I haven’t actually watched Anthony Albanese’s stupid ‘address to the nation’ but what annoys me is that he’s cloaking himself in the threadbare pomp and ceremony of ‘an address to the nation’ like he thinks he’s fucking Winston Churchill or something yet by all accounts I’ve read, the speech […]

RE: https://mastodon.art/@mobydick/116331881443977340 Don’t go to see as a Captain Cook

It is so awkward on 1 April to be editing the kinds of online citations for which your style requires you to note access dates because now, anyone who looks at the citation and sees “1 April” as the access date will automatically mistrust the accuracy of the source because it looks like an […]

#duolingo is such a strange palimpsestic app On one hand it presents itself as linear, gamifying itself to incentivise you to move along paths and through league tables But they are constantly shifting the syllabus and moving you around according to the 'new' version They always change the […]

I always feel a bit exasperated by "Webster's Dictionary defines…" kind of citations See also: when someone cites page 1 of a source

It angers and disgusts me that I found the tag /?utm_source=chatgpt[dot]com at the end of a URL cited by one of my editing clients but when I mildly suggested to this client that some of the referencing problems I've encountered with their work seem like potential AI hallucinations, they said […]

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@k3ym0/116161635202253362 Oof, why is anyone PAYING to use AI?? Paying money to dull their brain’s own creative and analytical capacities? Paying to increase pollution and cause water shortages in their own cities and towns, and to drive up housing costs, because […]

Terrible night’s sleep (2:06am–6:16am) because the fucking cat spewed somewhere in my room at 5:45am and I found myself lying awake fretfully rehearsing how I planned to respond to the vet’s email from yesterday so I figured that I was not going to go back to sleep and I should just turn my […]

RE: https://aus.social/@fergusryan/116144270285460107 lmao eshay idnapkay otplay

The only bit of the Winter Olympics I have watched is the figure skating. I have Stan which enables me to watch every session of every event on demand, so I worked my way through the teams event and then the ice dancing, the men’s singles, pairs and finally women’s singles I literally haven’t […]

Every time I get an email that someone has subscribed to my Substack I feel so embarrassed and want to apologise to them

That horrendous moment when you’re drinking from a straw in public and you’re reached the end of your ability to drink silently so you have to decide: are you going to 1) make loud gross slurping noises; 2) sacrifice that last little bit of the drink; 3) try to finish it without the straw?

Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US Department of War https://michaelwest.com.au/australias-anti-protest-force-for-us-department-of-war/ #auspol

Feeling grumpy and depressed by the thought of all the work that awaits me tomorrow, the day I have told myself I have to sit back down at my desk This is such a terrible feeling. As a freelancer I always felt a bit sorry for wage slaves who had the ‘Sunday scaries’ at the end of a weekend […]

RE: https://thepit.social/@peter/115824339431975101 Don’t use food delivery apps

Just walked past a mirror and felt a stab of despair that this is what I look like that I have to go through the world having people look at THAT GROSS THING and call it me and I can’t escape being THAT GROSS THING no matter what clothes I wear, or how hard I dress it with hair, makeup, etc […]

I was reading this op-ed, which vigorously condemns bad-faith attempts to blame the global protest movement against lsraeI's genocide of PaIestinians for the antisemitic Bondi Beach massacre last Sunday https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bondi-beach-antisemitism-israel/ Anyway, the […]

God, I have got my own Christmassy #StupidCatSong ‘Carol of the Grahams’ in my head Soft puffy Graham Miaows all the time He wants his food He thinks it’s good Sits on my desk Only to ask For venison He carries on He does a dance Bats at my plants Sits by my […] [Original post on aus.social]

I recently learned that 'The Rosie Project' author Graeme Simsion and his wife, psychiatrist and fellow author Anne Buist, host a strictly invite-only annual party at their mansion for Melbourne authors (no plus-ones, I guess except if they are also invited authors?) at this cocktail soirée, 7 […]

I’ve decided to start texting or messaging someone whenever I think fondly of them. No obligation to have a drawn-out conversation or to organise a get-together, but I want people to know they’re still in my life by being in my thoughts, even if we haven’t seen each other in ages I have various […]

RE: https://aus.social/@jessta/115629945769612373 I hate that I previously criticised the cops' repressive crackdown on public protest via "Designated Areas" by saying that if they actually wanted to achieve their stated aim of tackling violent youth crime, they'd concentrate their efforts at […]

A terrible bind that #adhd puts me in is that I forget large chunks of my daily activity if I don't document it as lists and logs, so I create these incredibly granular documents to capture it but I also forget to update the lists and logs, and then I get completely daunted by the prospect of […]

Maybe 15–20 years ago when I favoured an 'indie retro' fashion aesthetic that I referred to as 'Jaunty Pussy', I accumulated a huge wardrobe of brightly coloured cardigans in light, thin fabrics I am the sort of person who, when I find a style of clothing I like, will go back and buy the same […]

Workshopping a new #stupidcatsong based on 'Wicked', the award-winning musical about my cat #Grahamstodon… Something has changed within me Something is not the same I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game Too late for second breakfast Too late for a dawn-feed leap It's time […]

RE: https://wandering.shop/@silverspookgames/115611715485903283 I hate to observe this, but there was a Black Mirror episode along these lines. A primary-school teacher diagnosed with brain cancer gets a lifesaving cloud-based brain backup but can’t afford the company’s constant tiered price […]

Yesterday on my neighbourhood walk I sweated so much that when I got home, I pushed my fringe back off my face with a headband It dried that way and so I have decided to reveal my Forbidden Forehead today The proportions of my face look so wrong to me My glasses all look terrible as I chose […]

This should have been a bigger news story. More media consolidation in Australia, with Seven looking to buy radio station operator Southern Cross Austereo. SCA owns Triple M, Fox FM Melbourne, and 2Day FM Sydney. https://mumbrella.com.au/sca-and-seven-west-media-to-merge-892811 #auspol #ausmedia

I was looking up the meaning of the #brazilian #portuguese idiom “mas que nada”, as heard in the #sergiomendes song In the song, the context is like “whatever! Get out of my way, let me pass, because the samba is animated; what I want is to dance the samba” I found this informative link about […]

I told myself that today I would sit down at my desk and do some proper work to make up for not having done any work on Friday or Saturday Instead I loafed about on the couch reading a trashy Cold War spy novel, wasting time on social media and trying to groom matted bits out of #Grahamstodon’s […]

Voting is open for #fatbearweek2025! https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

Today, we’re ready to show you the upcoming quote posts feature in more detail. We’ve put together a blog post with examples of how quote posts will work on Mastodon, ahead of early access on our own servers next week 💬 Full launch to come, in Mastodon v4.5 […]

I'm obsessed with the cats who live in and around my apartment complex and whom I only glimpse Moonlight (black with dash of white on chest) lives across the hall from me and loves to strut about outside. Is the neighbourhood darling, often patted & photographed by studenty types on the street […]

Eughhhhh do not recommend wearing a button-through dress on a day of gorging oneself at dumplings

I fucken swear to fucken god, one of these days I’m gonna fucken trip over that fucken cat while holding a cup of fucken hot tea, and I’ll either scald the fucken cat or I’ll fucken scald myself

I wish I could figure out what makes me look at a picture of someone and go “wow, what a cool outfit” and apply it to myself so my own outfits don’t look either boring and normie or fussy and tryhard I read and think so much about this, and have watched so many […] [Original post on aus.social]

I’ve had a temperature tracking device in my living room for three years, since 2 August 2022, when I first participated in the ‘Winter Renters’ citizen science research project run by the lobby group Australian Renters to demonstrate the conditions renters […] [Original post on aus.social]

Oh my god, feeling like I'm falling apart today I wasted yesterday hanging out with my friend Karen and viewing wattle as it is #wattleseason then I had to work into the night to make up for the lost time. Went to bed at like 3:30am #grahamstodon lay on me while I was in bed and I somehow […]

This is so ridiculous but I am convinced that my neighbour's little black cat Moonlight doesn't like me, which feels like a blow to my self-esteem Moonlight used to appear to like me: she could sometimes be found sitting on my front doormat, she seemed to like being patted, and when she heard […]

Yeah, Mary, wise up gurl.

Well, I had a day off today and now I’m behind on my work and will have to work long and miserable hours to catch up I should have just worked all day

Stressed out of my mind, like my teeth are aching from the clenching I’ve been doing, and I go to Don Tojo for ‘meal’ I am standing there waiting for my meal, finding it soothing in a sensory way to twist my whole torso idly back and forth ‘How You Like That’ by Blackpink is blasting over the […]

I’ve got to keep reminding myself: I am the only one who cares about “what it means” Literally NOBODY else cares about the meanings and implications of things It is a WASTE of my time and of my brain’s analytic power to think hard about things like history, and context, and semantics I need […]

I’ve got to let go of the socials Put the phone down Mel I blame the ABC Classic #Classic100 which is like Christmas in June for me as I listen to no other radio station and have pathetic parasocial relationships with the various presenters Also I have been […] [Original post on aus.social]

I was just struggling through a seriously incompetent #italian conversation in #duolingo and I realised one key marker of language competency is your ability to guess a word you don’t know based on what you do know, so even if you get the word wrong, it still gets your basic meaning across […]

It bums me out to consider how much semantics matters to me. I strongly believe that words have specific meanings; they carry weight and nuance; they contain whole histories and worlds And we have invented metaphors as ways to make big, unwieldy abstract ideas feel familiar and concrete but […]

Random throwaway line in the Wikipedia article on the Judaeo-Spanish language: “In the Middle Ages, the word Latin was frequently used to mean simply 'language', particularly one understood: a latiner or latimer meant a translator.” It’s from the Anglo-Norman ‘latinier’, which reflects that […]

When I’m reading a historical novel and a character says, “I’m done” in the sense of “I have come to dislike this situation so I am removing myself from it,” or “We’re done” in the sense of “our relationship has ended; I no longer want to be with you” it always reads as incongruously modern and […]

Get ready for another episode of Taxonomy with Mel! I just learned there is a crustacean called a Balmain bug which is not just a different name for the Moreton Bay bug (Thenus orientalis) of my own acquaintance, but a whole other species (Ibacus peronii) Both are members of the family broadly […]

Duolingo is cheating me! I nail the triple points challenge and it’s like “bitch come back tomorrow” No, excuse me!! This has pissed me off, or as I was just learning to say, “ça m’a mis en colère”

Fkn hell, I am so sick of hearing the dreaded sound of my cat spewing on a new patch of carpet to the ones he has previously despoiled