Some gifts are so thoughtful that you can't express how much you appreciate them. Many thanks to @matteobassetti.bsky.social for this watercolour impression of my sky pirate microstate idea. Even if you can't get it from the sketchbook knowing it exists warms my heart 🥰

Following Australia's expulsion of the Iranian ambassador @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social sits down with former ambassador Matthew Neuhaus to talk through the legal implications. #CalledToTheBar soundcloud.com/calledtotheb...

I will be on ABC Radio National's PM program today discussing the illegality of Israel's blockade of Gaza (tldr: you can lawfully declare a blockade in international armed conflict, but not to starve civilians). We have a deeper dive on the issues here: soundcloud.com/calledtotheb...

Academic selfie: lunch with 2 of my favourite people, Gina Heathcote and @emilyjones.bsky.social edition

This is the rogue state that so many of our national institutions - among them Creative Australia, State Library Victoria, the ABC, the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute - have bent over backwards to appease.

UNSW is looking for a postdoctoral fellow specialising in nuclear law: external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53... Three-year position, no need to have existing work rights in Australia. We are a jolly bunch, so consider joining us.

Kindness is just a better and happier way to live. That said kindness doesn't mean accepting poor treatment or not having good boundaries – you need to be kind to yourself too

As usual with this issue, Harris is calling for a compromise that already exists. Every sporting body has standards for how long athletes must be on hormones before they can compete as women. The problem isn’t that we’re ignoring ‘reasonable concerns,’ the problem is that republicans are lying.

1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social

Out now! Can international courts adapt to the rise of digital evidence? Sarah Zarmsky argues that if international criminal law is to survive, it must catch up with advances in technology. Episode out now👇 www.asymmetricalhaircuts.com/episodes/epi...

This one is a bit of a personal favourite

TEA

When should ICJ judges step aside? @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social, @drnajimagi.bsky.social & @victorkattan.bsky.social unpack recusal rules, Judge Sebutinde’s remarks on Palestine, and the politics of impartiality & recusal from Gaza now to 1960s SW Africa #CalledToTheBar soundcloud.com/calledtotheb...

I spoke with CNA Singapore about the UN Commission of Inquiry report on #genocide in #Gaza, including the importance of #intLaw and how, while it has its challenges, it is still an important system of global cooperation and regulation youtu.be/zLAHMM61OWs?...

Boycott Business Insider

The first piece in our Special Issue on ICL & abolition is out! It is an incredible essay by @disposablehuman.bsky.social & @debbiekilroy.bsky.social on 'the brutal realities of incarceration, particularly for Indigenous women in Australia.' Open Access here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to BlueSky.

Academic selfie: dinner with 2 of my favourite people (the sensational @drnajimagi.bsky.social and my delightful PhD supervisor Rebecca La Forgia) but sad that @staceyhenderson.bsky.social couldn't join us edition

Hello Adelaide

There are some discussions going on in the SF/F genre right now about bad actors pretending to be allies. Sadly, this pattern happens over and over in every human community. News about a person hurting others usually comes out, but until then how do you know? How do you protect yourself? 1/

Disinformation is dangerous because there’s no adequate way to retract it once it’s out there. It’s deliberately designed to cultivate powerful emotions (outrage, disgust, resentment, anxiety, etc) and those emotions don’t just disappear even when a person is told their feelings are based on lies.

Hunted. The 8 episodes that it had were brilliant

A reminder: Ending healthcare for trans folk is political violence. Caging and deporting people who seek asylum is political violence. Arresting those who protest genocide is political violence. Political violence is pervasive, made persistent by politics that consign groups of people to death.

This explains it better than I can

The Israeli strike on Doha is almost certainly a violation of the prohibition against the use of force in Art. 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, and cannot be justified as self-defense. It should be condemned.

Just got described as "a demon trapped in a My Little Pony costume" and I gotta say, y'all say the sweetest things

I am absolutely not having it with the UK's statement: www.middleeasteye.net/news/mps-sla...

Israel appears determined to violate every fundamental norm of international law there is. www.bbc.com/news/live/c7...

I had a blast talking about to my old friend and mentor Rob McLaughlin and the phenomenal @alonso-gd.bsky.social about why sinking random "drug" vessels is lawless AF

A US kinetic strike on a suspected drug boat, lawful self-defence or utterly lawless? (No prizes for guessing.) Join @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social, Rob McLaughlin & @alonso-gd.bsky.social on #CalledToTheBar as they unpack law & blurred lines in the “war on drugs/terror.” soundcloud.com/calledtotheb...

How do we make a complex piece of tech easy to understand? An analogy helps – as long as it’s not misleading.

I don’t care if you think homosexuality is a “choice.” But I do care if you choose to be homophobic. My safety, rights, visibility and identity as a gay person shouldn’t depend on whether you think I was “born this way” or not. You don’t need a biological reason to respect my existence. Just saying.

Today is a stark reminder that chronic pain bad days and thinking are pretty much incompatible

Concise explanation from @aapfactcheck.bsky.social as to why the recognition of the State of Palestine does not breach international law. I'm glad to have been able to contribute a few comments

Clean the filters in your AC units people (this is the winter build up as it was too cold until now to have them off to clean them)

That JD Vance tweet is appalling. The US government literally doesn't care. If it wants to kill you, it will. Unashamedly and without even a pretense of legality.

‘The rationale, as explicitly stated in the bill's explanatory notes, is to tip the balance away from the public's right to be "informed of the processes of their government" and towards "the effective working of government".’ www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

the year is 2050. you ask AI how to wear a suit. the computer spits out info framed as objective facts, even though these are totally made up rules invented by an asian guy in 2025 while he was sitting on a toilet

Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.

Can Israel’s actions in Gaza be described as a genocide? How do you prove special intent and separate legitimate self-defence from international crime? @DrMelOB explains the different elements she and other academics have to consider. Episode out now👇 www.asymmetricalhaircuts.com/episodes/epi...

You love to see it! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Academic selfie: unapologetically queer with the amazing and delightful @senthorun.bsky.social edition

Performative heteronormative patriarchal respectability ain't going to perform itself I guess

Another day, another example of people using chatbots for illegal shit because Meta sucks at guardrails (and gen AI in general) www.nzherald.co.nz/world/meta-a...

📢 RECENTLY PUBLISHED: “Informed by comparative constitutional scholarship and queer legal studies, this article argues that art 156 represents the constitutionalisation of queer subordination by enshrining in the supreme law of the land the subordinate status of queer persons.” By Daryl W. J. Yang

Also I don't think I need to say it but there are already ways in the current FOI Act to prevent the release of documents on these grounds

What I would give for a functional university library ebook platform

It is now no longer merely a theoretical possibility that lawyers submitting AI-generated hallucinations to a court will face penalties from their professional regulatory bodies. This lawyer can engage only in supervised practice for the next two years.

“People who are experts in the study of genocide can see this situation for what it is,” Melanie O’Brien, the organization’s president and a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Associated Press.