fluids_guru

A color photograph of a brightly-lit, mostly cloud-covered Earth, showing Africa, Madagascar, and the Arabian Peninsula at top center, and Antarctica and the South Pole at the bottom.

Today in 1972, as Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, and Ron Evans were rocketing toward the Moon, one of them looked back and took this iconic photograph, the first to capture a fully-illuminated round Earth and the only one taken by a human being.

@scrawford.bsky.social

A Conference on Anarchist Politics, History and the Work Ahead Anarchism 2026 March 7 Melbourne

#Anarchism 2026 is a public, one-day conference hosted by the #Anarchist #Communist Federation (ACF).

Date: Saturday 7th of March 2026
Location: Balam Balam Place, 15 Phoenix Street, Brunswick, Victoria

ancomfed.org/conf-2026

Australia’s school bureaucracy is growing faster than classrooms Administrative staffing in Australia’s public education system has grown far faster than student enrolments or teacher numbers. Unless governments act, promised school funding risks being absorbed by ...

Trevor Cobbold: Administrative staffing Australia’s public education system has grown faster than student enrolments or teacher numbers. Unless govts act, promised school funding risks being absorbed by bureaucracy rather than improving learning and wellbeing. johnmenadue.com/post/2025/12....

They are an exercise in reverse virtue signalling

Don't look away from this tragedy - this is a sign of things to come as we head to 2ºC

I sound like a broken record - we are *utterly* unprepared.

We need to *urgently* have a clear view of the risks and do something about robust early warning systems that reach people on the ground timeously!

What our missing ocean float revealed about Antartica’s melting glaciers Our ocean float spent years adrift in the Antarctic ocean and beneath massive ice shelves. What it found will help us estimate global sea-level rise.

🌊 Serendipity often drives science forward.

A “lost” Argo float drifted under Antarctica’s ice shelves and resurfaced with a warning: warm water is creeping under major glaciers like Denman and Totten.

What’s at risk? Up to 5 m of global sea-level rise.

theconversation.com/what-our-mis...

'Brunner was an angry man, angry at injustice and cynicism, and this novel was meant to be a wake-up call to the world. SF is not about predicting the future; it's about elucidating the present and the past. Brunner's nightmare is crystallizing around us, in ways he could not have forseen then. If the right people had read this book, and acted in accordance with its spirit, our world would not be in such precarious shape today' JOE HALDEMAN

Brunner’s earlier work, Stand on Zanzibar was a classic of the genres. Hugo and Nebula award winner Joe Haldeman accurately described Brunner thus (in his review of Stand on Zanzibar):

John Brunner wrote a classic dystopian in 1975 which predicted this (amongst other things).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sho...

If you’ve tracked lithium, EVs, AI, solar, China, batteries & renewables for two decades, nothing here is “unbelievable.” It’s the inevitable collision of S-curves, compounding trends and industrial scale. Not surprising — just timely. In truth, this is what the future has been signalling for years.

56 million years ago, the Earth suddenly heated up – and many plants stopped working properly It could be a sign of what’s to come.

When global temperatures shot up by ~6°C about 56 million years ago, plants were unable to thrive

The reduced ability of vegetation & soils to capture & store carbon may have kept temperatures elevated for >100,000 years

Today Earth is warming ~10 times faster than it did 56 million years ago

Hundreds of cases of public service nepotism, cronyism went unreported The National Anti-Corruption Commission has warned of at least 554 instances when corruption in the federal public service was witnessed but was not reported.

"Public servants had admitted to witnessing but failing to report at least 554 instances of corruption, including nepotism, fraud, cronyism and conflicts of interest."

Adds to 1,000s of incidents that have been reported to the NACC.

From @paulkarp.bsky.social
www.afr.com/politics/fed...

David Pope in Canberra Times

Union boss appointed to board by Labor did nothing wrong posting anti-Liberal content to social media, minister says

The man wrote a reply to a LinkedIn post that criticised Angus Taylor, including the comment: “This is what their agenda has always been. The LNP has never built anything that builds for all.”

I fucking warned you dude. I told you bro A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION BY KARL MARX TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY SAMUEL MOORE AND EDIARD AVELING AND EDITED BY FREDERICK ENGELS VOL, I.

‘Day by day I lose weight’: asylum seekers on Nauru get $115 a week, but a bag of grapes costs $20 Forbidden from working, people sent to the island by Australia say they are struggling to survive because food is so expensive

Australia is paying $750m to a US prison company and $2.5bn in a secret deal to Nauru, yet the hundred or so asylum seekers in Nauru are starving.
It’s called corruption, and someone in authority should look into it.

FOI documents reveal extent of unreported corruption in Commonwealth agencies The nation's corruption watchdog has warned federal agencies and departments that gross misconduct may be more prevalent than previously thought.

"FOI documents reveal extent of unreported corruption in Commonwealth agencies" By Tegan George

thepoint.com.au/news/251205-...

On the driest inhabited continent on the planet…

#auspol

The top-10 carmakers by market cap make up 75% of global passenger car sales.

Tesla makes up less than 2%.

The Tesla bubble will be widely documented in history books.

Crucial memory will soon be a memory itself as Micron abandons consumers in favor of AI data centers The RAM crisis is just getting started.

This is like if Tyson stopped selling consumer chicken. RAM is about to cost as much as a brand new pc. The cost of everything from tablets, to phones, to laptops will skyrocket. All because AI data centers are consuming all the available RAM they can get.

www.pcgamer.com/hardware/the...

Dept of No Comment

'Gripping on for dear life': Talking to the people drowning in Perth’s housing crisis

Opinion | “This isn’t right! I’m 32! I have a degree, I have a job, and I can not afford a life!" This is what it's like to be caught in the middle of Perth's housing crisis.

I fucking warned you dude. I told you bro A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION BY KARL MARX TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELING AND EDITED BY FREDERICK ENGELS VOL, I.

As a Sociologist I feel comfortable saying Marx is needed right now. What we have is a new bottling of The Rich 'Individual' Vs Necessary Collectivism. Bring it on!

Hey Naarm folk, this band has had their instruments stolen 🤬😫 If anyone sees anything & can help get them back to Floodlights please get in touch 🫶🏻

So you're saying, Advance's aim to promote a pro-fossil fuel agenda is working?

140,000 homes are currently being left vacant in Australia. 32,000 homes in Melbourne alone!

Air BnB has 160,000 homes on its books.

There are thousands of developers land banking properties in our cities.

We could legislate the end of a housing crisis very quickly.

UK farmers lose £800m after heat and drought cause one of worst harvests on record Many now concerned about ability to make living in fast-changing climate after one of worst grain harvests recorded

I'm sure the UK political system is well placed to deal with this challenge.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Myself and @asborlaff.bsky.social feature on the Nature Podcast chatting about this paper on planned satellite constellations and their impact on astronomical research.

We are also very concerned about satellites impacting star gazing for everyone and losing the shared wilderness of the night sky.