I feel bad when I read people who say they hate writing, especially to the extent they’d let an LLM do it. Writing was the path to making me feel human and the emotional journey of doing it all the time fills me full of purpose. I refuse to believe I’m the only person who feels like this!

This is how you live a life

here is how you get into Wiseman

Twice this week when meeting a new person I've gotten an excited "Wow, it must be an exciting time to be a political scientist!" and both times I've answered "Not really. That's like telling someone it's an exciting to be a surgeon when there's a 63 car pileup on the highway."

👇👇👇👇

hello Mr Vice President this is your economist speaking I am advising you to keep using this metaphor

Swalwell: "My Republican colleagues are a joke. History will harshly judge them ... these guys are so lucky they're not under oath, because they would have to tell you what they really think of Trump. They call him crooked, they call him cruel, they call him a scumbag ... you're tiny, small."

Some top class performances, a proper Newcastle United showed up. And Lewis Miley, Captain 🖤🤍 #nufc

Honestly if “fighting AGAINST taxing billionaires in 2026” has you crying “purity test” you need to really examine what your values actually are

Number 18 by Jackson Pollock, 1950 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137445

I really really am not interested in seeing screenshots of fucking twitter on here and I wish people would stop it

Laura Tingle with a bit of Australian understatement: “It’s not really legal to nick someone else’s head of state.”

Of course The Australian would publish an opinion piece like this — the role of News Ltd and The Australian is to be the PR agency for right-wing financial capital. #auspol alexwhite.org/2025/12/the-...

Noticed that @letterboxd.social has ‘Adieu Philippine’ available to rent. Along with him appearing in Nouvelle Vague’, are we on the verge of the movie-watching population noticing Rozier at long, long last? I know I have a lot of blank spaces to fill in.

@oldfilmsflicker.bsky.social … got this wished-for present Xmas morning. Having first followed your YouTube reviews and blog, through to your published reviews and thoughts, thrilled that I now have your book. Merry Christmas from Western Australia.

Some of the best (I think) material in Five Came Back is there because a librarian saw what I was working on over 3 days and asked me if I'd like to take a look at a box of old George Stevens papers that had not been catalogued yet. So no, for a ton of reasons, AI cannot "do the research for you."

23 years ago today, one of the greatest died In memory of Joe Strummer 🖤 ... gone but not forgotten... 📸 Anthony Saint James #punk #punks #punkrock #punklegend #joestrummer #theclash #punkrockhistory #history #otd

Well, this is an utter disaster for science. This gutting of peer review is very likely driven by Project 2025/OMB/Vought, very likely is about funding junk science, and very likely is coming for #NIH and biomedical research next. 🧪

This is one of those times when all of the bad news just sucks the air out of your lungs.

Autumn is the most Enya of seasons, and it's ten years this month since I interviewed Eithne Ní Bhraonáin together with Roma and Nicky Ryan (the other 2/3 of the Enya project) about their avant-garde roots, Celtic Futurism, and 2015's wonderful Dark Sky Island LP thequietus.com/interviews/e...

Between diffusion models and LLMs, tech has inflated a trillion dollar bubble around automating activities that have immense social and cultural capital—writing, art, photography—but little actual capital. It’s harmful to education, culture, and society with minimal overall benefit

just playing all the Siouxsie and the Banshees albums in order. You can hear punk transmute smoothly into post-punk into goth just over the first three. Fuckin great songs too.

Hi! There's been lots of doomscrolling lately because many things are awful. However, sleep deprivation makes everything worse. You still deserve time to rest and recover. Try not to stay up too late tonight. Max loves you.

Funeral Parade of Roses. Unbelievable fun with jokes and ideas zinging around in rapid fire. On top of that, deeply empathetic and touching. Reminded me of my favourite Godard not in style but in inventiveness and as an ideas machine. As soon as my watch finished, immediately bought a physical copy

Happy birthday to the brilliant Lindy Morrison. Here's a glorious Go-Betweens performance filmed for Australian TV in 1987. It boasts their best line-up and a short but sweet set including Bye Bye Pride, Right Here, Cut It Out, Spring Rain, Cattle and Cane… youtu.be/4ALbPfCFfkQ

What an absolute treasure Diane Keaton was. Her wit never tired, nor did her style.

The best vowel is obviously 'O' while the worst is 'E', which isn't even symmetrical.

Arts criticism is vitally important, whether it's for TV, movies, comic books, or anything else. It's more than a binary good/bad; it's a way of contextualizing the emotional, political, or other themes of a piece as well as laying out connections and comparisons through deep historical knowledge.

oh yeah?

Anyone in need of a serotonin boost should watch this

Twenty years ago, this was merely a paragraph of speculative fiction in an unwritten late work from J.G. Ballard.

‘Hence, proposing to invade Greenland, annex Canada as the 51st state, seize the Panama Canal, or to "clear out" Gaza and develop it as a resort strip, led neither to a Republican revolt, nor any serious blowback. Trump-friendly media’ Mark Kenny #auspol #TACO

"Tomorrow belongs to me."

"Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a HUNDRED tracks today." "That ear – I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian." — Bob Dylan RIP Brian Wilson

From Surf’s Up, music and lyrics by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. Heart is broken by Brian’s death.

This world-renowned Iranian director was barred from making films in his own country. Now, he has come to Sydney under a veil of secrecy to promote his latest work, which is based on his interrogations in prison.

anything that at any point you loved but then became too cool for, know that someday you will turn back to that thing and say "oh. no. you were fine, you were more than fine. it is I who was cringe"

1950 via Sidney Skolsky: “Ida Lupino relates this incident as being mainly responsible for her turning from actress to director.” … “I discovered,” says Ida Lupino, “that no one listens to an actress. So became a director in self-defense.”

Just got a message from a mate: “Can Peter Dutton get a ‘Goodbye From Country’?” 😂

Back in 1991, David Bowie went to the Pixies/Pere Ubu show at Oberlin College. And the student newspaper the Oberlin Review interviewed him! So great.

If only the new pope is as thoughtful and progressive as Francis was. In these times …

Old message from my friend Simon: “Promised you a list of names of poisonous British mushrooms. I realise now that it reads like a list of rejected Cocteau Twins song titles.”

Neither Anthony Albanese nor Peter Dutton mentioned the two obvious reforms that would help to solve the housing crisis: scrapping or reducing negative gearing and removing the capital gains tax discount for investors.

A true heater 48 hours for The Onion, in my unbiased opinion.