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Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:57
The Albanese ALP government now has an opportunity to reinvigorate and rebuild the ABC. With two current ABC Board director vacancies about to be filled through advertised merit selection and the March departure of chair Ita Buttrose creating a vacancy for new leadership, Michelle Rowland, the Minister for Communications and, ultimately, Anthony Albanese, the Prime Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:56
The future is already upon us. The forty-year Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a divertissement. The population, participation, and productivity template of Treasury economists (3Ps framework) is inadequate and unsuited to the already changed world. As is the obsession with growth. How far out does it seem reasonable to project? In terms of climate, Australia is Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:55
At our present rate we won’t make our 2030 emissions reduction target; Opinion polls are still weak for the Coalition; and Ken Henry on our intergenerational obligations. Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Economics The Intergenerational report Continue reading »
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Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:53
The Jewish University Experience Survey of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) was prepared by the Social Research Centre, owned by the Australian National University. The Survey has gained lurid headlines in local Jewish media, the ABC, and around the world. The Social Research Centre has a Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:52
The Actuaries Institute of Australia has just confirmed what many Australian households already know – home insurance is increasingly unaffordable. It found average premiums climbed 28% in the year to March, while premiums for higher-risk properties, such as those in flood-prone areas, climbed 50%. The institute also found 12% of Australian households – 1.24 million – are Continue reading »
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Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:51
Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023. Saudi officials are killing hundreds of women and children out of view of the rest of the world while they spend billions on sports-washing to try to improve Continue reading »
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Sat, 26/08/2023 - 04:50
It’s not the big, glaring, obvious lies that get you. The New York Times is the world’s most destructive propaganda outlet not because it publishes giant ham-fisted whoppers, but because it appears trustworthy. Its reporting looks authoritative. Children are taught in school that it’s what credible news media looks like. This lets the well-crafted propaganda Continue reading »
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Sat, 26/08/2023 - 03:00

Hello, and welcome to our adult friendship. It can be hard to maintain close friendships upon reaching adulthood, and that’s why we’ve streamlined the process into a simple monthly text. Please respond with “lol” to confirm our friendship.

By confirming this friendship, you are agreeing to participate in one friendship confirmation text per month on a variety of subjects. Any subject is acceptable as long as it does not attempt conversations longer than two texts. Text messages that try to continue beyond “hahaha” or “that’s crazy” may be grounds for termination.

Please confirm the friendship within twenty-four hours. Failure to confirm the friendship within the time limit will result in the other party assuming they did something wrong. Did they do something wrong? Maybe they said something insulting? Should they apologize? What would be the point, though? Because they’re probably not even friends anymore because of whatever they did.

Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 02:00
Once in a while, as I peruse the morning headlines, I can’t help but ask myself: What would I have thought if I’d seen these stories 10 years ago? I’m always shaken by what it looks like from that perspective. It’s not as if shocking events hadn’t taken place in the decade before that. The 9/11 attacks came as a total shock and the financial crisis of 2008 was as close as I’d ever come to experiencing cataclysmic economic dislocation. But those, at least, were on par with historical world events like Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression, so there was a sense that they were not entirely unprecedented. On Thursday I read headlines that former President Donald Trump was turning himself in to be arrested for the fourth time, two of those arrests stemming from his attempt to overturn the election in 2020, another for stealing classified documents and yet another for illegally paying hush money to a porn star with whom he’d had an affair.
Created
Sat, 26/08/2023 - 00:30
Call me skeptical At a mixer last night, a friend mentioned the Democratic Data Exchange referenced recently at Axios: The database, run by an independent firm called Democratic Data Exchange (DDx), allows Democrats and allied groups — campaigns, state parties, super PACs and hundreds more — to bridge a longtime inability to share information. It’s a legal workaround. DDx allows 501(c) nonprofit groups to pool data with campaigns and the party that their nonprofit status otherwise prohibits. They cannot formally coordinate. Here groups just dump data into a pool that other allied groups can draw out of. The GOP has one too. Efficiency, huh? Back in the corporate world, when buzzwords like “efficiency” and “shareholder value” began circulating in the office it was time to update your resume. Listen, I do a lot of voting data analysis. Enough that I regularly hear Darth Vader in my head insisting, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.” Not that this DDx effort is not worthwhile, but it’s doubling down on microtargeting.