If I was designing a tomato paste squeezy bottle, I would simply make it so the lid closed the moment you squeezed it

Wow www.instagram.com/p/DZDnqVkKyY...

The next national cultural policy must put artistic freedom before ‘social cohesion’ www.artshub.com.au/news/opinion...

Exciting news! @aunz.theconversation.com is hiring a new Deputy Arts Editor! This is a part time role with a primary focus on our reviews coverage, working under me. Please get in touch with any questions! jobs.theconversation.com/jobs/5385996...

"How come you didn't do your homework?" "I was reading and I just got swept away" What can I say, the kid knows how to work me

"By Creative Australia’s founding act, the arts minister cannot directly intervene in individual funding decisions or defund specific creators. Instead, the department is examining how the minister can issue broader policy expectations." Jesus.

HOW GOOD was it? I nearly lost my mind at getting to see them again after 25 years.

the band that got me through being 17 with the guy I met just before I turned 18 😭

We made it! End of the week stress-baking a birthday cake to cap it all off, now to collapse

Just overheard this guy at the supermarket: "We gave birth. It was a home birth and it was lovely, really peaceful." Yeah for you I bet it was

The previously used, washed, but still slightly greasy ziplock bag theory of fiction?

I cannot tell you how much this marketing fills me with rage.

The Shopping Bag Theory of Fiction, The Placky Bag Theory of Fiction, The Reused and Slightly Disintegrating Bread Bag Theory of Fiction....

"For awhile I was walking through the world almost skinless" —Lauren Groff on her publishing debut, in Always Take Notes

Quietly getting through work by stacking all the Budos Band albums back to back today ➰ highly recommend if, like me, your work/write/think playlist has to be instrumental-only

Reading Muriel Rukeyser (from her 1968 collection). Almost 60 years ago, could have been written this morning.

RF Kuang's Katabasis making me think of the art world for no particular reason at all

"In a market flooded with design templates and AI-generated imagery, the painted cover stands out as distinctly human."

Oh Mr Frumble!

Deeply disrespectful to the entire Australian cultural sector that the Office of the Arts can't be bothered actually reading all the submissions people are working very hard on for the National Cultural Policy, and instead will be asking genAI for a summary. www.arts.gov.au/have-your-sa...

Due TOMORROW!

when you have to buy a birthday present but the rule is one for them one for me

I'm sorry but the fact that some Sydney Writer's Festival sessions are $45 is just wild Last time I went, there was no view of the stage and the moderator talked more than the author and I just looked at the back of people's heads thinking this could be a podcast

Eric Thake, The bushranger (1957) & Adam Norton, Venetian robot (2026)

Beauty in the everyday – 'The Great Piece of Turf' (Albertina) painted in watercolour and gouache in 1503 by Albrecht Dürer, who was born on this day (21 May) in Nuremberg in 1471 🗃️

Little interview ahead of this cracking exhibition 〰️

Nice to see Little World on the shortlist for the Miles Franklin, my review here for Adroit 〰️

The fact that UTS is even considering defunding 2SER-FM, & contemplating its demise, looks even more absurd when you read about community radio's massive benefits. theconversation.com/community-ra...

How to author bio right 101

Cracking interview with legendary editor Hilary McPhee about how OzLit – and the role of editors – has changed over the years (I can't even imagine being edited over the phone or, gasp, in person)

Regular reminder that this is how you say The Discourse

small joys 🍁

Agreed

This list feels like it was made in the early 2000s but ok fine, 54

Just arrived! Diving in and the first story is titled Helen Garner is Living in My Letterbox, because of course 🧡

Leonora Carrington in her studio Kati Horna huxleyparlour.com/artists/kati...

Sometimes self care is finally going to the doctor about your 6wk sinus infection and then making yourself a cheese toastie 🧀🐀

@kiklodge.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social with her third prize winning stunner “The interviewer has just clicked his pen and sniffed and is probably going to write Loser on his form” 🔥🔥🔥https://gooseberry-pie.com/how-edison-got-to-be-edison/

from ACMA

That's a new one. A sub from 2024 marked "sorry we give up"

Choose your fighter

"Almost two years later, the final hearing of the case is due to begin on May 18, two months before Gillham brings a new, independently produced tour to Australia this July, alongside Jordanian Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer."

"On Christmas Eve, I picked up a book called The Butter Did It, the first in a series called Mashed Potato Mysteries. I fell asleep when I got to the part where a rich woman fell down her marble stairs..." @ivygrimes.bsky.social offers a treat today, hilarious and horrid, just how we like it! 🍊🥃👇

now crossing the event horizon (getting the ugg boots out of the cupboard)

"The most pressing issue about AI’s impact on work…is the widening gap in skills, autonomy and wellbeing between those who get to work with AI and those who are finding themselves managed by it…That matters because work is not just about income. It is also about dignity, trust and control."

And yet working in the arts has the opposite effect

A non-exhaustive list of adjectives that do not tie women's creativity and cultural influence to male ejaculation pioneering trailblazing groundbreaking innovative inventive unique idiosyncratic original significant avant garde trendsetting influential And. So. On. Thank. You.

uh oh it happened again, sound the Feminist Icon Described as Seminal alarm

tl;dr writing is thinking, no write = no struggle = no think

New kind of phone but no one can call you on it and it only contains your favorite thing to read. Also it’s made out of paper.