Has anyone noticed what Margo Kingston has, that after the toy bulldozer was given to Pauline Hanson last week:
"Gina then puts her hand on Pauline’s back and says quietly, “Off you go.”"
Kingston goes on to say:
"Folks, Gina thinks she owns Pauline. That’s really bad news for the One Nation leader, who has spent decades establishing a “battler” archetype of a woman representing struggling Australians against the condescending elites."
This photo of mine - 'Patterns in the stubble' - has been shortlisted in the Australian Photography magazine monthly competition for May. The theme was 'Rural Life'. Pleased about this. Up against some nice photos so I doubt it'll go any further. But that's okay 🙂
We’ve seen this toxic campaign before..
Another female leader.. another time and place..
The right-wing and their media cohorts relishing the opportunity to tear a woman down, to make her less than, to make her leadership questionable and recreate a toxic environment for not only women in leadership.. but women in society who aspire to be more .. or even aspire to be equal to their male counterparts.
The “ditch the witch” rhetoric is an old byline of a fetid media narrative ruled by patriarchal “values” and they want to keep their power and control. There is no room for progressive ideology or equality for all in their world.
It’s disgusting. The people behind this slop are not there for the good of the many - because the many include the women in our society - and the girls who will be growing up in the same society ruled by those who think it is okay to punch down on women - and by example punch down on others who they feel are not worthy - egged on by this toxicity that is foghorned by those who have the most to lose in a progressive society that values equality, respect and critical thinking - a society that is not constantly groomed to be reactive and primed by puerile culture wars.
Shame on those who would denigrate a woman in this way - again - thereby lowering the standards and expectations in our communities.
It’s not only repugnant, it’s hypocritical. The leader of the Victorian liberal party is also a woman. Is Jess Wilson walking past this “standard” against another woman merely because it may benefit her? .. because ultimately this disrespect benefits no women in our society.
The ‘ditch the witch’ truck billboards driving around Melbourne featuring pictures of the Premier are sexist, misongynistic & deeply unimaginative
Jacinta Allan & I disagree on lots -but sexist & misogynistic attacks on women in leadership are unacceptable whatever your politics
A bricklayer in East Yorkshire has spent 35 years putting up barn owl nest boxes on weekends. This year, the region saw 308 owlets hatch.
His name is Robert Salter. He's 56 and does bricklaying full time. In 1990, he saw a piece on the news about a man in Lincolnshire installing barn owl boxes, and decided he'd do the same. He started with five.
He now has more than 350 boxes scattered across fields, farms, outbuildings, and trees in East Yorkshire. Every June, he takes four weeks off from bricklaying and visits them with his wife Sue. Scrambling up ladders, ringing chicks, cleaning boxes, repairing the ones the weather got to. He's a licensed bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology.
In 2024, the region ringed 95 owlets. In 2025, the count was 308. The Barn Owl Trust says that nationally, this year was "pretty poor" for barn owl breeding, but east Yorkshire is the exception, and it's the exception because of one man with a ladder.
The barn owl population in the UK was estimated at 4,000 pairs in the mid-2000s and crashed to roughly 1,000 by the early 2010s. The species is still recovering.
Most of conservation is one person who refuses to give up.
Good Morning Everyone
Olivier Fischer French Watercolours artist ( Honfleur)
Sad news I’m afraid
Stee died this morning.
I’m bereft. The nurses said it was sudden.
I still need to tweet or I’ll go mad.
Here and there and inbetween. I’ll tweet when I can.
Helen and Max
TRIGGER WARNING
In 1943 Japanese officer Chikao beheaded Australian POW Leonard Siffleet.
Australia demanded justice for this war crime.
BRS is charged with killing a handcuffed Afghan POW. Would those who argue BRS should not be tried have said, 'I stand with Yasuno Chikao'?
The BirdGod of Moult hasn’t failed Egg, yet again. Despite breaking all his tail feathers right at end of the moult year, a new set are growing in beautifully. Steering is back on the menu, if he chooses to use it.
#kookalife#EggBurra
Keith does not experience urgency.
This is important to understand about Keith. Dave experiences urgency. Steve experiences urgency. The urgency they experience is specifically about Keith, and it is constant, and it is calibrated to the knowledge that every hour Keith is unsupervised is an hour in which something structural is being quietly assessed.
Keith's relationship with the north gate in the week after Dave added the third bolt:
Day 1: Keith observed the gate from twelve metres for approximately forty minutes. He then went to graze. He came back in the afternoon. He looked at the gate again for twenty minutes. He went to sleep.
Day 2: Keith approached the gate. He pressed his head against the section to the left of the third bolt. He felt the flex in the timber. He went to graze.
Day 3: Keith pushed the bottom corner. He pushed the middle section. He looked at the hinge. He went to graze.
Day 4: Keith was in the road at 6am.
Dave's log: "I cannot work out what changed between day 3 and day 4. The gate was the same gate. Keith was the same Keith. I think he just needed three days to be sure."
This is, in fact, the method.
Keith doesn't rush. Keith doesn't get frustrated. Keith doesn't interpret an intact gate as evidence that the gate cannot be opened. Keith interprets an intact gate as a gate that has not yet been fully understood.
Keith gives it the time it needs.
Keith gets there.
Every single time.
Keith is the most patient animal on this farm, and also the most consistently successful.
These facts are connected.
@noplaceforsheep@AlboMP Egregious error. If there is one woman revered by the women who voted Labor, or what they #thought was Labor, that woman is magnificent Grace Tame. He clearly has forgotten the Women's March and the horrors of misogyny that sparked it.
Grace Tame is a beloved champion of women.
I hope Thorpe runs and is returned in 2028.
I doubted she could take her activist style politics to Canberra and make it work, but over time certainly has.
Thorpe's voice in and from the Senate's vital, especially with fascists on the march and hunt.
She seems poorly protect.
Dragonflies fun facts
- Just one dragonfly can consume over 100 mosquitos in a day
- Dragonflies can fly backwards
- They have nearly 360° vision
- Their wings inhibit bacterial growth due to their natural structures
- They're actually beautiful
My non-verbal son made this with his own hands. A kind word from you could mean the world to him.
My son is 14 and he’s never said a word. Not one. Non-verbal since birth, and every specialist we’ve seen has given me that look — the one that says “manage your expectations.” I stopped managing them years ago. I just started watching him instead.
Last year was brutal. Middle school is hell for any kid, but for mine it’s a different kind of torture. The staring, the whispers, the way other kids would talk around him like he’s furniture. He’d come home and go straight to his room, wouldn’t even look at me. I could see it happening — that slow collapse inward. I was terrified I was losing him to a place I couldn’t follow.
He started spending hours in the garage with my old button collection, the one my grandmother left me. Thousands of them in jars, sorted by size and color. I thought he was just stimming, organizing them over and over. That’s what his teacher said he does when he’s overwhelmed. But then I noticed he was taking wire from my jewelry supplies. Taking wood glue. I didn’t stop him. I just watched.
Three weeks ago he showed me what he’d been making.
This massive circular board covered in buttons arranged in a perfect rainbow gradient, each one glued down and some threaded on wire like little gardens growing up. Butterflies made from buttons scattered across it.
It was stunning.
Not kid-art stunning.
Actually stunning.
The kind of thing you’d see in a gallery and wonder who made it.
I took a photo and posted it in one of the creative groups on the shop where I sometimes sell the small wooden boxes I make.
I woke up to 300 comments.
People asking if he takes commissions.
Teachers asking if he’d make one for their classroom.
A woman who runs an art supply shop on the shop sent us a whole box of vintage buttons for free. She said she believes in young artists who create without words.
He read every comment with me.
And then he did something he’s never done.
He took my phone, opened the shop, and pointed at the word “artist.”
By marta hanger
Vale Heather Goodall. A champion of history. Of Aboriginal people. Of all the right causes and all the right people. Mother of lovely daughters. Wife of another noble Australian, Paul Torzillo. Sadly taken from us too early by motor neurone disease.