Jon Piccini
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jonpiccini.bsky.social
Jon Piccini
@jonpiccini.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer. Reviews editor. Union Thug. ADHD haver. Writing a history of Australian empire. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Tweets mine. He/him
Pinned
Excited to see this, the first output of our ARC project on Vietnam war R&R in Sydney, live at Journal of Contemporary history. We look at how the scheme awkwardly positioned white Australia within an emerging neo-colonial tourist economy. And it's OA! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Tourism, Americanization and the Vietnam War R&R Scheme in Sydney, Australia, 1967–71 - Chris Dixon, Lisa Featherstone, Jon Piccini, 2024
Australia's addition to the Vietnam War R&R scheme in September 1967 brought some 280,000 short-stay tourists to Sydney, and particularly its notorious ‘red lig...
journals.sagepub.com
Reposted by Jon Piccini
“The former ANU vice-chancellor’s golden handshake means that her new annual salary will be more than the total annualised savings ANU sought from the proposal to disestablish the ANU School of Music.”
www.canberratimes.com.au/story/911946...
More details about ANU former vice-chancellor payments released
'In accordance with her entitlements under her contract.'
www.canberratimes.com.au
November 25, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
You might not like it, but this is what peak male performance looks like
Additionally, hippos - despite being massive - have almost no fat on them. All of that impressive bulk is muscle.

2% body fat. Compare that to Elephants, which are around 8-10%, or rhinos, which are 10-20%.

The average human is around 20-40%, for reference.

They're *all* muscle.
November 24, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
This time next week a whole host of AHA members will be speaking as part of the Aus Academy of the Humanities and CHASS' symposium on academic freedom. It's free and open to the public: register your attendance at the link! humanities.org.au/events/acade...
Academic Freedom Symposium – Australian Academy of the Humanities
Join us at this year's CHASS in Melbourne to explore what it means to define, contest and safeguard academic freedom in the 21st century.
humanities.org.au
November 17, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.
November 23, 2025 at 8:29 PM
I'll give ya two bucks for the bird if it's still alive
November 24, 2025 at 9:06 AM
The Non Aligned Movement is back baby, wolf howl
November 24, 2025 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
interesting fact: noah smith is part of an ongoing experiment designed to see how much you could smooth a person’s brain out before they can no longer function
Enlightened centrist
November 24, 2025 at 4:01 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
"The ‘rubble films’ were intended to help make sure none of that could ever happen again, and in that, they are among the many intriguing failures of twentieth century culture." - Owen Hatherley

thequietus.com/culture/film...
Murderers Among Us: Owen Hatherley Picks Over the ‘Rubble Films’ of Post-War East Germany | The Quietus
At least twice, Germany has had among the most influential and important mainstream film industries in the world. First, famously, between 1919 and 1933, German directors, in what was called, not alwa...
thequietus.com
November 23, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
"Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested at his villa in the capital, Brasília, amid suspicions he was poised to abscond to a foreign embassy to avoid going to prison for masterminding a military coup."

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Brazilian police arrest Bolsonaro amid suspicions he was about to flee
Politician reportedly taken from his villa into custody at a federal police base about 7 miles from presidential palace
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
“People who attend UN climate conferences are loathe to describe any of them as a failure.”

Michael Jacobs telling it straight here. There is now a powerful and organised global resistance to climate action. What is to be done?

insidestory.org.au/not-so-good-...
Not so good COP • Inside Story
The latest UN climate summit was buffeted by geopolitical headwinds
insidestory.org.au
November 23, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
November 22, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Need a movie about this guy
November 21, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
An Australian, tasked with explaining this to people from another country: "Yeah, nah. Can't."
This is the most Australian thing I have seen all week and it's a mood
November 20, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Neo-Nazi & NSN flunkey Joel Davis (co-host w Blair Cottrell of 'The Joel & Blair Show') got arrest today.

'Davis was expected to be charged with using a carriage service to harass or menace. Sources have told this masthead the alleged victim was a political figure.'

www.smh.com.au/national/neo...
Neo-Nazi leader Joel Davis arrested by AFP at Bondi
The National Socialist Network leader, who led the anti-Jewish rally outside parliament, is now in custody.
www.smh.com.au
November 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Hog Tug Time Machine
November 20, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
70 teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute & observed weekly over 5 months. 80% of spoons disappeared; spoon halflife~81 days. Communal room halflife lower than in specific labs. 250 spoons annually required to maintain 70 spoon population.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
Objectives To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. Design Longitudinal cohort study. Setting Research institute ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
November 20, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Trump in a room with a very charismatic person results in like half a day of Trump agreeing with everything that person said, so this has the potential to be very, very funny.
Trump says he’s meeting with “communist” Mamdani at the White House on Friday
November 20, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
What does it mean to write the history of a place as it is being destroyed before our very eyes?

Anne Irfan on the stakes of studying, researching and writing the history of Gaza.
Writing history in a time of genocide
Anne Irfan asks, what does it mean to write the history of a place as it is being destroyed before our very eyes?
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
November 20, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
When it’s 1922 and you think the Irish War of Independence is done and dusted but turns out not everyone is satisfied with the resulting treaty
November 19, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Our new book, 'In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left from 1956', is now also available from @manchesterup.bsky.social as an e-book, which you can find here: www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

Check your institutional library for access!
November 18, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
November 18, 2025 at 4:35 AM
What gooning used to be 😭
November 18, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...
The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care?
The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity
www.cityam.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Jon Piccini
Rather gobsmacked & honoured to find that I have been named Australia's top researcher in political science by The Australian!
www.theaustralian.com.au/special-repo...
www.theaustralian.com.au
November 18, 2025 at 5:06 AM