Australia’s university system has somehow managed to devolve: from a free to an affordable education, but recently toward an inequitable and unfair funding scheme based on poor assumptions about both students and jobs. theconversation.com/how-did-aust...

I reckon the most interesting subset of discourse here is when presumed [good] factors are actually either actually bad, or there to downplay or dismiss the bad even if the amount of good is way smaller than the bad. A short thread to explain: on "training for electrification" + "demand response"

Nuclear power is a poor fit with renewables. montelnews.com/news/1ea628e...

Nuclear power is a poor fit with renewables. montelnews.com/news/1ea628e...

There’s a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect happening where people who read widely, consider various perspectives, and put in effort to understand views they disagree with worry that they don’t do that enough, while people who don’t do any of that accuse others of being in a bubble and call it a day.

When Buzz Aldrin replied “it never happened” in response to whether “anything scary” happened during his moon landing, Kim Kardashian thought he was referring to the growth of her brain. #moonlanding #nasa

When Trump refers to resuming nuclear weapons testing ‘on an equal basis’, he just means the USA, Russia & China are already the big outliers vis-a-vis the Comprehensive Nuclear-Ban-Treaty and he is committed to keeping it that way.

notes on gatesnotes, in a thread "A new way to look at the problem" - er, no, he's been running this line for DECADES On the headline: you can absolutely guarantee anyone presenting themselves as telling tough, hard truths is about to deliver some self-aggrandising nonsense

Just imagine the Australian Coalition opposition as an AI undergoing “model collapse”, where AI’s trained on the output of other AI’s become dumber, disconnected from reality & forgetful of established knowledge.

In a 2024 paper criticizing the 'billion-dollar-disasters' database, Roger Pielke Jr. published analysis that is best described as a Russian-doll of errors. Here's my in-depth take down of his appallingly bad work. economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/10/26/r...

How many classes today were canceled because a whole suite of EdTech services are built atop AWS? You know what platform never crashes?

“It is hard to imagine an achievement more worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize”. NOT. Talking military action against Greenland, Canada, Panama & his fellow Americans fails the criteria? 1) fraternity b/w nations 2) abolition or reduction of standing armies 3) formation & spreading of peace congresses.

Sargent’s suggestion that the Trump Regime is manufacturing a crisis by exploiting the attention economy fits well with accounts of modern fascism as growing out of late capitalism & the spectacle society. @gregsargent.bsky.social @timothysnyder.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment. New from me: newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Like the debate in statistics that cautions against precision obscuring significance, fine if you want to call the Trump Regime illiberal democracy. But it includes fascist elements: threat othering, conspiracy thinking, truth delegitimization. Maybe substantive significance trumps precision here?

“AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations”. - Cory Doctorow. pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/r...

It is more expensive for Finland (w/ 41% nuclear share of electricity) to prioritize nuclear over RE expansion but the Australian pro-nuclear lobby thinks it cheaper to go nuclear over RE despite Oz having 0% nuclear. When you don’t need a study.

Painting the battling of online disinformation as a ‘censorship industrial complex’ is exactly what the right wing propaganda industry wants you to think. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Trump seeks arrest over Escalatorgate? What is the charge? “Walking oneself upstairs is a social injustice”?

Dear Brett, tell us you don’t know the difference between opposing hate speech and censorship without telling us …

AI inevitably hallucinates and lacks the humility to admit uncertainty. Every “but humans make mistakes” answer hallucinates a social world where we forget AI systems are being sold as decision-makers free of human fallibility. www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Yes, Kirk Hagiography is pretext for authoritarian repression of the entire “left”. But it’s also hagiography to say Kirk would disapprove of the campaign against free speech: he started Professors Watchlist to harass, intimate & attempt to fire critics. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Feel free to continue arguing over the shooter's motives, but please understand that *it doesn't matter*. There's a organized political movement that plans to suppress, arrest, or kill its political opposition. It it seeking pretexts. Anything will do. If it's not this, it'll be something else.

Dressing up hate as debate? “… it is wrong to profit off the dehumanization of people because of who they are. I won’t celebrate his death, but I’m not obligated to celebrate his life, either”. @espiers.bsky.social nails it. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

If you put “Hey fascist! Catch!” in the context of Extremely Online culture, a different picture emerges, one where the right is so focused on alleged enemies they’re missing what’s happening *among their own*, and it’s here that I must beg your pardon if I’m introducing you to groypers.

Curry labels Dessler ‘unhinged’ and Dessler replies by unpacking procedural flaws in the DOE climate (denial) report. Yet Pielke thinks it’s Dessler getting personal. Make it make sense. @michaelemann.bsky.social @andrewdessler.com

"Many boomers, especially white heterosexual men... have felt disoriented as their world has shifted and changed around them. The clean energy transition symbolizes part of this change."

Polly Winsor—historian of biology extraordinaire and Emerita Professor of the University of Toronto's IHPST—is the winner of the ISHPSSB's 2025 Hull Prize, the society's highest honour! Polly is the *first Canadian* winner of the prize, and its second female recipient. 🇨🇦 🌱🐋 @ihpst-uoft.bsky.social

Why new nuclear power is a bad way to balance solar and wind davidtoke.substack.com/p/why-new-nu...

Small Modular Reactors: too slow, too costly, but pushed by an industry “burning through billions . . . in public money, chasing a fantasy that distracts and diverts resources from real, proven solutions.” www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/the-nuclear-...

As Trump goes on a deportation spree, it’s odd that one of the original grievances against the British King in the US Declaration of Independence (1776) was the King’s imposition of restrictions on the naturalization of foreigners.

Orwell said doublethink is holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and that authoritarian regimes will rewrite history to warrant a current agenda. Remember, Trump withdrew in 2018 from Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear accord.

When will fake environmentalists stop pretending the IPCC lists nuclear power as more likely to lower emissions than renewables? And do fake environmentalists deserve “typos”? @drpauldorfman.bsky.social @michaelemann.bsky.social reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-sa...

I am privileged to announce the publication of the Anti-Autocracy Handbook: sks.to/autocracy 1/12

Trump says Putin does not speak with those who threw him out of the G8, and Trump agrees with Putin that’s fair. So all the G7 needs to do to stop hearing from Trump is form the G6?

As 2025 nuclear advocates project huge expansion to meet massive demand, remember history. E.g.: its 1977. The 10th World Energy Conference projects (by 2020) a 4x growth in primary energy demand (2x by 2020) & nuclear share of electricity of 50-60% (10% in 2020). @drpauldorfman.bsky.social

After 15 years of being lied to and cheated on the govt is moving to tackle the Gas Cartel - toying with the idea of a domestic gas reservation policy. #Whatsthescam #auspol @mrrexpatrick.bsky.social michaelwest.com.au/albanese-to-...

Guy (RPJ) who thought Trump’s election meant science had to make peace with Trump (2016) and that Trump wasn’t attacking science (2018) unsurprisingly now (2024) calls the idea of resistance to Trump “nuts”. 👀 @michaelemann.bsky.social

BREAKING: warship sinks on launch. North Korea asks Sweden for advice.

Dear Higher Ed, when authoritarianism comes for you, resistance is not futile. It might be the only option. theconversation.com/universities...

Centralized “Curriculum and Quality Assurance” teams in modern Higher Ed are some combination of Orwell’s Ministry of Peace and Ministry of Plenty. Discuss.

Canada’s SMR project. The GE Hitachi BWRX-300 was advertised as online by 2028 @ ~ CAD$950 million per unit or ~ $4 billion for 1.2 GW. Already 2030 grid connect and $21 billion. Australia dodged billion dollar bullets scuttling the LNP nuclear plan?

A Coalition MP not quite grasping that leaning into Trump was ALWAYS a bad idea in Australia and that thinking Trump 2.0 was positive for the LNP was indicative of a poor roots system from the beginning.

The Australian conservatives (the Coalition) claim the IPCC tells them that only by going nuclear can they decrease emissions. No, the IPCC does not recommend nuclear as the most plausible route to ambitious emissions reductions. @drpauldorfman.bsky.social reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-sa...

@dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social helping make sense of why baseload and nuclear face insurmountable barriers to complimenting renewables in Australia. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04...

Strange - or really no surprise at all? - that all those misinfo-skeptics who (apparently) feared a censorship-industrial-complex (if analysts investigated systemic deception) are pretty silent as research gets shut down by an actual censorship-industrial complex?

Hard to overstate the extent to which we have handicapped our ability to deal with adversarial abuse because “ceNsOrsHiP!” screamers have cowed people into ceasing to study, and companies into ceasing to mitigate, the most transparently manipulative things. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Elites are predominantly old men, born domestically, from business & economics degrees. Who are busy complaining about woke, DEI, wages, regulations and universities, almost as if they’re self-absorbed, insufferable cry babies clinging to privilege. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

On why we should not trust the Australian Coalition conservatives in their push for nuclear power. It’s a con job. arena.org.au/the-coalitio...