn’t been solved already. It highlights how important diplomacy is and how reliant we are on fossil fuels and the potential damage they can cause if things don’t go according to plan.
The Nauru Files
This is a story I missed when it first came out in the middle of 2016. It focuses on how the Australian government uses the island of Nauru as a ‘processing centre’ for asylum seekers. The link above details the ‘process’ the Australian government employs, one that sees almost none of the people in the centres granted asylum.
What is also revealed is the sad history of Nauru. Home to an abundance of phosphate, which is used in fertilisers, the country once had the second highest GDP per capita behind Saudi Arabia. Today, its wealth has been squandered by corrupt officials, the island is destitute and home to a detention centre that contravenes international law.
Given how the Australian government is breaching its obligations per international law and the plight of refugees worldwide and how this is likely to increase due to climate change, what’s happening on Nauru could become the norm in the years to come.
The Right To Sex
This is a fantastic essay by one of my favourite writers on Medium, Steven Gambardella. He looks at the book, The Right To Sex, written by the philosopher Amia Srinivasan.
While I haven’t read the book yet, Steven does a great job of summing up the main points and critiquing the author’s work. His main point that men can learn a lot from the book strikes me as true and is the main reason I want to read it.
A point he makes towards the end of the book struck me when I read it, that ‘privilege is blinding.’ As a man who doesn’t worry about walking home late at night, or of being harrassed in bars and clubs, I can’t help but agree.
Book I’m reading - The Rise and Fall of The Dinosaurs
I’ve nearly finished this book and it’s been an eye-opening look into the world of dinosaurs, how they came to be, and then perished. If you want to understand more about the lost world of these beasts, this is the book you should read!
Quote I’m pondering: “In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.” - Elizabeth Kolbert
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom