McDrowsy

#NDIS strikes again:

Letter received today, October the 28th, dated the 16th, saying that new medical information and reports from therapists have to be received by the 30th.

This is one example of the impossible demands placed on disabled people by the NDIA, and we are powerless to stop it.

Me too. They disappeared from the neighbourhood last year and I really missed their birdsong. They came back recently, it’s so nice to hear them again 💖

I‘m currently being serenaded by a butcherbird outside my kitchen window.

They often shelter on our veranda clothesline when it rains.

#AustralianBirds

"The environment minister would be able to approve projects at odds with nature laws if it was deemed in the “national interest” under the Albanese government’s planned overhaul of the environmental protection regime."

What's the problem there? Who's interests should he be looking after? #auspol

Because people think you're a bitch if you don't.

See also: add emoticons, softening qualifiers, and any other happy-go-lucky, no-worries-if-not! flair.

When a chatbot gets something wrong, it’s not because it made an error. It’s because on that roll of the dice, it happened to string together a group of words that, when read by a human, represents something false. But it was working entirely as designed. It was supposed to make a sentence & it did.

Snap new Queensland ban on puberty blockers for transgender adolescents The Queensland health minister has issued a new directive to ban public doctors from prescribing puberty blockers to youths six hours after a Supreme Court overturned the January freeze.

Fuckers

Health minister reinstates ban on puberty blockers hours after Supreme Court overturned freeze www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Man driving a bus with the words don’t make me tap the sign Sign says even if someone doesn’t have a job they still deserve to eat

Alt text
Man driving a bus with the words don’t make me tap the sign
Even if someone doesn’t have a job they still deserve to eat.
#RaiseTheRate

Metformin has been shown to reduce the risk of Long COVID. Why isn’t it more widely used? - The Sick Times Recent studies add evidence to a prior phase 3 clinical trial, suggesting that taking the diabetes drug during acute COVID-19 reduces the risk of long-term symptoms.

Great work from Rachel Fairbank on the winding story of metformin for #LongCOVID at @thesicktimes.org.

Quotes from @jencurtinmd.bsky.social, Rachel Hall Clifford, @chromatowski.bsky.social, Carolyn Bramante, Ed Mills, Melissa Mazur & myself.

thesicktimes.org/2025/10/28/m...

#MedSky

There are no examples of genocidaires willingly ending a genocide and Israel is no exception. Unless Israel is turned into a pariah state and diplomatic and trade relations severed, the genocide will continue.

Topic: Robodebt Case Legal Fees Question reference number: IQ25-000016 Asked By: Senator Jacqui Lambie Type of question: Spoken. Hansard Page/s: 9 Date set by the committee for the return of answer: 24 October 2025 Question: Senator Lambie: Services Australia, you lost a Robodebt case against Mr Warren before the full court. I'm just wondering what your legal costs for both Administrative Review Tribunal and the Federal Court were? I’m gathering it's about half a million and I’m being conservative. Do you know what the costs were? Mr Higgins: I'd have to take that on notice, Senator. I don’t have that detail with me. Answer: $776,739.02 including GST (where applicable) in relation to AAT, Federal Court and ART.

Wow, Services Australia spent three quarters of a million in legal fees fighting a losing FOI fight against @daedalus.eigenmagic.com

humiliating

Price of poverty hurts us all, yet research reveals an easy fix In 2020, Australia massively increased welfare payments and conducted a live experiment in ending poverty, but when the subsidy was removed, many were thrown back into hardship. Leaving aside the mora...

"It's really hard … you're making choices that nobody should actually have to make," @artistaffame.bsky.social

"Every day it becomes a battle of whether you eat three times a day or if you see a doctor."

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

As SNAP benefits come under threat, a Detroit farmer is stepping up to help fill the void The federal shutdown has put SNAP benefits at risk for millions of Americans. Urban farmers like Travis Peters are stepping up to ensure their communities can eat.

The government shutdown has put SNAP benefits at risk for millions of Americans. Travis Peters, an urban farmer in Detroit, is giving out free produce tomorrow

'If it's getting tight, my food is free. Don’t even sweat that'

Grog's rule of privatisation:

"The day you decide to allow the private sector deliver a public service is also the day you should set the future date for the Royal Commission into abuses in the system."

The bird takes its revenge on the kings in The Thieving Magpie (1964), dir. Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini

Federico Fellini loved this film: "it makes me furious that I don't know how to draw so I could resolve my films in the same way"

Trees with autumn colours beside a clear blue river.

'Autumn in Oirase' from 'A Collection of Scenic Views of Japan; Eastern Japan Edition' - Kawase Hasui, 1933.
#JapaneseArt #shinhanga

But exhaustion isn't the whole story.

After some time - it could be hours or days! - the PEM will set in. This is the whole-system fatigue that isn't just exhaustion. It's exacerbation of other illness symptoms or symptoms we only get during PEM. The specific experience varies per person.

2/x

Something I think people really don't understand about ME/CFS vs other fatigue illnesses is how the fatigue symptoms can be delayed for us, and how they accrete, like katamari damarcy.

We do feel exhaustion upon exertion, often much faster or with less effort than others expect. This is true!

1/x

been saying this a bit lately, but: a core experience of being a welfare recipient in this country is being illegally harmed by government systems, and trying to pick yourself up to fight for basic justice and accountability for it

There was a fair amount of speculation back in the nineties about pesticides leading to #myalgicencephalomyelitis.

70 per cent of our outpatient visits in southern #Gaza are for diseases linked to poor living conditions, as over a million people are still crammed onto a tiny patch of land.

Without urgent improvements, more people will die from preventable causes.

www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/palestine-di...

Have Disabled People Considered The First Solution Anyone Would Think Of? and Other Unhelpful Tips

They have disabilities, pensions and get little support. They’re also among thousands rejected by the NDIS each year Disabled people and their advocates are exhausted and frustrated but say it’s worth fighting for a system that ‘really does change lives’

“For every 1,000 applications, there were 100 fewer successful requests made by people with physical disability in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas.”

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud’s reports that the physical yellow markers on the ground that demarcate the Yellow Line are only present in very few areas. Families trying to return to their homes are being fired upon and killed in these “free fire zones.”

It never came into my mind I would be chronically ill,disabled and house-bound in the moment I felt abnormal two decades ago.
#chronicillness
#Disability

Australia’s $20m ‘iron fist’ deal with Israel’s largest arms company signed two weeks before UN genocide finding Experts criticise federal government’s contract with Elbit Systems as ‘troubling acceptance’ of Israel’s conduct in Gaza

Australia’s $20m deal with Israel’s largest arms company signed two weeks before UN genocide finding.

The $19.8m contract did not go to competitive tender.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

You're absolutely right, Chris, climate change IS real. So why did your party:

* approve a climate bomb, the Northwest Shelf Gas Project

* rule out a climate trigger in the EPBC reforms and instead will rely on your farcical 'Safeguard Mechanism' and asking developers to be good.

We see you.

Revealed: some Australians have overpaid their Centrelink debt by more than $20,000 Exclusive: Services Australia spokesperson says automatic BPay payments and Centrelink being unable to contact customers may be to blame

Approximately 44,000 Australians who have a debt with Centrelink have overpaid it, some by $20,000 or more www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Lush store with posters saying STOP STARVING GAZA, WE ARE CLOSED IN SOLIDARITY

Lush store with posters covered over

Lush Australia followed the UK example yesterday, closing all their stores for a day in solidarity with Gaza and posting signs in their windows to explain why. Except that if you walked past Lush in a Westfield shopping centre you may not have known because many centres blacked out the signs.