The grown-up gap year is having a moment The grown-up gap year is no longer just for backpackers. It’s for seasoned professionals, empty nesters, and leaders asking deeper questions about purpose and legacy. Whether it’s to travel, study, ca...

www.aigroup.com.au/resourcecent...

Natalie Kyriacou OAM: Nature’s Last Dance — A Call to Action, A Rebellion, A Love Letter — THE BIOPHILIC BLUEPRINT ™ Natalie Kyriacou OAM shares the inspirations, stories and challenges behind her new book, Nature’s Last Dance, revealing why advocacy, imagination and a touch of joy are indispensable in the fight to ...

www.thebiophilicblueprint.com/living-archi...

State of Wildfires 2024–2025 Abstract. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires globally, yet our understanding of these high-impact events remains uneven and shaped by media attention and reg...

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Counting what doesn’t count: How consultants are hollowing out the university When Western Sydney University announced it would shed hundreds of staff, its vice-chancellor described the decision as part of a “necessary transformation.

johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10...

YouTube video by Paleo Edits A New Age of Dinosaurs | A tribute to Birds

Birds truly are the splendour of Planet Earth . . .
youtu.be/ej4LPcJu-54?...

That's right folks, focus on the real story (LNP is moribund): ~80% of Australia's contribution to global carbon emissions is embodied in fossil fuel exports

The @albomp.bsky.social gov's ceaseless enabling of NEW/EXTENSIONS of Coal & Gas projects (31🤯 & counting) is fuelling climate disaster

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for 1st time as temperatures in the region rise Mosquitoes have been detected in Iceland for the first time as the region warms due to climate change.

abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

Inpex has been under-reporting cancer-causing emissions from its Icthys LNG plant in Darwin, as reported this week in The Australian.

The people of Darwin deserve answers, and real action to protect their health.

🎙️Senior Contributing Fellow Stephen Long
#auspol @stephenlongaus.bsky.social

With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.

"Some of the tech leaders presented themselves as moderates, but they politicked and spoke like right-wing reactionaries, especially on social media." This is't just happening in Silicon Valley - there's a similar movement in the UK. Less high profile, maybe, but formed and cemented on Twitter

The AI Industry Is Traumatizing Desperate Contractors in the Developing World for Pennies AI is propped up by a global sweat shop operation, where exploited workers polish the software for wealthy corporations in the west.

“…for an AI chatbot to generate an autopsy report, contract workers have to sift through thousands of gruesome crime scene images, a gig known as ‘data labeling.’”

New User Trends on Wikipedia Isiwal, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons In March, the Wikimedia Foundation shared about the global trends that are impacting our movement. These trends have continued to shape not only the Wikim…

Lots of discussion - brainstormy but decidedly anxious discussion - at #wikiConferenceNA about this finding: human views of wikipedia are down 8% as bot traffic increases. diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/n...

Spiritual Solutions

"a Seeds of Good Anthropocenes for spiritual change projects"- @joostvervoort.bsky.social

Spiritual Solutions Library
case studies that "reimagine solutions that combine proven spiritual and scientific ways to bring about shared flourishing for people and the planet."
fetzer.org/spiritual-so...

MIT rejects "the Compact"
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Mitigation efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and meet the Paris Agreement have been offset by economic growth - Communications Earth & Environment Global carbon dioxide intensity declined from 2015 to 2024 following the Paris Agreement, but total emissions still increased due to economic growth, according to a global analysis of population, gros...

Good news: carbon intensity has declined

Bad news: carbon emissions increased, due to the rapid rise in world GDP

Also bad news: the chance of staying below 2°C remained low, at 17%

Better news: chance of going above 3°C has gone down substantially, from 26% to 9%

Olivia Guest, Marcela Suarez, Barbara Müller, Edwin van Meerkerk, Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Ronald de Haan, Andrea Reyes Elizondo, Mark Blokpoel, Natalia Scharfenberg, Annelies Kleinherenbrink, Il... Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. ...

“In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously to a) counter the technology industry's marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity.”

philarchive.org/rec/GUEATU

Two People Almost Drown After Asking ChatGPT When Low Tide Was The owner of a restaurant in South Wales potentially saved the lives of two swimmers, who ventured out after asking ChatGPT for tide times.

Folks will be quick to ridicule people who do this, but it can’t be separated from the media hype and ai boosters telling us the tech is a magic answer wizard that knows all and sees all.

The Principles of Conversational Transformation — Mule Design Just because a technology is cool and tricky doesn’t make it superior in a given human context.

www.muledesign.com/blog/the-pri...

Imagination as a Human Right In recent years our brains have quietly entered the digital arena.  Neurotechnology, BCIs, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic…

medium.com/@heremans.ro...

A Decolonized World: The River’s Memory For generations, Elara’s village had lived with their backs to the Great River.

systemswiki.substack.com/p/a-decoloni...

Reebok Launches Its First Fitness Smart Ring, Entering the Health Tech Market The sportswear brand is breaking into health tech and prioritizing community in the fitness space.

The real cyborg future is just you being turned into a perpetual data feed by every company on the planet.

Modern sea-level rise breaks 4,000-year stability in southeastern China - Nature Spatiotemporal hierarchical modelling of geological sea-level proxies and tide gauge data suggest that the modern global mean sea-level rise rate since 1900 has exceeded any century over at least the past four millennia, breaking the long-term stability observed in southeastern China.

Nature research paper: Modern sea-level rise breaks 4,000-year stability in southeastern China

go.nature.com/472YC8N

The Pope tweets: "The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate. Nor, for most of them, is poverty a choice. Yet, there are those who still presume to make this claim, thus revealing their own blindness and cruelty. #DilexiTe" Someone replies: "I was so hopeful I could be a Catholic again after the disaster that Francis was, guess we just get Francis 2.0 now and I am heartbroken. How do I stay a Catholic now...I don't want to lose faith but I am. You belong to someone else, not God."

heartbroken to learn the pope sympathizes with the poor. how can i continue to believe in god

Your Mind Wanders Because Your Brain Whispers - Neuroscience News Daydreaming activates the hippocampus, inducing electrical impulses that help us to encode memories.

neurosciencenews.com/daydreaming-...

Doesn't look promising but if we want to protect nationally impt plants, animals, habitats & places for all, we need
✅outcome-focused natl environmental standards & targets
✅a well-resourced & fearlessly independent EPA
✅real habitat protections w no industry carveouts
✅genuine Indigenous engagement

The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence | NOEMA Supporting transnational worker organizing should be at the center of the fight for “ethical AI.”

What has changed 3 years on?

The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence www.noemamag.com/the-exploite...

How do our bodies remember? The more we move, the more our muscle cells begin to make a memory of that exercise.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/10/1...

Groundhog Day and other eternal nightmares: Five philosophical takes on living forever From eternal recurrence to techno-dualism, five philosophical visions of immortality — and why most paths to forever end badly.

www.freethink.com/opinion/immo...

This.

We aren't just courting catastrophe, we're shopping for a ring.

Quick peak and sharp decline is still the only sane plan.

But no matter what we do now, expect massive discontinuities.

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...