Ben Eltham
@beneltham.bsky.social
š¤ 12575
š„ 1681
š 1825
Writer, journalist, researcher, trade unionist
pinned post!
RALLY TO SAVE MEANJIN Thursday 11 Sep 9am Outside the Melbourne University Publishing office, 715 Swanston St, Carlton. A number of Australian writers and editors will speak in support of this vital cultural institution
2 months ago
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Look Iām not one of those crazy Luddites or anything, but this does seem like it could be quite bad
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...
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Australian man encouraged to murder his father by AI chatbot
Experts are calling for new regulations on artificial intelligence chatbots, after a triple j hack investigation uncovered a disturbing example of a chatbot encouraging a man to murder his father whil...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-21/ai-chatbot-encourages-australian-man-to-murder-his-father/105793930
about 2 hours ago
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Emily C. Hughes
about 7 hours ago
pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you donāt often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.
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BeijingPalmer
about 8 hours ago
the Iranian drought story is insanely undercovered.
foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/07/i...
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Rory Hyde
6 days ago
'Inequality is not an accident of fate but the outcome of deliberate design ā and therefore it can be redesigned.' Essential reading from
@mrdtjames.bsky.social
on the failed promise of fairness.
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The Past and other Places
2 days ago
Edinburgh University is closing the Institute for Academic Development. Download these student resources while you can. Making notes, reading strategies, time management, dissertations and so on. CC licenses. Pdf and text only versions.
#HE
šļø
institute-academic-development.ed.ac.uk/study-hub/le...
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The American Prospect
about 11 hours ago
āOpenAI is getting ready to run hat in hand to the taxpayer for subsidies.ā After losing more than $13 billion this year, OpenAI officials are angling for a bailout. From
@ryanlcooper.com
:
trib.al/CUazMCQ
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OpenAI Is Maneuvering for a Government Bailout - The American Prospect
For artificial intelligence to ever pencil out, some truly enormous revenue streams will be required. And if you need trillions of dollars for data centers forever, thereās only one entity to turn to: Uncle Sam.
https://trib.al/CUazMCQ
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Matt Novak
about 13 hours ago
Just a little more gold and it will be perfect
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Whatās happening to British universities right now is a tragedy
www.bbc.com/news/article...
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University of Nottingham students fight 'insane' cull of courses
Traitors composer Sam Watts is among those against plans to cut University of Nottingham courses.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6zqe1l7g5o
about 10 hours ago
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James Alistair Henry
about 13 hours ago
'āCritics sayā is the tell, and does it ever go on telling.'
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Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
2 days ago
The fact that 30% of our stock market is wrapped up in āhelp-kids-kill-themselvesā technology seems to be an important datapoint in the evolution of late stage capitalism.
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The White Rose Society (Australia)
1 day ago
The National Socialist Network held an antisemitic rally outside New South Wales Parliament today - astoundingly, it's emerged this afternoon that they did this with approval from NSW Police.
www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw...
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Police allowed Nazi rally outside NSW parliament
More than 60 people attended Saturday morningās rally after notifying police more than a week ago. The police commissioner said he had no idea it was going to happen.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/police-allowed-nazi-rally-outside-nsw-parliament-20251108-p5n8qq.html
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Bill Grueskin
1 day ago
Are we invading Poland
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Ryan Marino, MD
1 day ago
Paneraās moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market. This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAIās own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.
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derek guy
3 months ago
Sometimes I see people like 20 tweets deep into an argument with Grok. Like, what are you doing brother? You are trying to win an argument with a vending machine.
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Yung En Chee
1 day ago
Environmental Defenders Office (
@edolawyers.bsky.social
, not active) have put out their updated assessment of the Albanese govt's EPBC reform bills Not pretty
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EPBC Act reform update - Bills pass the House of Representatives and draft Standard for Matters of National Environmental Significance releasedĀ - Environmental Defenders Office
This updated analysis assesses how the EPBC Bills stack up against the Samuel Review recommendations; examines the newly released national standard for matters of national environmental significance; ...
https://www.edo.org.au/2025/11/07/epbc-act-reform-update-bills-pass-the-house-of-representatives-and-draft-standard-for-matters-of-national-environmental-significance-released/
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A $12 billion loss, you say? in three months
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1 day ago
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Spoiler: not looking good
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1 day ago
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Esther Anatolitis
1 day ago
And hereās
@beneltham.bsky.social
on the magnificent arts legacy of the Whitlam Government, and whatās at stake today:
meanjin.com.au/essays/arts-...
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Arts legacy imperilled
Whitlamās legacy seems more imperilled now than at any time since 1975.
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/arts-legacy-imperilled/
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Emily Atkin
3 days ago
To understand how Bari Weiss might approach climate coverage at CBS, I read every climate article the Free Press has published. Almost every one reinforced a common fossil fuel industry talking pointāthat climate change is exaggerated, that solutions don't work, and that fossil fuels = freedom
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Bari Weiss vs. climate change
At The Free Press, Weiss consistently rebrands tired fossil fuel talking points as courageous, rebellious dissent.
https://heated.world/p/bari-weiss-vs-climate-change
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AI Firehose
2 days ago
Recent findings show that LLMs like GPT-4 and Claude 3 Opus underperform for users with less English proficiency and education, often providing inaccurate responses and condescending language, raising ethical concerns about misinformation for vulnerable groups.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17737
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LLM Targeted Underperformance Disproportionately Impacts Vulnerable Users
ArXiv link for LLM Targeted Underperformance Disproportionately Impacts Vulnerable Users
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17737
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Iris van Rooij š
7 days ago
āStudy after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universitiesā, says
@olivia.science
www.ru.nl/en/research/...
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āOpposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessaryā | Radboud University
Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm ā including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...
https://www.ru.nl/en/research/research-news/opposing-the-inevitability-of-ai-at-universities-is-possible-and-necessary
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Robert Saunders
2 days ago
It is both ethically wrong & fundamentally anti-democratic for one man to command this much wealth and power. States spent centuries trying to tame the power of over-mighty subjects. The rise of the global barons is not compatible with democracy as we've understood it.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Elon Musk's $1tn pay deal approved by Tesla shareholders
The richest man in the world will get hundreds of millions of new shares if he hits his targets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyk6kvyxvzo
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Brendan OāKane
3 months ago
You (a fool): The LLM is an all-knowing oracle, on its way to godlike intelligence Me (dumber): The LLM is Indraās Net, each fundamentally empty token a multifaceted jewel in whose surfaces the reflections of every other jewel arise in mutual interdependence The LLM: You can eat that rock
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Nick Evershed!?
2 days ago
New Australian content quotas are about to be introduced for streaming companies, like Netflix. These will hopefully boost the production of kids' TV - after changes the Coalition gov made in 2020, the amount of children's tv content produced nosedived
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Topher Florence
2 days ago
sorry guys i accidentally deleted the spreadsheet with the first drafts of homophobic potato chip brands and it turns out it was somehow load bearing to the entire driving system and the only guy who knows how to fix it got fired in the union busting so
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Aaron Rupar
3 days ago
incredible photo that's definitely worth at least 1,000 words from Andrew Harnik of Getty
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I said abolish and I fucking meant it
3 days ago
Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because
@jay.bsky.team
and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner
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āWorldās first trillionaireā is a caricature of capitalism that even Engels would have struggled to credit
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2 days ago
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max tani
3 days ago
New: Conde Nast fired four employees who were among a group that confronted the company's head of human resources on Wednesday over the decision to fold Teen Vogue into Vogue/recent cuts. Employees who were fired included journalists from the New Yorker, Wired, and Bon AppƩtit.
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Overland Journal
3 days ago
We have put a lot of effort recently in making available the entire archive of OVERLANDās 70+ year history. In that spirit, on the penultimate day of Subscriberthon we bring you this previously unpublished interview with historian Humphrey McQueen on state violence and the arming of the police.
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Back when they armed the police: an interview with Humphrey McQueen - Overland literary journal
In this interview with Rock Chugg, commissioned some twenty years by then-editor Nathan Hollier for a monographic issue that didn't eventuate, Australian historian Humphrey McQueen discusses the armin...
https://overland.org.au/2025/11/back-when-they-armed-the-police-an-interview-with-humphrey-mcqueen/
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Anthony B,
3 days ago
Every time any fucking Australian MP takes questions about the social media ban the first fucking question should include "and yet you continue to post to X, why on earth should anyone care about your opinion on any of this". These fucks can't step away from their Nazi Bar.
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Nathan Goldwag
3 days ago
Has Ross Douthat ever actually had a real job?
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Christine Kooi
3 days ago
A screenshot of an email just sent out by my university's HR department, inviting me to learn about "customer service," which is apparently one of our "core competencies." I don't have customers; I have students. The neo-liberal university.....
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Gales of November ReMar-mbered
3 days ago
āauthors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages⦠discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset⦠A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletionā
futurism.com/artificial-i...
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OpenAI in Danger After Authors Suing It Gain Access to Its Internal Slack Messages
Authors and publishers, who are suing OpenAI, secured access to internal Slack messages and emails discussing the deletion of pirated books.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-danger-authors-internal-slack-messages
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Maurice J. Casey
3 days ago
When I talk about how the history of progressive/radical movements is tied to a history of intimacy this is what I mean. Socialism is always both a theory of economic redistribution and a chance to hang out!!
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ABC News Bot (unofficial)
3 days ago
The inspector of the National Anti-Corruption Commission is inquiring into the agency's head, Paul Brereton, in relation to several complaints including from a former employee.
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Anti-corruption commission watchdog inquiring into NACC chief Paul Brereton
The inspector of the National Anti-Corruption Commission is inquiring into the agency's head, Paul Brereton, in relation to several complaints including from a former employee.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-06/nacc-inspector-inquiring-brereton-complaints/105980792
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Ian Dunt
3 days ago
Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design.
news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
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Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487#
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joannes
4 days ago
Took the cats out for a walk with my brother and accidentally created a 90s Britpop album cover
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Gaming regulator announces temporary halt on accepting bribes
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
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Gambling regulator stops accepting gifts from betting companies, for now
The announcement comes six months after the ABC first reported the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission chair had accepted corporate hospitality from bookmakers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-06/nt-gambling-regulator-stops-accepting-hospitality-gifts/105977024
3 days ago
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Micah
3 days ago
this is actually impressive, making up a brand new nobel peace prize replacement is a genuine innovation in bribery absolutely nobody does corruption like FIFA
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Alison Killing
3 days ago
NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabiaās Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - canāt get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives.
ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...
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End of The Line: how Saudi Arabiaās Neom dream unravelled
Mohammed bin Salmanās utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance
https://ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-line/
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Tom Studans
3 days ago
Huge result for now. Rapid response starting last Thursday to establish a united front of community and civil society organisations. Gonna be much tougher for them to get this through from here š
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Labor has failed to get their bill to grant police powers for welfare withdrawal through
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3 days ago
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Save this one for future reference
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3 days ago
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Mehreen Faruqi
3 days ago
Today our End Dirty Uni Partnerships Bill will be debated in the Senate. The bill comes at a pertinent timeāclimate crisis escalates, fossil fuel companies record mammoth profits, and weapons manufacturers pocket billions while people are slaughtered in their thousands by their war machines.
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Mark Joseph Stern
3 days ago
My take on todayās tariff arguments at the Supreme Court. Short version: LOL
slate.com/news-and-pol...
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For years, governments have told us āgas is a transition fuelā. Of course, that was a lie
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
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Secret report challenges government claim WA gas will help world decarbonise
A secret report undermines the WA government's claim that domestic gas production is helping the rest of the world decarbonise, while the state's own greenhouse gas emissions rise.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-06/wa-government-gas-industry-energy-transition-deloitte-report/105970038
3 days ago
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TechCrunch
4 days ago
Khan's appointment sends a message to the tech industry, whose most powerful players have already been critical of Mamdani, a Democratic socialist.
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Lina Khan to co-chair NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's transition team | TechCrunch
Khan's appointment sends a message to the tech industry, whose most powerful players have already been critical of Mamdani, a Democratic socialist.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/05/lina-khan-to-co-chair-nyc-mayor-elect-zohran-mamdanis-transition-team/
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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis
4 days ago
I knew it would take less than a day for a tiktok dj to make something.
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esti
5 months ago
Zohran at the rally for trans youth on february 8 ā£ļø he was polling single digits.
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