Danielle Clode

Wild sky this morning. Red in all directions. #sunrise #redsky #weather

Given how abundant ants and termites are it's actually equally interesting how few mammals specialise in eating them. And the traits they share because of that adaptation. #echidna Be interesting to extend to other vertebrates like birds and reptiles.

A great read!

Pretty delighted about how the writing hut has turned out. Pretty impressive upgrade from the open, leaky, dirt-floored shed by the dam.

And where have all those out of copyright/print books gone that libraries digitised and gave to google to make freely available forever. They've been hidden now due to (nonexistant) copyright concerns although you can buy a shitty POD copy $40 plus postage.

France breaks from US, other Western nations to recognise Palestinian state French President Emmanuel Macron's announcement, posted on X, includes a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about the decision.

Australia should recognise Palestine and stop being lap dog to the US and UK. They do not share our interests, they just have an interest in exploiting us. It's not the same thing. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

Shocking. I check the sources in the news articles! And turn off AI summaries. Why are these being forced on us? This is destroying the internet.

I'm not surprised it was difficult to publish. It messes with genre in both structure, theme and tone. My guess is that no one could get it past sales and marketing!

Oh that's exciting. Looking forward to reading this one. Congrats Alex and Martin!

Love this flower. Sadly so do the roos!

Danielle Clode reviews ‘The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian reverie’ by Richard Dawkins Science communication is a basic skill for all scientists, even if it is mostly performed for a restricted academic audience. Nonetheless, all scientists must also write for broader audiences – and so...

You can read the review here www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...

Enjoyed Dawkin's latest Book of the Dead. Reviewing a book well is not always easy so it's also nice to have that work appreciated.

She is completely answerable for the toxic authoritarian undemocratic discriminatory recommendations she put in her report. Why does this religious zealot have a special voice in our parliament?

Me too.

Horrified to hear lobbyist Jillian Segal proposing outrageous Trumpian financial penalties for universities and arts organisations upholding #freespeech in order to privilege some religions over others. Australia already has a fair and robust anti-discrimation and protection. No special treatment.

Amazing encounter with a cassowary at Etty Bay. They've become more common here in recent years. Saw another two on the road out. Never saw them when I lived here. Incredible birds, if a bit intimidating. #auswildlife #ausbirds

Which family values? Sexual predation, prostitution, infidelity, coercion, rape, domestic violence....?

Great speed reads night at Bibliotheca Bar for the #StoryandtheSelf conference in Adelaide with #iaba and #asal. Great venue, fab readers and appreciative audience.

Heading to Melb today for a Copyright Agency meeting. Collecting and distributing copyright payments from govt, schools, unis and others to support creators makes a complicated task much easier and is vital support for creators and their publishers. Latest payment went out this week.🎉

Gum leaves and blossom on white background

Love the charactersitic knobbly #gumnuts on Southern Bluegums. Don't often see the #blossoms high up on these tall straight trees, but some helpful cockies had been pruning this one. #plants #australiannatives #eucalypts

Hey - I wondered where you'd gone!

Just to be clear Morrison's federal response to Covid was an utter cock-up. It was the states that carried the load and implemented sensible often tough policies made worse by federal incompetence. He should be held to account, not given an effin award.

Search engines have been declining in quality for the last 20 years across the board. Even library searches stopped using boolean and swapped to horrible fuzzy logic that cannot be made precise even with quotes. But why? Have been told its for efficiency by lumping synonyms together. ??

And just being a national embarrassment.

Or bringing the position of PM into disrepute, undermining parliamentary democracy, setting us back 20yrs, failing to act on climate change, corruption, health, aged care......

Proving yet again that our awards system - at least at the highest level - is a completely confected crock of privileged self congratulatory backslapping amongst the already overindulged. How can this shameful corrupt waste of space be awarded anything other than a dark forgotten corner of history?

Ponzi cult

Absolutely. I had a very similar disturbing interaction with the metaAI program trying to work out if it had been trained on my books. Duplicitous is an understatement.

This is more than just producing bullshit. This is being programmed to decieve, to conceal errors and limitations and to present as human. Why would anyone create software like this?

The most disturbing thing about these genAI models is not that they make shit up (a big one) but that they are programmed to pretend to be human. And that users are told to be "nice" in order to get the right answers. Why would anyone program software to conceal errors and limitations?