About Laird Shaw

Autobiographical

👫 Straight ♂️ male of 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish, 🇮🇪 Irish, and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English descent.

🇿🇦 Born in South Africa in 1977.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 One younger biological 👩 sister, plus an older 👩 stepsister, and an older again 👨 stepbrother. 🪦 Deceased 👩‍🍼 mother. Living 👨‍🍼 father and 👩‍🍼 stepmother.

🦘 Australian resident and citizen, having immigrated here with my family in 1987.

🏫 Completed high school in 1994.

🧑‍🎓 Enrolled in a Bachelor of Engineering (🖥️ Computer Systems) at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) immediately after high school.

😱 Beset by existential psychospiritual difficulties, I abandoned my degree about two thirds of the way through.

⏩ Since then, I have 🧳 travelled around Australia a couple of times, taking about a year for each trip, 👨🏻‍💼 worked - occasionally, on and off - an assortment of jobs, had a few adventures including at a 🌲 forest logging protest camp, and otherwise lived a fairly insular, mostly 🌐 online life.

Views

🪽 Generally left wing, with some exceptions.

🧬 Basic ethic of respect for all life (sentience), human and beyond.

Causes

✊ Animal (and non-human living beings in general) rights and liberation.

⚖️ Restorative justice for the dispossessed, colonised, and occupied.

🛑 Ending coercive psychiatry.

☮ Peace.

🗳️ Direct, aka participatory, and especially digital (online), democracy.

(Not a comprehensive list, just those uppermost in my mind).

Interests

🪘 Percussion (playing and listening to).

🎶 Music in general (listening to).

⚔️ Philosophy (contemplating and debating more so than reading).

✍️ Poetry (writing more than reading).

👨🏻‍💻 Software development.

🥼 Parapsychology and related matters.

Personal website

This (creativeandcritical.net) is it.

Other sites of mine

On withrespect.net.au, I have made a start at outlining a philosophy and world vision.

Other sites I help maintain

I am one of the ten co-founders of Psience Quest, a discussion board focussed on parapsychology and related matters, and I help with its hosting and administration.

Many years ago, I helped to set up the comp.lang.c wiki, and developed its treeview skin. I currently host and administer that wiki. It is very incomplete and a bit of an abandoned ghost site at the moment. I welcome contact from anyone (potentially) interested in reviving it.

Connect and contact