It's kind of fascinatingly and depressingly hypocritical for Deborah Conway to claim that opposing a political movement is genocidal while the logical conclusion, currently underway, of that political movement is a genocide.

If you're thinking about using gen-AI to "write" books, this 🧵 is for you. I’m a highly experienced editor who’s been in the biz a long time. Recently I’ve had manuscripts come to me where the author has used gen-AI – not for writing, I’ve been assured, but for “structuring” or "organising"

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

Who the fuck does she think she is. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

So it appears my sequence, 'Late sonnets', has been awarded the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Congrats to all the poets in the anthology, and thanks to Hunter Writers' Centre and the University of Newcastle, and the judges, Jennifer Compton and Eunice Andrada. hunterwriterscentre.org/newcastle-po...

"I've never felt like shrieking" does so much.

Nothing I can say backgrounds this better than just reading it, especially if you're one of the less-young. www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/does...

Some light relief. I might join up, makes as much sense as anything right now. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Happy valentines day

This is lovely theconversation.com/as-beautiful...

This is terribly sad. Jon was a funny, impassioned and humble poster here and a cartoonist of a very high order. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

"A literary culture disaggregated from the contemporary world consigns itself to utter irrelevance – and yet in Albanese's Australia, the fantasy of an apolitical cultural sector seems to have been installed as de facto cultural policy." @catrionamp.bsky.social infra-dig.ghost.io/hard-surface...

This hits me in my nerd humor spot.

White dude throws object 'designed to explode' into a crowd and it's not terrorism. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Great to see someone addressing this increasingly prevalent dishonest erasure of history: indigenousx.com.au/debunking-au...

You’d think an attempted bombing of an event with 2,000 attendees on the shores of mainland Australia would get a breaking news alert and statement from the Prime Minister of the country. But it’s blackfullas and people who associate with them, that’s fine.

This is a fabulous resource for those in Australia who get waylaid by arguments about today: kooricurriculum.com/blogs/news/a...

Barbecue Day.

The annual reminder of where to get cool garments: www.darkanddisturbing.com.au/shop/austral...

Bughouse Kristin Hersh Hummingbirds Julia Jacklin Jess Locke Wish I'd seen: Detroit Cobras

It's not entirely true, is it

Sorry, is this the same Julian Leeser and Sussan Ley who condemned the ALP's 'politicisation' of the Bondi massacre? www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

A greeting card for my Bluesky friends

I genuinely think one thing that trips up folks on the left is that they can't imagine not sharing certain core values. Lemme explain. Here's an intuition pump: Say you're in negotiations with counterparty X. And there are two possible deals on the table ...

This submission by David Brophy is hilarious and demonstrates how poorly drafted the hate speech bill is

I just signed this open letter to the ABC. getup.to/929waCjCOJ4Sp

Adelaide Festival Board & Premier Peter Malinauskas made a race-based consience choice by erasuring the 10,000+ First Nations people who were massacred by British soliders, Aust police & settlers during 1788 to 1930. Some single massacres resulted in 100s of deaths. australian.museum/learn/first-...

PSA: @readingsbooks.bsky.social is offering a 10% discount for recent books of authors who have chosen to withdraw from the 2026 Adelaide Writers' Week: www.readings.com.au/collections/...

51 authors have now withdrawn from the apartheid Adelaide Writers Week. I wrote about it here and the long sordid road of racist interference from Zionists in the Australian arts. sakr.substack.com/p/the-road-t...

This is a bit fucked.

"New Year is nothing more than the continuation of Xmas festivities by other means." -- Santaclausewitz

Fun inscriptions in second hand books, part 27

Gadigal/Sydney based authors & readers, support the Berkelouw/Harry Hartog bookshop workers strike this weekend! Image via RAFFWU

“Why are folks getting dumber?” Because they don’t read. “Why aren’t men as romantic & poetic as they used to be?” Because they don’t read. “Why are people so vulnerable to propaganda?” “Why is everyone a conspiracy theorist?” Because they don’t read. Because they don’t read.

You will be visited by three spirits.

Fuck me dead.

I love that in Margaret Atwood's Paper Boat, across six pages, she acknowledges by name the writers, teachers, poets, editors and others that encouraged, supported, enabled her work.

Today’s xkcd made me cry. In a good way. xkcd.com/3172/

When anti-immigration migrants resolve their cognitive dissonance. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

John Menadue: “Charles was a very active participant in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam 50 years ago. Don’t make any mistake about that. Charles was up to his royal ears in it. He was not politically neutral. He sided with privilege and aristocracy.” johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11....

Why do Australian police forces keep facilitating neo-Nazi rallies? 🤔🙄 www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw...

Imagine being a non-white and/or young woman student at Campion Catholic College. Or somebody who believes in the words of Jesus, and wants to live by them, for that matter. May the nearest deity smite those who could do with a thorough smiting.

if you see this post, your actions are: - if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this - if you don't have a spare buck, just repost your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive

poor old Tony Abbott is on the public broadcaster dismissing the oldest and longest continuous oral histories in the history of humanity as “hearsay” how’s your morning going.

@southerlylitmag.bsky.social, so-called Australia's oldest literary journal, has quietly woken from a long hiatus to join us in the Bluesky. This must be a sign of something brewing. So give them a follow.

So, for Sydney-siders and those adjacent, to celebrate Gleebooks' 50th anniversary, I'll be reading with a bunch of terrific poets, among them Judy Beveridge, Pam Brown, Joanne Burns, Laurie Duggan, Jane Gibian on Saturday the 25th of October: gleebooks.com.au/event/poets-...

Vale Tony Harrison.

Just got sucked into @neal.fun's "Not a Robot" neal.fun/not-a-robot/