Brass gong with wooden striker (State Library of Victoria) Every day from the 1850s to the mid-1990s a librarian at Melbourne's State Library of Victoria would circle the reading room, striking this brass gong to mark closing time. In the 1990s the gong was replaced by a pre-recorded announcement.

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/ha...

A petition in support of the State Library of Victoria, currently facing significant cuts: c.org/Ny9tCp8jRM

Huge news!

Slop Evader is a tool from artist and researcher Tega Brain that lets you search the web for results exclusively before November 30, 2022—the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

INSANE LIFE CHEATCODE: choose to be miserable and then play the victim about it

The Contemplative Muncher

The State Library of Victoria’s ‘major’ proposed cuts include slashing the number of reference librarians and free computers for public access. Some staff are shocked.

The temperature should always be between 12 and 28 degrees xoxo

Do you ever start thinking about all the times in your life people have shown you kindness and start (happily) crying?

Scandal after scandal at the #StateLibrary of Victoria. Exhibitions interfered with & cancelled by people who've never worked at a library, museum, or institution with public requirements, hired without scrutiny. Contempt for staff knowledge. Researchers discouraged from expert staff consultation.

stealing and enshittifying human knowledge, attacking social connection, giving money to purveyors of slop for testing their black box bullshit machines, trashing the planet. www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

The settler colonial logic of elimination quietly carries on in the background as usual

One of the problems after two years of labelling all criticisms of a genocide as "antisemitic" is that now when you try to call out actual state-enacted antisemitism, many people will not believe you - or care

Is there an ALP-academic history-industrial complex?

Every "population crisis" article in western media is just "WHERE ARE THE WHITE BABIES" in disguise and we absolutely do not have to give any credence to any of them

This is such a hack answer, but reading Infinite Jest really exploded my understanding of and empathy around the issues of depression and addiction! It legitimately made me a better person!

This is true, but why think so small? Democrats are ripe to start organising heavily armed insurrectionary cells.

The first Midnight Oil album just sounds like angry Skyhooks

Some of you may be interested in this symposium on 'truth-telling' (in its many guises) being held at the University of Melbourne this week. Students and mob can attend for free, Unimelb staff get a 20% discount, and unwaged scholars get a 75% discount. I will be there for some of Friday's sessions!

It's increasingly astounding to me that normal American citizens haven't just started popping ICE agents in the street

He was a vain, dishonest fool, too sexist and racist even for the likes of E.O. Wilson. Like many 'great' 20th-century scientists, his credulous and craven colleagues repeatedly forgave him for his shitty personality and vile opinions, all because he was associated with a much overblown 'discovery'.

OVER A MILLION USERS DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT EVERY *WEEK* what the fuck are we DOING here

"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk

Dingoes ARE NOT domestic dogs, multiple lines of evidence demonstrate this. Dingoes ARE NOT ideal pets, they require extensive and special care. Dingoes ARE very important to First Nations peoples, and Australia's ecosystems. This proposed change is a very bad idea www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

I need to get woker

Probably because the ban has absolutely nothing to do with child safety whatsoever, it is about limiting and controlling access to information for young people, as well as slowly forcing everyone to adopt a digital ID. The whole thing is an absurd farce that’s going to fail in spectacular fashion.

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

😎😎😎😎 GOOD THINGS CAN STILL HAPPEN 😎😎😎😎

Today is full of genuinely good news???

Dick Cheney passing on the same day as a Muslim socialist wins NYC is definitely evidence of a higher power.

Is High Street, Northcote, painfully white? Well, that all depends on if you count the deliver riders

Have any historians watched The Idea of Australia on SBS yet? Any hot takes? Anyone think they might have a review up their sleeve? 👀 www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-...

A plausible theory for the muted media/public reception to this historic legislation on the latest episode of Lamestream here: open.spotify.com/episode/6BdW...

Would love to read some opinion/analysis on the passing of the Victorian Treaty - feels like a huge historic moment that's passing by without much public discussion

City of Glass - Paul Auster. As brilliant as all the hype around Auster would suggest - a beautiful balance between hard-boiled noir and meta-fictional mind-games, only tipping a little too far towards the latter right at the end. Prose as limpid as the titular glass.

Odd One Out - Monica McInerney. A sweet and at times genuinely funny love letter to Melbourne. Is this what they used to call 'chick lit'? It was a little strange, however, to read a deeply Australian novel where all the characters talk like Irish people.

The Swoop! - P.G. Wodehouse. Not a patch on the best Jeeves/Wooster novels but an entertaining little parody of invasion literature nonetheless. Some of the pop culture references were, of course, impenetrable, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

Do you think I could be a noir protagonist? I'm good at being nosy and getting my ass kicked at least

The true spirit of the season is that today is the 25th anniversary of Stankonia youtu.be/lVehcuJXe6I?...

Quite into Hot Priests* using their hotness and pastoral authority to fight evil and preach love * I know he’s a pastor, not a priest. Hot Priests is a category.

"If you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?" Billie Eilish speaking directly to Mark Zuckerberg, as she donates $11.5m to food poverty and climate justice organisations.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10... Top story today @abcnewsbot.bsky.social NOT the Royals. Please.

oh my god

Somebody (@jonpiccini.bsky.social) *did* commission an expert on the history of invasive species in Australia (me) to write about this! Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Greg Dening on why essays on historical method should open with a research diary – from 'Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land. Marquesas, 1774–1880' (1988)

Australian colleagues have been exploring the redirection of British slave-owners capital from the Caribbean into the colonisation of Australia. As Britons ended slavery they intensified the destruction of Indigenous societies. Latest addition from Zoe Laidlaw: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....