Popping in to commend to you this thoroughly interesting read: rimonhadassah.substack.com/p/whos-afrai...

Who's Afraid of Looms?

I'm doing transfeminist readings of obscure Doctor Who expanded universe novels now.

rimonhadassah.substack.com

The cruel punchline. Australia's usual solution: go and die somewhere else.

Deadline arrives for homeless to leave campsite

People living at a homeless hotspot in Wagga were given until today to move on, but some say they still have nowhere to go.

abc.net.au

Kate Orman@kateorman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Sometimes I think that Australia, for all our posturing about family, doesn't actually give a fuck about children. The tragedy at Wagga Wagga, where an Indigenous newborn died in a homeless tent, bears that out, as does the below. This is how we manage stray cats, ffs -- women pick up the slack.

The dogpile is increasingly distressing. Too many times, *I've* been the fan whose unwise words have loosed the dogs. *I've* been the person about whom it is permissible to say anything you like. In the dogpile, you show everyone your ugliest face. Blocking isn't helping. Time for a Bluesky break.

When the guvmint brought in a law forcing ISPs to retain a record of what Web sites we visit, I installed a VPN, purely to give them the finger. Recently I've been using NordVPN. Now that I've switched it off, my laptop has stopped constantly crashing. 🤦‍♀️

Another day, another YouTuber unsubscribed from for pimping AI *if there was a middle finger emoji it would be here*

No national ban on "conversion therapy", no protection for intersex kids against unnecessary surgery, amongst other failures.

Human Rights Concerns Raised After Australia Rejects UN LGBTQIA+ Recommendations

Human rights advocates have expressed disappointment after the Government declined any recommendations relating to LGBTIQ+ Australians

starobserver.com.au

Time is a funny thing. I read a little about the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians of their lands by English settlers. Apparently the last incident in the frontier wars, a massacre of 31 Aboriginal people, took place in 1928, the year my maternal grandmother turned 21.

It's Disability Pride Month? yay *falls over*

Alice Averlong 🏳️‍⚧️@alice.averlong.com · last mo.

We all like to joke about July being "Gay Wrath Month" but it's actually Disability Pride Month, so have the Disability Pride Flag from VGAPride and my AST Premmia LX MS-DOS machine

I'm intrigued by the idea that women's categories were added to sports not to encourage women to participate, but to avoid any risk of men sometimes being beaten by women.

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · last mo.

I do not understand the "fairness in sports" thing, in part because it isn't a thing, but also "fair to who" is always the question. People who are taller have an advantage in basketball. Does that mean we ban tall people? Why would THAT be fair?

Just saw someone use a metaphor to make a point, and someone else contest the metaphor instead of the point, and now I'm going crazy trying to remember a quote like "all right, so most metaphors don't stand up to close examination". The Young Ones? TNG?

As a target for bullies, whose big mouth has sometimes outraged people, I want to post a word of caution. When you react with shock, hurt, anger -- those are natural human feelings. When you egg each other on, sitting in judgement on the worth of someone you know nothing about -- -- I see you.

Start of day: depressed, no idea for novel End of day: energised, quite a good idea for novel Yay for coffee and Jon for letting me bruise his ears with my rambling thought 😁

BREAKING: Pride Month Extended Indefinitely

I'm hijacking Ian's post to show you the state I was in when I wrote most of my Doctor Who novels.

Ian Greaves@greavesian.bsky.social · last mo.

Going off grid for a month to get something quite difficult written. DM only if urgent. Find me on WhatsApp if your life depends on it. Take care. x

What I'm enjoying are landscapes of my childhood -- all those long driving holidays on dodgy, narrow country roads, past reflector posts and yellow fields.

Kate Orman@kateorman.bsky.social · last mo.

Watching Mad Max (1979). It would suck being Mrs Max, waiting to get fridged or have a line of dialogue, whichever comes first.

Watching Mad Max (1979). It would suck being Mrs Max, waiting to get fridged or have a line of dialogue, whichever comes first.

Dr West described a rash guess as "temerarious"! What a word! "Marked by temerity"!

"... the text presents so many oddities that the reader is reduced to the conclusion that the writer was simply baffled by much of the text which he was supposed to be translating." -- Classical scholar Stephanie West, in 1969, about Richard Reitzenstein's 1923 translation of the legend of Tefnut

EOFY looms and the charity begging emails are coming thick and fast

Thanks, God

I thought this was funny for one and a half seconds.

Katie Drummond@katie-drummond.bsky.social · last mo.

NEW: Meta paid hundreds of contractors to pretend they were kids—and then prompt rival chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT to talk about subjects like suicide, sex, eating disorders, and self-harm. From @dmehro.bsky.social and @joelkhalili.bsky.social

Oh good heavens!

Big Finish Insider@bigfinish.bsky.social · last mo.

The Big Finish team were deeply saddened and shocked to learn of the passing of our friend and colleague, Justin Richards, who died peacefully at the weekend. Our sincere condolences go out to his family and friends. A full tribute will follow.

A strange cosmic power has descended upon me. I can reorder the videos in a YouTube playlist on my phone.

Well -- thank you very much, Penelope. 💐

Stuart Douglas@stuartdouglas.com · last mo.

RIP Penelope Keith. One of the truly great comic performers.

The History of the World Part I (1981) is more silly than funny, but very likeable. The effects shots are incredible! The whole experience is rather like watching an old-fashioned adventure movie with a teenager who keeps cracking dirty jokes.

This is so well-put! I thought of our ancestors, the weak little monkeys who had to work together or die, had to understand each others' minds and hearts. Cooperation was a virtue, cheating was a profound crime. I think they'd recognise these "no empathy!" individuals as the cheats they are.

CZEdwards@czedwards.bsky.social · last mo.

Books are bottled empathy. They’re telepathy in physical form. Fiction makes us better people because it gives us a safe place to experience and learn to care through the most complex pain. Remember: fascists have designated empathy a sin & moral failing. They don’t want you caring for anyone.

I'm starting to feel sorry for all those poor women whose self-introductions everyone skips as they Jump To Recipe. "Hi! I'm -- oh well, enjoy the soup."

"Intelligent Design"

Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli@banditelli.org · last mo.

US Fish and Wildlife made an instructional video on horseshoe crab flipping and this looks like the most fun thing ever???? As a "don't feed the birds at parks" guy my minds blown that it's helpful to run around beaches physically moving giant arcane crabs. medium.com/usfws/helpin...

Can you guys believe we are now 2/3 of the way through the submission window for @scyllapublishing.bsky.social's The Monstrous and the Divine? Neither can we! If you've been keeping track of what we have so far and what we still want, look no further because the next round up is right over here:

The Divine Blog - Second Month Roundup — Scylla

Hear from Nicole Field about the subs we’ve seen for The Monstrous & The Divine in our second month, and what we’re still hungry to see in our last month of submissions!

scyllapublishing.com

lol, Colin sleeps in his clothes so that when he becomes Omega's slave, he's not wandering around in his undies