1/ My first graphic novel ’YOU MUST TAKE PART IN REVOLUTION‘ is coming home Australia! Aussie book tour starts in August. Come and join us for discussion on global totalitarian futures, and the costs of resistance particularly in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US .

UniSuper having it's logo on the side of a building in Melbourne's CBD doesn't strike me as the best allocation of academics' retirement funds.

Growers urged to prepare as Australia's 'free' pollination service disappears www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2...

Beekeepers urge growers to add pollination services to their business plan

Experts warn that free pollination from wild bee populations is disappearing as varroa mite spreads further north in Queensland.

abc.net.au

All this ACS logo #ChemChat has me grateful for the Royal Australian Chemical Institute's iconic three-boomerang-all-seeing-eye-flask. Long may it gaze upon us.

I saw it and so now you have to too. #ChemChat

Kiwis showing up we Aussies, again. I've heard far too many times Australian officials saying it can't be done/it's all too hard.

Andrew Digby@digs.bsky.social · 7d ago

With highly-pathogenic avian influenza now in NZ, we're taking steps to protect #kakapo and #takahe by vaccinating against the disease, following a successful trial. We're aiming for ~90 kākāpō and 100 takahē in an initial phase to protect the most valuable birds/sites. #conservation #birds

🧵 Snopes pored over hundreds of pages of documents to confirm that Anthropic bought millions of books in bulk and destructively scanned them to train its AI model.

Off to Melbourne today to see a medical specialist for treatment that isn't available in Tasmania (not life threatening). I'm very fortunate to have the means to cover the cost, but clearly other Tasmanian's can't. Tell me again how much we need that stadium?

Political spinner @theageaustralia.bsky.social

I have, with my own eyes, watched my tax dollars in the form of missiles as they hit buildings inhabited by civilians. I'd much prefer subsidizing a grocery story I don't use.

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

I am delighted and incredibly grateful to share that I have been awarded a NHMRC Emerging Leadership (EL1) Investigator Grant!

🧵

Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 4d ago

I have started running Claude alongside the book I am writing on ants, as well as just letting Google Gemini do its thing at the top when I do Google search. It is not doing any writing I am using, and I am always checking the results against primary sources.

Some comments on this are WILD (about Wild!). "The AI tools are good and mostly right, so you should use them" is nuts. If, like Alex you are writing science, mostly right is the same as completely fucking useless. If mostly right is good enough...you are not doing something important.

Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 4d ago

The short version is: after a month the AI has not given me any good reasons to trust it, and I am honestly freaked out by the confidence with which it weaves completely wrong facts into prose, and the confidence with which it writes and professionally formats entire sections of bullshit.

The Spiderman end credit "scene" wasn't worth it. I knew it when the cinema put the lights on as soon as the credits started.

James Miller@16bitirl.bsky.social · 4d ago

Movie theater innovations.

#BigBucky has come out from hibernation again for today’s #MonashOpenDay. #BraggYourPattern

ICYMI- yesterday's cartoon for @australia.theguardian.com

Were you charged or convicted under Tasmania’s former laws against homosexuality and against cross dressing? You may be eligible for financial redress of between $15,000 to $75,000. Find out more at www.ehos.tas.gov.au or by calling 1300 156 545.

Reading is groovy. Here's part three of my library 'READ' poster series.

To be clear, I was sharing it because it’s dumb

This is despicable. As I saw @patrickgaley.bsky.social say on LinkedIn: "The burnings of the Library of Alexandria destroyed an estimated 400,000 written texts. Anthropic has destroyed 2 million books this year alone." novaramedia.com/2026/07/29/a...

AI Firms Are Buying up Old Books, Then Scanning and Destroying Them

The world’s biggest AI companies are buying antiquarian books en masse so they can be scanned to train their large language models (LLMs) before being destroyed.

novaramedia.com

A call to arms song to start your day.

Pearl Jam - Seven O'Clock (Official Visualizer)

YouTube video by PearljamVEVO

youtube.com

#chemsky #chemjobs #chemchat

Dr Rosalyn Falconer@rosalynfalconer.bsky.social · 6d ago

The University of Auckland School of Chemical Sciences is hiring a Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry. Please share with your networks, especially to promising early career or postdoctoral researchers. Applications close 22 August. tinyurl.com/MedChemUoA

Just think if they went after Epstein criminals who raped children like they are going after Dr. Fauci.

"Every planetary scientist worth their sodium chloride wants a Uranus-Neptune mission" www.abc.net.au/news/science...

Neptune's moon system is bizarre. JWST data helps explain why

Neptune's strange moon and ring system has puzzled astronomers for decades, but data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might help explain how it formed.

abc.net.au

Someone is selling a Waitangi Proof crown, graded as PR64 (a very high grade), on eBay. Only 1,128 were minted. Yours for 'only' $14,750. ebay.io/m/CUKAaZ

'Anthropic described the project as “our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books” in an internal memo, which noted “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project”.'

Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele@drdragases.bsky.social · last wk.

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

its maddening to be told for decades that we cant have green energy until its profitable and then watch us burn trillions so people can make videos of homer simpson doing the harlem shake