Just, not amongst them

Gaming regulator announces temporary halt on accepting bribes www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

Yikes. The UCs have benefited tremendously from the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship program. It is an outstanding recruitment tool for talented faculty; this is a major loss.

You've heard of democracy, but have you heard of an ostracon? I hadn't. This is from a kids book about ancient Greece. Maybe we should bring back the ostracon?

“Quick, we need interviews with property investors, banks, real estate agents, landlords and young people with rich parents who are buying them a house.” chaser.com.au/general-news...

Apparently I am “very quotable”. Anyway nice and clear article!

I had a chat with Julian Morrow on ABC Radio National about Reflect Orbital’s plan for space mirrors to power Solar farms at night. Lots of feasibility issues and environmental impacts. That hasn’t stopped venture capital funding (yet). www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

✍️ Add your name to call on the Federal Government to urgently establish a National Firearms Register. nb.australiainstitute.org.au/australia_ne...

The things we can see with our eyes are just one layer of the richness of the night sky.

Absolutely delighted to read this news after an anxious wait - Christian Schwab and I will be looking for a postdoc on extremely precise radial velocities at Macquarie soon! Congratulations to everyone on what looks like an unusually large haul of projects for astronomy.

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have. Python foundation said no and rejected the grant. If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Continents xkcd.com/3159/

Stop it Scientific Reports, you are drunk (again). Basically the transients in this study are mostly plate flaws so who knows what they are correlating with nuclear tests. Could they just correlating good weather at Palomar and Nevada? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My friend told me that her 14 year old son started doing laundry on Sundays for some of his elderly neighbors. He doesn't charge for the labor. And now he is the most popular person in the building and has non stop pies, cookies, and cake. The 14 year old should be our model of modern masculinity.

It is grimly amusing that Australia’s second largest Defence acquisition deal ($46bn!) was referred to the NACC - for good reason - but the Commissioner won’t look at it bc he’s still a ranking ADF officer. Readers will be astonished that this referral two yrs ago has yielded nothing yet.

Two coal power units in Victoria tripped on Thursday and nobody realised, because a gigawatt of wind and solar was available to step into the breach. Six of the state's 10 coal units were out neatly replaced by batteries, renewables, and a bit of gas. #energy #climate

Barabbas to the Future… Did Barabbas Loins predict the future of Barnaby Joyce?

"xKid’s Always Interrupting platform is a game-changing (and mandatory) feature that nobody asked for."

A reminder.

Tell me your sports club isn't really about sports, without telling me …

It gradually begins to dawn that replacing web sites with apps distributed through easily-controlled chokepoints was a terrible idea

The answer may be simpler than you think!

ADS has given astronomy THE BEST literature tools available anywhere. I almost never have to use the garbage that other academics have to suffer through (GoogleScholar, JSTOR, LexisNexis, WoS, PubMed...) Literally anytime I have to interface with those tools I weep

Very much enjoying the culture of trust and respect implicit in the installation of room usage monitoring devices on academics' office doors today. Imagine my shock on discovering that managers' doors remain unsullied…

She basically invented astrophysics. She proved the laws of chemistry, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics, not just gravity, applied universally. She determined the composition of the sun and primacy of hydrogen in the universe. She advised the PhDs of Frank Drake and Frank Kameny.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.” It costs a lot less to house people.

It's busy out there. We live in a shooting gallery, just lucky we are a small moving target. 🔭

Me: i’m Autistic Them: Oh you take things literally Me: No that’s kleptomania

We’re calling on the government to introduce a National Climate Disaster Levy. A Levy like this would force the fossil fuel exporters, the companies that are causing this damage, to pay their fair share – not everyday Australians. Sign the petition. nb.australiainstitute.org.au/climatedisas...

Another "climate wake-up call". Government says it's bad. Real bad. That's funny, I remember reading something about the same people approving the expansion of Woodside's North West Shelf gas export project out to 2070.

"Ten years ago, scientists heard the universe rumble for the first time. That first discovery of gravitational waves began a new era of astronomy." @simon-stevenson.bsky.social writes about gravitational-wave astronomy today theconversation.com/10-years-ago... #GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️ 🖼️: C Knox

Researchers want to shift funds away from low-quality ministers

Not Zero.

Disgraceful. No govt that actually cares about climate change would do this. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell resigns amid crisis of confidence in leadership

omg how did I miss this (by Eldadi, Tenenbaum, and Loeb) and its follow-up today? 🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2508.09167 arxiv.org/abs/2509.06253

Protecting darkness and minimising light pollution is important for human and wildlife health. Please consider signing and sharing this petition. Petition EN7346 - National Legislation for Light Pollution Regulation and Dark Sky Preservation www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/... Closes 19 September.

If you need "drop-in sessions" to help your intelligent-but-time-poor staff understand how to use even the most basic functions of the software you bought (for millions!), you've been had. Absolutely had.

As an activist who helped lead the campaign against Robodebt, I can only think back to the days when legal scholars told us we had no chance of winning in court, and how I thought, fuck it, we’ll keep fighting anyway The Robodebt class action payout is now the largest *ever* in Australian history

Just remember: No-one has been jailed for Robodebt. Or even held vaguely responsible.

Looks like someone became aware of the cost of something, but not its value. (Unfortunately, I think this statement applies to the way universities are managed more broadly)

There's even instructions for running the telescope left on the whiteboard :)

Interested in owning a part of Australian history? The Molonglo Observatory site is for sale: www.realestate.com.au/property-hou... Don't worry, we stopped scientific operations a few years ago and gave it a suitable farewell (see next post). #RadioAstronomy

I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. ❤️ "Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"

My petition to the 🇦🇺 Australian government: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt! 📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/... ⏰ Deadline: October 1

"Clearly they support terrorism" chaser.com.au/general-news...

Filed under "But gas is cleaner than coal".

Alright, here's a simple suggestion, hopefully uncontroversial. 🇦🇺 PhD stipends are low*, but tax-exempt at least. Unless a PhD student goes part time, typically to care for family or children. Then the PhD stipend suddenly becomes taxable. Please change this. *Arguably way too low: $30k/year.