Tim McMinn

Finally, after a fortnight of soggy Sydney days a crystalline morning dawned. Our extension roof and back gutter were full of humus from the overhanging branches of our neighbour’s Lilly Pilly. No more putting it off, I decided. Time to get out there before the rain returned. For the first time, my seven-year-old joined me on the job. He enthusiastically cleaned the skylight, chucked decaying le ... (read more)

The Liver King wants your time. Specifically, your time spent on TikTok. Australia has the highest monthly TikTok usage in the world at nearly thirty hours per user, up 26.5 per cent since last year. That time is valuable. According to Suzie Shaw, CEO of We Are Social Australia, TikTok’s unique algorithm (which puts reels, or short videos, in front of the app’s users) provides ‘a great oppo ... (read more)

Armando Iannucci, creator of the darkly comic series Veep and The Thick of It, is surely one of our more perceptive contemporary political observers. While making us laugh or grimace with recognition at the manoeuvrings of his characters, he can also pull us up cold. For example, Iannucci spends most of The Death of Stalin mocking the posturing of the politburo following the tyrant’s death in 19 ... (read more)

‘It’s a media beat-up,’ our Brooklyn Airbnb host assured me as we chatted on the doorstep one sparkling autumn afternoon in early November 2016. ‘They need to make it seem like a contest or there’ll be no story.’ It would have been rude for me, as an outsider, to demur. I bumped into him once more, ashen-faced the following morning, after Pennsylvania had finally swung to Donald J. Tru ... (read more)