Political economists, ecologists, environmental scientists, geographers all have been working hard on how to shift the balance of power so we can meaningfully combat climate change but you've nailed it Ian. /S www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

Thanks, Vonnegut. 💜

Google's CEO saying that the reason there's intense backlash to AI is because humans aren't "evolved" enough to understand it youtu.be/RgV57kDzcng?...

elon musk had his brain melted by right wing twitter slop and illegally shut it down. six figure body count plus a new strain of ebola is ravaging africa as we speak. the discourse is about whether they hired enough conservatives to justify not torpedoing the agency. illegally, i might add

'Every collapse brings along intellectual and moral disorder. It is necessary to create sober, patient people who do not despair in the face of the worst horrors and who do not become exuberant with every silliness. Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will.' - Antonio Gramsci

No, he really, really doesn't.

Like Toni Morrison said, decades ago, “We really have to learn to love thinking again. Not fretting, not worrying, but thinking.”

Mitski's working for the knife continues to age like fine wine.

I feel like it just needs to be emphasised over and over, interest rate hikes were for unemployment, this was the goal. This is the mechanism.

One maddening thing about this is that techbros'll burden you with needless AI busywork -- then sell you AI as the miraculous remedy for this busywork.

Remember, kids: It is in the interest of the moneyed classes to couch intrasocietal struggles as intergenerational warfare because they’d rather have you yelling “boomer” at a working class 65 year than setting fire to a bundle of 30 year olds with Lambos.

Search engines are normally allowed to crawl websites because they offer something useful in return: Directing more traffic to the website in question. If the classic "show a bunch of links" search disappears from Google, it won't be a benefit and there's no reason to still allow their crawlers.

Harvard: here's lots of evidence grading doesn't work. On one hand, here's a vast field of people who have worked for years on how to make it better. OTOH, we could just make it much worse! Guess what they chose.

Just a reminder - you only pay 47% tax on income earned *above* $190,000. If you earn $200,000 you pay an average tax rate of around 30%.

millionaires talking to the press: Closing this tax avoidance loophole is an attack on poor people because hypothetically if they had spare money from investments they wanted to avoid tax on they could have too

I just received my PLR/ELR statement. PLR/ELR is a way that Australian writers can receive income from their books in libraries and schools. I remind writers to do your bloody paperwork so you can get paid and I remind readers if you borrow our books from libraries we still get paid.

I think my head is going to explode at the bleating from rich people about having to pay a bit more tax, while hundreds of thousands of disabled people are having essential, life changing support, cut

I still think these two paragraphs from Ganz are the most important contemporary political writing

Begging anyone at all to take a Religious Studies course or speak to a Religious Studies scholar or maybe even just touch grass before publishing this stuff

Analysis like this just fundamentally ignores that what is changing is that the so-called developed world is now experiencing larger brunt of the exploitation of captialism whereas much of it was felt by developing countries for the past half-century (and more) www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

The citation crisis ("you mean you guys read the sources you cite?"), like the replication crisis, exists because academia has been neoliberalised to death. The pressure to publish to keep an academic job is absurd and the metrics are unbelievably crude — that's why we're here.

Well, it happened. A client disregarded my advice about using generative AI and guess what? It gave them bad advice AND the judge ruled that by using it, Client waived confidentiality and ordered us to turn a bunch of private stuff over. STOP USING GENERATIVE AI FOR LEGAL THINGS. I BEG YOU.

this feels like the crux of things, and I don't see it highlighted enough: being creative is fun! i want a machine that does my laundry so i can focus more on making art, not the other way around!!

H/T to @davemilbo.bsky.social “Social murder” was the term Engels used when a society knowingly creates conditions that shorten the lives of the poor and vulnerable while pretending the deaths are unfortunate inevitabilities instead of policy outcomes. #Disability #NDIS

It’s weird that Helen of Troy being played by a black actress is a problem, but most of the rest of the Mediterranean, Greek and Turkish characters being played by incredibly fair and blond haired people of British, Irish and Scandinavian descent isn’t. And by weird, I mean entirely predictable.

Melbourne/Naarm yet again showed up in numbers for Palestine this Nakba Day, in defiance of so much grotesque complicity from our government. From the river to the sea.

And the answer to that question is something like the post above. Yes, the single word "degrowth" does not explain the entire logic behind it. So what? Is "capitalism" about having a big capital?

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.

Note that property investors get grandfathered changes, but NDIS participants do not. So our Government is effectively saying property investors deserve the dignity of maintaining their current comfort levels, but people with disabilities do not.

"It doesn't matter a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys what you all choose to do from now on. Burn down the forests, anything, it won't make a scrap of difference. Your future history has already happened. Two million years you've got and that's it."

What could this possibly achieve other than cruelty? www.theage.com.au/national/vic...

I'll never get over how journalists writing about the Paramount deal don't think it's worth mentioning to readers that every single major media merger has proven terrible for creatives, consumers, workers, and the overall market especially when Warner Brothers is involved

Let me share with you a "just get a job story". My friend has been diagnosed with FND (Functional Neurological Disorder). He would LOVE to work. He has applied for an insane number of jobs. All said no. Some days he's ok, others not. It's random. They all say he's a risk.

perfectly expressed

Isn't the fact that AI agents are able to purchase things on your behalf proving a flaw in every 'are you a robot' Captcha?

imo best thing about bsky is it kind of sucks. like i just don’t want to be here that much. v easy to log off

This is such a wrong-headed take. Australia is in a shockingly bad position Domestic wind / solar are being rediverted to meeting AI slop demand, coal plants extended. Fossil fuel use in transport will keep rising thanks to slow centrist policy. Gas exports will fall.. www.afr.com/policy/energ...

"The Albanese government has again ignored the popular and necessary demand to increase the rate of social security payments. As inflation and unemployment continues to rise, at the same time housing and bills are hurting people on higher incomes, the poorest drowned long ago" @antipovertycentre.org

Insane dystopian shit here, totally unacceptable. I expect politicians and commentators to be outraged by it, regardless of their opinion of the crimes these people were convicted of.

The fourth Reform councillor suspended, expelled or forced to resign since being elected on...Thursday

"If anything changes, I will be forced to raise it by the exact amount I already will be" he said to the media. chaser.com.au/general-news...

wow that sounds really useful

I think that the elephant lurking behind all of these discussions is the simple issue that 'what schools teach' is not as important in the lives of students as 'schools as socializing devices'. you're being molded into an adult and the particulars of it are largely irrelevant to you at the time

I really wish people aspiring to write understood what a competitive advantage being able to write without AI will be in the coming years.

“[P]eople tend to be poor judges of what is possible, and mostly tend to cede to others the parameters [of imagination]. This suggests that it is very important to take control of the boundaries of the possible, because doing so expands those boundaries.” www.the-reframe.com/the-unmovabl...

What is the German word for the expression you give when you see someone in public and remember you haven't replied to their email?

It's ridiculous that people are out here spending all their time talking like the coal miners are the only blue collar workers out there when there are more solar installers than coal miners.