iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A man who would try to drink out of the cup while walking, only to spill the contents all over his shirt

Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

That means a lot Liam, thank you -- an absolute highlight of the last year has been getting to work with and learn from you!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I'm finishing up in my current role and freelancing once again. Please get in touch if you need: *submission and grant writing (inc. disability, social policy) *academic editing and fact-checking *qualitative research and literature reviews No job too small or too left field!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I am up for it! Maybe we could set up a virtual chat time soon, to simulate the kind of circuitous pub chat that I think would be great fodder for such a thing

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

True on all fronts! e.g. I'm looking forward to some lived experience allergy research I contributed to coming out soon, extremely rewarding work entirely using finicky close reading historian skills -- but exactly the thing I'd have missed out on if I'd stuck to new towns, where the money isn't

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I suspect in part that this is single-authoring culture plus careerist anxieties about optimising output interacting to kill off the intellectual curiosity that leads one to explore multiple fields, even adjacent ones (despite it being exactly what makes for better scholarship in general)

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Academic Audio Transcription Ltd @aat-transcribes.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Working on a project which engages epistemic injustice, oppression or ignorance as a theoretical framework, or wanting space to explore these concepts with experts and other like-minded researchers? Join us this Thursday at 1pm BST! funnels.academicaudiotranscription.…

funnels.academicaudiotranscription.com

Join our free August workshop on Epistemic Injustice, Oppression & Ignorance

Join us on the second Thursday of the month for our next workshop on Epistemic Injustice, Oppression and Ignorance for Social Researchers

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Liam Thatcher @lthat.ch · 07/08/2026

From Inclusion Australia (peak body for people with intellectual disability) on Centerlink/TCF welfare penalties being switched back on. This will hurt people with disability: TCF must be removed and proper compensation for everyone harmed.

There are at least 3,200 people with an intellectual disability who have compulsory activities in employment services. This is likely to be much lower than the true number because it only includes people who have a primary diagnosis of intellectual disability and who have told Centrelink about their disability.

The Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) is the system used to stop peoples’ Centrelink payments if they have not done their compulsory activities. These penalties can include suspending, reducing or cancelling a person’s payment.

For people with intellectual disability, these penalties have serious and harmful consequences.

People with an intellectual disability face significant barriers navigating employment services and compulsory activities, especially when services and requirements are not designed to be accessible. Payment suspensions and cancellations compound these barriers by taking away the income people rely on for food, housing, medication, travel and other essentials.

Right now, some parts of the TCF, like payment cancellations are not happening because many were found to be unlawful.

On Tuesday 4 August the Secretary for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) said that they will begin to turn back on more parts of the TCF. This means people could have their payment suspended for more reasons, and their payment could also be cancelled.

DEWR have said this will happen from 26 October 2026.

The Government’s decision to bring these powers back is deeply concerning. We already know that these penalties have caused serious harm to people with an intellectual disability, and there are serious legal concerns about how the TCF has been used.

Inclusion Australia continues to call for:

The removal of the TCF and all compulsory activities

Access to compensation for all people impacted by unlawful payment penalties – while DEWR has said it will contact people who may be eligible for compensation, the Gov…

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Finally a splinter group with a graphic designer budget

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Brought up Gramsci in a medical appointment, basically gonna collapse into my own caricatured nature like a black hole now

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

This rules. Have you heard Louis Zong's Kirbia¡ EP? Makes looping the soundtrack slightly more socially acceptable louiezong.bandcamp.com/album/kirbia

louiezong.bandcamp.com

¡kirbia!, by Louie Zong

4 track album

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I don't mean to be a bad influence but I would love to read something by you on this topic!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I'd be interested in this too! It comes up a bit in discussion of Greg Dening's work but always wanted to read more. I have often thought that my high school (Jesuit adjacent tradition) exegesis training was better preparation for later history study than my actual history subjects.

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The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

thanks to whoever left this awesome giant sheep outside the museum! we're sure nothing bad is going to happen

A giant sheep standing outside the entrance of The Museum of English Rural Life

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

(Cue me explaining to my doctor that I haven't been resting enough but mitochondrial dysfunction is praxis so I'm actually getting at a higher truth)

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Tried to nap but couldn't, paradoxically because I was thinking about Ivan Illich writing in 1974 about participatory low energy societies

Text from Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity (1974): "While people have begun to accept ecological limits on maximum per capita energy use as a condition for physical survival, they do not yet think about the use of minimum feasible power as the foundation of any of various social orders that would be both modern and desirable. Yet only a ceiling on energy use can lead to social relations that are characterized by high levels of equity. The one option that is at present neglected is the only choice within the reach of all nations. It is also the only strategy by which a political process can be used to set limits on the power of even the most motorized bureaucrat. Participatory democracy postulates low-energy technology. Only participatory democracy creates the conditions for rational technology."

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

This is on the list of stuff I wish I'd have gotten in to the book but didn't. If I could do it over, etc etc

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

The wholesome hopefulness of 1970s MK culture is always a treat to behold; may we all be driven by even a fraction of that enthusiasm

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

100%, seeing who applies/gets these types of roles gives great clarity on who actually cares about their discipline and colleagues

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Qual survey results are such a treat to work with. Can't wait to read more of what you find!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

(Also as I obviously won't be able to go, I actively encourage sharing pictures of whatever treasures you find, for vicarious enjoyment purposes)

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

My former academic library has just been collected for New International Bookshop ahead of their Big Red Book Fair on 18 July at Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St Carlton. Go give my old books good homes 💜

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

There's a radical A03 audience waiting for you with this one

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I feel like it's moments like these that are exactly when those sorts of candidates have their highest possible function

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Absolutely! Also the planning culture changed so much from the late 60s on, that there was less of the kind of "Canberra as Arcadia" energy in those spaces - but it must have stuck around in some other areas!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Interesting that this vibe was still going on that late! There was a lot of that type of thing up to the 60s around gardens/parks etc, but I sadly never got to do much on later aspects of this sort of 'showcasing'

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Ah that makes sense! I love how it looks a bit like a 70s stoneware reactive glaze on this one

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

This rules! I am wood-illiterate but it reminds me of burlwood in a good way

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Extremely useful thread summarising how the amendments to the NDIS bill are faring, for those who lack the spoons or stomach to watch along

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El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

and NDIS Bill report delayed again - this time till next Tuesday www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar...

aph.gov.au

Media Releases

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El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

report on NDIS bill due today, but in the meantime read some of the incredible submissions from disabled people - all the 'name withhelds' tell you how scared people are about speaking out, but they did it anyway www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar...

aph.gov.au

Submissions

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King Algamemnon @adamrothman.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

The only acceptable use of Claude

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Dr Cath Feely @cathfeely.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Always, always pause when reading something that doesn't make any sense and think ... my own version was a sentence about reading dialectical materialism as a guide to gaining confidence talking to women. It might be madness but, you know, it's nearly always interesting if you follow it.

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Dr Cath Feely @cathfeely.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

One of the most important influences of The Cheese and the Worms was to notice the odd turn of phrase or the thing that doesn't make sense in a document and poke at it. I always loved that bit at the beginning about the sentence in the Inquisition about putrefaction that he went back to years later.

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Radical Online Archives @radonlinearchives.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

A whole bunch of new collections of radical online archives listed. Check out this 🧵 #historians #archives 🗃️

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 16/06/2024

Today's the anniversary of the Nazis executing Marc Bloch. Or, someone who could sit with uncertainty, champion inquiry & trying to understand, and recognise plurality & perplexity. And, in that knowledge, made the choice not to remain passive. Bloch, Historian’s Craft (MUP, 1992), pp. 64, 119, 160.

his comrades address him with a look of amazement. "extraordinary! You don't even seem to mind this awful uncertainty!" My friend could have answered that, despite the popular prejudice, the mental climate of research is not so unsympathetic to ready acceptance of the lottery of fate.

Even in action, we are far too prone to judge. It is so easy to denounce. WE are never sufficiently understanding. Whoever differs form us -- a foreigner or a political adversary -- is almost inevitably considered evil. A little more understanding of people would be necessary merely for guidance, in the conflicts which are unavoidable; all the more to prevent them while there is yet time. If history would only renounce its false angelic airs, it would help us to cure this weakness. It includes a vast experience of human diversities, a continuous contact with men. Life, like science, has everything to gain from it, if only these contacts be friendly.

This is in all honesty to acknowledge the subordination of the perspectiv to the peculiar angle of the inquiry. Moreover, lt us take care: in history, the fetish of single cause is all too often only the insidious form of search for the responsible person -- hence a value judgment. The judge expresses it as: 'who is right, and who is wrong?' The scholar is content to ask: 'why?' and he accepts the fact that the answer may not be simple. Whether as a prejudice of common sense, a postulate of logicians, or a habit of prosecuting attorneys, the monism of cause can be, for history, only an impediment. History seeks for causal wavetrains and is not afraid, since life shows them to be so, to find them multiple.

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El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

NDIS Bill Committee report now due Friday (was due today) www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar...

aph.gov.au

Media Releases

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

This, again, like building castles out of dry sand

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

a machine that can fill in the gaps in the archives! this is distilled essence of so much of the techno-utopianism around LLMs and research. it fundamentally misunderstands: the *gaps* are the meaning. history is not the past, it is the processes of recording, then interpreting those records

research.it

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

(This is a lovely thread Briony, thank you!)

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

My opinion undoubtedly doesn't count, but you're far more a historian than many who are more comfortable with the label of historian, and I mean that as a compliment. Anyone who's not getting powerful cultural history vibes from your work isn't paying attention

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

This probably changes, but in keeping with my "cultural history is a broad church" line, Raymond Williams' Culture & Society. I always come back to him on large scale change as experienced individually through the senses. (My Thompson obsession is with Time & Work Discipline more than Making.)

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

This explains so much, thank you

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Just disability things: I have a lovely new mechanical keyboard which feels very satisfying, sounds quiet, and is pleasingly colourful. However I can't use it right now because I'm too sick to move my hands enough to press down keys without the effort making me too tired to type at all. 🙃

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Ironically I'm too sick to make a case for myself right now, but I am absolutely very interested in this, sounds like deeply exciting work! Sounds like it was a great panel

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