Throwback to something worth repeating.

Over centuries, artists and censors have employed the humble fig leaf to cover the penis – including on Michelangelo’s ‘unmistakably male’ David. Read more: theconversation.com/the-pen...

this weekend i visited a beloved local cafe/record store and they had a bathroom labeled "Gay Bathroom". when we complimented the sign the barista said sometimes shitty people ask if there's a different bathroom they can use, so they have a second one in the other room labeled "Super Gay Bathroom"

Fellow writers: I am deeply saddened to share that if we want the rewards of having written, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of writing

Why continue to make art? Making art is an act of rebellion. Loving yourself is an act of rebellion. Loving other people is an act of rebellion. Caring about people, community, nature, is an act of rebellion. Don’t let the apathy sink in. Don’t let the cynicism sink in. Don’t be like them.

Another totally messed-up act in colonial Australia. First Nations peoples disregarded and sidelined, again. Wongari (dingoes) murdered. Shame on all responsible. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

I'm just so fucking angry right now. About the fires. About the heatwave. About the wars. I vote. I go to protests. I boycott. I reduce, reuse, mend, recycle. I pay my taxes. I set aside a portion of my income for charities. None of this is enough. None of this is working. Fucking hell.

Israel killed three journalists, including a CBS News contributor, the latest attacks in Gaza despite a U.S.-backed ceasefire that began in October. Israel has killed about 220 journalists in Gaza since October 2023, according to Reporters Without Borders. https://wapo.st/4r5ZmRr

But Toad did not answer. He had fallen asleep.

Tiny? The world's 15th largest economy? I come from a country whose entire population is one third the size of Melbourne alone. I understand needing perspective but Australia is not tiny by any metric.

Today is one of those days where I’m struck anew by how *bad* the internet has gotten. It’s almost unusable. Clouds, apps, advertising — nothing is where it should be and it’s nigh impossible sometimes to do basic tasks online.

Love this from Guillermo del Toro

OMG 😭 Huntington's is an inherited disease that's like Alzheimers + Parkinson's all in one. NOW: "once the gene therapy has been delivered into the brain... [it] injects a piece of DNA to reprogram the neuron to become a factory for its own cure." LIFE SAVING! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEx...

Remember how appalled we all were in 2022 when Russia completely unprovoked attacked Ukraine? That is what we’re doing tonight with Venezuela. We are the bad guys here. Everyone who supports this is supporting unprovoked murder. Fuck every last one of them

help I've watched this 24,688 times and it doesn't stop being funny

If any single techbro pushing genAI had 1% of the incredible artists (incl writers, film-makers, game devs, etc) in their life that I do, they'd never ever put their talents and energy towards making machines that steal from them to spit out soulless garbage facsimiles of creativity.

Ancient thinkers struggled to tell facts from falsehoods just like we do – and their strategies are still relevant today.

The Onion, non-stop winning

Despite frequent remonstrations from digital archivists, Persephone never accepted that she could not photocopy a whole book in one go.

I just think farming social media engagement by pumping out videos of animals, who broadly are harmed by the environmental impact of AI, absolutely sucks ass, and is a stain on the soul. Literally sit around in a park for an hour, you'll see an animal doing something cute.

I keep saying this! We're in a blip.

Amazing fine art photography book on Kickstarter by my friend Alexia Sinclair. A decade of work shot around the world in one book. She's incredible. Check it out. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ale...

Searching for a new litterbox and dying laughing at this cat who looks like a toilet astronaut.

I don't know if we can claw our way out of this. theconversation.com/how-the-inte...

A great piece about the weird place games still occupy in modern culture! I've had people who play games tell me they think 'gamer' is a dirty word, while others don't recognise that relaxing with a game after work is no that different to watching telly on the sofa. observer.co.uk/the-critics/...

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

The cats are adorable and the art is great but I will never understand "Soviet as a kitsch aesthetic" because of all the crimes against humanity that regime perpetrated for decades

Now "browsing" means Netflix compiles your recent watch history and feeds you more of the exact same thing. Or Amazon analyzes your buy history and gives you a list of 15 books with basically the same title. You rarely stumble upon something new or different by chance. It's eroding our curiosity.

One thing I love about writing regular SFF book reviews is it forces me to delve into the wealth and variety of audacious fiction being published right now. Every month I find dozens of fascinating, unique titles and try to read as many as I can. I wish it were way easier to broaden your horizons.

Melbourne’s rail network will feel the improvements immediately, but experience from Sydney and elsewhere shows changes in travel behaviour will take time. 👉 Read the full story: theconversation.com/austral...

If writing is so easy why do people argue that they can’t do it without the pablumatic verbiage extruder And if it’s so difficult then why do people think it’s not labour and writers are not workers

At the same time Australia has inked a deal with the US on critical minerals, it’s proposing cuts to facilities that underpin clean energy ambitions.

Even some hardcore cat people I know didn't get 100% on this quiz! theconversation.com/do-you-speak...

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

Change one letter, ruin a candy. Starwurst

Please check your kids’ Halloween candy carefully this year. I bit into a chocolate bar and found Microsoft Teams.

Pride is not the only emotion that you're allowed to have about your history. There are many others that can and do apply. It should not be a failing or a threat to your sense of self to acknowledge those other emotions. To speak them aloud as you watch history unfold.

A man was arrested for playing Darth Vader's theme music, "The Imperial March," behind National Guard troops walking through Logan Circle. Now the ACLU is suing on his behalf. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

The thing that makes Star Trek utopian isn’t the end of scarcity or the harmony between all peoples it’s also that the guy on the ship who gets laid the most plays the trombone at work and periodically does community theater

With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.

we broke the embargo

you don't understand. as someone who isn't inherently good at art, stealing paintings from the museum is the *only* way i'm able to express myself creatively. i wouldn't be able to paint beautiful portraits. but by breaking into a museum and stealing the paintings, now i am

I would laugh if this wasn't so true 😭

Today’s Comic: The Inevitability of Enshittification…

at this point we can just substitute “startup” with “some stupid shit no one asked for” no one wants any of this, it’s just rich dudes figuring out how to get money from wealthy dudes

One of the questions is why we allow private corporations to fill the sky with junk?

Have you heard that Reflect Orbital want to launch mirrored satellites to beam sunlight down to Earth? 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠 theconversation.com/a-us-startup...

Do we really want 250,000 mirrored satellites in Low Earth Orbit? Hasn't the Starlink megaconstellation already done enough damage? 🧪 @mjibrown.bsky.social

Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried. 👉 theconversation.com/a-us-st...