Author | Lightnews

Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · 1m

Folding wing of a Salvin's Albatross

A large albatross is sitting on rolling water. Its beak is peaking out from behind a wing which is in the middle of folding up against it, showing off the inner feathers and structure of the wing

Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · 3m

A daily bird I've enjoyed seeing (or as often as I remember to actually post)

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · 11d

Hiromi + PUBLIQuartet was one of the best gigs I've seen this year. Virtuosic playing with absolutely compelling performances. Brilliant way to close out the jazz festival.

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · 21d

Latest episode of Weekender takes on Wayward (yay?), After the Hunt (boo!), and I recommend the latest show at Heide and the new album by The Antlers.

Weekender: Wayward maintains its direction, on the hunt against After the Hunt, and two great art exhibitions. - ABC listen

Featuring troubled children in a small American town, an outsider who can sense that something is wrong, and hints of the supernatural, Wayward seems influenced by the work of Stephen King, but Ce arg...

www.abc.net.au

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Reposted by Sky Kirkham

The Saturday Paper @thesaturdaypaper.com.au · 25d

“This inquiry has… exposed what lies beneath the tip of the governance failure iceberg – overpaid and arrogant management and their largesse, opaque, unaccountable, and top-down decision-making, and governance bodies stacked with corporate appointees.” satpa.pe/XogpEAK

Stacked boards driving ‘rotten’ university sector

satpa.pe

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · 28d

This seems extremely embarrassing re: the state of Aus politics

Bill Browne @browne90.bsky.social · 28d

Making his point for him -- just asking about the power of the gambling lobby gets Senator David Pocock booted from sports club the Prime Minister heads. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Former Wallabies star David Pocock booted from parliamentary sports club

Exclusive: Senator accused of bringing social club into disrepute after raising concerns about its association with betting lobby

www.theguardian.com

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · Sep 30

I’m not a fancy big city lawyuh, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how copyright works.

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · Sep 29

Exclusive: OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator, which creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear.

OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out

Executives at the startup notified talent agencies and studios over the last week.

on.wsj.com

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 25

An early edition of Arts in 30 Weekender, with Jason Di Rosso joining us for a chat about One Battle After Another and Spinal Tap II

Weekender: One Battle After Another and Spinal Tap II tell very different stories of the world - ABC listen

With two major films launching this week, The Screen Show's Jason Di Rosso pops in to share his thoughts. One of Hollywood's major auteurs, Paul Thomas Anderson, brings us his second adaptation of Th...

www.abc.net.au

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Nick Feik @nickfeik.bsky.social · Sep 24

Very glad to be able to speak to ABC RN's Arts in 30 about the closure of Meanjin.
Thanks, @skykirkham.bsky.social
Discussion starts at 20mins:

Arts In 30 - ABC listen

Your weekly dose of news and interviews from ABC Radio National’s arts and culture team.

www.abc.net.au

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 19

Second episode of the Weekender is up - featuring guest host Claire Nichols. We look at the huge success of The Studio, share book tips (The Names and What We Can Know), music tips (Springsteen and Wisp) and pay tribute to Robert Redford.

Weekender: The Studio sweeps the Emmy's, the lingering power of The Names, and a Springsteen rarity revealed - ABC listen

Claire Nichols from The Book Show joins the team to talk through the biggest name in comedy at the moment: The Studio. With a record-breaking 13 Emmy's at the 2025 awards, we share our takes on what's...

www.abc.net.au

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Tim de Sousa @timdesousa.bsky.social · Sep 18

Ah, yes, what a shock, who could have seen this coming, it's not like it has been a long standing issue with facial recognition systems since inception or anything...

Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · Sep 18

Social media ban trial data reveals racial bias in age checking software www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

Social media ban trial data reveals racial bias in age checking software: just how inaccurate is it?

Young people from Indigenous and Asian backgrounds are more likely to be miscategorised as over the age limit and older people as underaged, analysis finds

www.theguardian.com

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James Ley @jamesley.bsky.social · Sep 18

The deputy editor speaks

overland.org.au/2025/09/no-g...

“No Guernicas, no sacred places”: On the closure of Meanjin - Overland literary journal

Australia’s literary culture depends for its life on its journals. Literary journals are not just clearing houses for pithy snatches of commentary and readable middlebrow fiction — they’re incubators ...

overland.org.au

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Writers Guild of America East @wgaeast.bsky.social · Sep 18

The following is a statement from the WGA on ABC’s decision to pull ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

WGA Statement on ABC's Decision to Pull ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’
The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other - to disturb, even - is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.
As a Guild, we stand united in opposition to anyone who uses their power and influence to silence the voices of writers, or anyone who speaks in dissent. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn't have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to - painful as it may be at times - is the freeing agreement to disagree.
Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich.
Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.
The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers.

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Justin LaLiberty @jlalibs.com · Sep 16

RIP to Robert Redford, one of the best to ever do it (and a dozen other things on top of that)

Here’s an excerpt from a 2017 interview that he did with Esquire, in which he discusses his career, the Trump presidency and a slew of other things all very articulately

Remember him for the work

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 16

Thorough and fascinating examination of what remains publically known (and unknown) around the decision to end Meanjin

Nick Feik @nickfeik.bsky.social · Sep 16

New:
A deep dive with some alarming new revelations on the silencing of one of the few remaining independent progressive voices in Australian media. Who killed Meanjin?

Who killed Meanjin?

And why won’t Melbourne University Publishing engage with efforts to save it?

www.crikey.com.au

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Gabrielle Jackson @gabriellecj.bsky.social · Sep 12

Australian War Memorial defers military history prize after judging panel awards it to book on Ben Roberts-Smith - story by Paul Daley www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Australian War Memorial defers military history prize after judging panel awards it to book on Ben Roberts-Smith

Exclusive: Governing council ‘retrospectively’ decides the Les Carlyon literary award should go only to first-time authors, ruling out Chris Masters’ book

www.theguardian.com

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 12

A new weekly extra for Arts in 30 - we set the news aside and bring you our tips on what to check out and what to skip from the world of arts. This week: Why genre fiction deserves a place in the top books of the century (we pick Mieville and Pratchett), and the new album from Bleak Squad

Weekender: The case for genre fiction in the Top 100 and a new Australian supergroup - ABC listen

Welcome to the Arts in 30 Weekender, where we're setting the news aside and sharing our tips on what to check out and what to skip from the world of the arts. With voting for the Radio National Top 1...

www.abc.net.au

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Dr LJ Maher (cis: she/her, 🌈, AuDHD, Quaintrelle) @littleread.bsky.social · Sep 12

Re #MeanjinJournal, a letter from myself and some of my colleagues to The University of Melbourne. #Meanjin is such an important part of Australia's literary ecosystem and losing it would be culturally and industrially devastating. #AusLit #AustralianWriters #Publishing #Unimelb

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Letter in support of Meanjin’s future

As members of the Publishing and Communications program’s staff at the University of Melbourne, we strongly support the continued existence of Meanjin Quarterly. From direct involvements with the journal during the past 25 years and more, we personally attest to the formative role Meanjin has played in the development of writers, editors and publishers, and an independent Australian cultural voice. The creative labour of thousands resonates deeply in the fabric of this cultural institution founded by Clem Christesen in Meanjin/Brisbane in 1940.

We call on the University of Melbourne to recognise the rich and continuing social, political and literary value of Meanjin by ensuring its future. The journal is a living resource for our teaching, and vital to our students. Its publications fill our reading lists with ideas from the best minds of our time. It has uplifted many of our students through publication, internships, partnerships and employment, and its connection to the University is part of what makes our writing and editing programs valuable and comparable to other leading universities on the international stage.

We believe the University’s enduring purpose of benefiting society compels it to take swift action to preserve the journal and sustain its continued publication, preferably within the University itself. At the very least, the University should do all it can, acting in good faith, to transfer the journal’s cultural and IP assets to another institution prepared to save it. Culturally, the University of Melbourne has benefited immensely from its support of the journal since 1945; the extinction of the journal would be its enduring loss but an even greater loss to the community the University serves.

Signed by:

Sybil Nolan
Tim Coronel
Matt Holden
LJ Maher
Fiannuala Morgan
Sharon Mullins
Beth Driscoll
Claire Parnell
Nicola Redhouse
Hollen Singleton
Bec Kavanagh

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 10

Should probably have included a link to this... www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Meanjin to close after 85 years and Anthropic agrees to $1.5 Billion dollar settlement with authors - ABC listen

Meanjin is set to shut down after 85 years, with the board of their publisher, Melbourne University Press, saying that it’s a purely financial decision. But is financial viability the metric that a ...

www.abc.net.au

Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 10

On Arts in 30: With Meanjin set to close after 85 years, @greenj.bsky.social looks at the finances of running a literary mag and @beneltham.bsky.social explains why he's organising a protest to save it. And @jennifermills.net.au on what the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement will mean for Aus writers

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Meanjin Quarterly @meanjin.bsky.social · Sep 8

Thank you for the outpouring of support over the past few days, and for the memories being shared.

The complete Meanjin archive will be put online and made available for free from February 2026. In the meantime, current print and digital subscribers continue to have full access to it. (1 of 2)

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Meanjin Quarterly @meanjin.bsky.social · Sep 8

There is an FAQ page up on the website to answer some of the questions being asked about subscriber refunds, which we will process expeditiously. This page will be updated with new developments.

meanjin.com.au/frequently-a...

For any questions, please email us: [email protected] (2 of 2)

Frequently Asked Questions

Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) announced on 4 September 2025 that Meanjin will cease publication after its final edition in December 2025. For questions related to the impact of this announc…

meanjin.com.au

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Sky Kirkham @skykirkham.bsky.social · Sep 5

Warner Brothers is the latest studio to file suit against Midjourney. For the backstory on this, check out our interview with @rahll.bsky.social from the first time around www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Warner Bros. Joins Studios’ AI Copyright Battle Against Midjourney

Warner Bros. has become the third studio to sue Midjourney for blatant infringement on its copyrighted characters.

variety.com

Reposted by Sky Kirkham

Mal Neil @malneil.bsky.social · Sep 4

I worked with meanjin a few years ago on supporting its sales to close the incredibly small gap between its revenue and costs.
It had made progress. The small amount needed to subsidise could be found if UofM saw literary culture as important.
It clearly doesn't.

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