“Labor sources have told ABC Investigations the prime minister's office has been putting pressure on advocates for gambling reform within the parliamentary Labor party to prevent them from speaking up.” Worth reading Steve Cannane’s analysis today. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

“Over a dozen Labor MPs, including senior figures in the party, have told ABC Investigations they want action on gambling reform.” www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

uh i would say it's mildly alarming that the Trump administration is using its sanction powers to compel tech companies into taking its critics offline. First, the ICC's chief investigator says he was blocked from his Microsoft-hosted email after US sanctions. Now, this

#Analysis So what did Busan actually tell us? If we want to understand US-China-Taiwan after Busan, we shouldn't obsess over what was announced. We should stare at what was deliberately unsaid and ask why leaders who talk so loudly at home chose to stay quiet when they were finally face to face.

Google might be killing the open web, completely ruining most media outlets' chances at survival and making sure no one finds our journalism but I gotta say... Chrome's new split tab thing is so useful as an editor

fun fact: Google's AI summary mentions facts only in my article that are behind the paywall. 👍👍👍

Lmao what (from today's Breaker newsletter)

"A world of creativity without craft". www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Scoop: The federal government was warned last month that 1 in 3 parents plan to help their kids get around the social media ban. The risk of "non-compliance snowballing and becoming normalised" could "undermine" the ban, the report says, based on polling done in Feb/March www.crikey.com.au/20...

ok i am about to start filing FOI requests

Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules apnews.com/article/pent...

‘My eyes are stinging, but damn it, they’re open’: surviving a 12-hour Twilight marathon in the year 2025

"News sites are the canaries in the coalmine. This is about the biggest change to the web in 20 years, one that will affect how you access information and what you read and watch." www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

People are using AI to research topics, answer factual questions, and ask for advice. In essence, they're increasingly using it for tasks that were once the primary domain of search engines and, by extension, news publishers. www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/peop...

"I wish I had told you, before our dinners grew cold, that one day I would speak loudly. Not to wound, but because not speaking would betray everything I was taught to honour. Because for me, love is not blind loyalty – to an ideology, a state or even a community" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Google is ramping up AI. Here's why that may be bad for news sites: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-10-08/how-googles-ai-overviews-are-affecting-australian-news-websites/105839588

Scoop: OpenAI has signed its first ever Australia government contract, quietly inking a deal with Treasury amid the ChatGPT-maker's charm offensive on policymakers. This modest contract is an ideal foothold into future, more lucrative deals, according to one firm's analysis. www.crikey.com.au/20...

Hard to figure out sometimes whether submissions were made using AI, but then sometimes they make it fairly easy.

"Dalton’s fourth novel is a wife-guy manifesto, an uxorious fable. It’s bleakly retrograde: women as redeemers; men as awestruck limpets; love as an unyielding grip." www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

Wrote about anxiety about the creep of artificial intelligence into the courts and concerns that the use of these tools could erode Australia’s core judicial values

2 bits of new info in my piece: - eSafety Commissioner will say which platforms that it considers in the teen social media ban - Communication Minister has not asked the Privacy Commissioner for advice on what data social media companies may not collect

RIP Chad Profitz (who was deactivated after posting too close to the sun). Will love you 4eva. www.capitalbrief.com/article/meet...

Research shows police regularly perform inadequate rape investigations and fail to test for DNA evidence. That has led lawmakers across the country to extend their statutes of limitations. This hasn’t happened in Massachusetts. 👉 Read more (w/ @wbur.org): www.propublica.org/article/mass...

From premiers to pariahs, the predominantly Indigenous side was expelled from the league after just one season. The video footage that condemned them remained hidden for decades: until now. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Australia's teen social media ban has been sold as being the solution to, or at least helping to solve, a lot of different problems. Since we're not far off from the ban's start, I thought I would be good to pull together all the government's many claims about its benefits: www.crikey.com.au/20...

Oi!

Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide in Gaza, according to the "most authoritative assessment" to date. The inquiry's report follows a two-year investigation and builds on a growing number of assessments labelling Israel's actions as genocide. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

People have focused so much on the predator problem on Roblox (which is honestly fairly solvable by utilizing parental controls/blocking chat) that they've missed the forest for the trees: it's all junky games laden with in-app purchases, pay-to-win, and dark patterns nymag.com/intelligence...

A five-month investigation has identified six people shot by Israeli snipers on 22 November 2023, revealing how a family from Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood was torn apart in a few hours by men who grew up in Naperville, Illinois and Munich, Germany. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Charlie Kirk's murder has plunged us into a democratic crisis www.vox.com/politics/461...

“When people talk about cultural vandalism and the insult to the legacy of Meanjin, I think they mean the decision to close the journal severs a connection to this history, to the possibility of a cultural nationalism that isn’t defined by racism & imperial fealty” www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/08/m...

Why do we feel inadequate, and how does that feeling shape our characters? Vivian Gornick writes about low self-esteem.

Love love love this!

"Those lofty words aged like milk this week as Albanese's government revealed its plans to water down Australia's transparency laws and make secrets easier to keep" www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Want to work with the 7am team? Take a look at this gig, and if you think you’re the right fit - APPLY. www.seek.com.au/job/86881346...

This story is absolutely horrific. www.wired.com/story/the-ba...

This sucks!!!

Govt leans heavily on eSafety Commissioner receiving 600 FOI requests in one year. However frivolous they may be, they were overwhelmingly for personal info - so fees wouldn't apply. And at just 1 or 2% of all FOIs, they are not the reason the system is so expensive in money and work-hours.

I wrote about the em dash

The first story I did for Crikey back in 2021 was reporting on a leaked neo-nazi manual showing how "media baiting" — aka tricking journalists into writing about them — was a major strategy for them. www.crikey.com.au/20...

The gun lobby claims it is “winning” the fight against Australia’s longstanding crackdown on firearms, pointing to a sharp increase in licensed gun owners and weapons since laws were introduced in the aftermath of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... Exclusive

Hundreds of billions of dollars to automate the experience of being groomed in an AOL chat room in 1998

The federal government has upheld dozens of military export permits to Israel, raising fresh questions about Australia's weapons transfers throughout the war in Gaza.

Great stuff on the dire state of the publishing industry from @radiomoderation.bsky.social www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/the-...

If you were going to read this but thought “actually I want you to cut it by a third and read it out to me”… podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/l...

Targeting journalists is a war crime. As colleagues, we remember them. meaa.io/45A4vZ5

"They found that even when men earn far less than their wives — even when they’re unemployed and making bupkes — their contribution to housework stays remarkably low. In fact, women’s time spent on housework actually fell after they divorced" www.thecut.com/article/cori...

"While the Israeli government resents countries such as Australia recognising a Palestinian state, it is more of an irritant than a substantial setback. But there is one thing Israel dreads the prospect of: economic sanctions" - @johnthelyonsden.bsky.social www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike, while he and other journalists were inside their tent