Perdita Phillips

I may have a picture somewhere but it will be a slide somewhere in storage 😆

I love these graptolite models. I seem to remember some on display at the Sedgwick museum in the 1990s

what would happen if the colonial phrases were included? The book itself is the language of basalt, is adding text just reestablishing historical power imbalance? If not, what else could I add or change in the book?

PS: exhibition opens on Thursday 5 March at the print council of Australia gallery

If I reproduce this evidence of colonialism, am I merely perpetuating it? This question has come up repeatedly. For example I have in this unfinished book (other books in the series stand on their own, and will be exhibited unaltered, where the lithic comes through strongly),

Ok so this is a question for everyone: I’ve been working on a project about finding the lithic (geological) in an archive. Needless to say I didn’t find more than traces of the more-than-human and at times I found extreme (if poetic) examples of colonialism instead.

I am curious (and cannot access databases behind paywalls)

Alternatively it’s a farkn hot endless summer that keeps going until April

A round, light brown tablet made of clay with three lines of cuneiform scripts. Two rulings, or traced straight lines, enclose the writing. The photo also shows the sides of the tablet, including a few damaged parts.

May as well dive right in.

Did you know that dogs in ancient Mesopotamia also refused to drop the ball?

According to a Sumerian proverb, “The dog understands ‘Take it!’ It does not understand ‘Put it down!’”

Source: cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/34...

Interesting study, but coverage is undermined by using fake AI-generated fossils ("Credit: AI/ScienceDaily.com") rather than authentic specimens. I am not aware of any actual Ediacaran fossils that look like this. To be clear, this is a criticism of Science Daily, not the authors of the study.

I know, but I’m finding “horror” stories (especially where true) difficult at the moment

Is this too depressing or can I bear to read it?

two beaches

one stranded starfish
can be carried
back to the sea

a hundred dead
starfish requires
honesty

25.I.26

"Terrible things are happening outside ... poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared." — Anne Frank (Jan 13, 1943)

'Our AI has messed up': Tourists sent to destinations that don't exist Weldborough in remote north-east Tasmania has lots of natural beauty. But it does not have hot springs — and it is causing headaches for locals.

Tour website's AI sends visitors to Tasmanian sites that do not exist. It's only when the cost of getting sued is too high will this kind of bullshit stop happening. #AIisnotworthit www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Cow Tools!

We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them

It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS

Here I describe our study

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social

My immediate mental image!

I did this drawing as part of a residence at spectrum project space Mt Lawley @edithcowanuni.bsky.social in 2012/13 based on fieldwork in the Kimberley

*bricks not included

Large sheet of paper with big a red mud splotch and a hat and price of fabric attached to it. The hat is directly in the place where the bucked of mud was dumped

Detail of mud and hat

Would someone please buy this?????* | can't bear to destroy it but have no room to store it. Found hat, cloth and red mud (brighter than the photo) on paper approx 151 x 139 cm.

Penny Coss will be performing as part of our shear zone residency at Walyalup Fremantle Art Centre. I did the sound (and the scratchy drawing) and Sarah Tomasetti made the fresco banners

A list of 21 debut authors who almost appeared at a writers’ festival.

Imagine you were about to appear at a writers' festival to talk about your first book... then the whole thing fell apart.

I wanted to find debut authors who almost talked at Adelaide Writers' Week. These are 21 folks I've identified so far but *please* let me know who I've missed or mixed up.

Scott Morrison ministerial positions controversy - Wikipedia

Yeah but does it beat Scotty from Marketing for sheer indefatigability? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_M...

A badly damaged book photographed against a grassy sward. The title is just visible

Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation buried for 5 months and then plunged into black-stained, stagnant water: more-than-human knowledge

‘I rarely get outside’: scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI In the race to embrace new technologies, some ecologists fear their field is losing touch with nature.

New technologies are revolutionising ecology, with more data than ever available at our fingertips. But what are the costs and perils of ecologists doing less field work?

Interviews with several BES members in this fascinating @nature.com article

Front-on view of common Bronzewing

Plumpfy Cooer, meet Fat Albert (Phaps chalcoptera)

Terrible fire 😔

A bentwood chair on a forest path with a cloud of corks attached to the back legs

The chair on the ground before being elevated 19m

High tide (folly) being installed at southern forest arts in Northcliffe

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu

The golden age of diversity and democracy in Oz.