“Zero-based budgeting rarely succeeds in cutting costs. Its real effect, in Musk’s hands, was the concentration of power. His approach assumed… that bad data – whether fraudulent contracts, useless staff or illegitimate people – could simply be deleted.” www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

For Business Insider, I read three books about Palantir and wrote about how "Palantirianism" -- unabashed nationalism, tech building up the US security state, ready to commit violence on behalf of the US and our allies -- is ascendant in Silicon Valley. www.businessinsider.com/palantir-gui...

Construction workers shouldn’t earn less because teachers are paid shit. The question should be how construction workers have managed to win higher wages from their shitty bosses and why doesn’t Labor pay education workers more (Labor sets public school wages). The answer is industrial action.

"Birth rate problems are technocratic problems that emerge primarily out of the failure of neoliberal biopolitics to adequately organize reproduction for the needs of capital; pronatalism is an attempt to impose an ideology that will do so, ideally without significant [government] outlay."

Yes, that’s the issue. I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate this: to the extent that LLMs serve a purpose in education, it’s an indictment of the education system, not a praiseworthy feature of LLMs.

“In Lebanon, the barbarians are no longer expected at the gates but have seeped into the very atmosphere of a disordered world. Here, violence is not a singular event but something in the air one inhales, gradually learning to domesticate and contain.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/mil...

'The fact that the worker, when the productivity of his labour has been increased, produces say ten times as many commodities as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour-time on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before.'

What a joy to finally share the cover of The Organism–Environment Pairing (@mitpress.bsky.social)! The 📗 will be out on May 12 📆! I look forward to the conversations it sparks among scientists, philosophers & historians! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205282... #evosky #histsci #philsci #philsky #booksky 🌱🐋

'Two pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested for violating contentious new Queensland hate-speech laws, with one of them allegedly saying the banned phrase “from the river to the sea”.' 🍉🙅‍♂️ www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The impact of "AI" on productivity over for large firms over the past 3 years (US, UK, DE, Aus) according to NBERS 😆 www.nber.org/system/files...

This is the cloud of oil currently hovering over Tehran, released when the US bombed the city's oil depots. A stew of particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals & volatile organic compounds is raining down into the city right now. 1/2

“What differentiates Trump from his predecessors is his refusal to do what Lacan would call feigning to feign, his total inability to conjure the pretense of at least pretending to publicly care about pretense.“ www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Over 1,300 killed in Iran, more than 100,000 displaced - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/over-1300-killed-iran-un-says-100000-displaced

always a good time to reread this classic

In this episode of the podcast Critical Theory in Context, Jacob Blumenfeld interviews Aaron Benanav of Cornell University about @abenanav.bsky.social's proposal for a multi-criterial socialist economy. www.indep.network/critical-the...

Freud, 2026--er, 1915

This ist a great presentation of @abenanav.bsky.social condensing his idea of a multidimensional economics as described in his articles in the @newleftreview.bsky.social.

I really appreciate @dwallacewells.bsky.social's work, but this—green energy supplementing rather than replacing fossil fuels—seems to me the main story, not just a qualification to the story of the "green transition." GHG emissions keep rising—with 2025's projected to reach the highest level ever

“Tropical flowers are blooming months earlier or later than they used to because of climate breakdown, with potentially “cascading impacts across ecosystems”, according to a study of 8,000 plants dating back 200 years.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The PEOPLE’S choice

speaking on Fichte and economic planning in the Anthropocene this week at the @cpkp.bsky.social cpkp.net/event/commun...

The Jewish Council of Australia condemns Benjamin Harnwell's appalling comment at the Advance conference and call on our leaders and the Antisemitism Envoy to speak out in condemnation.

“One of the most difficult, but important, tasks of our time […]: the task of preserving and of liberating thought from the notion of value.” — Blanchot, “What Is the Purpose of Criticism?” (from the preface to Lautréamont and Sade) (trans. S. and M. Kendall)

Really good piece on the stylelessness of liberals: 'There is no liberal Joe Rogan because his liberal equivalent would rather soliloquize and tweak a couple of ordinances than enter into an unscripted tête-à-tête for hours.' thepointmag.com/criticism/li...

In our latest, we speak with Alberto Toscano @alfatau.bsky.social about fascism as an antagonistic politics of social reproduction, some of the particular features of the crackdowns on care in Trump’s second term, and Alberto’s book Late Fascism www.patreon.com/posts/150947...

Vale Lionel Fogarty Rochford Street Review was saddened to learn of the death of poet and activist Lionel Fogarty. Please be aware that this article includes the name and images of an Aboriginal person who has died. rochfordstreetreview.com/2026/02/16/v...

Melinda Cooper: “Epstein’s victims experienced the rule of master and servant not just as economic but sexual violence. They were the first to name and resist our emergent political order.” www.equator.org/articles/eps...

🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

‘Under international law, the right to protest is particularly important for marginalised groups. These include the victims of Israeli violations in Palestine, whose families also live among us, www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw...

My article “Regressing to Nature: Culture Industry and Fascism in Times of Ecological Crisis” is out in Constellations (open access)! It draws on Frankfurt School analyses of culture industry and fascism to rethink them as forces that obstruct responses to the climate crisis: doi.org/10.1111/1467...

Australian Census on University Staff Wellbeing results are out. Every uni recorded scores indicating high/very high psych risk. And in news surprising no one, "only senior execs and deans rated their workplaces as medium or low risk while all other staff groups reported high-risk conditions."

QUT will take over famous literary magazine Meanjin, after the journal was closed by Melbourne Uni Publishing last year. This is a win for all who campaigned to save the masthead, but hardly makes up for the damage done last year www.smh.com.au/culture/book...

“There were roughly 500 police deployed at Town Hall and an estimated 3,000 across the CBD. This scale was not accidental. It was a show of force. Police created the disorder they later claimed to suppress. This tactic is known. It is taught. It is deliberate.” michaelwest.com.au/this-was-pla...

#BREAKING 🚨 Aftab Malik, Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, has released a statement condemning "unprovoked violence and aggression" from NSW Police against Muslims praying in Sydney's Town Hall Square "There cannot be any justification for this behaviour"

The footage of Australian police acting like ICE agents is pretty shocking, but the media broadly stepping up to downplay, deny and mis-describe their violence in ambiguous terms is completely unsurprising. It's an industry fundamentally incapable of ever assigning any blame to the police: ever

sOcIaL coHEsiON

With @bentarnoff.com!

Powerful message in today’s SMH and Age.

🖤 arrived yesterday: Bernhard’s early short fiction — first published in English, selected and arranged chronologically by @shirtysleeves.bsky.social ✨

What might we be able to build in the future that we can't build today? For the @TheIdeasLetter, I wrote about the political economy of technology and technological change in a world beyond capitalism. www.theideasletter.org/essay/a-real...

William Nordhaus received the Nobel Memorial Prize for these flawed economic models, and Bjorn Lomborg built a highly lucrative career on them. They told rich and powerful people what they wanted to hear. While helping to consign us all to catastrophe. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

great article by Jensen Suther on the faults of degrowth Marxism thepointmag.com/politics/rad...

The Victorian state election will be held on Saturday 28th November. Victorian Socialists are running candidates across the state. Today, we're proud to introduce our candidate for Melbourne, Jordan van den Lamb (aka. @purplepingers.bsky.social).

Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn

Exclusive | The Albanese government is handing access to Australians’ biometric data and ID documents to US agencies like ICE, and not telling anyone. @keanebernard.bsky.social reports.

Wrote a piece for @crikey.com.au on how the media stopped discussing climate change www.crikey.com.au/2026/02/02/c...

Out now 🦑✨ "Clearly-written and provocative. [The Metaethics of Virtue Ethics] makes an important contribution to the development and defence of neo-Aristotelian naturalism in meta-ethics." (Micah Lott, Boston College) Learn more: https://bit.ly/3NNsxdF Preview: https://bit.ly/3NIQCCq #ethics