Beth

Like, well done. I groaned.

I have to say, the Australian organisers of the Women's Asian Cup making the mascot a literal fire horse is hilarious.

Both in terms of 'look we understand the Chinese Zodiac' and also in terms of the associated personality traits mapping to sportswomen.

Foord, I would have pushed her too

I swear the stress tonight is going to kill me.

That last goal from Kerr however helped a bit.

I love women’s sport because there are…shocker…a wide range of genders everywhere.

More time to get everyone in? (She says, on the train in the rain right now)

A regent honeyeater sits on a branch.

Fenner School scientists from the Difficult Bird Research Group have rescued the lost song of the regent honeyeater, offering new hope for the survival of the critically endangered bird: bit.ly/4l2D5Cc @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social

That’s some great illlustrative header art

I love the bit clowning that this person thinks the average US citizen, familiar with calling their country the US, won’t recognise that ‘USian’ is a term referring to them.

I mean, I hear the schools are bad, but COME ON.

On the other hand, I notice yo don’t mention Riverina…

To be fair, they’re not wrong on your views about separatist state movements.

Always a good sign when they invoke the Angel of Death

Harold Holt does not count here, as he lived a long and happy life in his new home in Heibei

(The AEC have already said no to this banter outcome but cmon, writing campaign for comments!)

As always, there’s gold in the redistribution proposal.

My favourite is renaming Franklin (now moved to be THE East Coast Electorate) to be “West”, after Aunty Ida West.

Do it! No chance of confusion stems from this!

You know what I fucking love seeing in the measles alerts: OLOL, aka ‘we wrote a paper about tracking a COVID superspreader event in this very church’.

Real promising. Definitely fills me with confidence. Totally not a sign of a local cluster forming at all.

Well Observatory Hill has hit 77mm and Bankstown is at 90mm so I feel safe saying it’s a bit wet.

Three digits in the rain is good right?

I can’t tell. Is this wet?

I realise we'll never actually reach the state seat situation where they're completely separate, but we could absolutely shove a solid chunk of Richmond into carved off parts of Lindsay and Berowra.

My other personal reason for why Big Parliamentary Expansion Is Good is that if we drop the quota for a seat sufficiently we can sort out the worst seat marriage in Sydney, the Division of Macquarie. 0.5 quotas of left voting Blue Mountains, 0.5 quotas of right voting Richmond, unhappy together.

Also on team 18 Senators for the way it restores proportionality in representation to Tasmania, opens up the situation for NT to retain multiple seats without having to mess with the formula constantly, decreases electorate size for the giant rural seats and allows half-senate elections having tilt.

Old mate is turning 72 in June and will be 74 when his term expires. Surely he longs for the pasture.

If Don Farrell can actually get parliamentary expansion passed and then proceed to retire before the next election I may find it within myself to say something nice about him

My only thought is something like wedding gift thank you cards but let’s be real if you don’t actually care that’s totally skippable

Yeah, it’s not the 19th century, communication by handwritten letter is a niche choice suggesting intentional enjoyment of the format.

Way to take something that now showcases time, effort and personal thought and warp it by treating it as a pointless chore to be automated.

Just needs to run faster than highway speeds!

Useful website I’ve started using this summer: real time UV tracking. Lets me check the UV index before I go outside, which is particularly helpful for exercise and working out how much sun protection I need.

Because it’s Aussie, it actually tells you 11+ rates.

www.arpansa.gov.au/our-services...

What is this even for? "what if we automated and took the human factor out of the entire process of sending a letter" suggests they don't actually find any value in it.

I think Sydney-Canberra also stacks up if they could get the trip down to at least the same duration as a Murrays coach. (And uh put some work into linking the station better to Canberra transport). Could modeshift a bunch of people only driving as it’s faster.