Naththan

SA Liberals dump candidate who said homosexuality ‘opens up demonic realms’ after initially standing by him Party leader Ashton Hurn confirms Carston Woodhouse will not run for Liberals in SA’s state election, but says ‘people are entitled to have their views’

The first rule of gay demonic realms membership is that you under no circumstances reveal to the heteros the existence of the demonic realms. Friggin’ snitch.

Liveable Melbourne means contending with jerks who are intent on using their cars to block the tiniest strip of the street that our collective carbrain has deemed to be for pedestrian use.

If a PT project is underused: “what a waste of money, PT is such a money pit, let’s never invest again”.

If a road project is underused: “amazing, great job, we’ve solved congestion, let’s build more of these”.

Petrol prices need to be six, seven times higher. I will not be taking any questions.

Question: what proportion of Victoria’s flour etc is milled at the Kensington mill?

My dodgy estimates that you should consider calculating yourself...

🚅 Madrid to Barcelona HSR: AU$25,000,000/km

🚅 Sydney to Newcastle HSR: AU$310,000,000/km

There's a more specific comparison to Spain under "the density myth"
🚅 NTL-SYD's 624/km (² not specified) compares favourably to BCN-ZAZ's 244/km².
🚅 But BCN-ZAZ is almost all a surface alignment and not a tunnel.
🚅 Spanish HSR construction is way cheaper as a result and in general.

"N/S/W is actually denser than the UK, Japan, France, and Spain if you only count the urbanised area and then carefully compare that to the whole area of these other countries"

Solid logic. No comments. Give these people 200 billion to build a subway between Sydney and Newcastle.

Complete with a new station at Shin Wondabyne.

I demand a surface alignment that lets me soak in the amazing scenery.

I feel if we’re going to insist on 250+km/h, the first stage should at least be one that is as low risk as possible, like Sydney to Canberra, instead of tunnelling under the Hawkesbury.

The utterance of "A.I.'s inevitability" is one of the most stark pure performatives I've seen in my time working in higher ed. Every time it is uttered, it is clearly not reporting a fact about the world but instead actively trying to create the reality it narrates. We can and must refuse.

Surprise xtrapolis ii at flinders street station

It’s amazing how much wider and more spacious the street feels without cars, even where there are many more people using it.

Despite having selected the “sustainable” option for my super, the top investment in my account was Transurban. That is until AI mania took over.

Rest of February at the very least. Congrats!

Interesting report out of the UK proposing to "reconfigure and upgrade an existing set of services into a coherent, clockface, integrated network" for the countryside between Sheffield and Manchester, drawing on Swiss PT planning principles.

Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus.

Perhaps I'll step this back a touch and acknowledge how the Unimelb campus is gated in some ways:

👎 Poor permeability on Swanston St due to tram superstop and turnbacks
👎 Grattan Street resuming its role as a traffic sewer
👎 Royal Parade being a ultrawide traffic sewer

... I'm sensing a theme here

University urged to change course on demolition of modernist building Scholars in Melbourne University’s arts faculty warn heritage will be erased if the university demolishes modernist architect Roy Grounds’ John Medley Building.

Based on the number of graduating students and general tourists who have their photos taken with Medley as a backdrop, there must be something special going here.

(As an aside, the reason that Melburnians reckon Unimelb is "gated" is because they can't drive their cars through).

Cohesion.
My @smh cartoon.

How an ugly debate about level crossing blights Cheltenham’s landscape 10 years on The legacy of a fierce and organised community campaign against building a “sky rail” continues to frustrate locals, who say requests to add greenery to the space have been denied.

FYI

🚟 Melburnians demand trenched rail instead of elevated,

🚟 Govt builds railway trench with potentially developable, but in the meantime nasty, concrete platform,

🚟 Melburnians seethe enviously five years later at how nice rail-over-road is elsewhere in the city.

💯 Perfect, no notes.

Dignity is making statements that amount to incitement to genocide.

Disgrace is protesting that.

Gotcha.

‘Take them away, crush them’: Australia faces an oversized yank tank surge that some say poses a health emergency

Fixed it for you.

I love that he wrote an article like this and is still convinced that men, including himself, get to where they are based purely and unambiguously on merit.

All bicycles included in draft plan for mandatory helmets and high-vis, Department confirms — Plan was expected to be put to the Cabinet today before it was withdrawn from the meeting of Government Ministers. A reported plan by Ireland’s Government to make the wearing of helme…

All bicycles included in draft plan for mandatory helmets and high-vis, Department confirms irishcycle.com/2026/02/04/a...

This ought to fix the problem of students protesting against institutional ties to a state credibly accused of genocide and apartheid!

The stations between Sunshine and Watergardens on the Sunbury line have recently received a huge increase in service, with 10-min headways until 9pm.

The connecting bus situation is still pretty dire, though. Improving this is critical if we want to get the most of the munnel.

According to both PTV and Google journey planners, a journey from Footscray to ACMI at Fed Square takes longer via the Munnel.

It's 19 mins on a Werribee train and 25 mins on a Sunshine-Dandenong train.

Why? Very long egress times from the Town Hall platforms.