As the world burns, let's get one thing straight. A video podcast is just a TV show.

It’s old-fashioned to defend mainstream journalism these days but some of the most reliable reporting from people actually on the ground will be the AP and Reuters the next 24 hours. Your Substack journalist writing takes will be using frontline reporting from them.

INBOX: Union for Reform Judaism, Central Conference of American Rabbis & American Conference of Cantors issue a lengthy statement declaring: "Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the 'total victory' over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law."

A number of US administration officials have criticized the landmark defense agreement with the UK and Australia.

It’s the happiest day of Elon Musk’s life because he finally posted something people actually want to read

Weird they're showing Swan Lake on Fox right now

The ABC has a structural obsession with the Liberals because of the last decade of funding cuts and Senate estimates pressure, but I think this is also a consequence of exclusively hiring senior political reporters from News Corp. Their sources tend to be in one direction.

To the cartoonist who drew this, well done.

Just six years after his Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered, at MBS’s direction, Jeff Bezos is going into business—and, thus, helping to enrich—the man who orchestrated it. My latest for @status.news www.status.news/p/jeff-bezos...

If Williams is happy to harangue journalists because they aren’t interviewing his mate and promoting his commercial gigs, what else is he interfering with? ABC board way overdue for a wholesale clean out www.smh.com.au/business/com...

The man is sundowning.

Great to see the ABC discuss astroturfing and Australians for Natural Gas this morning. Would have been nice for some acknowledgement that I first reported in @reneweconomy.com.au that the group was created by a gas executive and former director of CPAC. You can read the story below:

COMMENTARY: In recent years, Russia has repeatedly used Svalbard to experiment with different provocations. And now, the Kremlin has accused Norway of militarizing the archipelago, creating a potential pretext for military action.

ICE stripped a German green card holder naked, drove him from Boston to Vermont to Rhode Island, put him in a cold shower, deprived him of medication, sleep and food until he collapsed. No one knows why he was detained.

Russia is not winning www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Not sure ABC Middle East coverage has ever been worse. An entire report on Gazans being forced to go the Jordan for medical aid without once mentioning why, and even manages to paint Israel as a benign force helping facilitate the aid. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Australians lose more money to gambling in a year than government spends on aged care, report finds

Interesting data in light of current events. More about welfare queen Elon Musk: www.profgalloway.com/elon-musk-we...

new from me: Elon Musk's X appears to be blocking links to directly contact users on Signal Signal, the encrypted messaging app, has recently become a major tool for government workers looking to blow the whistle on DOGE

Well worth a read. This is one of the biggest media companies in the world plotting to sow division in Australia at a time of heightened concerns about what the government loves to call “social cohesion”. Where is the outrage from the government? Where are the repercussions for the perpetrators?

Why do white supremacists fake tan?

That said though, the case has revealed how deficient management is at handling this stuff. The Buttrose/Anderson/COT nexus probably the most objectively dumb and dangerous in modern history. No real hope for change with the same board and Hugh Marks (lol) coming in.

Just last week someone told me Trump would never shut down USAID because it buys so much US grain and I said, "I wonder if he knows that"

While ABC managing director David Anderson gave evidence in Federal Court, unionised staff held a meeting with almost 200 employees in solidarity with Antoinette Lattouf.

I can see it now. First you build hotels in Gaza. Then of course you go to the Ukraine. Find nothing but the best land and rebuild. .. You can train the staff at Mar a Lago ....

Assuming we make it through the next couple of decades, this will be an incredible image for future historians/students of the Trump era

➡️ January 20: FAA director fired ➡️ January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen ➡️ January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded ➡️ January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees ➡️ January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years Making America Great Again!

DeepSeek Take #1 (of 2): it seems to be a pretty good thing that there's a model of LLM out there that just cuts a hole in the growth-at-all-costs model of data centre expansionism US big tech has been pushing, and hopefully this means lower risk of fossil fuels being enabled by that expansionism...

There were better shows on Netflix when it cost $10 a month

This is worth a gander

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens theonion.com/no-way-to-pr...

Australia media executives love to make the dumbest decisions possible then look around and complain about how the public doesn’t trust them anymore.

Syria is about to become an Al Qaeda state. Given the focus on Hezbollah and terrorism over the past 12 months you would imagine this would perturb the West but CNN and the NYT are doing soft interviews with the Islamist leader to convince local audiences it’s a good thing.

We don't need more remakes of old movies. We need more MUPPETS remakes of old movies.

Strange situation when a former Israeli defence minister can (rightly) accuse the government of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, but a journalist saying the same thing in Australia is fired www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/w...

88 years ago today, Robert Johnson stepped into a San Antonio hotel room and changed music forever. His first recording session and recorded blues classics like 'Sweet Home Chicago,' 'Terraplane Blues,' and 'I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom.' The birth of a legend.

LinkedIn has requested it be declared exempt from the government's age verification regime (per its submission to the senate inquiry), which raises a fun hypothetical that LinkedIn could become the social media platform of choice for teens

One thing I find interesting about the echo chamber complaint is that an echo chamber just won a presidential election. Put aside the convo of whether it’s “good” or “bad” for a moment. The far right has devoted enormous resources + time to building echo chambers & loathes spaces they don’t control

More efficient government? Start by socialising both risks and rewards—examples in my 2013 book “The Entrepreneurial State” include how guaranteed loan to @Tesla from US DoE should have received upside. Musk read some history before ideological rampage begins marianamazzucato.com/books/the-en...