I went long on the late, great David Stratton for Sydney Review of Books. Spent the end of last year reading all of his books and thinking about what sort of writer he was and what kind of library he leaves behind. sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/oh-da...
Happy Mardi Gras
Jacob Elordi is James Bond!
Is he being directed by Linklater?
Can someone explain why Malcolm Turnbull has been using this rotoscope filter lately?
A girl with painting nails sucks on her finger. Image comes from the front cover of Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy.
ICMYI: Laura Elizabeth Woollett explores the highly anticipated debut novel by Jennette McCurdy and the evolution of the teacher–student trope in her first review as KYD Critic. Read more: bit.ly/4kjdyo8
The Post's books section was very strong. And for it to be killed off by the founder of Amazon, the company that drove so many book stores to die off, is a level of irony that, if it were in a novel, would come across as contrived.
bsky.app/profile/nycs...
Text: Introducing KYD Critics. Left: Sam has short brown hair and wears a white T-shirt under a blue shirt. Right: Laura has long black hair and wears a lilac shirt.
We are delighted to announce Laura Elizabeth Woollett and @samtwyfordmoore.bsky.social as two regular critics for Kill Your Darlings magazine. Laura and Sam will each publish long-form criticism on new release fiction and non-fiction throughout 2026. Find out more: bit.ly/4tbyYHS
Congrats on the program Andrew!
Some reflections on Adelaide Writers' Week from this Adelaide writer. Deep disappointment all round, and some big questions:
www.indailysa.com.au/news/opinion...
STATEMENT FROM THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE 8 January 2026 Following a statement from the board responsible for the Adelaide Festival organisation and all Adelaide Writers’ Week events, The Australia Institute is withdrawing its support and sponsored events from this year’s literary festival. The Australia Institute has valued being part of discussions at the event, which in the past have promoted bravery, freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas. Censoring or cancelling authors is not in the spirit of an open and free exchange of ideas.
Statement from @australiainstitute.org.au on Adelaide Festival.
Somervillian skeet
“That old one — the working class as one dumb mass — is nothing but another bourgeois cliché. We are not simpletons, we’re just exploited.”
From a polemic by Sergio Chesán on literature and class, translated for us by Roy Duffield.
@samtwyfordmoore.bsky.social on Sumner Locke Elliot's late-life coming-out novel, Fairyland. Listen to the podcast: apple.co/4nVRuAW
Loved being a part of this podcast and writing about SLE!
Australian real estate culture is rotten. A take on everything.
Great haircut!
HEADLINE: Deloitte to refund government, admits AI errors in $440k report
Deloitte Australia will issue a partial refund to the federal government after admitting that artificial intelligence had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references and a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgement. A new version of the report for the Department of Workplace Relations (DEWR) was quietly uploaded to the department’s website on Friday, ahead of a long weekend across much of Australia. It features more than a dozen deletions of nonexistent references and footnotes, a rewritten reference list, and corrections to multiple typographic errors. (photo of Deloitte Australia HQ) Deloitte Australia has made almost $25 million worth of deals with the Department of Workplace Relations since 2021. Photographer Dion Georgopoulos
The first version of the report, about the IT system used to automate penalties in the welfare system such as pauses on the dole, was published in July. Less than a month later, Deloitte was forced to investigate the report after University of Sydney academic Dr Christopher Rudge highlighted multiple errors in the document. At the time, Rudge speculated that the errors may have been caused by what is known as “hallucinations” by generative AI. This is where the technology responds to user queries by inventing references and quotes. Deloitte declined to comment. The incident is embarrassing for Deloitte as it earns a growing part of its $US70.5 billion ($107 billion) in annual global revenue by providing advice and training clients and executives about AI. The firm also boasts about its widespread use of the technology within its global operations, while emphasising the need to always have humans review any output of AI.
SUBHEADING: Deleted references, footnotes The revised report has deleted a dozen references to two nonexistent reports by Professor Lisa Burton Crawford, a law professor at the University of Sydney, that were included in the first version. Two references to a nonexistent report by Professor Björn Regnell, of Lund University in Sweden, were also deleted in the new report. Also deleted was a made up reference to a court decision in a leading robo-debt case, Deanna Amato v Commonwealth. The new report has also deleted a reference to “Justice Davis” (a misspelling of Justice Jennifer Davies) and the made-up quote from the nonexistent paragraphs 25 and 26 in the judgement: “The burden rests on the decision-maker to be satisfied on the evidence that the debt is owed. A person’s statutory entitlements cannot lawfully be reduced based on an assumption unsupported by evidence.”
#BREAKING 🚨 Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report into mutual obligations issues.
Fake quotes from Federal Court case that ended Robodebt deleted from new report in Friday DEWR dump.
📰 AFR
✍️ @paulkarp.bsky.social
✍️ @edmundtadros.bsky.social
🗣️ @chrisrudge.bsky.social
What can we glean from the last bastion of regular television book coverage? @samtwyfordmoore.bsky.social finds out.
killyourdarlings.com.au/article/brin...
Finally a hot bisexual man. The representation we needed. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...
i feel like there's probably a better way to dunk on ai tools than using them extensively so you can post all the poor results that in turn encourages even more people to use them to post their "funny" mistakes. true believers don't care, you're just amplifying its use and feeding it more user data.
I would like to read my very interesting book on the bus but instead I have to listen to your very boring conversation.
“Tech companies have devalued the work of creative industries for years. The latest iteration of this is their insistence the AI models they plan to make lots of money from need the labour of all of human creation for free in perpetuity.”
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Arts and media groups demand Labor take a stand against ‘rampant theft’ of Australian content to train AI
I challenge Australians to have normal conversations on public transport, or, better yet, none at all.
My NYT op-ed this morning
I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...
Again, someone hoping to provide report cards on universities advocates for this role in a report that would likely fail as an undergraduate paper for lack of citations and evidence of its many claims.
