Bang on stuff here, with some hard questions for designers and educators on what to do now

The day stared back at me as if waiting for me to tell it what to do.

“I prefer, where truth is important, to write fiction.” ~ Virginia Woolf

Pump it up. My @smh @theage cartoon.

Glorious

I lived on Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee as a student and it still tastes like PhD stress

'[Farrell was] striving to make architecture more communicative and uplifting at a time when modernism seemed to have finally run its course.' – Cath Slessor

'Bauhaus the design movement or the band?'

“university leaders … must act to help us collectively turn back the tide of garbage software, which fuels harmful tropes (e.g. so-called lazy students) and false frames (e.g. so-called efficiency or inevitability) to obtain market penetration and increase technological dependency” 3/🧵

‘While we shall be judged for a year or two by the _number_ of houses we build … we shall be judged in ten years’ time by the _type_ of houses we build.’ - Nye Bevan, 1944, quoted by @municipaldreams.bsky.social

Megasheds the size of 12 football pitches, surrounded by barbed wire and flashing lights, that make lots of noise and potentially disrupt local energy supply while creating a handful of jobs are not going to be a source of local renewal - all that Nvidia money isn't going to show up on high streets

‘Eno’s exchanges in 1995 with friends such as Kevin Kelly (Wired, the Whole Earth Review) and Stewart Brand (the Whole Earth Catalogue, the WELL) now feel a little quaint, like a coffee house claque in 18th-century Vienna.’ Ian Penman on becoming Enosceptic: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

“If we leave it up to the market, you would have only offices, furnished tourist rentals and second homes — a Paris without Parisians, a Paris for the rich” (Indeed. Look at Anglosphere capitals. Amusing to watch the FT try to get its head around this pretty excellent policy) on.ft.com/4nxze08

The cliché house (by @KarlreMarks)

I love London so much. So much. Did you know that London has the lowest level of ethnic violence of any city of comparable size in the world? Multiculturalism has in fact worked here. They just don’t want it to be true because we happen to have a Muslim mayor.

“Approving new fossil fuel exports is destroying the future. It isn’t just a betrayal of our Pacific neighbors, it is a betrayal of all Australians, putting the profits of foreign-owned fossil fuel corporations ahead of our wellbeing, security and prosperity.”

So great

To what extent does preventing progressive economic change fuel the far right? Looks like we’ll find out in Aust as Albo has no intention of driving wealth redistribution, or taxing the big miners, polluters, property developers or gambling interests. Failing to address inequality is major error.

“A substantial rise in supply could probably only unwind a small fraction of the huge rise in house prices … This suggests that politicians’ primary focus on supply may be fundamentally misdirected.” Is the argument high house prices are solely due to supply finally falling apart?

“A first, obvious step would be for our security agencies to classify Nazis and Sovereign Citizens as terrorist movements.”

Opinion | A woman on taklback radio said she was going to the rally for her grandchildren — as a generational duty, an act of love. Fear can feel like love when you clutch it hard enough, @mrdtjames.bsky.social‬ writes.

When you mistake the lecture for ‘content’, instead of the culture of learning and connection to your peers

Adelaide University students and staff to stage sit-in over ‘travesty’ of fewer in-person lectures

Data Plan Voisin

Some people make the argument that today's information environment is basically built for the right, designed to cut off or short circuit reasoned deliberation in favor of outrage & resentment, & that the left's goals-- cooperation, building over time --are simply incompatible with that environment.

Good piece on AI hype

A pleasure to host the ace Nicholas de Monchaux, Head of School at MIT Architecture, for a few days here at Melbourne School of Design. Nicholas gave a wonderful talk to our Design Thesis students (thanks @roryhyde.bsky.social for coordinating) (+ also good chats RE future of design schools)

‘We are stuck with a government with a massive majority, but is never going to govern like it’s got a massive majority.’ - @keanebernard.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/c...

Boost your productivity! My @smh @theage cartoon.

The government doubling down on its embarrassing ban of Palestine Action is ludicrous (as well as deeply undemocratic)

“Instead, we have to believe that the horizontal sea of collective purpose can rise and break the levees of vertical control.”

Israel, which does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza…has killed 237 journalists since the war started, according to Gaza’s government media office. The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 186 journalists have been killed in the Gaza conflict. apple.news/At7CSM72NQWe...

Our colleagues Al Jazeera reporters Anas al-Sharif & Mohammed Qraiqeh, & cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal & Moamen Aliwa have been killed in a strike on a tent for journalists near Al Shifa hospital. They worked relentlessly through bombing & hunger to document this war. Please remember them

'While denouncing creativity, Frank Lloyd Wright yearned for more opportunities to exercise his own. Since this was boundless, he was inevitably frustrated to the end.' - Robin Boyd on meeting Wright at Taliesin, 1970

Thanks Philip

Excellent article on our housing conundrum by @roryhyde.bsky.social, challenging all but especially Govts to really engage with improving our housing - by actually leading policy & building exemplar projects architectureau.com/articles/exp...

This is an insane, hilarious, sad story. Stay safe, use your brain!

Lovely pointy pointless thing

The scientific fraud case involving Professor Mark Smythe at QIMR Berghoffer stretches for years and covers hundreds of papers. Massive story by Liam Mannix www.theage.com.au/national/fol...

This week’s column www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

“I gotta be honest, this is not good enough … we are viewing property as a pathway to wealth as opposed to something which is designed for people to live in … this is wrong – it’s actually morally wrong what we’re doing. So get angry about it, because I bloody well am.”

This is Amnesty International, the most reputable human rights group in the world. No one can say they didn’t know.

I know Melbourne can be a traffic jam with unaffordable unheatable homes, but today I went windsurfing on the bay in the middle of winter so I agree with the BBC

Combating antisemitism iron dome Today’s @theage @smh cartoon.

Can't argue with science. My cartoon in today's The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Here's the ultra-short read on the Mamdani logo design www.gq.com/story/zohran...

“late-night arts TV was the epitome of Reithian principles. For arts-curious kids stranded in parts of the country where not much was going on, Clive James, Melvyn Bragg, Mark Lawson, or whoever, made it clear that esoteric cinema, strange performance art, or difficult music was for you”

"The ground bears witness to our actions when we build a house, plant crops, construct a power plant, drop a bomb, or cultivate space for other living beings to thrive." It's been a while since I felt so touched by a speech—in this case tender, moving, urgent, and powerful in equal parts.

Labor and the LNP are exactly alike on climate change and environmental destruction. But hey it was fun having that play fight over nukes during the election rather than debating reality.

Thank you, sir, a great essay that was.