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As a transgender person who grew up evangelical and is now an atheist, I feel...

Cameron Stewart recently attempted to vaunt the virtues, so to speak, of the AUKUS nuclear submarines via an article in The Australian newspaper. In part, it’s threaded together with tufts of intellectual fluff from Kim Beazley, his one-time offsider, Paul Dibb, Peter Dean from the United States Study Centre in Sydney, Mike Pezzullo formerly of Continue reading »

The worldwide sushi industry is under threat due to overfishing of plastic soy sauce fish stocks, with leading marine biologists predicting a collapse of the entire fishery within the next five years. “Ten years ago we used to see schools... Read More ›

(If only the media would report it…) Media Matters with yet another of Trump’s insane comments: Major newspapers and newswires failed to report that at a September 17 campaign event in Michigan, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proposed reducing food imports in response to a question about how he’d reduce food costs, claiming that “our farmers are being decimated.” Several economists explained the obvious point that reducing the supply of food by restricting imports would actively increase food prices. During the town hall, an audience member asked Trump how he would “bring down the cost of food and groceries.” After Trump rambled about unrelated energy prices and Federal Reserve interest rates, he responded: “We gotta work with our farmers. Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country. We’re gonna have to be a little bit like other countries.

A unique court case has begun in Nevada this week. At stake is the future of the Murdoch empire. The case, which began on 17 September local time, is scheduled to run (in secret) for two weeks, and sometime after that the Reno Nevada County Probate Commissioner will make what will probably be the biggest Continue reading »

Donald Trump inherited a strong economy from President Barack Obama and managed it poorly. Real GDP grew more slowly under Trump than it had under any president since World War II. He was the only president since then to preside over a fall in the number of workers with a job. In 2016, the United Continue reading »

Something absolutely stupefying is happening in Germany: its iconic auto company, VW, the darling of every Chancellor from Adolf Hitler to Olaf Scholz, appears to be in a death spiral. At the end of this story I’ll draw a link to the salutary lesson countries like Australia and New Zealand need to draw from the Continue reading »

Shortly after he became Treasurer, in July 2022,  Jim Chalmers announced a review of the Reserve Bank – the first since the current monetary policy arrangements were instituted in the 1990s. A lot of the recommendations from the review were not controversial and could be described as “improved housekeeping”. As Chalmers recently told journalists, the Continue reading »

I’m guessing that anyone who reads Pearls and Irritations knows that Land Forces, Australia’s largest weapons expo, was held in Melbourne from 11 to 13 September in the face of strong opposition. Given the blanket coverage, it’s likely the great majority of those in the city also knew this was happening, as well as a Continue reading »

My book ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web is on its way to the virtual printers tomorrow, which means it will be available for purchase from all your favourite e-book stores at various points during next week. I will be taking this opportunity to have an online reading and book-signing party. The event is on … Continue reading Book-Signing Party 30 Sep 2024 →

It’s getting hard to tell anymore Daniel Dale at CNN breaks down a few of Trump’s bizarre ramblings: Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories. This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the kind of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Rather, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality. He talks about the “eating the dogs” thing of course. But there are more: Harris and the military draft At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is talking about forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.” That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing back the draft.

Regeringen presenterade idag sin budget för år 2025. I de aviserade ‘satsningarna’ går nästan hälften till sänkta skatter för hushållen. Framför allt höginkomsttagare med månadsinkomster på över 60 000 kr får de största skattelättnaderna.  Detta är minst sagt provokativt om man tänker på alla de umbäranden vanliga löntagare genomlidit de senaste åren med höga räntor, […]

Like David Lammy, the military recognises the threat of climate breakdown. But that hasn’t stopped the sector's vast emissions

Dear Parent or Guardian,

Despite our laughably small budget, the district insists we keep up with tech trends. As a result, you must manage a shit ton of cheap, hard-to-use apps and websites this year.

Classroom Assist
Students use this platform to chat with teachers and submit assignments outside of school hours. To enroll your child, click here and answer three ancient Babylonian riddles, each more difficult than the last. Failure to correctly answer each riddle will lock you out of the site for forty-eight hours—plenty of time to consider homeschooling your student.

Volunteer Wizard
A reminder that you’re required to volunteer at one super-stressful school event per semester. (FYI, we need someone to cover a vape-patrol shift at the homecoming dance.) Sign up on this overly complicated app that’ll make you wonder why we didn’t just use a Google Doc.

Labour members should organise within Constituency Labour Parties and trade union branches to pass motions in support of migrants and bring these into effect by mobilising for solidarity actions on our streets and in our workplaces