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Call It What It Is
Why “No Kings” misses the point about who’s really running things The “No Kings” signs at protests look good on television. Revolutionary-era costumes, tri-corner hats, flags with rattlesnakes. It is the visual language of a country that believes it is repeating the 1770s. People are scared, and they are reaching for the last time Americans…
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The Desperation Wage
When AI learns exactly how little you will accept We are used to algorithms deciding what we pay. The flight is more expensive because everyone wants to travel that weekend. The Uber costs more because it is raining. The hotel room doubles because there is a concert nearby. The rent goes up because some software…
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The Replaceable Human
How Capital Has Always Tried to Own Your Skills Right now, capital is making the largest coordinated investment in a single technology in human history. We’re talking trillions of dollars. More than the Manhattan Project. More than the Apollo Program. More than the Interstate Highway System. Adjusted for inflation, the money being poured into AI…
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Rate Limiting the Vulnerable
Why the NDIS Cuts Are a System Design Failure When I’m asked to build a new system at work, I start with estimates. How many users am I expecting? What load will it need to handle? I design accordingly, no point over-engineering something that doesn’t need it yet. If my SLA says I need to…
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Survivorship Bias and the End of the World
Why “We’ve Survived Before” Is the Most Dangerous Argument There’s a famous image from World War II, a diagram of a bomber covered in red dots, each one marking where returning planes had been hit by enemy fire. The military’s first instinct was obvious: reinforce the areas with the most bullet holes. Protect the parts…
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The Taboo of Survival: Why Capitalism Won’t Let Us Save Each Other
It is January 2026. If you look at the stock market, we just finished a year of record growth. If you look at the real world, however, the picture is very different. Since the start of the year, I have been watching the global stage with a sense of dread. The potential breakup of NATO,…
MannanLive
Tech, Travel & Thoughts
This is how it all started…
MannanLive.com began back in June 2012, during one of the most exciting early chapters of my career. I was a graduate software engineer working at a financial company in Australia when I was sent on a month-long work trip to China to collaborate with our contracting partners at ThoughtWorks. It was my first time working overseas, and I wanted a place to document the experience – not just for others, but for myself.
What started as a simple travel log quickly grew into something more. I found myself writing not only about the places I visited but also the things I was learning along the way – technical problems I solved, tools I was discovering, and the odd bit of geeky enthusiasm that didn’t quite fit into a formal work report.
Even before then, tech had always been part of my story. From tinkering on my parents’ word processor as a kid, to studying IT in high school and uni, to launching my own rostering SaaS while still at university (which – somehow – is still alive and well today at RosterPortal.com.au).
These days, I use MannanLive.com as a hybrid of sorts: part personal journal, part technical reference. It’s where I post walkthroughs of problems I’ve solved (mostly so I can remember what I did!), share side projects, and occasionally reflect on where this journey is taking me.
Mannan
Tech Enthusiast and Mocha Lover
