"fresh survey of eight sites along WA's Ningaloo Reef has revealed more than 60 per cent of corals have died [..] Of the 1,600 corals counted in March, only 600 were still alive come late October"

Beach walking at sunset is not very calming when the local beach has 100000s of dead and dying fish. The impact of the algae bloom in South Australia continues to be devastating for marine life 😿

So much opportunity for Australia to lead, and so much apathy by decision makers

As it's October and the 'Halloween as an imported American thing' discourse has begun, I thought I'd mention that in Australia, the Scottish diaspora, especially in the first half of the 20th century, celebrated Halloween as a particular Scottish tradition, as attested to by many articles on Trove.

The conversation between Klein and Coates showed me that a lot of people who screech about “infighting” on the left aren’t aware of the fact that marginalized people have been forced to learn how to regulate their emotions during conflict, and so, are better able to hear what’s actually being said.

My newest on substack: did you hate the book? Or did you hate the character? And if you hated the character, you actually loved the book. #ErikaTWurth #NativeAmerican #PinkHorror open.substack.com/pub/erikatwu...

'This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable.' - Chris Hedges bsky.app/profile/nick...

DFAT has now confirmed Australians and others have been abused by Israeli authorities after their abduction from the flotilla. Assaulted and injured. Deprived of sleep and medication. Still illegally detained. The PM and Foreign Minister must urgently demand their safe release.

Alrght everybody, get your Tin Can Telephones out. We need your help! We reach new people by word of mouth. Send all your educator friends this pic! Teachers, librarians, scout troop leaders, etc! We offer our program for free, so we need help getting the word out without advertising $$.

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

Books can cannibalize books 😈🍖 BENNY ROSE THE CANNIBAL KING is back in print, just in time for his month of legend 🎃 read about a group of teen girls facing a flesh-eating ghost on Halloween 1987, alongside 12 more coming-of-rage stories in TEENAGE GIRLS CAN BE DEMONS, out now from Titan!

For @copower.bsky.social, a brand new comic by Eav Brennan on South Australia's algal bloom and the “waves of death” threatening our seas.

OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...

To the surprise of no-one, #Albania 's supposed #AI Minister is revealed as a human actress on green screen... the whole thing being a smokescreen for some dubious government procurement dealings.

Much attention has been on ANU but the governance crisis is broad and deep across the sector. Close scrutiny needs to be applied *everywhere*. This is shameful from UTS management.

Native forest logging must end in order to reach Labor’s emissions reduction target, expert says www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Two years after it was delivered, the National Health and Climate Strategy remains unfunded, and it's unclear who is responsible for its implementation. We need urgent action now. @croakeynews.bsky.social www.croakey.org/federal-gove...

calling all Australian researchers - see below. The ARC haven't circulated this survey very well.... thanks @arc-tracker.bsky.social for circulating!

You can’t make this shit up. Deport men of colour, refugees to Nauru on the claim they are not of good character while giving tens of millions to a notorious outlaw motorcycle gang to provide the security there, in a secret deal. The corruption stinks. www.theage.com.au/national/lea...

Help shape People With Disability Australia's submission on changes to the Disability Discrimination Act Anyone with a lived experience of disability or who supports a person with disability can contribute I've filled in this survey. You can contribute by 5pm TODAY: pwd.org.au/pwda-survey-...

The survey I link to closes today ….

Exclusive: Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, Meanjin, is being shut down today for "financial" reasons, Crikey can reveal.

My latest research looks at Artificial Intelligence at Work. I analyse two studies on AI job augmentation and job losses, by Jobs and Skills Australia, and Microsoft. I show how science is used selectively to advance AI discourse. (Thread) othersociologist.com/2025/09/03/a... #ai #sociology

This level of sea life deaths in less than 12 months. This should be a national disaster response. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

It's after midnight in NY so Night and Day's pub date has arrived. It's available as a trade paperback, audio book, and ebook. If you enjoy it, please consider mentioning it on your social media and/or review it. Thanks everyone. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Night-...

NEW: Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history.

I got the complaint in the horrific OpenAI self harm case the the NY Times reported today This is way way worse even than the NYT article makes it out to be OpenAI absolutely deserves to be run out of business

NEW: Australian Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay is facing a chorus of criticism over her decision to participate in an upcoming 'antisemitism summit' organised by pro-Israel groups. deepcutnews.substack.com/p/australian...

This poem was written to perform at Fine Print Magazine's Narrative Sabotage event in July. Thanks to @overlandjournal.bsky.social for publishing a re-worked version. I'm very new to poetry, but it felt good releasing some rightous rage. From the river to the sea / always was always will be ✊🏾

Is this what the AI era is going to be like? A big four consultancy (Deloitte) does a major report for govt then says "oh we just got the names, dates and publishers" of many of the works cited WRONG. No biggie. www.afr.com//companies/p...

Wordpress has published a guide on how to use AI to write blog posts. This is frustrating and saddening development.

THIS IS A BIG DEAL 🔥⛽🌏💀 MAKE A SUBMISSION ! The Australian Senate now has a Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change & Energy investigating climate disinfo orgs & funders Due by 12 Sept 2025 here: www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar... Cont'd below 🧵 #auspol #NZpol #AtlasNetwork

I've written about AI and the Economy. Here's a thread with key points. I've analysed how the AI industry has created a discourse of technological supremacy over human labour. I look at selective use of science to influence social policy and kill competition. #ai #sociology #ArtificialIntelligence

I review the government’s recent proposal, which may allow artificial intelligence (AI) to mine copyrighted works. I analyse the ways in which AI establishes economic power by marketing technological supremacy. #ai #artificialintelligence #sociology

Twelve of the 36 judges of the Queensland Literary Awards have resigned since Arts Minister John-Paul Langbroek directed that the black&write! award to K.A. Ren Wyld, a First Nations author, be cancelled www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/que...

Microsoft's cloud service Azure has been used by Israel in mass surveillance of Palestinians. Evidence from Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and military www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Productivity Commission is considering a text & data mining exception for the Australian Copyright Act, making it legal to train AI on copyrighted work. "Creating greater leeway in Australian laws can be read as tacitly endorsing currently unlawful practices" theconversation.com/the-producti... #AI

1,900 AUS authors report 12,000 of their books were stolen by Meta to train its generative AI tool. "The practices of OpenAI and other AI developers such as Meta & Google have impacted a broad spectrum of Australian authors & illustrators" @asauthors.bsky.social www.asauthors.org.au/news/asa-opp...

We are dismayed by the Productivity Commission report raising the prospect of a text and data mining exception to Australia’s Copyright Act that would enable Australian authors' work to be used for AI training, without permission or payment. www.asauthors.org.au/news/asa-opp...

As AI is pushed upon us, a timely communique from the Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference, held earlier this year at the Australian National University on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. www.croakey.org/calls-to-act... www.croakey.org/calls-to-act...

I'm outraged by Labor's decision to greenlight PwC, a consultancy firm which has proven to be untrustworthy & that has continuously refused to cooperate with government inquiries. 🧵

"We are distressed that Australia has done so little to prevent the progressive erosion of international law, the persistent armed assaults on Palestinian people, and the violation of their human rights in Gaza and the West Bank." - Letter to PM from AUS diplomats johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08...

I explore the Sociology of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I discuss how AI models replicate race, class, and social inequality. I show how sociology can address ethical use and structural change in the AI sector, and why First Peoples' leadership must be central to the development AI policies

📢 CfP! For an upcoming special issue titled "Anticolonial Theories as Objects of Historical Inquiry", we invite papers that historicize the theory-making endeavors of marginalized individuals and communities in the colonial modern world. 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal... 🔁 Please repost!

#ICYMI: Writing About Activists, our recent Conversations series event chaired by @academicdiary.bsky.social and featuring scholars Hannah Ishmael, John Narayan and A.S. Francis. 🎥 VIDEO buff.ly/o11njAN 🎧 Listen to our new #podcast mini-series Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism buff.ly/EUCdEHZ

Gestures. My @smh @theage cartoon.

DSS haven't published any income management data since its March edition - meant to be updated 3rd Thursday of each month data.gov.au/data/dataset...

Amazon paid The New York Times $20 million+ to license their content for AI

Frontiers to retract 122 articles, links thousands in other publishers’ journals to “unethical” network