Dr Jan Bell

Women academics, this is how to acknowledge your husband in your magnum opus. Mary Douglas ‘Purity and Danger’ (classic text on the anthropology of dirt), 1966. #academicsky

Colonel Brandon has donned his flannel waistcoat. Mr Woodhouse has gleefully cancelled every engagement for the next six months. Catherine Morland is looking for a scenic ruin in which to be scared of the lightning. Fanny Price has taken no precautions because nothing could make her any wetter.

darvo (Tomorrow she will ask for sympathy bc she’s a real person and makes mistakes and now everyone is picking on her) #auspol

Pauline Hanson now says the cartoon mocking Jacqui Lambie's prolapse "wasn't as tastefully done as it could have been". Taste is about execution. There is no tasteful way to mock a veteran's service injury.

With the world slipping towards conflict, it is scandalous that these lowly tradesmen are attempting to ban such hastiludes as jousting. They’ll be trying to prevent our young men from improving their archery next. What of Agincourt?

Thanks to Kon Samaras for writing this ... I can feel his searing hot anger in every word. johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10...

I'm old enough to remember when Pauline Hanson was so offended at being lampooned by drag artist 'Pauline Pantsdown' that she took her application for an injunction against PP all the way to the High Court. Seems the admonishment to 'have a laugh' only goes one way.

People should remember this one for if one nation gets into office and tries to cape like they're protecting cis women by cutting support to trans women or banning us from normal women's spaces. This really goes quite far beyond even regular anti-feminist territory: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...

Thread.

1. he’s so open about it this term! so basically republicans have had to move to “this is good, actually”, can’t deny it’s happening 2. it hits different, even for republicans, when everything is so damn expensive trump grifting billions stops feeling like owning the libs and more like owning you

related

To support One Nation, you don’t just have to be racist, you have to be generally devoid of decency

There are real concerns about the rollout of Thriving Kids program and how it’s being handled by states and territories across the country. Last week, I asked the Minister for Disability and the NDIS about progress in Victoria, and how the federal government will oversee it.

"The chilling lesson of the Starlink episode for those who depend on US hardware or software is that the US always retains an off switch. In other words, Britain and the rest of Europe have to be able to defend ourselves" Have you taken that lesson, @albomp.bsky.social ? #EndAUKUS #auspol

Israeli soldier names what Australian PM @albomp.bsky.social, FM @senatorwong.bsky.social & DM Richard Marles refuse to #EndImpunity #EndGenocide #EndOccupation #EndApartheid

Sending love, respect and kind thoughts to @jacquilambie.bsky.social today. (In case you missed it: Pauline Hanson's One Nation has published an utterly vile, cruel cartoon about her, mocking her health situation. I haven't watched it.) 💐 🙏 #auspol

Colonisation mindset: destroy all other cultures

This should set off a siren in every defence ministry in Europe: there needs to be much more urgency about developing autonomous capabilities, not subject to US caprices, for early warning of attacks, countering ballistic missiles, communicating with forces or controlling offensive weapons.

has to be at least a 50/50 chance Starlink gets seized in 2029, and probably the rest of it broken up

Last weekend a First Nations woman in custody in Queensland was shackled to a hospital bed as she gave birth prematurely by caesarean. Medical staff tried and failed to have the chains removed. The brutality is cruel and unnecessary.

broken Britain

who could have possibly predicted this

I assumed overwhelmingly most of the posts I saw about it was just a joke.

Jennifer Lawrence on Gaza says she is terrified from the Israeli genocide in Gaza: "I’m terrified… What’s happening is no less than a genocide and it’s unacceptable. When you ignore what’s happening on one side of the world, it won’t be long until it’s on your side as well."

You may have missed it as the media was silent, but late yesterday the Labor-dominated committee looking into Lidia Thorpe’s bill to ban strip searches of children delivered its final report. The answer to overwhelming evidence of harm? Nothing that would stop a single search.

I barked when I got to this one in the book. The way his shoe and his glasses fly off....

Today marks 28 years since Matthew Shepard died, beaten to death for daring to be out in 1998. In 2021, his mother Judy testified for my bill to ban the anti-LGBTQ panic defense here in Virginia so people kill or assault us for simply existing. I’m grateful for her work and the advocates who helped.

Any version of Imperial Rome not *absolutely covered* in Graffiti is bullshit. Rich people would pay poor folks to put messages up on random walls, to sway public opinion. Advertisements too. The most accurate scene in Gladiator is one they cut - Maximus doing an Olive Oil brand endorsement.

I think we've learned, by now, that "obscene" here means "acknowledging queerness", because queerness and queer people are judged to be intrinsically obscene in this worldview. I wonder why all modern autocratic ideologies seem so united on this.

I know it has been said before, but I am reading @karenhao.bsky.social’s Empire of AI based on @tressiemcphd.bsky.social list, and I am at the part where we find out the the movie “Her” and creating an assistant was a massive inspiration. The idea that someone yearns for an assistant. A female one.

Ukraine just did more to clean up American elections than Congress has done in twenty years.

"She exudes a dark and nasty aura." I had no idea we were awarding writers -- a famously sunny and warm group -- based on how they smile. Faulkner skipped everywhere he went, giggling all the way.

Also, @news.abc.net.au, aren't we all a bit over the genre of "cafe owner whinges"? That's not news. That's all they ever do. No one is forcing them to run a cafe.

“The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage.” No words. I am speechless. This violates all ethical boundaries.

AHHHHHHH THE ONLY REASON HE EVEN STAYS TO DIE AT TROY IN THE ILIAD IS TO AVENGE PATROCLUS. IT'S A POEM ABOUT HIS RAGE. THE OPENING LINES ARE PRETTY CLEAR WHY CAN'T A SINGLE DEFENDER OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION READ A SINGLE THING FROM THE WESTERN CANON AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Turns out the friction of having to learn photoshop was a crucial firewall protecting society from the terrible taste of small business owners

As a young girl, my grandmother had a medical emergency on a train. Diverted, she just happened to be recovering in the nearest hospital in Owensboro, Kentucky when the last public execution in US history took place. She didn't attend, but the experience disturbed her for the rest of her days

This may seem like a petty grudge match, these sanctions on the International Criminal Court on using US banking, technology, and currency resources… … but they absolutely are not. Buckle in for why we should all be concerned 🧵

This is shameful. The controversial Guinea-Bissau truck RFKJr wants to fund has been given ahead. Now a life saving vaccine will be deliberately withheld from newborns in a country where hep B is endemic

To recap: Drag Shows ❌ Miss Rachel ❌ Books ❌ Public executions ✅

NEWS! “Live-streaming a public execution is probably a bit much,” Taliban tells America newsthump.com/2026/10/09/l...