Saw Obsession today, loved it. Strikes me we really seem to be in a moment where utter obliteration of the face is the most horrific move in film, and that seems very interesting to me culturally... Like, is it an identity thing? Total destruction of the self? Or is it just the tech is here?

Whenever I see a house with a Bromley, I'm like, "ah, this person wants you to know they can afford original art, AND they like boobs"

Bit of a call out: did you buy, or do you know who anyone who bought, a Nightingale home? Drop me a DM!

gambling ad: will u ruin your life in six months? here are the odds, would u like to bet on it

I think if you're going to describe any policy position as "populist" in a news, analysis or commentary, you should be forced to define why. And yes, I think that's fine for anti-immigration position. It's clarifying, because being anti-immigration isn't backed by data. Wealth taxes largely are.

Monopoly: The 90s Australian Edition

i'm really enjoying some of the new era of SNL skits, but it's made me go back and watch some of my old favourites, and i gotta say: Liza Minnelli tries to turn off a lamp is still god-tier to me, still my utter favourite. So I wrote about it open.substack.com/pub/heterose...

Cartoon by @smoothdunk2.bsky.social

Here, have some unseasonal magpie discourse

Here, have some unseasonal magpie discourse

What percentage of Facebook now is AI-generated replies on AI-generated paid ads, do you think? 80%? 90%?

A reasonable argument for Airbnbs, even in a rental crisis, is that many short-stays are second or holiday homes in seasonal locations -- they were never going to be for rent. A new report from AHURI found frequently available whole property Airbnbs in *Hobart* outnumbered rental vacancies 36 to 1.

Nice work from my old colleagues at @aunz.theconversation.com looking at alleged insider trading on Trump Truth Social posts stories.theconversation.com/the-market-m...

I spent the weekend catching up on so much drawing, reading, seeing and listening to new music, and just generally doing a mix of offline things that were both necessary and also just enjoyable. Also deleted TikTok for the first time in a while. Feel a lot better for it than most weekends.

Flea's jazz album, Honora, is really quite good and properly weird too. Given Andre 3000's 7 Piano Sketches was also in my top ten (maybe five?) albums last year, I'm very here for this weird late career trend of successful pop artists making great jazz/modern composition records.

Dear neighbours: I have set your homes on fire and blocked the road from the fire brigade. I get it. That's annoying. Now we all need to get out there and show the city we're all good neighbours and care about keeping this suburb from burning down. We owe it to ourselves.

I attended a very odd auction on Saturday. There were two separate winners. The agent called it "one of the strangest situations that I’ve experienced in 23 years". Have a read about how it all shook out.

I am intrigued by the concept that a candidate of a party enmeshed with a dynastic mining billionaire, whose leader's only apparent solution is cutting immigration, is anti-establishment. This is the sad bedrock of our culture and politics. Do we ever try to define "establishment" or only "anti"?

Brace yourselves: the median Melbourne house value 20 years ago was just under $356,000. Guess how many houses are at or below that now... What does it say about the concept of "affordability" when wages are up 79% and property prices are up 167% over that period?

One thing I love about being a cyclist is even if it's a miserably cold wet day, your hands are seizing up and you're wet through, when you encounter a major problem you generally find camaraderie with your fellow riders and band together, rather than getting cranky at the people around you

I wonder if thinking about LLMs as capable of intelligence is a misnomer, not in a derogatory sense (though feel free), but because what they do is more like what moss or maybe a bacteria colony does: spread outward based on finding the best probable edge/answer and seeking reward/avoiding negatives

I wonder if thinking about LLMs as capable of intelligence is a misnomer, not in a derogatory sense (though feel free), but because what they do is more like what moss or maybe a bacteria colony does: spread outward based on finding the best probable edge/answer and seeking reward/avoiding negatives

Dear [NAME], I hope this email finds you caught beneath a landslide, in a champagne supernova, in the sky.

Dear [NAME], I hope this email finds you caught beneath a landslide, in a champagne supernova, in the sky.

When I take my small child on a little adventure

Shout out to @crikey.com.au for this deeply unsettling Albo composite in today's newsletter, it's very funny

A lot of us love watching people build or renovate their dream and "forever" homes on reality shows... But what does a Grand Designs home being up for sale two months after going to air tell us about how professional you have to be to pull off a tv-ready reno?

A lot of us love watching people build or renovate their dream and "forever" homes on reality shows... But what does a Grand Designs home being up for sale two months after going to air tell us about how professional you have to be to pull off a tv-ready reno?

Nine Inch Noize is great. I wish we got some Fragile cuts getting this treatment, but I understand why we didn't.

the best dinosaur is clearly Iguanodon, because of all the dinosaurs it most resembled a middle-aged Sicilian-American dock-worker with a switchblade

It doesn't pay, but I do miss the cartooning life. The material these days *long drag of cigarette* madone

Someone once replied to a story of mine at The Age with, inexplicably, "Go to Axminster, Devon". And I don't know why, but I think about that more often than you'd probably imagine.

Okay but the funniest thing here, aside from the US doing a Tudors speedrun apparently, is that the Pope *actually* won in a landslide, given he needs a super majority to get the big white puff

The problem with the NDIS - and there is a problem - is the same one Australia always faces. If you let small businesses exploit the public purse, they'll exploit it mercilessly (remember pink batts or any one of a 100 such programs). The key is in the system design, not the auditing of it.

Whatever else The Drama gets wrong, it's interesting that US reviewers/viewers see the idea of a school shooting as a third rail of discourse about depressed teenagers. You have guns readily accessible and you have teenagers, it's almost inevitable bullied teens realise they can shoot people.

I fear 2/3 of the @slate.com Political Gabfest not understanding and bailing on the Secret Agent may make me not trust their views on anything ever again, and there have been a lot of red flags I've let fly

Head for the hills/beaches/plains! There are a number of affordable regional towns with good employment, connections and investment returns that could be our sensible housing future as we continue to see ballooning capital prices, even in high interest periods. www.theage.com.au/property/new...

The secret to the energy transition might not be the altruistic good of getting your energy without hurting the environment... But how much cash you can hack away from your provider. Suburban solar dads swapping tips and tricks are leading a consumer movement to go green.

The secret to the energy transition might not be the altruistic good of getting your energy without hurting the environment... But how much cash you can hack away from your provider. Suburban solar dads swapping tips and tricks are leading a consumer movement to go green.

Look, I'm not a prescriptivist, but this war has driven me up the wall for the use of "decimated". "Devastated" is right there, you war-mongering, economy destroying buffoon. You can't decimate a bridge. Taking 10% off a bridge makes it not a bridge.

There's a big "citation needed" on this one from my old work. Love their stuff as a rule, but I never hear the end of people saying how much of what is labelled vegan leather isn't sustainable. We rarely talk about the origins of widely used animal leathers theconversation.com/vegan-leathe...

Pretty persistently frustrating that enviro opposition to data centres get clumsily dismissed as "NIMBY" when, as you can see here, it's well-evidenced and packed to the brim with real-world examples of material harm. And GP goes further than most in pointing out the end-goals of the system:

The Gas industry now saying a 25% export tax would "stop investment in new gas supply, leading to gas shortfalls" Bullshit. Utter bullshit. 83% of Australia's gas is exported. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE

The RBA will be hoping a rate hike will help cool inflation, but people are already factoring in cost-of-living pressures (at least those they can control). Offset account balances were at record highs, and excess mortgage repayments at their highest rate since 2021, in the December quarter.

Jonah Peretti stop consistently being the biggest disappointment in new media for almost a decade challenge (level impossible)

The Chalamet ballet/opera discourse lasting this long when it's such an obvious case of wilfull misunderstanding for an invitation to comment is, along with the Jim Carrey nonsense, both depressing and maybe an indication everyone is burnt out on arguing about real things.

You turn up at an auction. Bids go above the price guide, but it still passes in. A day or so later, you see it relisted for private sale at a higher price than the guide. New data shows almost 40% of properties that are passed in and relisted are listed at a higher price than the guide.

Auction clearance rates usually bounce back in February after winding down in December... But they're below the seasonal average. Interest rates, affordability and, soon, fears and flows on from global conflict could set the tone for the property market this year.

Angus Taylor is either a successful businessman who wants to bring that expertise to government (without a lot of documentary evidence), or, on the evidence available, a guy who came from money, with a lot of money and a few unsuccessful businesses (?) www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...