Australian slur technology is the most advanced in the world
Historians wanna talk like they got something to say | NZ and Australian history, politics, trains, music, sport, higher ed | he/him | Melburnian Kiwi in Perth
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Australian slur technology is the most advanced in the world
For the real ones who remember: rich guy alert (rich with the knowledge that takahē return to Otago's Rees Valley)
🚨🚨🚨 TAKAHĒ GOOD NEWS KLAXON 🚨🚨🚨
Wow, this is so exciting. I hope they survive and thrive.
If you are seeing me now, it means a certified banger
Petitioning the Minister for Arts to demand that all my sci-fi be rail-enabled
every Kiwi reading this just heard the chorus of the same song in their heads
In 1903, the permanent way officers of the NSW Govt Railways were unhappy that "lads and others" frequently broke the cast-iron numbers on mile posts (which indicate the distance from a reference point such as a terminus or junction) by using them as "targets for pea rifles, stones &c."
Big deal! I can detect heart failure far faster than AI, as long as there is no particular requirement for being right.
Yeah it will continue to operate as per usual
Marshall Islands picks up the pieces after fire destroys its ‘heart of democracy’
I also think it wouldn't be a bad move to provide for any seat that falls vacant after the cutoff but before parliament rises to have some modicum of alternative representation, e.g. a specific minister could be designated as a parliamentary liaison for the seat as a role within their portfolio
In states with fixed election dates, it wouldn't be a bad idea to legislate some sort of cutoff for byelections prior to the general election It would provide welcome certainty and limit the contentiousness of decisions like this (or parties making them appear contentious for their own advantage)
Absolutely wild to have appointed a director who can't have access to certain board documents, must receive a separate vetted board agenda pack and can't be present for some board discussions. And his company's donation to NZ First has, apparently, nothing to do with his appointment.
August 2025. Elon is master of Twitter. Only the Bluesky fleet stands before him. Timelines are now battlefields.
Me: Maybe I should give NRL a chance NRL:
Not joking about the inevitable recanting: my Nan, who lives on the Gold Coast, is a member of clubs full of old NIMBYs who wasted much oxygen moaning about the original stage of the light rail and vowed they'd never use it. Virtually all of them now use it regularly and can't imagine life without
Amazed that I got this via almost total guesswork Birdle 🇳🇿 01/09/2025 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 birdle.nz
Who needs steel rails when you can make them with gold
It’s the bike shelter’s fault that it was in the way. How dare it impede this pensioner’s dreams of owning an aquacar
We cannot possibly punish anybody for what they do behind the wheel though! The driver’s seat is a fabulous space devoid of responsibility!
Oh this is infuriating, especially as the opposition came only from a small vocal group of idiots, at least half of whom would’ve immediately recanted the moment the line opened (as happened with earlier stages)
You can actually take trains across the Balkans?? Let's find out how
I've set up a quick spreadsheet list of the politicians who we know attended the various marches today. Only a small group so far, but a telling one. If you know of any more, feel free to let me know and I'll add them, its important we keep track of what politicians support this. #auspol
A peer and retired general got the British Government to help secure a gold mine he partly owns in West Africa. Which century is it again?
I’m not even joking that it is my favourite thing to do and the whole reason I am in this game
The adverse effect on my mental health was making me, the Dostoevsky-reading, metal and goth music-listening, trenchcoat-wearing stereotype, happy for three years
Hmm, I mainly know the Aus/NZ historiography, where war looms as an external strain on use and investment in public transport—there is sadly very little on the use of railways as "pacifying" the King Country after the end of open fighting in the NZ Wars and integrating it into the settler state
The first update to the SA party tracker has been made. The Libertarians are now a pending application, For Unley is a registered party, and the United Multicultural Alliance is now a deregistered party. #saparli #auspol anthonyhistoryrant.blogspot.com/2025/08/sout...
I would have thought that if you’re going to give an Australian example that depicts its setting well, it would either be Frontline or Utopia (the latter of which I just can’t watch, some of the characters are too familiar to real-life bores and drones)
The most runs conceded off one legitimate ball in first-class cricket is 67 in contrived circumstances. See here: www.espncricinfo.com/story/the-77...
Bob Katter is on an international study junket?
Not far off! The cumulative time in office of Bob Sr, Bob Jr, and Robbie is currently 86.91 years Since 26 Nov 1966, at least one Katter has been a member of the Qld and/or Cth parliaments except for when Bob Jr didn't recontest Flinders (Qld) to stand for and win Kennedy (Cth), 28 Aug 92–13 Mar 93
Not far off! The cumulative time in office of Bob Sr, Bob Jr, and Robbie is currently 86.91 years Since 26 Nov 1966, at least one Katter has been a member of the Qld and/or Cth parliaments except for when Bob Jr didn't recontest Flinders (Qld) to stand for and win Kennedy (Cth), 28 Aug 92–13 Mar 93
Automatic 1 star review
I have always seen the exorbitantly long US programmes as a reason (among many) to explicitly advise *against* studying there. US-trained historians seem no more skilled or sophisticated than our own, but finish later than their counterparts starting at the same time here
Moira Deeming, idiot, shrieking in parliament: a statue of Daniel Andrews is a tool of authoritarians LIKE LENIN OR MAO! Me, wise, shrieking in parliament: the threshold for a statue is 3,000 days so WHERE IS MY STATUE OF JAMES MCCULLOCH (PREMIER FOR 3,226 DAYS ACROSS 4 TERMS, 1863–77) YOU COWARDS!
Also, I've been telling myself this since about 2015... and the book I published in 2021 was not even one of which I had conceived in 2015, while a lot of other ideas just keep sitting around waiting for me to have infinite time
I keep telling myself I am not allowed to have new ideas for books because I already have enough to last a lifetime. Unfortunately, I sketched the outline of another new idea last weekend
Have a look at the other replies, turns out some institutions do it
And to me as a historian, “Blue Books” are the annual publications of statistical data that colonies in the British Empire produced for use in the Colonial Office
This one is interesting; bit of a Red Rooster line here. LAST PAST THE POST (Senate, registered parties with ATL box, ATLs only) Aus Citizens 84 (majority loserment) Soc Alliance 28 Great Australians 18 FUSION 12 Sus Aus 5 HEART 3
LAST PAST THE POST House of Reps 2025 Libertarian 25 INDs 24 Fam First 22 TOP 19 Aus Cit 17 FUSION 9 AJP 8 LCann, PHON 5 Christians, SEP, SocAll 3 HEART, GRPF 2 Green, Great Aus, Dems 1
Standing in the shower this morning I was thinking about the many restructures and redundancies I’ve seen over the course of my career in the Humanities, so I turned it into a blog post www.mikejonesonline.com/contextjunky... #humanities #universities
A thought I have every day within seconds of logging on
If students buy their own, I assume they have to be inspected individually before an exam to ensure nothing has been prewritten and no notes are being smuggled in between the pages? It seems a security risk to me…
This is the main reason I’m wary of bringing back written exams as a marker: trying to read handwriting from people who use it regularly can be tough enough; it fills me with dread thinking of how tough it could be to decipher the chicken scratch of unpracticed hands
Usually didn’t even do much study except the day before. I already had opinions from tutes and readings, time to go spout them off to my marker!
I found the trick to getting an HD on my polsci exams was simply to have a coherent intro with half decent signposting and then name two scholars or key people/orgs in each body paragraph. Never got worse than 85
There are some replies though where people are griping about having to get them from campus shops when they had their own perfectly good paper already…
Americans, am I understanding this correctly? These “blue books” that you use for uni exams are not provided to students in the examination venue, the students have to *buy* them and bring them to the exam? I never sat an exam in Australia where I had to bring my own paper!
Ask people what they remember best from the 2007 men’s CWC and most of them will recall “the fridge has opened!” when Dwayne Leverock took that stunner for Bermuda against India. Nobody cares what the final score was. Hell, I also had to double-check who Australia beat in the final
It’s so frustrating that I basically cannot travel anywhere during spring or autumn, my two favourite times to go on holiday. No I don’t want to take leave during the Australian summer, I’d rather be inside working in air con and take my leave when it cools down and is nice to be outdoors!
I dare anyone on this website who isn't actually a scholar specializing in that to name without looking up two ancient Sumerians who aren't Gilgamesh, the god-king and Ea-nasir, the bad copper merchant
Can the bores fuck off. Besides the fact that men's comps in varied codes of football (soccer, rugby, whatever) have lopsided matches, we've seen genuinely competitive games in the women's RWC and more such matches will follow
Sadly not! I’m sure they’re great names. But I tried to find the "correct" symbols for said name in high school and undergrad, but although they have cropped up often, they have happily had nothing to do with me!
Getting mad all over again remembering the older Australian academic who said that my insistence on having my name spelt correctly with an é in professional settings was "obviously pretentious"
Evergreen comment about most Perth railway stations
Good lord am I bored of HR apparently being annoyed at me for not taking leave exactly how they think I should within a calendar year
Names getting changed by lazy border officials is a 19th/20th century cliche (and less true at times than supposed); having 21st century computer systems that only accommodate 26 characters and not even diacritics or multiple naming conventions is simple incompetence
After more than a century missing off the coast of Western Australia, two famous shipwrecks have been found, revealing information about the past.
Also, what it really sounds like is that the registrars need the capacity to query changes that set off red flags rather than hard limits on normal people because "terrorism!!!!11!1" and other bad actors
Yeah, 12 months is sensible and I wouldn't oppose it being even double that tbh. I'm also glad there is at least a carveout for marriage, divorce, and DV. But a hard limit on 3 changes rather than, say, 3 in a decade? Even 3 in two decades would avoid the problem for Tamra in one of those stories
You're an invalid character but not because of how your name is spelt
Wait really? Holy shit that's nuts. Never mind anything that culture warriors might invent, what about a woman who gets divorced and remarries four times? Stuck with hubby number three's last name?
I am sure Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J are on the case though
At least the Germans *have* a solution for how to spell your name when umlauts are not supported. I wouldn't mind if it was standardised that I could be either André or, say, Andrae (also, Günther/Guenther is a great example to add to those in the article linked above)
Personally, I have little official documentation with my name spelt correctly. Govt/work systems usually have me as "Andre". Even when a system seems able to take my é, I usually type e because I can't trust that a) it will keep displaying é correctly and b) all systems it interacts with will do so
The state of things is so bad that many Australian/NZ systems (and I am sure many around the world!) cannot handle Irish names with an apostrophe like O'Brien, even though the Irish have been here since basically the beginning of British colonisation
This reminds me of the classic blog entry about falsehoods that programmers believe about names: www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/f... And this excellent follow-up with examples: shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/f...
Whenever I log on to the Twitter app I see people I wish had stuck around here... for five seconds before another fucking ad and I close it again
Plan to treat patients in the ICU won't combat all sickness, critics say
It’s been nice. Never thought I would see the place so green!
Coward, put in the effort now and you will have many rewarding decades of better typing ahead of you
My toddler must’ve turned on speech to text, but honestly a lot of posters do need to hear this.
I’m enjoying that there is some mysterious young woman the paper won’t name who apparently had enough name recognition among those surveyed to score a favourable result against Pesutto. Gee I wonder if she might be a daughter—no, let’s say niece—of a former premier of Victoria…
Skill issue. My father taught me to do so at age 9 and the Internet taught me to stop at age 16. Very easy to unlearn
I was quite amused that I saw the post below while checking my phone on the way to give the lecture depicted in this image (maybe one of my students should study the history of milkshakes and the pep thereof…)
The past really was a different country...
Hilariously I just saw this post while checking my phone on my way to give a lecture called "The past is a foreign country" (which is actually about designing a research project)
Pity the US party system will deny Newsom the joy of defecting to a minor party further to the right of his former right-wing enemies, then defecting from that too
This won't mean anything to an American audience but Gavin Newsom is giving me Mark Latham vibes (though, you wouldn't see him in dirty clothes at the PMs XI game)
Yuuup. Even for stuff I've taught for ages, there's no chance the details and nuances of the tutorial readings for each week stick perfectly in my mind, but apparently I should remember it pristine from the first time and not need to review before class each year!
If we took lectures seriously (and we should: active listening is essential in all areas of life; need I point to how often bad dates are defined by failure to listen?), we'd give lecturers prep time not just to review last year's notes or recent lit, but also to REHEARSE so it flows and fits
I make notes about what I think worked—or didn't—each year, but I get 2 hours of prep per lecture. That's only enough to review said notes and make modest updates of transcript and slides, never mind reading new lit. There's no time to rehearse. If I could rehearse, maybe I'd rush less at the end!
To pick up an aspect of this and go on a tangent: lectures would be better if workload models allowed for *rehearsal*. When students give oral presentations, they're often expected to be well rehearsed. When staff lecture on something they haven't thought about for a year? "oh you know it right?"
Australia has scored 430+ runs against South Africa twice in ODIs. The first time, Australia was famously "about 15 runs short". This time South Africa seems to have been about 15 *wickets* short
As an Essendon fan, I hate to say it but we can finalise the top 8 already (god it would be funny if we won though)
I'm too geographypilled; my first thought on reading "Jordan's in Europe" was "it's in the Middle East??"
You could also vote for the president, so long as you voted for Juvénal Habyarimana
Oh there will be an election. It might not be free and fair but it will happen; even the most obvious dictatorships usually have sham elections. To take my favourite obscure example, Rwanda in the 1970s allowed you to vote for anyone so long as it was a National Revolutionary Movement candidate
What a day of Australian footy, the best damn sport in the world
Brisbane kicking more behinds than a Spencer Tunick photograph
First quarter: Mabior Chol 3.0 (18) def. the rest of Brisbane and Hawthorn 0.11 (11)
I am an article completist and podcast occasional dabbler (which is more than I can say about most podcasts or anything else that requires me to turn off my music)
Oh my god how had I not encountered this song before, amazing
Needs a bit less Chatterton and a bit more Shutupandlistenton
Hmm, the way this is going, they might be 15 *batters* short
Think they are 15 short