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• Post #4383661

  Has anyone connected the dots between Ashley Hinson and Susan Collins shared network of Epstein-adjacent donors? Marc Rowan central to both, Lutnick big donor to Hinson. Feeds into general narrative of Republican corruption wnich Dems need to push hard. #uspol

• Post #4383657

  Has anyone connected the dots between Ashley Hinson and Susan Collins shared network of Epstein-adjacent donors? Marc Rowan central to both, Lutnick big donor to Hinson. Feeds into general narrative of Republican corruption wnich Dems need to push hard. #uspol

• Post #4344947

  The race to the bottom in corporate taxation finally seems to be over https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/announcements/2026/07/corporate-tax-revenues-remain-elevated-while-tax-rates-stabilise-according-to-new-oecd-data.html

• Post #4344885

  Article lists co-operating autocracies, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, but not US. Trump presented as a bumbler failing to counterbalance dictators. In reality he loves them and want to join (even if Iran has spurned him, and China wants to be the capo di tutti capos) https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/the-rise-of-authoritarian-cooperation-a-new-illiberal-order

• Post #4229750

  TIL, again, that it's easy to make mistakes and important to correct them. I misread a source as saying that the UK has no equivalent to our Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In fact, the Cabinet Office fills that role. Apologies for the error.

• Post #4229749

  We don't need massive data centres, and gas-fired power plants, to manage the use of LLMs as a replacement for Google. Hyperscaling is a destructive waste of resources, https://act.350.org.au/petitions/protect-larrakia-country-say-no-to-new-data-centre-in-darwin

• Post #4229748

  it was once expected that a finding of corruption in a govt department would entail resignation of the minister in charge. Now it's big news that a minister in the ACT government has done the right thing. By contrast, Jacinta Allan, hanging on like grim death #auspol https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-27/rachel-stephen-smith-elected-new-act-deputy-chief-minister/106961110

• Post #4229747

  A general lesson from the fall of Jacinta Allan. Once a potential leadership challenge is public enough to be a serious possibiiity, it's sure to happen. And, once it happens, incumbent is bound to lose, maybe after the first vote, or the second, or (in the best case) at the next election. #auspol

• Post #4219394

  Before we even got to the scandal stage, how could leaders of NSW Catholic Church have thought it appropriate that the head of Catholic Schools NSW should be a senior figure on the Liberal Party? McInerney has resigned but his patron Archbishop Fisher should go too. #nswpol

• Post #4219364

  Please help me in the campaign against preventable blindness. https://johnquiggin.substack.com/p/three-sleeps-to-go

• Post #4180674

  How we paid for the millionaire factory https://substack.com/home/post/p-208634850

• Post #4126440

  I don't buy strong claims about AI, and I'm particularly sceptical about agents. But I also find LLMs like ChatGPT a massive improvement on Google for all sorts of purposes. Yesterday, I had to fix the electronic gear changer on my Canyon bike. Basically a matter of swapping out a button battery.

• Post #4103508

  Some basic propositions about voting, maybe of interest to readers of Nate Silver #uspol https://johnquigginblog.substack.com/p/nate-silver-discovers-the-educated

• Post #4102478

  How privatised companies got so rich - we paid. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/26/always-remember-how-macquarie-built-its-millionaires-on-outrageous-tolls-and-charges

• Post #4102075

  Nate Silver discovers the educated poor https://johnquigginblog.substack.com/p/nate-silver-discovers-the-educated

• Post #4085424

  Protests against data centers are doing the shareholders and creditors of AI a big favour, slowing down the hyperscaling race, and protecting them from a future full of stranded assets.

• Post #4059497

  New #Apple #MacOS includes Journal application. Apparently it's Notes but with "mood". It certainly put me in one.

• Post #4021839

  Double donations day for Fred's Big Run https://open.substack.com/pub/johnquiggin/p/freds-big-run-b11

• Post #3935517

  Ocean biomass sinking not recommended. A long term problem for solutions based on reforestation, I think. But for the moment, let's restore as much forest as we can https://drawdown.org/explorer/deploy-ocean-biomass-sinking

• Post #3927373

  Trump promised a self-coup and hardly anyone noticed. Michael Koziol in the Nine papers, gets it right, whereas NY Times and Guardian (article by US prof) missed the point completely, treated this as an attempt to sow distrust in results. #uspol https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/north-america/trump-lays-the-groundwork-for-emergency-declaration-ahead-of-midterms-20260717-p60g7g.html

• Post #3910267

  Another logic fail on AI, this time from NYTimes. Meta leasing compute capacity to Anthropic is evidence that Anthropic is eating Meta’s lunch (who knew?). Evidence of AI industry hunger for computing power would be AI companies buying/leasing compute from non-AI firms. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/technology/meta-anthropic-ai-computing-power.html

• Post #3872742

  Support my appeal to end preventable blindness https://johnquiggin.substack.com/p/freds-big-run-ff9

• Post #3821135

  In the middle of this standard lament, a startling concession "And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before." after which the author moves on almost immediately https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/

• Post #3801626

  Seeing lots of posts making the point that median US incomes have risen since 1970 (about 50 per cent) and that there have been massive improvements in ICT, and noticeable in other goods and services.

• Post #3751606

  Ethereum success with proof of stake more evidence that Bitcoin is a pointless and evil waste of energy https://coinmarketcap.com/community/articles/6a51e415f8f0eb0b8ffe9b65/

• Post #3751598

  Only real lever govt has - drop maximalist goal of suppressing vaping as well as smoking. Even if "gateway drug" claim were true, that horse has bolted. Anecdotal stuff we've been fed "17 yo vaped once and died of lung cancer" the opposite of evidence-based policy #auspol https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/why-the-government-won-t-cut-cigarette-excise-to-combat-illicit-tobacco-20260710-p60ebf.html

• Post #3620780

  Hoping US/Trumpistan beat Belgium and go all the way to win the Cup*, ideally with some dubious penalties to help them. Then maybe FIFA will pay the price of decades of corruption. Happy I can take a dispassionate view, since Socceroos already out

• Post #3445075

  TIL that, contrary to my long-held assumption, the "new town" of Milton Keynes in England was not named after John Milton and John Maynard Keynes in an expression of postwar optimism. That was the name of the long-existing village, combining a shortening of Middletown with a long-dead landowner.

• Post #3445074

  Quite striking that even Starmer's UK is seeking to reduce dependence on US military technology. Not what Trump and Hegseth were hoping far when they told Europeans to pay their own way. https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/1e0351dd_uk_develops_affordable_long/

• Post #3445073

  TL;DR. The hyperscalers expect massive growth, but the electricity needed to meet current demand could be supplied.by a handful of power stations https://substack.com/home/post/p-203092662