🌦️ Melbourne: 9–13°, showers, rain 100% (5 mm), UV 8
🗳️ Emoji: 🔥 won a tie-break on 4 votes, level with 🐨
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

🌦️ Melbourne: 10–21°, drizzle, rain 57% (1 mm), UV 6
🗳️ Emoji: 💙 won with 4 votes, over 🫪
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

In 2023, the Victorian government promised $4.7 million for a dedicated wildlife hospital in southwest Victoria. They've broken their promise.

Today, injured and orphaned wildlife across the region are heavily dependent on Mosswood Wildlife, the area's only dedicated wildlife rescue and rehabilitation facility. Run entirely by volunteers, Mosswood cares for hundreds of animals each year, including koalas, seabirds, and penguins, but it is already stretched beyond its limits.

Wildlife faces constant threats from disease, vehicle strikes, dog attacks, bushfires, and habitat loss. Now that bird flu has reached our shores, the need for a dedicated hospital in this coastal region has never been more urgent.

A purpose-built wildlife hospital would provide the specialist care animals urgently need while supporting the volunteers working tirelessly to protect them.

With the Victorian state election approaching, now is the time to act.

Selected Excerpts:

Earlier this year, the Victorian government amended planning legislation in Victoria with the approval of the Planning and Environment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026.

The new Act has been designed to speed up housing delivery and development by “cutting red tape”. The legislation changes mean that many types of new urban development applications now go directly to the Minister of Planning for approval instead of local councils and are separated into 3 different types of applications. The first two types of low and moderate impact proposals for new single dwellings, townhouses and low-rise apartment developments typically preclude the need for local notification, and VCAT appeal rights no longer apply.

If a large high density or commercial development was proposed, most people would assume that local residents surrounding the area would be informed. However, postal notice is now restricted to adjoining landowners. This means that potentially, a new twelve storey development or data centre can be built a street away and the only notification required is an online notice or physical sign on the land. Appealing a new large-scale development that has a huge impact on local amenity and wellbeing has also been restricted.

The new legislation also means that planning appeals are restricted to residents who received direct notice of the new planning application. This means that if you live just streets away from a new high-rise development that is likely to take your daylight, you won’t even have the right to appeal. The changes raise serious implications for democratic decision-making in urban planning and city design, ignoring broader community input on decisions that will affect the ongoing liveability of an area for decades to come.

🌦️ Melbourne: 10–15°, drizzle, rain 20%, UV 8
🗳️ Emoji: 🔋 won with 3 votes, over 🎪
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

🌦️ Melbourne: 10–22°, thunderstorms, rain 100% (10 mm), UV 7
🗳️ Emoji: 🐞 won a tie-break on 3 votes, level with 🍩
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

Across north western Victoria, massive critical minerals developments threaten farming, landscapes, local economies and ground and water supplies.

There are five main projects currently planned. More than 42,000 hectares of farm land are currently under retention licences. There are also legacy issues from older projects, which have not been properly rehabilitated.

And in Gippsland, Gippsland Critical Minerals is developing the Fingerboards Project, which will have an enormous impact on an important food bowl of Victoria, right next to the Mitchell River.

Each of these projects are subject to an assessment and approvals process. However, local farming communities feel that the assessment system is broken, ignores their concerns and allows approval of destructive projects. And there has been no attempt by the regulator or the state government to understand the cumulative impacts of these projects combined across an important food production area.

I support the call for the state government to announce an immediate halt on any further assessment or approval of any aspect of critical minerals projects until there has been an independent and comprehensive analysis done of the cumulative impacts of these projects.

The damage caused by these projects may be permanent, meaning the loss of important farming country and huge impacts on farming communities for decades to come. Until there has been a full assessment I do not support any further development of critical minerals in the state.

https://www.melbournefoe.org.au/moratorium_on_critical_minerals

🌦️ Melbourne: 12–16°, drizzle, rain 61%, UV 8
🗳️ Emoji: 🐨 won with 3 votes, over 🐎
🏇 Today: Melbourne Cup Day public holiday
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

🌦️ Melbourne: 11–19°, showers, rain 98% (27 mm), UV 6
🗳️ Emoji: 🦉 won with 3 votes, over 🦨 and 🐨
🏇 Tomorrow: Melbourne Cup Day public holiday
^Weather^ ^data^ ^by^ ^Open-Meteo.com^ ^under^ ^CC^ ^BY^ ^4.0^

weather might be up and down, but 60 Minutes is doing a piece on community opposition to data centres and will be filming at the rally - organisers are hoping for a big show of support!

1pm, Westgate Park Picnic Ground, Saturday 31st October

I have a team of writers over in the Philippines … I just tell them to not write anything incriminating."

The site features stories containing glaring errors and AI-generated photos.

Tests conducted by ABC NEWS Verify of prominent chatbots have found it is being recommended as a reliable source of information by Google's Gemini and X's Grok

The site is an example of so-called "pink slime" journalism, according to Momoko Fujita, a senior lecturer at the University of Canberra, who researches how digital platforms and media influence people's behaviour.

Pink slime refers to websites that purport to publish legitimate news but instead publish AI-enhanced content for the purpose of influencing audiences or generating revenue..

lol wtf ? what's the end game here ?

YarraByte has been having a lot of unauthorised absences lately. Do we need a PIP?