• Tony Abbott's incredible disappearing act - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

  There was no time to be lost. An election ... now! That was the top line melody that came daily, against a steady bass of 'stop the boats' and 'abolish the tax'. Day in, week out. For three outraged years.

  And then he was gone: the incredible vanishing Prime Minister. The sudden political calm was greeted by the muted golf clap of the political commentariat, who recognised the dexterity of this political craft work. The discipline. The sense of ordered, deliberate cunning.

  Tony Abbott has been Prime Minister now for eight days, a period marked by his sudden withdrawal from public life, part of a broader closing down that clearly aims to remove the sense of urgent emergency that has been the backdrop for our politics since 2010.

• Abbott flees reporters after asylum seekers drown on way to Australia | News.com.au: Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, ignored reporters when asked about the tragedy shortly after he addressed a sporting function this morning. (raw footage)
• What you missed: an incredible federal budget outcome

• Pure gold.

• Animated gif of storm over a city
• Mark Webber: 'I've had some great highs and some hard lows in F1' | Sport | The Guardian

• Few women, lots of private school Catholics: The lopsided gender balance of Tony Abbott's cabinet has caused a stir. But how does it compare with the Australian population on other major demographic characteristics such as age, religion, schooling and occupation?
• Magical NeverWet Street Art Only Appears When It Rains
• The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people | Society | The Guardian: "In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings."
• Ignore the GTA 5 sceptics: adults do play video games | Technology | theguardian.com: So, you see, part of why this "do adults really play games" thing makes me cross is that it's about intellectual snobbery, or even just intellectual ignorance (is that an oxymoron?). No one scoffs incredulously at commuters doing the crossword, or at Magnus Carlsen winning a chess tournament – but they're doing the same thing as gamers – they are playing. And we should never ever stop playing.
• Adactio: Journal—CERN and the line-mode browser
• Christopher Pyne reveals university shake-up: The Abbott government plans a drastic overhaul of the higher education system, including axeing the compulsory fee collected by universities to support student services and scrapping Labor's targets to lift participation by disadvantaged students. The Abbott regime, where higher education is only for the rich. Student fees are there to provide support services like child care, health services and affordable cafeterias. Annoyingly though, usually heaps of the budget also goes on subsidised sport. That would put the Lycra Monk in a curious place, philosophically... wanting to remove child care but keep the gym...

• How to recognize the artists of paintings - Imgur: If all the men look like cow-eyed curly-haired women, it's Caravaggio. ... If everyone looks like hobos illuminated only by a dim streetlamp, it's Rembrandt.
• Daily Kos: STUNNING: Comparing U.S. & World Covers for TIME Magazine
• Things That Have More Women In Them Than Tony Abbott’s Cabinet | Junkee
• Think Seeing A Little Male Nudity On TV Is Too Explicit? Then ... It's Time To Hear The Hard Truth.
• The best examples of street art in 2012 (48 pictures) | memolition (opportunistic street art)

• Record dud vote tally: Late yesterday the commission's virtual tally room (vtr.aec.gov.au) reported that with just 78 per cent of the vote counted for the House of Representatives, 677,000 votes had been cast aside as informal. One vote in every 17 cast at this election did not count. In 2010, 5.55 per cent of votes were ruled informal. This time, the count is running at 5.91 per cent.
• Longreads - 'Like Being in Prison with a Salary': The Secret World of the Shipping Industry
• Dogs basically don't care if you are a robot or a human - not entirely true. But they will happily take food from a robot pretending to be a human.
• Google knows nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world | Computerworld Blogs: Sounds great. Backing up your data/settings makes moving to a new Android device much easier. It lets Google configure your new Android device very much like your old one. What is not said, is that Google can read the Wi-Fi passwords. Article includes instructions on how to turn it off.
• Construction Vehicles Designed as Gothic Architecture - My Modern Metropolis
• Watch 32 discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes

Dangerous Currents, Bondi 2010.

• All network software is social software. - The Fishbowl
• The 1970s Cold War Era Home built 26 Feet Underground | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic
• What Was, Is and Will Be Popular - NYTimes.com: Back in 1940, Billboard published a single music chart, simply named the Best-Selling Retail Records, which solely tracked sales. ... Then, this year, Billboard announced it would include YouTube playbacks as part of its rankings, and the song “Harlem Shake” immediately became the No. 1 song in America. This was thanks largely to a snippet of it being used as the soundtrack for thousands of viral YouTube videos. ... This is how we ended up with a No. 1 song that isn’t even really exactly a song.
• An open letter from the guy who did that sweary website
• Abbott's cage of commitments: First, consider this pair of clashing commitments: he's promised to repeal the carbon tax by all means necessary, yet at the same time to deliver stable government. ... The second serious problem Abbott faces is his commitment to "end the debt" while also promising to spend more than he can afford. He can't have both, and he knows it. ... Abbott's third serious problem is his pledge not to touch the labour market, even though it's the top priority of the business lobby.
• Dark Roasted Blend: Huge Semi-Submersible Ships

• Collaborating with a 4-year Old | the busy mockingbird
• Inside the World's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
• Election spending: how much have they promised? | theguardian.com
• Don't be a fucking idiot this Saturday (brilliant election site)
• Obvious Winner - Turtle Tech: Badass Cyber Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Jump Start - Shelly wasn’t prepared for the helicopter’s natural defenses.