Having flu vaccination, COVID-19 booster simultaneously seems sensible

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Having flu vaccination, COVID-19 booster simultaneously seems sensible

4 June 2025

Posted the other day by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

As winter begins, a new study has found that getting a COVID-19 booster at the same time as the flu vaccination could reduce the rate of hospital admissions for coronavirus. In a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Burnet Institute researchers found that offering COVID-19 vaccination boosters alongside the flu shot could reduce the hospital admission rate for COVID-19 by up to 14 per cent.

This is something we’ve been doing for the last couple of years now. We go in for the flu vaccination, and are also given a COVID-19 booster.

I was surprised the first time the medical centre staff offered to do the COVID booster at the same time as the flu shot, since we used to have to wait about two weeks after one, before we could get the next. Not anymore it would seem.

It may not seem like the odds of going into hospital, in the event of a serious infection, are hugely reduced, but every little bit helps.

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Australia, health, pandemic

Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser wins 2025 Stella Prize

24 May 2025

Sydney based author Michelle de Kretser has been named winner of the 2025 Stellar Prize, for her 2024 novel, Theory & Practice, a novel Stella judges say does not read like a novel:

In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sharp examination of the complex pleasures and costs of living.

The novel that does not read like a novel, is indeed a curious work:

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students — and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.

Established in 2013, the Stellar Prize, which is awarded annually, honours the work of Australian women and non-binary writers.

Half of Australians use AI, but many mistrust, even fear it

17 May 2025

The findings come as part of a global study into the use of, and attitudes to artificial intelligence (AI), carried out by multinational professional services network KPMG, in conjunction with Professor Nicole Gillespie and Dr Steve Lockey, of the University of Melbourne.

“The public’s trust of AI technologies and their safe and secure use is central to acceptance and adoption,” Professor Gillespie says. “Yet our research reveals that 78% of Australians are concerned about a range of negative outcomes from the use of AI systems, and 37% have personally experienced or observed negative outcomes ranging from inaccuracy, misinformation and manipulation, deskilling, and loss of privacy or IP.”

While the benefits of AI use in the workplace are understood, many Australians harbour concerns the technology may result in job losses. These fears are justified to an extent however, and not only in Australia, with some freelance IT and creative professionals reporting declines in work availability, something that they are attributing to the prevalence of AI technology.

Australian political leaders who refuse TDA interviews lose elections

5 May 2025

Australian youth news outlet The Daily Aus (TDA), asked former Australian Liberal Party, and Opposition leader, Peter Dutton several times for a one-on-one interview, but he refused every time.

The same, apparently, went for former Liberal Party leader, and Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Both leaders refused to speak to TDA, both leaders went on to lose elections they subsequently faced, Dutton over the weekend, and Morrison in 2022.

Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meanwhile sat down with Billi FitzSimons, TDA’s editor-in-chief, in early February. Angus Taylor, the Opposition’s shadow treasurer, did however speak with FitzSimons in April (Instagram link). He was, I believe, the most senior Liberal Party/Opposition member to be interviewed by TDA.

FitzSimons, and TDA co-founder Zara Seidler, recounted the experience (palaver?) of attempting to invite Dutton to speak with them, in a recent podcast. Spoiler: Dutton seemed pretty obstinate, an attitude in general that probably cost him the 2025 election.

Abdul Abdullah wins 2025 Archibald Prize Packing Room Prize with Jason Phu portrait

2 May 2025

Melbourne and Bangkok, Thailand, based Australian artist Abdul Abdullah was named winner of the 2025 Archibald Prize Packing Room Prize yesterday, for his portrait — titled No mountain high enough — of Jason Phu.

The announcement of the Packing Room Prize is a bit like the beginning of Archibald Prize season, the annual arts award for Australian portraiture, and runs through to the closing of the Archibald exhibition, being Sunday 17 August this year.

Entry is open to any Australian artist, who’s painting was produced in the twelve months prior to the closing date for entries. The work should feature a “distinguished” Australian subject, usually in the arts, sciences, or politics, who, further, sat for the artist, face to face, while the work was produced.

Nearly two-thousand-four-hundred works were submitted this year, for the Archibald, together with the also annual Wynne (landscape painting), and Sulman (painting, genre, or mural painting) Prizes, the second highest of entries in the history of the prizes.

It can only be imagined how busy the loading dock at the Art Gallery of NSW must have been during the entry stage. The winners of all three awards will be announced next week, on Friday 9 May 2025.

More Australian publishing plagiarism allegations, this time in cook books

2 May 2025

Australian cook Nagi Maehashi, founder of popular food blog RecipeTin Eats, and publisher of two cook books (her first title was riotously successful), has accused Brisbane based baker Brooke Bellamy, of copying at least two of her recipes.

In addition, Maehashi also claims Bellamy copied “word for word”, a Portuguese tart recipe, published by late Australian chef Bill Granger, in his 2006 cook book, Every Day.

I’m not sure you can copy a recipe for something like Portuguese tarts, but allegedly re-printing one verbatim might be another story:

It has historically been difficult to prove recipe plagiarism, especially when recipes such as baklava, caramel slice and Portuguese custard tarts are not original ideas but versions of traditional recipes that have been tweaked and replicated thousands of times.

Bellamy has denied the plagiarism allegations, saying all recipes in her book, Bake with Brooki, were her own original work.

Starbucks turns its fortunes around in Australia

29 April 2025

American coffee chain, Starbucks, is enjoying a surge in popularity in some parts of Australia.

Starbucks, put simply, had to stop chasing the mainstream market — metropolitan city coffee purveyors who savoured the neighbourhood cafe experience.

This is a far cry from their Australian nadir in 2008. To continue the good run though, they’ll need to retain the cafe-style business model, where customers can sit down and socialise. This rather than converting shops into glorified fast food collection points, apparently the norm in North America.

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Australia, coffee, trends

Australians favour early voting, time for politicians to take notice

24 April 2025

Shane Wright, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

A record 542,000 people, or 3 per cent of those on the electoral roll, cast a ballot on the first day of pre-poll voting on Tuesday. It was a 72 per cent increase on the 314,000 who cast a vote on the first day of pre-polling at the 2022 election.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), there are a little over eighteen-million Australians registered to vote in the upcoming federal election (Saturday 3 May 2025). To expect all of these people to attend a polling booth on a single day, is absurd, especially in more populous regions. Could that many people possibly vote in one day? Despite the best efforts of polling booth staff, I think some people might miss out. This after having possibility waited hours in a queue.

Of course eighteen million people wouldn’t all descend on polling booths on election day. Some people would have sent in postal votes, while a supposedly small number would voted early, as they were unable to do so on election day because of work or travel commitments. But with up to half of Australians expected to cast their votes during the two weeks ahead of election day, it is clear not all of those people will be working or travelling on the day. When it comes to voting early, Australians are voting with their feet, by walking to into pre-polling booths in droves.

Voting is compulsory in Australia, as it should be, and all the more reason people be given — particularly in the absence of an online voting system — a reasonable amount time to vote. Naturally there are risks in voting early. The candidate a person votes early for might make a serious blunder in the lead up to election day. The party someone backs might announce a policy on the eve the election that is not popular. Parties typically do not release the costings of their policies and promises until the last minute. People who have voted early might find the proposed expenditure excessive.

Then again, policies can quickly be altered, or dropped completely, immediately after the election. An elected lawmaker can unforgivably err shortly after assuming office. There may be little a voter could do at that point, except wait for the next election. But nine million, maybe more, Australians cannot be wrong. The option to vote early, unconditionally, is something the people want, risks notwithstanding. It is time all politicians in Australia accepted early voting as an inherent part of the election process. I also wrote about early voting at the last federal election, three years ago.

Say what you will, this is a democracy after all, but I’m sold on it.

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Australia, current affairs, politics

Australia is bigger than Pluto, are then dwarf continents a thing?

22 April 2025

This, an image comparing Australia with dwarf planet Pluto, was published years ago, but somehow I only saw it for the first time a few days ago. Incredible, isn’t it? Width-ways, going from the east to west coasts, Australia dwarfs Pluto (no pun intended).

But drawing comparisons between dwarf planet Pluto, and the Australian continent, however, makes me nervous. Might such a stark juxtaposition result in Australia being downgraded to dwarf continent standing? In the same way Pluto was demoted from full, to dwarf planet, status in 2006?

Were such a travesty to occur, Australia would have to claim the title of the world’s largest island, an honour presently bestowed upon Greenland. That’s not a new idea though, a rum brand, for one, made the suggestion several decades ago.

The 2025 Global Book Crawl on at indie Australian bookshops this week

22 April 2025

The Global Book Crawl began yesterday, and numerous independent bookshops in Australia are taking part. The book crawl, which has been running for several years, aims to get book lovers across the world, into indie book stores.

In Australia, if crawlers collect enough stamps in a crawl “passport”, they might go on to win a collection of fifty books. Other participating nations include Argentina, Austria, Fiji, Guatemala, Ireland (quite a lot towns involved there), Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, and Switzerland.

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Australia, books, events

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