Jen
LightNews LightNews
banner
jennmelb.bsky.social
Jen
@jennmelb.bsky.social
510 followers 270 following 560 posts
I like e-biking, cities and parks, vegan lifestyle, and nature where we live. Literature teacher. Naarm / Melbourne. Learning 🇵🇱
Posts Replies Media Videos
jennmelb.bsky.social
This is basically the only social media content my soul can tolerate at the moment. The guinea pigs' vegie treats are in the shape of a spider today, a halloween theme.
Twenty plus rescued guinea pigs at Piggy Bank sanctuary are eating their morning greens from an array presented in the shape of a halloween spider, it is very heart warming and gentle and sweet and I can watch it without crying.
October 27, 2025 at 8:01 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
The plan came out of extensive public consultation and feedback from the community living and riding through the area. it's based on sound urban principles. yoursayyarra.com.au/building-saf...
A before and after artists impression of the bicycle street. The left side is the street now, the right side shows people walking and biking through a safer, calmer, greener environment.
October 6, 2025 at 12:15 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
My local council #cityofYarra, in inner Melbourne, (Australia) has an amazing plan to build safer, more beautiful "bicycle streets". It's exciting!! But my neighbours are campaigning against it because they think the loss of 13 car parking spots makes the street *more* dangerous. #urbanism
An artists impression of the bicycle street plan in the City Of Yarra, including more street trees, traffic calming, and diversions away from residential housing. It's beautiful.
October 6, 2025 at 12:15 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
It was interesting until I got to "An AI-driven diagnostic tool, Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)," I recall from my student and teaching uni days that we already have a method of recognising prior learning - it's called telling someone who can help you get credits for your prior learning.
Highlighted text in screenshot: quoting Shorten. "We have the technology today to assess existing skills and create an individual learning pathway for every student.” An AI-driven diagnostic tool, Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), could assess a person’s existing competencies and build a bespoke degree focusing on their knowledge gaps. Shorten said a re-imagined university system needed funding to be re-imagined too.
September 21, 2025 at 1:45 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
The drive in data centre expansion world wide isn’t You Tube and Netflix - and especially not my personal use of it but thanks for blaming me for this - but AI proliferation. Here’s what the data centre industry itself is saying. www.datacenterfrontier.com/machine-lear...
According to Tam Dell’Oro, Founder of Dell’Oro Group, demand for accelerated computing and AI-specific workloads is exceeding expectations, expanding from Tier 1 to Tier 2 cloud service providers. “The proliferation of accelerated computing to support AI and machine learning workloads has emerged as a major driver in the data center physical infrastructure market,” said Dell’Oro. “AI workloads require significantly higher power densities, with rack power needs rising from an average of 15 kW today to between 60 kW and 120 kW in the near future. This shift is accelerating the industry-wide transition from air to liquid cooling.”
August 15, 2025 at 9:55 PM
jennmelb.bsky.social
I took this eye-level photo near my inner city Melbourne home. I just don’t understand why cars need to be like this.
The bonnet of a giant car photographed from my eye level I’m 158 cm tall.
August 5, 2025 at 10:19 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
On Utopia.
About Utopis, Le Guin writes: "Non-European, noneuclidean, nonmasculinist: they are all negative definitions, which is all right, but tiresome; and the last is unsatisfactory as it might be taken to mean that the utopia I’m trying to approach could only be imagined by, or inhabited by, women; and I mean nothing of the kind. Perhaps the word I need is yin. Utopia has been yang. In one way or another, from Plato on, utopia has been the big yang motorcycle trip. Bright, dry, clear, strong, firm, active, aggressive, lineal, progressive, creative, expanding, advancing, and hot. Our civilization is now so intensely yang that any imagination of bettering its injustices or eluding its self-destructiveness must involve a reversal."
August 1, 2025 at 6:39 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Second part of the text for Alt Text Readers:
Not because of what happened here, but in spite of it. Walk its streets and you’ll hear Woi Wurrung beside Vietnamese, Dja Dja Wurrung alongside Arabic. From Fitzroy to Shepparton, cultures mix, meals are shared, and stories once buried are now told with pride. It is not perfection, not yet justice, but it is movement. Early settlers presented the Wurundjeri with a gift: a mirror, smooth and foreign. But it didn’t reflect the dignity and sovereignty of those who received it. It showed only what the colonisers wanted to see: a passive, vanishing people. By now, we’ve all had a chance to look into the mirror. It’s time to let in the light—mirrors don’t work in the dark—and meet our reflection square-on, so that we might look to the future with clear eyes. We don’t need permission to tell the truth. And we don’t need to wait to imagine something better. Victoria has been presented with an opportunity to take the lessons from our past and apply them to a shared future: a new line of history where guilt and shame are not our concern, but what happens next is. The shroud can be lifted. A new chapter can begin.
July 6, 2025 at 1:20 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Something good, something beautiful, from something so terrible.

From the Yoorrook Justice Commission Final Report: The Cloak and the Mirror.
Not complete - just the first half of the text: We were told this land was empty. A myth stitched into maps and laws, into classrooms and monuments. But the truth was always here—in the earth, the rivers, the sky. In culture forbidden but not forgotten. In the whispers that survived when language was punished. The history of this land is bound by two cloaks. One is warm, woven from fibres of care and culture, wrapped close around Country and kin. The other is a heavy cloak of forgetting and silence: truth draped in denial. This second cloak was meant to smother. But even under its weight, memory moved; quiet but alive. What is now called Victoria existed long before its name. It was held, sung, walked and remembered. Knowledge was carried in story and ceremony; in hands that lit fires the right way, that harvested without greed. This was not emptiness. It was presence, deep and abiding. The hatted strangers came from all directions under the southern sun. For half a century, word of their arrival had spread along ancient songlines. The moment of contact may not have been a surprise—but it was seismic. The forever-point. Tracing the history of this place postcolonisation reveals a tangled, jagged line. To follow it is to witness survival in the face of squattocracy, poverty in the face of struck -gold wealth, and endurance in the face of attempted elimination. From Gunditjmara Country in 1834, and every place before and since, the conflict never ended. It simply changed shape—from musket to manager, from protector to policy. It lives in soil turned by boots and bulldozers; in absences and archives; in laws that still speak over First Peoples. Today, Victoria hums with a different kind of energy.
July 6, 2025 at 1:15 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Who's watching?
A back laneway in inner Melbourne, Australia. In the middle distance of the frame I am was unknowingly being watched by a ragged, curious creature. A closer view of the creature - cat like. Brown with white paws, and white cheeks, looking squashed and weathered like a toy that has gone through the wash a hundred times. Beautiful.
May 9, 2025 at 12:20 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
We need more of this in Australia, where there are rarely covered bike racks. I saw this excellent bike parking in April outside a suburban apartment in Japan; outside a a small local shop, and lock-up parking for 80 bikes near the station. Covered bike parking is everywhere, bikes everywhere.
A row of bicycles under an covered awning outside an apartment block in Osaka, Japan. A short row of bicycles under an covered awning outside a small convenience store in Osaka, Japan Lock-up bicycle parking for 80 commuters across the road from a suburban railway station in Osaka, Japan.
April 30, 2025 at 1:06 PM
jennmelb.bsky.social
In Japan, workers get all their commuting to and from work paid for by their employers - not a law but an expectation. The most economical route to work is covered, so, train, bike (repairs and maintenance), bus, car not always, unless no other way. weconnect.co/japan/benefi....
Commuting Allowance (non-statutory) Although not required by law, most Japanese companies will provide commuting allowance to employees to cover the expense of commuting to and from the office. The expense should be equal to the most economic route between their home and the workplace
April 2, 2025 at 10:49 PM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Meditative coffee artistry at a market in Kyoto, Japan. Zoom in to see the beauty of the materials. #slow #urbanism
Japanese coffee seller prepares a cup of coffee for a customer. He has three filter cones set up and is using a copper water kettle with an attractive, worn patina. The man’s face is calm in concentration. Japanese coffee seller prepares a cup of coffee for a customer. He has three filter cones set up and is deciding what action comes next in his ritual as the water filters through. Close ups of the beautiful glass and wood and leather of his filters.
March 29, 2025 at 2:11 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Amazing lichen covered stone stair in Japanese streetscape. With bikes. #urbanism
A moss and lichen covered stair in Japan, ancient and curved with the passage of many travellers. Two bikes are parked in front of the stair at ground level.
March 27, 2025 at 3:56 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Lush interior of Hankyu line trains in Osaka #trains #publictransit #japan
Retro interior of the Hankyu line trains in Osaka. Lush green velvet, chrome, and 1970s school desk faux wood panels. Smooth. Retro interior of the Hankyu line trains in Osaka. Close up of the funky hand straps, and 1970s style faux wood panels. Retro interior of the Hankyu line trains in Osaka. 1970s school desk faux wood panels.
March 24, 2025 at 9:14 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Bikes and cars in Japanese suburb. Osaka
Bike parking near a train station in Osaka. A small corner block given over to paid parking for about 100 or more commuters. Close up of the paid commuter bike parking. A nice covered bike parking area outside a convenience store in Osaka. Teeny tiny Japanese car parked in a teeny tiny space. Osaka. Just as cars should be.
March 23, 2025 at 6:51 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Also, the NATO countries PAID in lives and money. Here's just the UK. Australia also sent troops to die in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are not a NATO member.
Screenshot from Wikipedia. UK war costs As of March 2006, approximately £4.5 billion ($6.8 billion) had been spent by the United Kingdom in Iraq. This came from a government fund called the "Special Reserve" which at the time had a balance of £7.4 billion ($10.14 billion).[21][22] According to the Ministry of Defence, the total cost of UK military operations in Iraq from 2003 to 2009 was £8.4bn.[23] Official calculations stated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined cost £20.3 billion (up to but not beyond June 2010).[24] See also Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq Casualties of the Iraq War Polish involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq Refugees of Iraq
March 7, 2025 at 4:52 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Yes, she's massively irritating. But, the story should really be what the independent climate body has to say about the nuclear pathway, that it's not sustainable and will undermine our goals to reduce carbon emissions. The process is more important than the end goal.
Screenshot from ABC article on the effects of the LNP Nuclear plan. Heading: Nuclear plan a 'carbon bomb' Text: The agency found adopting the Coalition’s nuclear plan would result in an additional 2 billion tonnes of emission, the equivalent of 200 years' worth of emissions from Australia's domestic flights. It compared the current trajectory modelled by the country's energy market operator, AEMO, with the Coalition's nuclear modelling that was released in December. The increase in emissions would come from delaying the rollout of renewable technology and instead continuing with coal-fired power, which is otherwise expected to shut down over the next decade, and slowing the transitions in other industries. A bar chart follows indicating vast increases in carbon emissions between now and 2050 when the two pathways finally converge.
February 25, 2025 at 3:25 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Some language choices (English Australia) seem to make the Apple Intelligence unavailable!
Screenshot of an iPhone settings screen showing that Apple Intelligence is not available when iPhone is set to English (Australia).
January 8, 2025 at 5:26 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
East Berlin
An inner urban street scene where pedestrians have a lot of space to walk and for children to ride their bikes safe from cars, that are separated from the expansive footpath area by attractive bollards. A lot of tree cover makes the summer day cool and green.
December 31, 2024 at 10:07 PM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Absolute legend - I would invest in this if I could just to keep a man like this working to make the world better. Such a rare mind set these days. They should crowd source investors.
An excerpt from the reposted article about natural waste processing invention by an Iranian immigrant to Australia: Dr Jahangard is still looking for investors to keep the innovation on Australian shores. He said his main drive was to make a positive impact and leave a legacy for his only child rather than making money. "My goal is to have an opportunity to make the world better," he said. "It's not about my generation, it's about future generations.
December 9, 2024 at 9:54 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Here are some paintings of the inner Melbourne suburb I live in, by the Cossack/Australian painter Danila Vassilieff - paintings from the 1930s into the late 1940s. Wonderful street scenes, children playing, people chatting on the street, dogs. Some quiet still remains, but now, cars are there.
Fitzroy street scene, 1930s painting by Danila Vassilieff. A boy plays with a bike wheel, dogs wag tails. Fitzroy street scene, 1930s painting by Danila Vassilieff. People hang out the front of a corner shop. Fitzroy street scene, 1930s painting by Danila Vassilieff. A girl, an yellow dog, and some other kids walk through the quiet streets. Fitzroy street scene "Children with bicycle", 1949, painting by Danila Vassilieff.
November 30, 2024 at 3:25 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Just gliding downhill between University campuses during my work day - instead of driving or catching crowded PT on a hot, humid day. Melbourne CBD in the background
E-bike on a path in Carlton heading into Melbourne city centre. Landscape view.
November 26, 2024 at 4:07 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
A vast spreading eucalyptus tree in inner Melbourne
November 16, 2024 at 12:57 AM
jennmelb.bsky.social
Furry flannel flowers - also testing the Alt-text default. Maybe it can become a new art form to convey the feel of an image as well.
A close up of a flannel flower, an Australian native daisy, pale and greeny-white. It's petals are slender and pointed, with a surface soft like the downy fur of a peach, or maybe the tender underside of a dog's wrist. A wider view of a clump of flannel flowers, reaching from their grey, crinkled foliage up into the warm sun above.
November 12, 2024 at 8:50 AM