“If you ask tobacco companies to help write your school’s policy on cigarettes…you’re going to end up with guidance on how to smoke responsibly in school.”

Every single artist, arts worker and person who engages with art in so called Australia should be screaming at the top of their lungs right now about the current state of authoritarianism and censorship across the sector.

I won’t be publishing with UQP any more and neither will Evelyn Araluen, Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Randa Abdel-Fattah, and Sara M Saleh, among others. The list is growing. The press is dead. I wrote about why here: sakr.substack.com/p/the-cultur...

The loss of UQP is terrible — the list of authors and work — particularly First Nations authors and work — built up there in the last decade has been world-changing. Those who've trashed it know exactly what they're doing — the reputational damage is part of the point. We're running out of venues.

absolutely gutting news coming out of UQP. Imagine betraying Aboriginal poets and scholars and novelists on Aboriginal lands for an orchestrated pro-Israel grievance campaign. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Cancelling a work by a queer Indigenous author raises serious questions about whose voices are considered too difficult, too risky, or too inconvenient to publish. Intellectual freedom isn't tested when it's easy. It's tested in moments like this. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

After Lamestream broke the news that the University of Queensland Press had cancelled the publication of a children’s book, award-winning writer Evelyn Araluen has terminated her relationship with UQP.

If you’re going to be an arts manager, please have a fucking spine

Yesterday I published a piece demonstrating that "AI" as an artifact is built on fascist thinking logic. We need to push back against this further encroaching fascism into our collective consciousness.

"Self publishing is hard obviously. But being in a shitty deal is worse" - @tanamakes.games Who Killed the Games Industry - Coming Soon #indiedev #gamedev #WhoKilledTheGamesIndustry

As an anthropologist I have to track #AI development since the building of data centers for Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI (ChatGPT) etc. stands in a continuation of colonial violence against indigenous communities. All these centers are (planned) on/near indigenous land! #ContraAI🤖

“Is it enough to enjoy firelight and the company of others to minimise one’s individual footprint amid horrifying entropy and structural violence? To make individual sense of it all through the arrangement of words on paper? Or is organised action necessary?”

I am forever saying that if refusal isn't a live option in any decision making process about "AI", then no ethical practice is possible. You've got to be able to stop if the thing is unacceptable.

ALT GAMES has a Steam page to Wishlist and play all the beautiful games on display. Do it or I’ll perish 🫵 store.steampowered.com/curator/4601...

Give me a comments section on real estate websites. There's a house on the market in my (very small, incredibly remote) hometown for a batshit amount of money and I want to neg some property agents about it

You absolutely SHOULD NOT go around telling people that data centers are full of gold, silver, palladium, copper, and that the data centers are almost entirely unstaffed.

Announcing: Freeplay is here to stay. Parallels 2026 is coming and we're advocating for games to be funded as art. Read more and get involved: freeplay.net.au/posts/freepl...

if you're good at writing documentation, please for the love of god come work with me so I don't have to do it - 4 days a week, full remote (Australians and I think NZ only) $100k/yr and a very chill team assemblyfour.com/careers/docu...

🃏Wyrmspace Tactics will be at ALT: GAMES 2026 🎮 If you're around come say hi and check out what we've been scheming! Here's a sneak peak at some of our new security features 🤖 #ALTGAMES #PowerhouseMuseum #AustralianGames

Here’s the story of one of them. Awful www.thestranger.com/forced-out/f...

There’s been a trend on TikTok of (predominantly) women and femmes building cyberdecks and it is delightful watching people get into tinkering and repurposing compacts, clutches, and making tech CUTE

In light of the news about BRS being arrested for his war crimes in Afghanistan, and the sickening attempts from racists to excuse his villainy, this week’s throwback poem is from my third collection, Non-Essential Work.

The genocide in Palestine continues, as bombs are dropped day after day. In Lebanon, a million people have been forced from their homes by Israel, nearly 2000 people killed by bombs and still, Australia does nothing. Labor must immediately cancel arms deals with Israel and impose sanctions.

People are expressing outrage about how Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested, saying it was too public. He was arrested with no cuffs, not a hand on him, despite facing allegations of war crimes. I can’t help but think of the young Aboriginal boy wrongly arrested at gunpoint by the AFP on a Canberra bus.

Helen DeWitt on turning down a $175k Windham-Campbell Prize because she wasn't able to handle the prize's mandatory publicity requirements. Imo a moving, deeply relatable, and darkly funny story about money, obligation, mental health, & executive dysfunction paperpools.blogspot.com/2026/04/we-l...

As Jewish Australians, we are devastated to learn of the Israeli assault on Lebanon yesterday. We urge @albomp.bsky.social and Foreign Minister Wong to speak out against Israel's violent escalation and call on the Government to take decisive action by demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Whoa 🤯 The Moon, in full eclipse, with the #Artemis II Orion spacecraft. Part of the Moon and spacecraft are lit by Earthshine, and both Saturn and Mars are visible to the lower right. Incredible. Details: images.nasa.gov/details/art0...

I cannot believe I'm experiencing 17776 for the first time. Maybe some of the all time greatest storytelling on the internet?: www.sbnation.com/a/17776-foot... (image alt text: ".On April 7th, 2026, people stopped being born. On the same day, people stopped dying, and people stopped aging.")

Hello my name is Alex Goldman and I used to host the Reply All podcast. A lot of people liked that show. Now I make @hyperfixedpod.bsky.social which if you liked reply all you’d probably like well. The thing is that a lot of people who liked Reply All don’t know my new show exists.

I started making a vibey ambient patch in VCV Rack for background writing music and then oops spent the afternoon making noises instead of writing, but sounds pretty space to me!

I appreciated this article by Michael Taggart, on the temptation to use some of these coding tools and the pitfalls, from the POV of an experienced software engineer. This is why it's important to fight these issues collectively rather than at the individual level. taggart-tech.com/reckoning/

When the spaceship is performing even better than planned 💅🏼

🌈 Announcing the Magabala Pride Fellowship 🌈 In partnership with Pride Foundation Australia, the Fellowship will award $10,000 to a First Nations storyteller to dedicate time to developing or completing a manuscript. 📅 Applications close 24 April 2026 👉 Apply now: bit.ly/4tjK50s

That Address to Nation could’ve been a text.

Maybe radio DJ's shouldn't dictate Federal policy?

Israel’s holocaust of Palestinians reached a horrific new low today. No different than trains heading to gas chambers. Shame on everyone silent about this.

"But AI (and the metaverse, and web 3) must be seen not as novel innovations but as new attempts by the same investor and developer class at extracting value from their past successes, at seeking out new revenue sources amid an already digitally saturated world."

I’ve said this before about other forms but AI is sweeping through an already denuded landscape. The bar for a great deal of writing has been lowered to a frankly absurd level of chatty readability that has resulted in a borderline fear of actual quality prose and original argument.

If you use GitHub (especially if you pay for it!!) consider doing this *immediately* Settings -> Privacy -> Disallow GitHub to train their models on your code. GitHub opted *everyone* into training. No matter if you pay for the service (like I do). WTH github.com/settings/cop...

Leaving it here for today

It’s shocking how the motivation behind almost every single bad tech bill is about hating LGBTQ people and specifically trans people

Our founder explains why she resigned from the Advisory Board of Mumbrella’s CommsCon. #murujuga #edelman #CommsCon www.linkedin.com/pulse/questi...

How women were driven out from tech jobs was not mysterious in the slightest. The main weapon used against me and other women was sexual harassment, which takes many forms. Example: a guy said to me “You look tired” every morning for six years.

The bodycam footage of Stevie Lee's death is horrific. The Qld Coroner refuses to release it. open.substack.com/pub/amymcqui...

"Players don't read text." This is not literally true in all cases, but it IS a factual statement in many contexts. An interesting question is "Why?" The same player who reads a text-heavy game like Disco Elysium may not read text popping up in a UI during the action or during a tutorial.

📣 Letters to Arralla is OUT NOW on NINTENDO SWITCH 💖🕹️ Deliver mail and explore our summer island Arralla from the comfort of your couch, bed, beanbag, bean….. beanie weenie... (☉-⚆) AHEM we’re playable now on both Nintendo Switch and PC! #cozygames #indiegames

It is remarkable that tens of thousands of people could march in the streets every week for years with zero political impact. Yet a ‘coordinated email campaign’ will see visas cancelled, bookings dropped and funding withdrawn. The lobby groups have it.

Meredith saying something I’ve spent a lot of the last couple years thinking about:

I stand by it

“He doesn't know that the important thing isn't just the end result, it's the journey and the questions you answer along the way” < this is one of my biggest beefs with “AI” tools. Teams are talking to chatbots instead of the qualified, experienced people on their team.