Reading

My friend Alan Kohler, who is the finance presenter at the ABC, wrote an interesting article today about AI (January 19, 2026) – AI platforms like Grok are an ethical, social and economic nightmare — and we’re starting to wake up – in which he argued that while he thought climate change was “humanity’s biggest…

In recent times, there has been a growing interest in institutionalist trends and research within economics. Traditional explanations and analyses have seemed to have little or no value. Abstract and unrealistic theories have increasingly been replaced by historically grounded ones. Institutional and structural elements in the economy are highlighted, replacing overly short-term and model-based variables. […]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 18, 2026 by Tony Wikrent Dingbat imperialism and its malcontents Dingbat Imperialism, the Lowest Stage of Capitalism John Ganz, Jan 13, 2026 [Unpopular Front] Germany planning ‘Arctic Sentry’ Nato mission to protect Greenland  [Telegraph, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025] Tech billionaires behind Greenland bid want to build ‘freedom cities’  [Responsible […]

Greenland fever dreams, paramilitary training for ICE agents, and more from The Lever this week.

Establishment Democrats are rejecting an increasingly popular position by refusing to take a bold stance that happens to be good politics.

The post “Abolish ICE” Is More Popular Than Ever. How Will Democrats Drop the Ball This Time? appeared first on The Intercept.

The Power of Poetry with things falling apartand anarchy let loose, it was only poetry, he found,which had any use, so he reached for his copy  of The Complete Works of Yeats and bludgeoned the Presidentof the United States

Sydney’s Phantom Book Shops by Isadore Brodsky was published in 1973, one of Brodsky’s many historical studies of the city. Brodsky was a doctor and a passionate historian, a prolific researcher of what was then called ‘Old Sydney’: its 19th and early 20th-century history. Sydney’s Phantom Book Shops followed the stories of the city’s bookshops […]

Should previous Doctor Who showrunners return if/when Russell T Davies leaves? That's not as good an idea as you might think, and here's why.

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

A private investigator who offered to help the family of missing rugby and reality TV star Levi Davis is accused of taking possession of his iPhone and then failing to return it

My Lords, first, I distance myself from the Opposition’s onslaught on Rachel Reeves. To my mind, she is a tragic figure rather than an incompetent one. She is trying to do her best for her people and the country but is in hock not just to the bond markets but to mistaken academic orthodoxy which, … Continue reading Budget Speech 2025 November

Somalis are fighting back, from homemade sambusas for protesters to foot patrols on the lookout for ICE.

The post Inside the Somali-Led Resistance to Trump’s Assault on Minneapolis appeared first on The Intercept.

Test your knowledge of arctic misadventures, Federal Reserve troubles, and other issues that really matter.

När riksdagen 1998 beslutade om ändringar i regeringsformen och riksbankslagen gjorde man Riksbanken formellt och konstitutionellt oberoende från regering och riksdag i penningpolitiska beslut. Tanken var att man beslutsmässigt skulle ha mer eller mindre vattentäta skott mellan finans-och penningpolitik. Detta har också inneburit att Riksbanken har en nästintill oinskränkt makt över en politik som i […]

In November 2022, any residual feeling that Silicon Valley represented a clear-cut boon for humanity vanished like a fart in the wind. In an act of breathtaking arrogance, OpenAI released GPT-3.5, a free preview of its chatbot ChatGPT. Confronted with a technology that could synthesise humanlike text in response to prompts from actual humans, journalists and commentators rushed into print to weigh its likely implications, often using the chatbot itself to generate the first few paragraphs of their articles (which is a bit like a caveman ostentatiously sporting a bronze medallion towards the end of the Stone Age) ...

The British journalist and activist Ash Sarkar is one of the most engaging members of the group of leftwing radicals who make up Novara Media. Established in 2011, in the long wake of the GFC, and at the dawn of Prime Minister David Cameron’s savage reign of austerity, Novara now has over a million subscribers, not least because of Sarkar’s ambassadorship in the otherwise solidly centrist world of mainstream UK political commentary ...

There is a video clip somewhere of Dennis Altman on the ABC’s Monday Conference program, a forerunner to the late (and unlamented) Q&A ...

Reviews and best-book-of-the-year picks