Worth noting today that none of these people have suffered any kind of inconvenience let alone punishment for their role in the fatal #RoboDebt scheme… #NACC #Auspol
I believe in evidence based policy. I work on websites for local government. I sew, 🪡 🧵 and despite being a lifelong Melbournian, I don’t wear black. My curiosity is my superpower. 🇦🇺 🦘 Living on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung of the Kulin Nation
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Worth noting today that none of these people have suffered any kind of inconvenience let alone punishment for their role in the fatal #RoboDebt scheme… #NACC #Auspol
We have not yet seen justice. And while there is no justice there can be no real healing. Robodebt is about more than just a set incident in time - it’s about a cruel ideological approach to governance we must all play a part in resisting. And in the meantime: solidarity
Absolutely disgusting.
enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits
These days we scoff and shake our heads at the irresponsibility of putting radioactive materials in consumer products as a gimmick, and the naivety of those who rushed to purchase. I can only hope that future generations will have the same reaction to our current Data Fairy hypefest
*Agrees in Australian*. We just had nazis rally in our capital cities. The participants didn’t call it that, but if nazi are at your rally, it’s a nazi rally. The nazis dressed in all black. Everyone else was wrapped in the flag.
If you add -ai to the end of your google search terms, it gives you the results without the ai summary.
I hate this so much too!
beautiful
Today’s outcome is a relief, but there was little justice in the eight year persecution of Richard Boyle, a hero who everyone (including the judge) accepted was motivated by public interest. #auspol
BREAKING: Hero whistleblower Richard Boyle walks FREE! After 7 years of hell for exposing ATO's brutal debt collection, he's received a good behaviour bond. Justice at last! But this travesty shows we urgently need whistleblower law reform & compensation for what he's endured
Australia post has suspended mail too
A new study suggests the impact of long covid is similar to a stroke or Parkinson’s theconversation.com/long-covid-i...
Totally filled with joy!
“Immunologists tell me that the average person’s immune system looks different than it did in 2019. That we’re walking around with more inflammation, and with immune systems that don’t work quite as well as they did in the beforetimes (on average).” #COVID
Funny and true and well worth a watch, not just because it features friend of the @theshot.net.au @purplepingers.bsky.social! www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9k-...
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.
Healthcare workers should wear N95 masks as routinely as they wash their hands. HEPA air filtration and high air exchange rates should be standard in all health care settings. This is not in any medical school at the moment, just as handwashing was not in any medical schools in 1850.
All of Hobb’s characters are so well fleshed out!
Probably should’ve posted the Ai statement separately - not sure how it displays with the rest. It’s not so different from what I originally posted, but prefer people get the final version. Have at it & hope it’s useful to you in your classes. All on my site here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...
Why scientists are rethinking the immune effects of SARS-CoV-2. www.bmj.com/content/390/...
Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
It is precisely as we have always said. This moment, a long time in the works (with many failed attempts) will likely succeed under Labor which created the scheme.
Every Australian should understand what was done to innocent people by our repulsive former federal government
Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It’s time to lift living standards for all www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
May you all find the guts to do what you wanna do, expectations be damned. Be this little girl sometimes people.
One quarter of Israelis protested.
💯%!
i have taken the epstein files that were in the DOJ and which you were probably saving for justice forgive me, they were incriminating so detailed and so bold
Gold Star ⭐️ for excellent poetry!
Not just the Brits, but us Aussies as well and I suspect our close relatives the Kiwis. Pot plant literally means plants in a pot here. 🪴Not the other kind 😆
Stealing from artists is a bad read. By @sophtree.bsky.social & me.
This should get WIDE circulation: MIT stating that it “has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper.” gizmodo.com/mit-backs-aw...
I really dislike how much I’m being encouraged to use AI. I think it has its place, but we shouldn’t be using it casually, for everything.
Should you find yourself the only masked person at work or in a store, please, do not despair, instead just think back to kindergarten and your teacher asking “if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” and know that at least you can honestly say: no.
Same
Thank you @newsweek.com & Alyce Collins for your honest coverage about COVID. So few outlets do this. “Various studies have drawn links betw. COVID & brain bleeds… People w/ COVID who have an ischemic stroke may be more likely to suffer bleeding in their brain & worse outcomes during treatment.”
Vale David Stratton
Vale, David Stratton and thank you🙏
I made a cutting table for sewing with two ikea kitchen cabinets (lowers) and a door for the top, and it’s 14 years old and awesome!
Want to see billboards in every major city that just say 'Power Bill Too High? Thank "Generative AI"' and then a link to a website all about "AI" and data center energy and water use
I’ve been meaning to look into this. (Reposting for myself as a reminder).
💯🎯👇 @senatorwong.bsky.social @albomp.bsky.social
“The Arts degree … is the degree of choice, typically, for poor people, indigenous people, women.” The Coalition's Job-ready program made Arts much more expensive and drove people away from tertiary education. So, why is Labor refusing to dump it? satpa.pe/wGpnGu7
CO2 monitors have become popular tools people can use to estimate their indoor air quality. A new study was recently published that looks into how we can use them to optimise occupancy thresholds and identify problem locations. Actual practical science!!! A thread
Derrick Kardos died of complications of #LongCovid on July 18th. Let his words sink in.
most people want a quick and simple answer to why AI systems encode/exacerbate societal and historical bias/injustice and due to the reductive but common thinking of "bias in, bias out," the obvious culprit often is training data but this is not entirely true 1/
Treatments and improved vaccines are in development. Protect yourself before then. “A group of scientists, primarily from South Korean universities, has confirmed the efficacy of an oral anti-viral treatment…against COVID-19 after a clinical trial.” #COVIDGoodNews www.upi.com/Health_News/...
"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."
Women: I just wish I could leave the house without fearing for my life Men: if women don't give me sex I get very angry!!!!! Journalists: here's 10,000 words on the male loneliness crisis
The sense that women have excessive moral obligations to men—to care for their feelings, to defer to their interests—but can legitimately make only minor claims in such care from others is central to how misogyny actually perpetrates itself as an ideology.
🚿 🚿
“I only use ChatGPT to—“ Silence. All use is unethical. It’s trained on stolen works and ruining the environment.
The Shrinking Trump psychologists are all over his cognitive decline youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Done.
The devastating environmental impact of the AI data centre goldrush, comprehensively outlined by the Financial Times. ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent... #DigitalEthics #DataCentres #AIEthics
So everyone behaves as if Covid is over, and people no longer bother getting vaccinated. Vaccination avoidance is much more prevalent in general. It’s really sad. The anti-vaxers are everywhere.
Melbournians did it tough for the greater good, in and out of lockdowns to achieve Covid zero. But we still had arseholes! And when they eventually lifted all mitigations (after many were vaccinated) the needle swung in the other direction. No one wants anything that reminds them of the hardship.
I live in a city that did the polar opposite- Melbourne, Australia, we had some of the longest lockdowns in the world. We had fantastic leadership both medical and political (our State Premier). It made a difference.
My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.
Post your Lock Screen 😊
Love watching Aaron Chen - currently watching him on “Guy Mont Spelling Bee”. Haven’t seen Josh on anything recently, but this would be a cracking show!
chng.it/RzhnjRYwsF
Vitamin D deficiency increases risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation. "As the latest wave of COVID-19 shows no signs of abating, University of South Australia experts say it’s not just booster shots that could offer protection – healthy levels of vitamin D may also play a role."
Big trigger warning, especially (but not limited to) the end of the first season.
There has been a lot written about the Jamie Fraser character in the ‘Outlander’ series and the direction, which was definitely catering to the female gaze - as were the massive books which served as source material.
I love your books! Are you currently writing another? (I suspect it would be hard with everything going on in the world).
New COVID-19 vaccine candidate shows strong protection against multiple variants "A promising new COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by researchers at the Centenary Institute and the University of Sydney has shown strong potential to protect against both current and emerging coronavirus variants"
This whole "Let's use computers to do everything badly in the most expensive and unethical possible way" thing is really testing me.
"You could just give it some problem and it would just figure it out" is the ai equivalent of "now draw the rest of the owl."
A simple intervention that could have significant impact and costs nothing… www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
🇩🇰 Denmark just flipped the script on AI deepfakes:under a bold new law citizens now own the copyright to their own face, voice, and body That means no more fake videos or cloned voices without consent—and platforms that don’t remove them can face serious penalties www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
I’m sure it is incredibly frustrating to not have that option.
So grateful to live in Australia with preferential voting where it is easier to vote your values, and indicate your own (individual) flow of preferences. If your preferred party doesn’t get enough votes, you can make that vote flow to the next least-worst party (and so on).
this is interesting and balanced research and it confirms my priors so i'm sharing it (h/t @jenvalentino.bsky.social) but also it makes sense — LLMs speed up the typing part, which often feels like the bulk of the job, but is actually dwarfed by the thinking part. and these things don't think good
Want to reduce your risk of heart disease? Avoiding COVID could play a bigger role than you think. Even a “mild” infection can strain your cardiovascular system—raising your risk for serious complications over time. Your heart health matters. Protect it. Read more: whn.global/want-to-redu...
Great 7 minute listen highlighting some common myths regarding COVID from a physician following the science. Appreciate especially how she points out that COVID is not just a risk for “the vulnerable.”
“Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or something idk
Who is really in charge?! The evil leading the clueless around.
Things are worse for people at the bottom, than they have ever been since the Great Depression.
Several advocacy groups have proven that there are no rental properties in the entire country that someone on a minimum wage could rent. What this looks like is people having to share housing or be homeless. We are an incredibly urban population, and rents in the country are not much cheaper.
I would absolutely agree that you need a much higher minimum wage there. I guess, as someone who is privileged to be comfortably housed, I wanted to acknowledge that we are letting our relatively equal society slide away.
Minimum wage is now $24.95 AUD per hour in 🇦🇺🦘🐨. (Real estate (including rent) is still nuts, so many are struggling with cost of living in spite of this). www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wage...
Station to station: first look at the Metro Tunnel set to revolutionise Melbourne travel
Disgusted by this behaviour at the NDIA. Thanks again to Rick Morton’s journalism for investigating powerful government agencies, who are screwing over vulnerable people.
Here's the key chart from the referenced study on office trends in in Australia - a really dramatic shift in hours spent in the office from pre to "post-COVID" (they define as "after November 2021") . A greater change than I imagined (from my WFH bunker). Ofc COVID waves are continuing ...
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is a national treasure. It gets the best price from US pharmaceutical corps, protecting us from exorbitant prices that US citizens pay. Congrats to PM Albanese for consistently defending the PBS from Big Pharma. Read: australiainstitute.org.au/post/our-pbs...
#Covid #LongCovidKids www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06...
Remembering this great tweet on the Summer Solstice
Australia: Improve your indoor air quality at home this winter (poster) "This poster provides information and tips to help you improve your indoor air quality at home during winter." Publication date: 19 June 2025 Source: www.health.gov.au/resources/pu...
This is great news! I played plenty of girls and then mixed netball in my youth.
Not only can working from home make you happier, for many disabled people it allows them to remain in the workforce It gives them autonomy & independence. Flexibility to attend doctors appointments and care for their health It’s a crucial accommodation, and removing it will harm disabled lives
Long COVID is Now the Number One Chronic Illness in Children. "So many children are getting Long COVID because COVID causes Long COVID, and children are not “immune” to COVID, they are not becoming healthier with each infection, and the adults around them are doing nothing to mitigate the virus."
Some good news! Don’t give up. Keep protecting yourself & others. #CovidIsntOver “This discovery marks a significant advancement in the quest 4 durable & broadly effective antiviral therapies, offering hope for treatments that can keep pace w/ viral evolution.” www.news-medical.net/news/2025061...