Japanese Government collects more tax from Australian gas than Australian Government New Australia Institute research published today shows that the Japanese Government makes more revenue taxing its imports of Australian gas than the

Read the research 📊⤵️
australiainstitute.org.au/post/japanes...

Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration “With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, ...

"With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, nuclear-armed superintelligence seeking to annihilate the human race—which will later be revealed to be Skynet itself."

why oh why is it necessary to explain what’s bad about pushing to *replace* income tax with wealth tax, instead of y’know, expanding the tax base so everyone feels invested in society. “tax wealth NOT work” is a perversion of progressive taxation + frames tax as a penalty rather than a contribution.

Sign the petition below!
And hats off to Ed Husic for championing this.

Blockchain-Enabled Water Management and Crop Optimization in Arid Regions: A Sustainable Path to Food and Energy Security – The Australian Case - Water Resources Management This study examines the short-run effects of blockchain-enabled irrigation management in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), one of Australia’s most water-stressed agricultural regions. Although interest in digital water technologies has accelerated, empirical evidence on their real-world effectiveness remains scarce, leaving a substantial gap in the literature. To help address this gap, we implement a simulation-assisted difference-in-differences (DID) framework that integrates annual agricultural data (2014–2023) with a counterfactual control series generated from pre-intervention dynamics. Within this framework, the adoption of blockchain-enabled irrigation in 2019 is treated as a hypothetical intervention year created through simulation rather than an observed policy change. The results reveal a significant post-2019 decline in agricultural water use alongside a measurable increase in energy consumption attributable to blockchain-assisted monitoring. No statistically significant short-term effect is detected for crop yield, suggesting that productivity responses may require longer behavioural or agronomic adjustment periods that are not fully captured by annual observations. Overall, the findings underscore both the efficiency gains and the energy trade-offs associated with blockchain-supported irrigation systems. This study offers one of the earliest empirical assessments of blockchain applications in agricultural water management and provides policy-relevant insights for arid and semi-arid regions seeking to modernize irrigation governance.

An interesting piece of AI-slop. Figure 1 is a masterpiece of absolute BS. The editor has a lot to answer for.
doi.org/10.1007/s112...

There are allegations Bell requested minutes of meetings be changed, sought to change employment records, breached conflict of interest provisions, undermined the university's promotions processes, ignored professional guidance, used her seniority to gain advantage for Meares, and overturned the university's central promotions committee after it rejected his bid to become a full professor.

The Saturday Paper understands it was Bell's suspension that led to a heated exchange at a university council meeting on February 18, during which interim vice-chancellor Professor Rebekah Brown was yelled at by a council member and ultimately asked to leave the meeting. Chancellor Julie Bishop did not intervene and a complaint about the conduct was made after the meeting.

ANU Council apparently more concerned about reputation - theirs? - than potential wrongdoing. Surely stamping out wrongdoing is in the best interest of the university and taxpayers?! Far out. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...

This woman is facing a copyright claim for her own music by an AI company that took her youtube page and copied her.

Moon in between the camera and the Earth, dark side visible.

Wow.

“NASA's EPIC camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. This view shows the fully illuminated ‘dark side’ of the moon never visible from Earth.” www.planetary.org/space-images...

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Looks ominous

David Pocock gives furious speech saying the government has failed on gambling advertising YouTube video by Guardian Australia

David Pocock speaks for most Australians, who want to see an end to advertisements for gambling, an industry that hooks people for life, sucks them dry, & is now grooming children.
Do It. Defy the gambling industry vampires and End Gambling Advertising Now.
#Auspol

www.youtube.com/watch?v=daK9...

Schematic from Rai et al. 2026, GRL, showing how the glacial maximum ~20000 yrs ago had an expanded oxygen minimum zone in the Arabian Sea compared to the deglaciation and Holocene

Led by PRL student Deepak Rai, we recently had a new paper out showing that the Oxygen Minimum Zone in the Arabian Sea *expanded* in size during the last glacial cycle @arvindocean.bsky.social agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Bracing myself for the enshittification to begin

Who could have possibly foreseen this outcome...🙄

Vanda Blue

Today we've released our first album with original music. Five songs on belonging and building a space of your own, packaged in a soul-funky envelope.
Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/3ryXHI...
Apple Music: music.apple.com/au/album/van...
Or search "Vanda Blue" on your preferred streaming platform.

I got in the queue for BorrowBox a few weeks ago. Initially it said it would be available in August (!) but that has since come down to late April. So the queue moves a lot faster than first predicted.

I know everyone is very excited, but

Guardian headline: “Bob Carr, ‘a masterpiece’ and a hornet queer fantasy”

And this, kids, is why we need Oxford commas…

Having a quick skim of the Liberal party election review. In 61 pages, the words "climate change" appear only once, in an external quote.

The party is on the brink of extinction, and they still can't acknowledge that climate change is an issue that *might* require a tiny bit of attention.

🚨 #DiscoveryProjects EOI #DPEI27 announcement:

❗️Outcomes for Expressions of Interest should now be available in your RMS account ▶️ rms.arc.gov.xn--au-lmy

ARC should also email Lead CIs with their outcomes (may take a while & be staggered).

Full apps open 2 Mar, due 22 Apr.

AI Lost Out to Traditional Models in Forecasting NYC's Blizzard Two days before New York's biggest snowstorm in a decade began, forecasters were still unsure how much snow would fall. One traditional US model had consistently predicted a major hit, while newer art...

Will AI weather models lead to better & faster extreme weather warnings? @wxpizza.bsky.social is watching how forecasters prioritize AI predictions before issuing public warnings about incoming storms. More models don't always mean enhanced decision-making. ow.ly/RWMj50YlyfC @bloomberg.com

Things should clear up for the morning commute once silicate weathering has been shut down for long enough that slowly accumulating volcanic CO2 catastrophically deglaciates the entire planet

PhD opportunity for an Australian or New Zealand student (or someone currently studying in Australia) to study nano-microplastic contamination at University of Queensland with a wonderful colleague of mine Dr Elvis Okoffo. Also with Prof Kevin Thomas and Cassandra Rauert.

Excited to do some Antarctic science under the @scar-antarctic.bsky.social umbrella!

The CGT discount is the most unfair tax handout there is.

It is exacerbating inequality and locking a generation out of home ownership.

Enough is enough.

No more tinkering around the edges of the housing crisis. Labor must scrap the CGT discount in the next budget.

Underlying demand, and underlying demand ex-solar contribution (both utility and rooftop) over the last week or so ... 🔌💡

Connecting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to the Southern Ocean Following the Closure of Equatorial Seaways During the Cenozoic Before the Miocene, the Atlantic overturning circulation was confined to the Northern Hemisphere, becoming inter-hemispheric thereafter During the Cenozoic, the upwelling of North Atlantic Deep W...

🚨New paper from the team 🚨 In this climate modeling study, PhD student Erwan Pineau investigated the paleogeographic drivers controling the evolution of the AMOC during the Cenozoic. And the southern ocean gateways have a significant impact! doi.org/10.1029/2025...

I'm all for progressive income tax. I would also support progressive super tax (which we don't have). It's just that those things aside, I think progressives in Australia have learned that GST=bad because "John Howard" and I don't think it's necessarily all bad.

Ok but in Sweden you can go to university for free.

I get that argument, but a tax that generates significant revenue, is simple to implement, and can't be dodged by tax deductions is generally a good thing. The redistribution effect can take place through the actual services. Also my experience is Aus pays much higher salaries than Sweden!