Great quote in the Musk/Open AI legal feud: ”We are about to witness the landing of the Hindenburg on the deck of the Titanic; we know it’s going to be crazy and nasty.”

Holy cow! More than 10,000 PhDs in science have left the field since Trump took office – that’s 14% of American STEM PhDs in one year! www.science.org/content/arti...

Louise Adler: “Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us …AWW is the canary in the coalmine. Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week | Louise Adler

Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation

theguardian.com

Did you know Australia quietly built one of the earliest digital computers ever? Meet CSIRAC, a 2.5-tonne vacuum-tube behemoth that went live on this day 76 years ago. Dive into its forgotten story. 🔗 bit.ly/48jgawN #ComputingHistory #Australia #TechHeritage

The Trailblazing First Generation Computer the World Forgot

At the dawn of the computer age, Australians developed a 2.5 tonne behemoth named CSIRAC — now recognised as one of the grandfathers of…

bit.ly

What happens when you refuse to accept the status quo? Happy 158th birthday to Marie Curie: the first person ever to win 2 Nobel Prizes, who discovered radium & polonium, and risked everything in the name of science. #NobelPrize #WomenInScience #ScienceHistory

Radiance: The Brilliant Career of Marie Curie

Marie Curie was an undisputed scientific giant and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. But her research also eventually claimed her…

medium.com

Remarkable scenes at the IAC 2025 press conference with 10 astronauts from around the world. The room was overwhelmed by a diverse sea of young faces who hung on almost every word. It’s the generation that will live and work in space, and they can’t wait. #IAC2025 #space #astronauts

Delightful to catch up with Sophia Casanova, whom I profiled in a feature for Australian Geographic in 2020. She was then a UNSW PhD student on space mining. Now, she's designing missions to prospect for, and mine, water ice on the Moon at ispace Europe! Go Sophia! #IAC2025 #space is.gd/alrONt

Having a blast at my first International Astronautical Congress. Plenty of opportunity for maximum space geek out. Per passionem ad astra.

Sometimes you forget that Sydney is a very pretty city.

Just a reminder: Science save lives 😊

Interesting: “It’s no longer about left & right, it’s about online & offline. The greatest division is now between those of us who have become radicalised online …and those of us who continue to cling to the old ways of doing politics, which still prize moderation, compromise & consensus-building.”

Left or right, the real source of extremism is right in front of our faces

America’s epidemic of radicalisation and political violence should be a wake-up call for Australia to address the disastrous impact of the growing online-offline divide.

smh.com.au

You just don’t expect random philosophical questions at the supermarket.

If you're in Sydney Oct 16: Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of the first radio pulsars in 1967, will be giving the 2025 Stibbs Lecture at the University of Sydney, recalling the chain of events that led to her discovery. www.sydney.edu.au/science/news...

Stibbs Lecture

sydney.edu.au

Very sad to hear of the passing of John Manrtinus, a foreign correspondent par excellence. A lucid and impassioned journalist committed to the craft and to telling stories the world ignored. Recall fondly the many delightful conversations we had over beers in East Timor.

‘He went where others weren’t’: War correspondent John Martinkus dies

The Melbourne-born war correspondent made his name reporting on East Timor.

smh.com.au

On this day 39 years ago, I began my career as a journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald. It gave me a taste for big-city newspaper journalism, its proud traditions and odd quirks. I met outstanding colleagues and had some fabulous experiences. Thank you, @sydmorningherald.bsky.social #journalism

Here’s an idea: any company that can afford to pay a CEO more than 30 times as much as the average full-time worker, needs to pay a higher tax rate.

How much more do CEOs earn than you? Most Australians get it wrong

Asked how much top executives rake in, we are “astronomically off the mark”, a new study shows.

smh.com.au

How to protect yourself in the zombie apocalypse.

Highly-advanced stealth technology update.

Beautiful requiem to the passing of my beloved creation, COSMOS magazine, by the indomitable @jacksonwryan.com in The Monthly. It's been 20 years since its founding, but it too has surrendered to gravity. Ironically, COSMOS is outlived in the depths of space. www.themonthly.com.au/july-2025/na...

Into the void

The end of Cosmos after 20 years is a blow to Australian science journalism, at a time when we desperately need its insights to counter misinformation

themonthly.com.au

Who would have thought?

How global online scammers in Myanmar rely on Starlink for their operations. #scammers #Starlink #Musk

How Elon Musk’s Starlink enables a multibillion-dollar online scam industry

Looking across the Moei River from Thailand, you can see them on the distant Myanmar rooftops – dozens of white rectangles, arranged in clusters. They’re a warning sign for what could be lurking under...

smh.com.au

“In Trumpian circles, many people ostentatiously identify as Christians but don’t talk about Jesus very much; they have crosses on their chest but Nietzsche in their heart—or, to be more precise, a high-school sophomore’s version of Nietzsche.” David Brooks in The Atlantic.

Evolution at work.

May the fourth be with you.

Election day in Australia: hot dogs, pastry stands and local craft stalls. My ballot includes one Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister. Voting is mandatory, and ranked choice. Nice to live in a proper democracy. 🙂🗳️