Albo completing his total transformation into John Howard. One of the most embarrassing Labor leaders in history.

The companies behind artificial intelligence like to fancy themselves at the vanguard of human progress. But it’s pretty clear they’re instead catapulting us toward a new era of idiocy. We told you so back in 2018.

Amid the platitudes, plenty of reasonable points here about the challenges facing the Libs. But it’s a complete cop-out to avoid the most pressing problem of all: the role of the Oz/Sky et al in pushing the party further and further to the right on every issue. inflectionpoints.work/articles/lib...

In 1988 an innocuous Australian government agency was tasked with gathering statistics for industry. Its work made it a flashpoint for critics who charged that it helped rationalise climate denial. With ABARE's internal records now open access, I took or look for @drilledmedia.bsky.social. /1

Unlike X and Twitter before it, this site isn’t designed to snowball posts towards virality. Thus it’s more welcome for slow thinkers like the kind @beijingpalmer.bsky.social names and less useful as a one-stop shop for Today’s Zeitgeist—which has become an indispensable crutch for journalists.

Very funny to watch the right-wing media scrambling to tamp down the One Nation surge. In 2017 they were doing everything they could to praise Pauline for her maturity (read: willingness to support Coalition policy). www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-toda...

Thx to Nicholas Brown from ANU for this thoughtful engagement with my book and what it can tell us about Australian politics for @insidestory.bsky.social insidestory.org.au/frontlash/

Don’t wanna miss out on history’s greatest fraud and enormous contributor to the climate catastrophe!

Umm…

‘During the Vietnam War, heroin was so readily available in Indochina that a New York Times report claimed that between 10 and 15 per cent of lower-ranking enlisted men were addicted.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on the connection between war and drugs. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time in things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further

What does Epstein’s household economy reveal about the billionaire far-right? Melinda Cooper traces the disturbing logic connecting primal patriarchy, transhumanism, and the rule of masters over servants. www.equator.org/articles/eps...

This is a real sentence in a new NYT article about how the US has changed since Trump, lol.

Please spare us the tributes to the outgoing editor.

Blessed are the bootlickers, for they will be called children of Zion.

Thinking about the time an otherwise fairly decent politician in Steve Bracks backed cops to the hilt when they violently attacked World Economic Forum protestors in 2000. This is what the ALP does. There might be exceptions, but I’m not aware of them.

You’ll hear it said that Jon Kudelka was a genuinely wonderful and generous man, this was undeniable, and the interactions I had with him bore that out, he was also a fucking punisher of hypocrites, he adored fighting bad people, and he had picked some quality enemies

John Carroll somehow finding a way to make the tedious AWW takes even dumber.

New Social Network Exclusively For AI Bots https://theonion.com/new-social-network-exclusively-for-ai-bots/

Late to this, but how’s the shitty bootleg photocopy version. Hastie is such a pathetic try-hard.

Another acceptable title would have been: "Australia to return a portion of the billions it stole from East Timor under a gas deal we secured by bugging their negotiating team".

‘The warnings of King and Adams could hardly seem more prophetic. American democracy has been progressively hollowed out by forever wars, deindustrialisation, the tyranny of wealth and the creation of an archipelago of maximum security prisons.’ @adamshatz.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Something is truly rotten in the state of victoria … open.substack.com/pub/crickete...

A. Odysseus Patrick retaining his position as the weirdest political journalist getting around.

Where does tearing apart the lives of Indigenous players fit into that?

“Today, legitimacy, that invisible prop of authority, is endangered like never before, as unjust hierarchies become too visible to ignore, and custodians of the status quo have taken an axe to their own prestige.” —Pankaj Mishra

Both you and Cave have large and privileged platforms, and never shut up. Please.

The perfect Saturday Paper synthesis.

This piece nicely captures how confusing it is for those of us who came of age before the internet took over everything to observe the online brain poisoning of younger generations. thebaffler.com/latest/if-yo...

Lol

He’s catching up.

Cédric Durand, After AI newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Normal country.

Who could have seen this coming www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Nikhil Pal Singh offers the most sophisticated analysis yet of Trump’s new regime – a “Homeland Empire” that wants to rule over subjects, not citizens, both domestically and abroad. www.equator.org/articles/hom...

So basically exactly what Cathy Wilcox suggested in her cartoon.

👏👏👏

I have been sent a copy of Adelaide Festival's response to the letter raising concerns about Thomas Friedman's participating in Adelaide Writers Week. The response says that Friedman could not participate due to "last minute scheduling issues".

Sleeper issue in all this 👇

2025 marked thirty years of Thomas Friedman as the New York Times’ foreign affairs columnist. Belén Fernández surveys the wreckage.

Never trust Bob Carr.

“An extraordinary aspect of this case is that the festival board seems not to have learnt from the experience of other arts bodies on the question of Gaza. Nor has it absorbed the lessons of principle they taught.”

Not a peep from these three. What a shock.

Look at those international names. Another cultural institution commits suicide.

If Louise Adler is opposed to the decision – which I would fully expect, given her excellent track record on this front – how has she not resigned?

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s response:

While they’re cancelling events, I have a few nominations.