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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 43m

Modern Ocean Grove isn’t really the quaint seaside resort of memory and romantic imagination.

View from the town centre towards the invisible beach: it’s a hillside completely covered by boxy, multi-storey, cookie-cutter residences. Blah.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 43m

Early for a haircut appointment, and this is the view from the salon.
#Wadawurrung Country

In the foreground, a monstrously large White House with a boring white fence. Lift your eyes and feast on the view beyond: crashing surf, blue-green ocean, and natural scrub covering the distant rocky outcrop of Barwon Heads.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 58m

Was struck by a photo earlier this year (from ISS, I think, or maybe a satellite) showing the general sprawl & size of Melbourne at night: CBD and the dark bay easily discernible, but completely outshone by the enormous northern-suburbs roadworks. So brightly lit, it was impossible to see details 🕶️

Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 3h

Excellent thread (👇🏻) summarising the factual elements of the report, which “documents the widespread unlawful administration of Mutual Obligations,” a framework that punishes Indigenous people, single parents, people with disabilities, homeless people, simply for existing.

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 4h

Now that the Deloitte report, about the government's unlawful administration of mutual obligations, is making international headlines, it's worth looking at what's actually in it (apart from AI slop) and WHY it was actually commissioned

A thread👇

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 5h

“Sartre said, 'Hell is other people.' But us-two, we know it is the opposite. It's isolation that makes you a citizen of Inferno.”

– Tyson Yunkaporta, “Right Story, Wrong Story”

Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 6h

Escaping the hell of daily life “is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Final paragraph from “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino.

“And Polo said: ‘The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.’”

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Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

Ceryl @politicdormouse.bsky.social · 7h

Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan #Scottish civil engineer & 1st woman member of ICE Engineers in 1927. She was #engineer on #Sydney Harbour Bridge #Australia, #Tyne Bridge linking #NewcastleUponTyne & #Gateshead & Lambeth Bridge in #London. b. #OTD 8 Oct 1899 #WomenInSTEM en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy...

Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan as a young woman

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 8h

Wishing you a randomly happy day 🥳🌟🎉🎶🧁

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 17h

Gotta start somewhere 🤷🏼‍♀️

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 17h

Blue- and pink-collar workers — or, these days, the fluoro vesties — rarely seem to benefit from those leading thoughts.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 1d

Gorgeous 😍

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 1d

The theme is cities:
– Siang Lu: Ghost Cities
– Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
– Ada Palmer: Inventing the Renaissance
– China Mieville: The City & The City
– Peter Ackroyd’s London books
– and of course Terry Pratchett’s sprawling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, and the other cities of the Discworld.

This week’s reading: a copy of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities lies atop my commonplace book, on an outdoor table at the neighbourhood cafe. A coffee cup and a petite lemon tart set the ambiance for this relaxed Wednesday morning in early spring. Photo by me. #CafeLife

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 1d

lol, I wasn’t thinking of you specifically, but if the sandal fits then it should be worn with pride ☺️

Am also a follower of Anoia, the Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers

wiki.lspace.org/Anoia

Anoia - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki

wiki.lspace.org

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 1d

Erudite: the goddess of smartypantses

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Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

Shebah @shebahride.bsky.social · 2d

We're always looking to grow our driver community, so if working when you want (with autonomy), supporting women from all walks of life (daily), earning 85% of each fare AND having an army of like-minded women behind you sounds like a dream, please get in touch!

shebah.com.au/drive

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Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 2d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 2d

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Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

Teen Vogue @teenvogue.com · 2d

“I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me. But that is not the story,” Thunberg said during a press conference following her release.

Read more:

Greta Thunberg On Her Detention: I'm "Not The Story" — It's Israel Violating International Humanitarian Law

“I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me. But that is not the story.”

www.teenvogue.com

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 2d

That’s what drafts are for — collecting thoughts, clues, fragments into a single document. Structure and finesse can come later, when you have the wherewithal.

Tip: bracket any pasted bits with (eg) “ZZZ” so that they can’t accidentally disappear into your own prose. CRTL+F to find & edit later.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 3d

🎉🥂🎶🌟🥳

Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 3d

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 4d

rampant heightism 🙄

Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 5d

Yes, this. I’ve worked alongside a couple of that particular club’s members, and they were all about the networking.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 5d

It suddenly occurs to me that minifigs are quite hobbity.

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Margaret L Ruwoldt @emelaarghh.bsky.social · 5d

Lucky you! 🤩

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Reposted by Margaret L Ruwoldt

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 5d

i had an opinion about the new tswift record after all
www.patreon.com/posts/140377...

“Eldest Daughter" is a symptom of my overall issue with Taylor Swift: the scale of her music just feels fucking off. In 2025, she's no longer a lovelorn kid singing about Romeo and Juliet; she's a 35-year-old billionaire who's played sold out stadiums all over the world. She's Taylor Swift. That's her name. Damn near every living person knows who she is, and she's singing about the internet? About the fucking comments section? When she sings "I'm not a bad bitch," is she even aware that she's lying, that she's worshipped by more girls and women than almost anybody else? Even her love songs feel incorrect to me on these grounds. When I think about the real circumstances of her life, I just start wondering where the songs are about the housekeepers, the assistants, the cooks, the drivers, and every other person who's changed her life way more than the man in the Musso and Frank's booth in "Elizabeth Taylor." I struggle to trust her as the lyrical steward of ordinary human experiences. I am certain it's been many years since she's had one the way I have them, with all the waiting for a table that implies, and the navigating of customer service phone trees, the dithering over $35 travel insurance that I can never decide if I actually need, the frantic emails about unpaid freelance invoices, the trip back to the grocery store for the thing I forgot when I went earlier in the day, and all the other boring crap I have to do because I can't buy up other people's lifetimes so they have to do it for me.

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