On news of Matthew Carney stepping down at Four Corners, it’s worth reading his recent and stirring address on the 50th anniversary of the killing of the Balibo Five: www.abc.net.au/abc-internat...

Advice to Sarkozy from a fellow traveller: www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

REAKING: New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Trump foe, is indicted by Trump’s DOJ. She has been charged with one count of bank fraud by the same U.S. attorney who brought charges against James Comey.

Fascinating piece on the rise of Christian fundamentalism in Trump’s America: www.spiegel.de/internationa...

What a grim lineup of headlines.

‘This Is Like Something Out Of A David Lynch Film,’ Says Man Driving Car With Headlights On

Criminal justice another of the institutions of state wilting under Trump: ‘On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.’ www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...

The most American essay so far this year: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/o...

Fascinating analysis on Canberra’s culture of drops here: www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

From cabinet secrecy to “factors against” access, Australia’s FOI amendment bill risks undoing gains won under earlier reforms www.themandarin.com.au/299152-foi-a...

Revealing, if true.

Well overdue for media to ban “drops” by political parties that insist no third party comment can be sought. Insidious, does not serve readers. (The Age banned them at a state level, or at the very least discloses that that was a condition for the story). Time for it to end in Canberra.

Rodney Bridge, a resident of Perth, Australia, whose 16-year-old son took a hallucinogen bought from Silk Road and then jumped off a hotel balcony in 2013, called Mr. Ulbricht’s comeback tour “a disgrace.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/t...

See: every sector of the economy.

I thought they were excellent, deeply thoughtful questions. Not rude, not one-eyed, but probing.

A century or so ago, it seems that no writers had this grammatical tic. Now it is everywhere.

This is worth the time

Amazing graph from Semafor -- China now forecast to account for almost 60% of all renewable energy capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030

I hereby formally propose a new term (unless someone already has): AE standing for Automated Enshittification

Revealed: spies for hire used ‘Big Brother’ tactics on salmon farm activists

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ bsky.app/profile/yash...

A must-read item:

via Benedicto.Uribe on TikTok

Watching the chaos unfold in America reminds me of the poignant take on Paul Simon's classic AMERICA featured in the last ever Wharf Revue. 😢 www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH5e...

"Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has $185bn for ICE, which is more than the annual military budgets of the UK and France combined. Wherever ICE raids trigger protests, Trump can send in the troops." My column. www.ft.com/content/3d6c...

The first stories from our five-month investigation: Scouring coronial findings from 248 deaths, we found a staggering 57 Australians have killed themselves in the past two decades using hanging points in prisons that authorities knew about but failed to remove www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The early warning that put a price on fixing the state’s psychiatrists crisis www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

The dystopia is upon us.

A hidden measure in the Republican budget bill would crown Trump king https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/27/a-hidden-measure-in-the-republican-budget-bill-would-crown-trump-king

Read this on Miller’s (Trump’s?) lust for power: www.stevevladeck.com/p/148-suspen...

‘The hate media’? Huh?

"We cannot give everyone a trial," says the president of these United States.

🧵 THREAD: A federal whistleblower just dropped one of the most disturbing cybersecurity disclosures I’ve ever read. He's saying DOGE came in, data went out, and Russians started attempting logins with new valid DOGE passwords Media's coverage wasn't detailed enough so I dug into his testimony:

I was at HKU yesterday and this is what the “democracy wall” looks like now. It has the same name. And cameras though. But nothing else

8/ This is a watershed moment, as Trump thumbs his nose at a Supreme Court ruling, gaslighting the public by pretending his won 9-0 when he lost 9-0. If we normalize this, there's no end. He can lock up or remove anyone. We will no longer exist in a democracy.

How New Washington works: Companies have been bilking the govts out of billions for "skin bandages" that don't do much Biden moved to crack down Then a company donated $2M to Trump super-PAC After that, Trump publicly praised the product, and froze the crackdown www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/h...

Today on my LBC Sunday show I interviewed a former Trump adviser. She claimed that Putin wasn’t morally responsible for the war. I challenged her on that claim. She told me she didn’t like me and hung up. And they say the left are snowflakes. Watch the full interview here. youtu.be/tSsV7xyDyfY?...

Fascinating

What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.

I believe this is a world first: An intra-day tariff chart.

Jiminy Cricket. USA as haven

Quite.

Sunday’s @thetimes.com cartoon times.newsprints.co.uk/morten-morla...

Garry Kasparov is right, I’m afraid: they are breaking everything so quickly even though it’s unpopular, because they never expect to face real elections again. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

BREAKING: There has just been a huge argument between Zelenskyy, Trump & Vance in the Oval Office. Trump calls Zelenskyy disrespectful and says he “is no position to dictate” to the US. Trump raises his voice to Zelenskyy. He can’t stand someone standing up to him. This is unbelievable.

Internet slop, well explained.

Journos finally catching up with a trajectory evident to historians since 2015. Better late than never, I guess. Parents, whatever else they study, encourage your kids to enrol in history units too - while history units still exist. www.afr.com/world/north-... #everythinghasahistory #trumperica

Strata is a complete nightmare: ‘ … charging more than 80 strata plans for a search conducted on one law firm, the review found’. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02...