Patrick Allington

A frankly trying modern literature university job for someone, being forced to live in Lausanne on a very good salary for years on end

Nobody: Universities: what if we kept trying to expand while having fewer and fewer staff

Dolly was a subversive, funny, brilliant artist. Wrote songs on violence & abortion, supported trans & drag folk, funded black kids' bands, kid literacy & vaccine research. She knew her own style, her own priorities, her own heart. A genius superhero who used her powers for good. Forever beloved.

All of the dystopic novels assured me our leaders would be more charismatic than this

The RBA says rate rises don’t really increase living costs. But the data is clear – they very much do | Greg Jericho

Geologist Reunited With Beloved Rock He Studied 20 Years Ago https://theonion.com/geologist-reunited-with-beloved-rock-he-studied-20-years-ago/

Here it is. My manifesto for the 2026 Clacton By-Election. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Join me, clean up Clacton and let's make 13th August Bin Day! #VoteBinface #VoteyMcVoteface #YesWeTinCan

I'm so disillusioned, I almost don't even care who gets the FIFA Peace Prize next year

Don't believe every housing headline. Or, as Chief Economist Greg Jericho puts it, maybe it's time to calm the farm. The latest data shows the outlook for house prices is more nuanced than the doom-and-gloom commentary suggests. Read the full analysis on The Point: https://theaus.in/4b7wym4

Shocked to discover FIFA is corrupt. www.foxsports.com.au/football/wor...

The greatest Mexico v England tweets you will ever read. 😂 As you were.

Not only did the AFR let AI invent its fictional graph, but the journo (whether or not "assisted" by AI) got the story wrong by not getting the difference between preference flows & transfers.

Probably my all-time favorite quote about editing is, some clueless individual asked Martin Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker how such a nice lady could edit such violent movies, and she replied "Marty's movies aren't violent until I edit them."

Bunnings, a giant retailer in Australia just dropped their updated privacy policy, and boy. they like collecting data: customer identity (gore PII), credit history, income details, images of you in store, online activity/habits/interests and of course, use cookies to track you across the web

"Even the most high-art novel is still a commodity to be traded for money—and literary fiction is only sacred when such business is invisible." Tom Williams on Laura B. McGrath’s “Middlemen”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/middlemen-literary-agents-american-publishing-industry-laura-mcgrath

BREAKING: The Pentagon has fired the Stars and Stripes ombudsman — the role Congress created to protect the military paper's editorial independence — after she publicly criticized the DOD's overhaul of the publication. w/ @liamjscott.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

John makes the key point about the NDIS “rorts”: the system was designed from the ground up around unaudited private provision

Vale David Malouf, a great Australian writer. My favourite Malouf books are the novel The Great World, his lectures on Australian consciousness, the short stories in Every Move You Make, & the poetry in Typewriter Music. His words will endure. #auslit textjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/2608...

Come along to the @gleebooks.bsky.social launch of @janecaro.bsky.social’s Vantage Point essay. You’ll laugh, you’ll get mad, and be reminded it was a series of choices that got our public education into this state and we can choose to correct course

Funny how the law and order guys never think it applies to them 🙄 He’s again blaming the courts, the protesters and those attacked by police all for his appalling and illegal attempts to ban dissent

Were Were those the only two options

Two things we can do to stop the next pandemic: 1️⃣ Reduce wildlife trade.* (👉 *But: criminalization drives trade underground, and we find that illegal trade accelerates spillover. We need new ideas.) 2️⃣ Ramp up disease surveillance in wildlife markets, farms, and supply chains.

I've completely lost track of what I'm supposed to be distracted from.

"You're alienating half of your audience by being political!" The half:

100 books you must read over easter

This is the most delightful thing I’ve ever read

Anyone posted this yet ... thought I'd get in early. From the always hilarious (and much missed) @kudelka.bsky.social

Just 1 example of the kind of thing unis are getting for their massive spend on consultants. ANU spent $6k on a "non-significant meeting" with a reputation management firm at which apparently no one took a note. That's more than a tutor gets for a semester's work thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...

The scale of Australian universities managerial & governance surrender/capture is ASTOUNDING "Twelve of the 14 universities had council members, who had substantive roles as consultants from firms such as Ernst & Young, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, McKinsey, and Boston Consulting Group"

I feel genuinely flabbergasted by the defiantly anti-journalistic approach of NYT Comms here. They're saying the NYT's reporting on the stance of the American Medical Association is correct, despite the American Medical Association saying their stance is different from what NYT reported.

One day it may even be able to transport passengers

Self-censorship is what we are increasingly seeing now among Australian institutions, a consequence of the relentless efforts of the pro-Israel lobby, Murdoch media and both major parties to silence any dissent to Israel's acts. In short - it's worked.

It's time for new ideas, new voices, new gatekeepers, new strategies, new incentives, new politics to support Australian culture and the arts. Submissions to the Australian Government's consultation on its new cultural policy close 24 May. #ausarts #auslit #revive www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/n...

Read the full @australiainstitute.org.au submission here: australiainstitute.org.au/report/the-a...

Remember all the talk of healthy young people dying suddenly after COVID-19 vaccination? Our new study in @plosmedicine.org shows there's absolutely nothing to that. journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Voted in the South Australian election. Always a privilege, even if I would have voted for the sausage in bread had it been on the ballot. #SAVotes

Good news! The final ENTSO-E report into the Spain blackout is out A complex stew of different factors, but "too much solar" is simply not even among them, let alone a major component. As always: the narrative built by fossil/nuke advocates was wrong www.entsoe.eu/news/2026/03...

As part of our ongoing revival plan, the inaugural Southerly Poetry Prize is now open to all Australian poets. Entries from both established and emerging writers are welcome. #southerly #auslit #poetry #poetryprize

Australian governments subsidising fossil fuel use by more than $30,000 a minute, analysis finds

Lovely.