Why do German companies have workers on their boards?
In big German firms, staff elect half the board. Since 1976 that's the law. What it changed, what it cost, and why Australia has nothing like it.
6 min read
A community library of what we learn
Plain answers to things people had to work out the hard way. Every post names its sources.
Why aren't we working 15 hours a week? Pointless jobs, and the hours we could get back
Keynes predicted a 15-hour week by 2030. David Graeber blamed pointless jobs. What the studies found, and why the paperwork still matters.
6 min read
Where did all the admin come from? What Australia's job numbers show
Since 1987 the workforce doubled while manager, program and HR jobs grew four times over and secretaries halved. The ABS numbers, and why it happens.
8 min read
What is school like in Finland?
School at seven, a break after every lesson, no test that ranks schools, and teachers with master's degrees. What Finland does, and what its falling scores mean.
6 min read
What if your neighbours could reach an emergency before the ambulance?
In Israel, volunteers on motorbikes reach emergencies in under three minutes. Australia has apps that do the same for cardiac arrest. They need more people.
7 min read
What if your doctor could prescribe a choir, a garden or a men's shed?
England pays link workers to send patients to choirs and clubs. Australia invented the men's shed. What the evidence says, and what could come next.
7 min read
What if you could see every time an official looked at your records?
In Estonia you can. A log shows which agency read your data and why. What it looks like, who it caught, and why Australia has nothing like it.
6 min read
What if prisons had no walls? Finland and Norway already run them
A third of Finland's prison places have no walls. How Finland went from locking up more people than Australia to among the fewest, and who gets in.
7 min read
What if every voter had $50 to give a candidate? How to fix money in Australian politics
Donation caps, fast disclosure, public funding, open diaries, and a voucher every voter spends. Seattle has run one since 2017. Here's what happened.
7 min read
What happens when the person harmed meets the person who did it?
New Zealand sends young offenders to a family meeting, not a courtroom. Ten trials show victims fare better and offenders reoffend less.
7 min read
What happens when the people who do the work own the business?
Worker-owned firms last longer and match ordinary firms on productivity. Mondragon in Spain has 70,000 people. Australia has 1,800 co-ops of its own.
5 min read
What happens when a town owns its own internet?
Chattanooga's city power company built gigabit fibre in 2010. Ten years on, a study counted $2.69 billion in benefits. Catalonia and Australia tried too.
6 min read
What happens in Denmark when your job disappears?
Danish bosses can let people go easily. Workers keep up to 90% of their pay and get help into the next job. How it works, what it costs, and what Australians get.
6 min read
What happened when Portugal decriminalised all drugs?
In 2001 Portugal stopped arresting people for using any drug and sent them to a health panel instead. HIV and overdose deaths fell. Here's what worked, and what's strained.
6 min read
What does Japanese school lunch teach children?
In Japan, lunch is a lesson: a hot meal planned by a dietitian, served by the children to each other. Australia is starting to try it.
6 min read
Should high school start later?
Puberty moves the body clock later, and early bells cut teenagers' sleep. When Seattle started an hour later, students slept 34 minutes more.
5 min read
How much cancer can be prevented? 90 percent, or a third?
One view says 90% of cancer is preventable; the WHO says 30 to 50%. Both rest on real research. Why they differ, and what Australia has already prevented.
6 min read
How does Vienna keep housing affordable?
More than half of Vienna lives in city-owned or subsidised homes, paid for by a small tax on every wage. How it started in 1919, and what it costs.
7 min read
How does Taiwan let citizens help write its laws online?
After students occupied its parliament in 2014, Taiwan built vTaiwan: an online process that finds the rules people who disagree can both accept.
6 min read
How did the Netherlands get its children cycling to school?
In 1972 Dutch roads killed hundreds of children a year. Parents took to the streets, and the country rebuilt its roads around them. Now 3 in 4 teens ride to school.
5 min read
How did Iceland get teenagers to stop drinking?
In 1998, 42% of Icelandic 15-year-olds had been drunk in the past month. Iceland paid for sport, music and art, and parents agreed on rules. Drinking fell.
7 min read
What if Australia shared its $19 trillion? A thought experiment
Australian households hold $19.4 trillion. What if we paid off the debt, funded the government for five years, and took a break to think?
5 min read
Why are so many children becoming short-sighted?
Half the world may be short-sighted by 2050. Trials show more time outdoors cuts new cases in children, whatever they do there.
4 min read
Why an honest account of an accident can sound like an excuse
Listing the causes of an accident is how safety experts find the truth. To an untrained listener it can sound like dodging blame. Four biases explain why.
4 min read
Who gets heard in Australian politics? Donations, lobbyists and the revolving door
Five per cent of donors gave over half the big parties' declared donations. What the records show about access in Canberra, and what has changed since.
6 min read
Who checks that food additives are safe?
In the US, a company can declare its own additive safe and tell no one. How the checks work in the US, the EU and Australia, and where they fail.
6 min read
Which disability test does your super insurance use?
Most Australians hold disability cover inside super without choosing it. One test refused 60% of claims. How to find out which one you have.
4 min read
Where does Australia's drug policy money go?
$5.45 billion a year: nearly two-thirds to law enforcement, under 2% to keeping people alive. Who gets arrested, and what Portugal and the ACT did instead.
4 min read
When does paying people change what they do, and when does it backfire?
Small rewards can double blood donations or build kids' eating habits. A fine can make parents later, and cash can halve donors. What decides which.
4 min read
What is quadratic voting, and could it fix one person, one vote?
Quadratic voting lets you show how much you care, not just which side you're on. How it works, where it's been tried, and what can go wrong.
5 min read
What happens when people get cash with no strings attached?
Alaska, Finland, Kenya, Stockton and a US trial paid cash with no conditions. What changed in work, health and children's lives.
5 min read
What happens when a medic and a crisis worker answer the call instead of police?
Eugene, Denver and Australian co-response teams send health workers to mental health calls. What the evaluations found, and what they did not.
4 min read
What happens if Google or Apple locks your account?
One account often holds your email, photos, phone and every login. Real lockouts show what goes, why appeals fail, and what to back up today.
4 min read
What can people who barely get heart disease teach us?
Doctors on Kitava found no stroke or angina. Among the Tsimane of Bolivia, 85% of older adults have clean arteries. What they share, and what it means.
4 min read
Was school designed to make children obedient?
Compulsory schooling began in 1760s Prussia as a tool of royal authority. What that history explains, what it doesn't, and what the evidence says works.
4 min read
It wasn't that bad? What prison does to people after release
People often play down time inside. Death rates, trauma and reoffending after release tell a different story, and Norway shows another way.
4 min read
Is risky play good for kids?
Climbing high, going fast, play fighting. The research says children who take small risks in play move more, get along better and are no more injured.
4 min read
Is loneliness really as bad for your health as smoking?
Across millions of people, loneliness and isolation raise the risk of early death by about a quarter. What it does to the body, and what helps.
4 min read
Is depression caused by low serotonin? What inflammation and the gut have to do with it
The "chemical imbalance" story is too simple. A quarter of people with depression have raised inflammation, and diet and exercise ease symptoms in trials.
4 min read
How much sleep do you really need?
Experts say seven hours or more; hunter-gatherers get about six and a half. Why both are true, and why the timing of sleep matters as much as its length.
4 min read
How much movement undoes a day of sitting?
A study of a million adults found about an hour of moderate activity a day cancels the extra risk of sitting eight hours. What counts, and why steps matter.
5 min read
Does what you eat affect acne?
Two island peoples with no acne, a trial of low-GI eating and a meta-analysis on milk. What the evidence shows, how strong it is, and what to try.
4 min read
Does thinking about death make people harsher? What the evidence now says
A famous 1989 study had judges set bond nine times higher after thinking about death. Big replications since then paint a weaker picture.
4 min read
Does smacking children do any harm?
Six in ten Australians were smacked as children. Decades of research find it doesn't improve behaviour and predicts more problems later.
4 min read
Does making suicide harder actually save lives?
When Britain took the poison out of its gas supply, total suicides fell by a third. Fifty years of evidence says removing the means saves lives.
5 min read
Does giving homeless people a home first actually work?
A permanent home first, no conditions, support offered. What trials in New York, Canada and Finland found, and what they didn't.
4 min read
Does competition make people perform better than cooperation?
Decades of classroom research favour working together. A 2024 lab study found both lift performance, but only competition raised stress.
3 min read
Does a shorter working week work? What the trials found
Iceland, the UK and a six-country study cut hours without cutting pay. What happened to burnout, health and output, and what's overstated.
4 min read
Do smartphones harm teenagers' mental health?
Teen distress rose sharply after 2010, as phones spread. What the research shows, where scientists disagree, and what parents can act on now.
4 min read
Do pictures of eyes make people behave better?
A photo of eyes nearly tripled payments in an office honesty box. Twenty years on, the effect holds for littering and theft, but not for generosity.
4 min read
Do cushioned shoes weaken your feet?
People who grow up barefoot have stronger arches and fewer flat feet. What the studies show, what they don't, and how to change shoes without getting hurt.
5 min read
Do children adopted from overseas keep any of their first language?
Adoptees lose their birth language fast. Brain scans and relearning studies show traces stay for years. What that says about nature and nurture.
4 min read
Do bystanders really stand by and do nothing?
Real CCTV footage says no: someone steps in to nine in ten public fights. Where the "bystander effect" came from, when it holds, and how to help safely.
4 min read
Do animals understand fairness? The monkey who threw back the cucumber
Capuchins, dogs and crows react when a partner gets a better deal for the same work. What the famous experiment shows, and where it stops.
4 min read
Can you run AI on your own computer?
Yes. Free open-weight models run on an ordinary laptop, offline, with nothing sent to a company. What you need, what you give up, and how to start.
4 min read
Can you really only keep 150 friends? What's left of Dunbar's number
The 150 limit comes from a primate brain chart. A 2021 re-analysis found the data fit anything from 2 to 520. What the evidence does and doesn't support.
3 min read
Can police tell when someone is lying?
Barely better than a coin toss, and trained officers do no better than anyone else. What the research says, and why truthful people get caught out.
4 min read
Can phones message each other without the internet?
Yes, over Bluetooth or local Wi-Fi, passed phone to phone. How mesh messaging works, where it failed protesters, and what to trust in a shutdown.
4 min read
Can a whole country vote on its own laws? How Switzerland does it
Swiss voters have gone to the ballot box 331 times since 1848 to decide laws themselves. How it works, what it produces, and where it fails.
4 min read
Who links to my domain? Free ways to find out, and what each one misses
The Wayback Machine, Common Crawl, public link indexes and paid tools each see a different slice. A worked example where three of them found nothing and the links were real.
3 min read
The Cubs Problem
Why don't the young humans get a box? Applebee follows the question further than the adults would like.
Read the comic
The Coloured Boxes
A zookeeper watches humans queue for hours to drop paper in coloured boxes, and asks what the ritual is for.
Read the comic
Is your website hiding gambling links? How to check in five minutes
Hacked sites carry invisible blocks of betting links that visitors never see. What the code looks like, how to find it, and what to do next.
3 min read
Buying an expired domain: what DA, DR, Trust Flow and referring domains tell you
Four numbers from three companies, none of them Google's. What each one measures, how we combine them, and the checks the numbers cannot do for you.
3 min read
Millwork shop drawings: a free guide in 31 chapters
How a submittal is put together, how casework is built, hardware, standards and grades, practice, and the trade. Every number sourced. On draftingmillwork.com.
draftingmillwork.com
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