the best time to spot platypus is when I am not there 😢

one of the silver linings of having to spend most of the day inside to keep an eye on the recovering dog is having a chance to read Esther Anatolitis’ ‘When Australia became a republic’ from cover to cover. Such smart, compelling writing.

my grandmother had two babies that didn’t survive infancy but sure, Rob, kids never got sick in the mid century

have come, somewhat unexpectedly, to the inner north. I’ve been to Readings and “Safeway”, muscle memory is now demanding I eat a two kilo plate of pasta at Ti Amo

earlier I learned that A and her friends refer to someone not responding to them during a conversation as “being left on heard“

love to be at my desk late enough to get real time early morning emails from the UK

took the small dog to the vet for ACL surgery today and he was so sad and scared… don’t like it :(

Sometimes I get so tired I have a little cry. This is my secret power move, tired crying

I found out at the weekend that my godmother‘s father, who we spent quite a bit of time with during our childhoods, thought that my sister and I choosing to study Arts degrees constituted “laziness”, and that we would never get jobs post-university.

I’m chatting to Darryl Jones (author of (Be)Wilder: Journeys in Nature) and Steve Wilson (Endangered: the Javan Rhino Story) about their books at Eltham Bookshop on Wednesday - come along if you’re in the area and you’d like to check it out. Tickets here: elthambookshop.com.au/c/our-author...

I found a spot I’ve never been to before (had to jump a fence but it was worth it)

i’m the joke understander come to me for all of your joke understanding needs

I get a lot of static from people in my life for not resting enough but last night I lay on the couch watched a movie for three hours and now my neck is ruined so maybe I was right all along

feeling attacked by the part of my brain that thought watching the 38 minute video about a disastrous date was a good idea

people don’t talk enough about how vital it is to eat weetbix when they reach precisely the right consistency - not before and not after

I think sometimes of a public art exhibition I went past this year of an artist’s collection of found photos. Each photo was of someone with their hand in front of their face, wishing to not be photographed. Blown up to huge size by a stranger, shown in public. We’ve become so uncaring of consent.

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

our little dog has made a full body commitment to the family’s embrace of soccer by tearing his ACL right in half

I just want to drink my coffee in peace, without Nick Cave in my face

are the vibes bad or am I just incredibly tired

one of the most putrid uses of AI is making celebrities into the people some of their fans apparently wish they could be. HOT TIP: if Paul McCartney is visiting Elton John in hospital with a guitar, the photos won’t be turning up exclusively on a site called “gamblenowdupes dot com”

Fairhaven yesterday

I am in a coastal town for a few hours, drinking a good coffee and wishing I could stay longer

Happy butterfly season to all who celebrate. If you’re in Melbourne good news - the caper whites have arrived!

this is less than idea

I used *so many* of these in our weird fact check in this morning

imagine if your only understanding of fish came from pictures that were face-on

I am not a twitcher and I am not sure I’d even consider myself a birdwatcher in the way that I understand the term. But as @seandooley.bsky.social notes in this piece, birds are magical a way that is for everyone www.theguardian.com/environment/...

When I turned 30 I had not yet written my first published book or my first published novel and did not know (or know of) some of the most important people in my life. I didn't know how much my life could still change, and did, after the age of 30. There is so much your life still yet to live.

introducing the kid to Charmed and apparently some one was too cheap to pay for the licensing to get ‘How soon is now?’ on streaming

Judas can be unlocked for thirty pieces of silver

I’m gonna say something controversial: I actually don’t think chickpea anxiety is real

someone just told me they thought they knew me from TV but it turns out they just know me from Teams meetings

who wants to guess the consequence of working in the car while a passenger on the road between Eltham and Healesville 🤢

it’s my birthday today and @harrysaddler.bsky.social surprised me by organising a heap of my friends to pitch in and gift me this absolutely gorgeous landscape of Koroitj (Tower Hill) by south west artist Rachel Peters which I completely adore and have been coveting since first I saw it

new episodes of Alice in Borderland!

it’s Harry’s favourite time of the year (Respectfully Fighting About Birds On The Internet Month)

it’s definitely how the Dr Bronners copy guy wrote their website

the unmitigated horror of opening Teams and seeing FIVE SEPARATE people all writing a message to you at the same time

So this guy says one way to stop doomscrolling is to choose to do something creative when we feel the urge to reach for our feeds or whatever. I just spent four hours doing creative things, and I even got a blog out of it. I feel satisfaction and mild enthusiasm instead of the usual despair. Yay!

I don’t lean hard on the unfriend button but reposting B@rnie F!nn into my timeline is an automatic block

rotten night’s sleep with a looped nightmare that I was trying to park cars in a muddy paddock and they kept slipping into each other and getting damaged. Then someone came and started parking cars in a way that made it impossible for me to finish the job and when I asked them to stop, wouldn’t

if you want to have a wild ride through a corporate history, I can recommend the Dr Bronner’s website

I’ve done it you guys: I’ve aged into the bracket where my name could conceivably be Helen

classic “I’ll just tidy up a bit” turning into “holy crap I am running late” morning

there’s something so rank about the way people (Klein in this instance) divorce ”holding a position” for electoral purposes from the *consequences* of that position for everyone else.

Friends, are the present-cupboard-y amongst you thinking about Xmas presents? Ahem! These books are the antidote to hard-sell celebrity & useless 'wellness' marketing, big lies & frightful dullness. I promise you fun as well as updated, evidence-based, independent honesty. Local bookshops & online.

I know we keep focusing on Colbert and Kimmel as we should, but we also need to remember there are hundreds of people who work for these shows who also just lost their jobs because of this bullshit, and most of them are probably not millionaires.

what inference should one draw from the fact that the former exercise yard of Old Melbourne Gaol is now an “alumni courtyard“ for RMIT

maybe if we let Zenitsu go in a plane he will stop barking at them @harrysaddler.bsky.social