Great quote in the Musk/Open AI legal feud: ”We are about to witness the landing of the Hindenburg on the deck of the Titanic; we know it’s going to be crazy and nasty.”

Holy cow! More than 10,000 PhDs in science have left the field since Trump took office – that’s 14% of American STEM PhDs in one year! www.science.org/content/arti...

Louise Adler: “Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us …AWW is the canary in the coalmine. Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Did you know Australia quietly built one of the earliest digital computers ever? Meet CSIRAC, a 2.5-tonne vacuum-tube behemoth that went live on this day 76 years ago. Dive into its forgotten story. 🔗 bit.ly/48jgawN #ComputingHistory #Australia #TechHeritage

What happens when you refuse to accept the status quo? Happy 158th birthday to Marie Curie: the first person ever to win 2 Nobel Prizes, who discovered radium & polonium, and risked everything in the name of science. #NobelPrize #WomenInScience #ScienceHistory

Remarkable scenes at the IAC 2025 press conference with 10 astronauts from around the world. The room was overwhelmed by a diverse sea of young faces who hung on almost every word. It’s the generation that will live and work in space, and they can’t wait. #IAC2025 #space #astronauts

Delightful to catch up with Sophia Casanova, whom I profiled in a feature for Australian Geographic in 2020. She was then a UNSW PhD student on space mining. Now, she's designing missions to prospect for, and mine, water ice on the Moon at ispace Europe! Go Sophia! #IAC2025 #space is.gd/alrONt

Having a blast at my first International Astronautical Congress. Plenty of opportunity for maximum space geek out. Per passionem ad astra.

Sometimes you forget that Sydney is a very pretty city.

Just a reminder: Science save lives 😊

Interesting: “It’s no longer about left & right, it’s about online & offline. The greatest division is now between those of us who have become radicalised online …and those of us who continue to cling to the old ways of doing politics, which still prize moderation, compromise & consensus-building.”

You just don’t expect random philosophical questions at the supermarket.

If you're in Sydney Oct 16: Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of the first radio pulsars in 1967, will be giving the 2025 Stibbs Lecture at the University of Sydney, recalling the chain of events that led to her discovery. www.sydney.edu.au/science/news...

Very sad to hear of the passing of John Manrtinus, a foreign correspondent par excellence. A lucid and impassioned journalist committed to the craft and to telling stories the world ignored. Recall fondly the many delightful conversations we had over beers in East Timor.

On this day 39 years ago, I began my career as a journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald. It gave me a taste for big-city newspaper journalism, its proud traditions and odd quirks. I met outstanding colleagues and had some fabulous experiences. Thank you, @sydmorningherald.bsky.social #journalism

Here’s an idea: any company that can afford to pay a CEO more than 30 times as much as the average full-time worker, needs to pay a higher tax rate.

How to protect yourself in the zombie apocalypse.

Highly-advanced stealth technology update.

Beautiful requiem to the passing of my beloved creation, COSMOS magazine, by the indomitable @jacksonwryan.com in The Monthly. It's been 20 years since its founding, but it too has surrendered to gravity. Ironically, COSMOS is outlived in the depths of space. www.themonthly.com.au/july-2025/na...

Who would have thought?

How global online scammers in Myanmar rely on Starlink for their operations. #scammers #Starlink #Musk

“In Trumpian circles, many people ostentatiously identify as Christians but don’t talk about Jesus very much; they have crosses on their chest but Nietzsche in their heart—or, to be more precise, a high-school sophomore’s version of Nietzsche.” David Brooks in The Atlantic.

Evolution at work.

May the fourth be with you.

Election day in Australia: hot dogs, pastry stands and local craft stalls. My ballot includes one Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister. Voting is mandatory, and ranked choice. Nice to live in a proper democracy. 🙂🗳️

Forrest wonderland in Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain National Park 😊

Meanwhile, on Heard Island …

It took abandonment by the USA and the threat of Russia to wake central Europe’s sleeping giant. I wouldn’t be surprised if America’s leading scientists end up across The Atlantic.

Yeah sure, he’s playing fourth dimensional chess.

"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become king, the palace becomes a circus,"

Five Failures in the Oval Office (video) open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

“I know it’s psychologically difficult for us, having lived through eight decades of comparative peace and democracy, to accept that the disasters of fascism and global war could possibly return, but the future comes with no guarantees – all it provides is lessons.” Very true.

🙂

Large piece Space junk lands in a village in Kenya. “We’ve reached this point in our exploration and use of space where this isn’t just something that happens once in a blue moon. It is now almost every month or two.”

Morning world. Lovely view from my cabin.

Wild: Google Street View captures a man in northern Spain stuffing a white body-sized bag into the trunk of a car. Police said it helped them solve a missing-person case, and arrests followed.

“But the eggs were just so expensive.”

Waleed Aly nails it on ICC, Israel and Hamas: “Who said anything about equivalence? The warrant is dead simple: that the court, having considered the evidence before it, has found reasonable grounds to believe these people committed specified war crimes and should face trial for them.”

Nicely summoning up the West’s reaction to Ukraine so far: “the Kremlin’s successful strategy of forcing the West to see the conflict on Russia’s terms, confusing each fresh attempt by Ukraine to resist Russian aggression as a major ‘escalation.’”

Thought this was worth sharing. From 1tireddoctor on Threads.

A first step in reducing price gouging by supermarkets: Australia introduces bill imposing huge fines - up to 10% of annual turnover - against shady practices by the country’s supermarket oligopoly.

An ode to the Manneken Pis (Brussels’ Little Pissing Man)? Banskyesque, if not Banksy. Suggested titles? “Trickle Down Economics” “A Little Wee Boy” “Number One” I do love the irreverent humour of street art. Allegedly in Lyon, France.

Hello good people of Bluesky. Been here a few days, and found it pleasant – a bit like innocent Twitter of old. I'm a science journalist and editor in Australia and I look forward to seeing what the sane world is talking about – as well as the occasional irreverent gag or punchy meme.