sketchbook corner: when all that digging, planting, feeding and nurturing finally pays off...

sketchbook corner: songbird...

As the man wondered, what happened to all the "experts" who used to say CGT & neg gearing had no impact on housing... Westpac investor loans plunge one-fifth on federal budget tax shock afr.com/companies/financial-…

Hear hear!

I hear ya ‘E’ 🫂

The GOP are frankly responsible for the USA having this 1st class nutter at the do-called helm They deserve oblivion at every election, no matter how small an election, until they wake the hell up!

Farmers say never name your animals as you have to say goodbye to them at some point But you should name the trees you plant as you want them to say goodbye to you Meet Hengest Hengest was the 5th century chieftain who with his brother Horsa, founded the Kingdom of Kent

Today is Trump's 80th birthday - that's nothing. Much more impressive: Michael West Media's 10th birthday on July 18. Book here to join the party at Sydney's Dockside: michaelwest.com.au/you-are-i…

Ping @StMaryMacKiller

#BREAKING: President Trump signed a proclamation to allow commercial fishing in three marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean, home to wildlife found nowhere else on the planet. This puts some of our most irreplaceable ocean ecosystems at risk for short-term gain.

My garden robin just had an ‘everything’ bath-watch to the end bc she’s drenched, spiky haired & in need of a towelling down when she flies off. One academic study shows that when we watch footage of ‘cute’* animals it dials down stress levels-my small feathered pal’s bathtime is for your brain. *actual word used in the experiment:

Launch it in to the fucking sun.

People, this brand is pumping ads at the moment using AI exploitative backstories about downs syndrome kids handmaking their products. They are mass production dropshippers. Do NOT fall for this shite. Warn people. You’re being bombarded with lies.

If I was in charge of this removal I would start with “N, A, D,” in his first name. Move to his last name and remove the “R, U, M, and P.” Then take off the “A, N, D,” leaving “THE DOLT” remaining. Call it a night and remove the rest tomorrow.

Yet Joyce & Pauline (great title for a sitcom) keep telling me climate change is a hoax! theguardian.com/world/2026/j…

Turns out data centers are highly flammable. Just an interesting fact I thought I'd share.

I am the Director of Allied Threat Liaison at the Pentagon. M job is to hold two facts in my hands at the same time, every day, forever, and never let them touch. Fact one: we tell Israel everything. Fact two: this week the Defense Intelligence Agency rated Israel a critical espionage threat, the same category we use for Russia, for trying to learn the things we are already telling them. I keep both facts true. The entire position, in one sentence. I have a corner office for it. Every morning I send Mossad's liaison a briefing so complete it could be a confession. Troop movements. Our negotiating floor on Iran. The thing the Undersecretary said in the room he thought was quiet. I attach it. I hit send. And then, by 11, I file a counterintelligence report warning that Israel is aggressively attempting to obtain the exact document I emailed their station chief with a read receipt at 9:04. People ask how Israel could possibly be spying on us when we hand them the material voluntarily. I want to be honest with you. It is not a contradiction. It is the product. If they only knew what we gave them, the relationship would be a friendship, and friendships do not have a budget line. The spying is what makes it a relationship. The spying is what gets renewed. I have a filing cabinet. In the top drawer is Jonathan Pollard, 1985, a Navy analyst who handed Israel a room full of our secrets. Below him is Israel's formal apology, 1987, beautiful, "never again," signed. I have read it forty times. Below that is the 1995 memo where the Pentagon called Israel a non-traditional adversary and then swore it never wrote that down. Below that is this week, where the DIA made Israel a critical threat and three days later we approved the next aid package, and I filed the approval one drawer down from the apology, and the drawers do not know about each other. I make sure the drawers do not know about each other. Also the job. There was an agreement in 1951. The CIA and Mossad shook hands. We would not spy on them. They would not spy on us. I keep the original in a frame. It is the funniest object I own. I show it to new hires and I watch their faces and I know within four seconds whether they will last. The ones who say "but this is insane" do not last. The ones who say "so who at the embassy do I email the briefing to" get the corner office. Here is what I have learned in twenty years of holding two facts apart with my bare hands. Washington does not want the contradiction solved. A solved contradiction is a closed file. A closed file is a smaller agency. Nobody in this building has ever been promoted for ending something. So I send Mossad the briefing. I file the warning on Israel. I rate the ally a critical threat. I approve the aid. I accept the apology I have already filed forty times, and I slide it into the drawer above the renewal, and I keep the two facts from ever touching, because the day they touch is the day I find out which one was real, and I have built an entire life, a pension, a parking spot, on never finding out. Israel is our closest ally. Israel is our highest threat. Both checks cleared. You were never paying for security. You were paying me to keep the drawers from knowing about each other. And the cabinet is full now. So we are buying a bigger cabinet.

I have cleaned-up this remarkable Autochrome portrait of the great French sculptor Rodin (1840-1917), looking statueque, draped in a white sheet in his studio 119 years ago. Rodin is most famous for creating 'The Thinker' and considered the founder of modern sculpture. This colour photograph was taken by Edward Steichen in 1907, showing Rodin seated in front of his sculpture "Eve". It is an early colour glass-plate process and not colourised.

Perfect.