This is an epic fail by federal and state government. Resource this properly, NOW. “Ms Howman said the clean-up by authorities had been sporadic and disorganised, with birds sometimes lying in place for days before they're cleared away.” www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Fears mass bird deaths in south-west Victoria linked to bird flu

People in the south-west Victorian town of Portland fear a deadly bird flu is to blame for hundreds of bird deaths this week, as carcasses begin to pile up.

abc.net.au

Anyway, a reminder. Fuel Tax Credits over the next 4 years will cost the Govt $47bn. The savings from the cuts to the NDIS is $38bn. Gillard in 2010: "Budgets are about choices, and you show what you value through the choices you make" Indeed.

Greg Jericho@grogsgamut.bsky.social · 2d ago

Why "social, economic and community participation" and "improved daily living skills"? Because (according the legislation) they apparently don't "affect supports that are essential to a participant’s health, safety or continuous care needs" Yep living skills are not essential to health or safety.

Do they care about school closures when they are driven by climate change or only when they can blame the teachers unions? How about when the schools are closed because they've burned down, been blown apart, or are engulfed in floods?

9 million U.S. students lost school time for weather in the 2024-2025 school year » Yale Climate Connections

Extreme heat, smoke, floods, and storms are disrupting education across the country.

yaleclimateconnections.org

Not sure why anybody in Canberra thinks they're getting those submarines.

Just Jack@jackhealy.bsky.social · 3d ago

What the actual fuck is this!!! …speechless….

#auspol This is scary damn reading. Every single one of us will get older (unless we die of something before then). Algorithms have no place in this field. None. Inside the aged care algorithm deciding support for older Australians

The aged care algorithm deciding support for older Australians

Using expert analysis, evidence revealed by bureaucrats at Senate estimates, and documents obtained under FOI, Four Corners reveals the fullest picture yet of the secretive algorithm affecting the liv...

abc.net.au

New: The authors of the age assurance tech trial report underpinning the social media ban have conceded ChatGPT was used in editing the report but denied citation errors discovered were due to AI hallucinations (w/ @nickevershed.bsky.social ) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Report supporting Australia’s teen social media ban appears to contain AI hallucinations, Senate hears

Exclusive: Guardian analysis finds one section of report includes links to academic articles that do not exist, but authors deny the references were made up by AI

theguardian.com

My final cartoon for @australia.theguardian.com 😭 (I always did cartoons for the International Guardian on Saturdays so this is a #USPol one with a bit of Leavitt-y) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

How will history remember Karoline Leavitt? | Fiona Katauskas

Depends who’s writing it

theguardian.com

Have Australian governments used the _years_ they've had to prepare for the arrival of H5N1 to do ALL that they could to protect our birds and mammals? I don't think they have. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

The two species NSW is racing to protect after fifth case of deadly virus

A Victorian little penguin has died from the disease as the CSIRO revealed how bird flu winged across the world to arrive at Australian shores.

smh.com.au

First I was banned from X/Twitter. Then Facebook banned my newsletter. Then X/Twitter banned me permanently. Now YouTube disables my channel the week of my book launch. Was it something I said? 👉 www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...

SARS-CoV-2 is an endemic virus. It keeps mutating & we keep being human. We are it's host. We move around. Gather. Don't prevent spread. Rarely boost. A small proportion get seriously sick. Some of them die. As with 200 other respiratory viruses, this one will keep spreading unless something changes

NPR@npr.org · 6d ago

Just like all previous summers since the pandemic began, COVID-19 cases are ticking up again, even while other health threats make more headlines. n.pr/45oln5k

Running dry: drought-hit UK sporting venues and parched pitches – in pictures

Running dry: drought-hit UK sporting venues and parched pitches – in pictures

With the UK experiencing the driest summer on record, we look at how the weather is affecting the pitches and courses across the country Continue reading...

dlvr.it

“If we ban sports betting, the people at those companies will lose their jobs” good

Labor needs to end special treatment on board rules & regulation, tax, public reporting, professional liability & whistleblower protections. Review all KPMG contracts & ban them from govt work. Break up & regulate Big 4, increase penalties for bad behaviour & ethical failures.

At least, Essex police have confirmed they didn’t advised any candidate to not stay away from the count: “We have a proportionate and robust policing operation to ensure the safety and security of all participants in the count.” 2/2

We need to build 100 more data centres so we can ask Co-pilot how to stop this happening

Sarah Creighton @saraita101.bsky.social · 7d ago

At what point do we take this seriously

With my colleague Roni Rabin, I dug into the evidence around Covid vaccine safety in pregnancy, and broke down a statistic about miscarriage that has been repeatedly debunked but was still widely circulated again this week.

Covid Vaccines Are Not Linked to Miscarriage. Here’s How We Know. (Gift Article)

Prominent Republicans and others have falsely claimed this week that the shots are linked, despite years of data showing they are safe.

nytimes.com

I would think that in these troubled times, we would want to at least try and future proof our housing stock. Reduce our dependence on energy, build for efficiency and longevity. Yes, by all means streamline the NCC and Australian Standards. They are bloated documents that are hard to navigate.

Purplepingers ☭@purplepingers.bsky.social · last wk.

The liberals’ response to the shitty housing standards everyone is paying exorbitant amounts of rent for: “deal with it peasants”

BREAKING: Whistleblower David McBride walks free from prison today. He told the truth about war crimes in Afghanistan. The government locked him up for it. Today, after more than two years, he's out.

I wrote about a reason not to use generative AI in your writing that I haven't seen anyone talking about. Once I realized this, banning GenAI in our lab's writing became a no-brainer. Feel free to share, I think this is probably useful especially for trainees: www.carlsonlab.bio/thoughts/the...

The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI — The Carlson Lab

Over the last year, our lab has been developing a policy on AI use. To do this, we did three main things: We read a lot of academic publications and tech news. We set up an #ai channel on our la...

carlsonlab.bio

Where are these big scary communists? Are we saying the Labor party, that works with the Coalition more often than not, are communists? What, with no respect, the fuck are these people on about

Axios writer: I melted my brain with AI. Not only can I no longer read, but I don't even understand the purpose of reading anymore. Here's how you can also do this. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

You can't predict the turns this sentence takes. Extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” where hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano-Reggiano wheels are stored as loan collateral. fortune.com/2026/08/10/i...

Italy's $4.7 billion cheese economy is feeling the heat as climate change threatens its cheese banks that hold Parmigiano wheels as loan collateral | Fortune

Extreme heat is straining the vaults that hold Parmigiano wheels as loan collateral, and economists say the damage runs wider than the vault

fortune.com

Anti-vaxxers kill people dead & deserve shame & punishment. Also the President is in full REM sleep dreaming he’s in the 1987 Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya: "We shouldn't be keeping kids out of schools because their parents have made different decisions than other parents" (Note that Trump is asleep)

Plenty of evidence that this is a negative policy step. Doctors, scientists: don’t just roll your eyes - call it out. The attack on truth, on institutional trust, is cynical and calculated. We must respond. 🧪 #medsky #episky #academicsky www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Trump signs order attempting to override CDC vaccine schedule and break up MMR shots

Order also recommends all shots be given at separate medical visits though cost of doing them together is lower

theguardian.com

"Don't stay on twitter so long you stop believing in sunscreen" sounds like an idiom people 200 years in the future will be using but won't remember what it means

‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom

‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom

Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?

theguardian.com

A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...

Hmmm. Does Prue Car know that schools in NSW are promoting the use of NSW Education’s own generative AI tool, NSWEduChat? And spending time teaching about how to use it? 🙄 Presumably she does. Maybe she could suggest a rethink there too.

The Sydney Morning Herald (unofficial)@smhaustralia.nzcow.com · 2w ago

📢 Education Minister Prue Car has written to the state’s exam authority requesting an urgent moratorium on take-home assignments due to the threat of AI.

We just got interviewed today on RNZ about the bulk buying of books for AI training. In April we got several large orders and then just last week more: 180 books in 10 orders in one day, all going to a US warehouse. It really must be another version of #ProjectPanama www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/w...

Wellington second-hand bookstore’s mysterious orders

Book Haven in Wellington's Newtown started to receive more orders than it could possibly handle.

rnz.co.nz

Ffs just when you think your level of respect for NSW premier @chrisminnsmp.bsky.social can’t drop any lower 🤦‍♀️

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au · last wk.

Kyle Sandilands's new show gets off to a 'clunky start'