Bunnings, a giant retailer in Australia just dropped their updated privacy policy, and boy. they like collecting data: customer identity (gore PII), credit history, income details, images of you in store, online activity/habits/interests and of course, use cookies to track you across the web

king shit www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"Even the most high-art novel is still a commodity to be traded for money—and literary fiction is only sacred when such business is invisible." Tom Williams on Laura B. McGrath’s “Middlemen”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/middlemen-literary-agents-american-publishing-industry-laura-mcgrath

BREAKING: The Pentagon has fired the Stars and Stripes ombudsman — the role Congress created to protect the military paper's editorial independence — after she publicly criticized the DOD's overhaul of the publication. w/ @liamjscott.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

John makes the key point about the NDIS “rorts”: the system was designed from the ground up around unaudited private provision

Vale David Malouf, a great Australian writer. My favourite Malouf books are the novel The Great World, his lectures on Australian consciousness, the short stories in Every Move You Make, & the poetry in Typewriter Music. His words will endure. #auslit textjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/2608...

Come along to the @gleebooks.bsky.social launch of @janecaro.bsky.social’s Vantage Point essay. You’ll laugh, you’ll get mad, and be reminded it was a series of choices that got our public education into this state and we can choose to correct course

Funny how the law and order guys never think it applies to them 🙄 He’s again blaming the courts, the protesters and those attacked by police all for his appalling and illegal attempts to ban dissent

Were Were those the only two options

Two things we can do to stop the next pandemic: 1️⃣ Reduce wildlife trade.* (👉 *But: criminalization drives trade underground, and we find that illegal trade accelerates spillover. We need new ideas.) 2️⃣ Ramp up disease surveillance in wildlife markets, farms, and supply chains.

I've completely lost track of what I'm supposed to be distracted from.

"One paper’s acknowledgements thank 'Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise'."

"You're alienating half of your audience by being political!" The half:

100 books you must read over easter

Yet this is nothing

This is the most delightful thing I’ve ever read

Anyone posted this yet ... thought I'd get in early. From the always hilarious (and much missed) @kudelka.bsky.social

Under a proposed gambling shakeup, children will only be able to access their Sportsbet accounts at recess and after school.

As per the 2021 Census, the Aus Bureau of Statistics defines 'generations' as follows; Interwar - aged 75 and over Boomers - 55 to 74 GenX - 40 to 54 Millenials - 25 to 39 GenZ - 10 to 24 GenAlpha - 0 to 9 Please adjust your ageism accordingly. #auspol

Just 1 example of the kind of thing unis are getting for their massive spend on consultants. ANU spent $6k on a "non-significant meeting" with a reputation management firm at which apparently no one took a note. That's more than a tutor gets for a semester's work thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...

The scale of Australian universities managerial & governance surrender/capture is ASTOUNDING "Twelve of the 14 universities had council members, who had substantive roles as consultants from firms such as Ernst & Young, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, McKinsey, and Boston Consulting Group"

I feel genuinely flabbergasted by the defiantly anti-journalistic approach of NYT Comms here. They're saying the NYT's reporting on the stance of the American Medical Association is correct, despite the American Medical Association saying their stance is different from what NYT reported.

One day it may even be able to transport passengers

Self-censorship is what we are increasingly seeing now among Australian institutions, a consequence of the relentless efforts of the pro-Israel lobby, Murdoch media and both major parties to silence any dissent to Israel's acts. In short - it's worked.

It's time for new ideas, new voices, new gatekeepers, new strategies, new incentives, new politics to support Australian culture and the arts. Submissions to the Australian Government's consultation on its new cultural policy close 24 May. #ausarts #auslit #revive www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/n...

Read the full @australiainstitute.org.au submission here: australiainstitute.org.au/report/the-a...

Remember all the talk of healthy young people dying suddenly after COVID-19 vaccination? Our new study in @plosmedicine.org shows there's absolutely nothing to that. journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Voted in the South Australian election. Always a privilege, even if I would have voted for the sausage in bread had it been on the ballot. #SAVotes

Good news! The final ENTSO-E report into the Spain blackout is out A complex stew of different factors, but "too much solar" is simply not even among them, let alone a major component. As always: the narrative built by fossil/nuke advocates was wrong www.entsoe.eu/news/2026/03...

As part of our ongoing revival plan, the inaugural Southerly Poetry Prize is now open to all Australian poets. Entries from both established and emerging writers are welcome. #southerly #auslit #poetry #poetryprize

Australian governments subsidising fossil fuel use by more than $30,000 a minute, analysis finds

Lovely.

No, Tom. The biggest factor distorting "debate" is a mainstream media all too ready to report Hanson uncritically. You mention in passing that the Canberra press gallery will need to adjust how they treat her. But why are they not calling out her racism and toxicity now, as they did 30 years ago?

3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Highlighting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)

An antibiotic used by the Tasmanian salmon farming industry is detected in native species more than 10km away from the closest fish operation using it.

I wish more people knew this

In the middle of ar street

A supermassive black hole of slop collapsing under its own slop gravity

Sweden curling set up a sting operation to catch Canada cheating i’m fucking losing it

I was so impressed with this story about measles in the Atlantic -- the depth of reporting it would take to weave in all these details so fluidly. Turns out, it was a work of fiction. She researched the effects of measles, but lots of fiction writers do research. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/the-...

Bearing Witness #monoprint Acrylic on Paper #art #printmaking

I think LinkedIn might be the only place on the internet where the widespread and unstoppable spread of machine generated text has made zero noticeable difference to anything

49 years ago today Fred Schneider, Cindy Wilson & Kate Pierson of The B-52′s making their worldwide debut at a Valentine’s Day house party in Athens, GA, February 14, 1977. Photo by Kelly Bugden #punk #punkrock #newwave #womenofpunk #theb52s #history #punkrockhistory

Happy birthday, Chuck. Proud to carry on your legacy of studying evolutionary biology while going through it

A few months later, 'Meanjin' rides again. www.artshub.com.au/news/article...

Vale @kudelka.bsky.social