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• Post #4302363

  Arundhati Roy 'For the first time in years, it feels wonderful to be Indian. Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke' #india #cockroachParty #democracy https://thewire.in/rights/cockroach-democracy-unarmed-and-dangerous

• Post #4076558

  RE: https://scholar.social/@natebowling/116976065066476739 'In states that have legalized sports betting the average citizen is worse off. A 2024 UCLA study found that legalization is associated with lower average credit scores, increased debt collection instances, and a rise in bankruptcy filings' #auPol #gambling #publicPolicy

• Post #3974587

  This piece is so exceptionally good I'm willing to bet it'll be included in collections years from now. It is an historically good, extraordinarily well crafted piece of writing. 'when evidence proliferates, and visibility increases, while political evasion persists, we face a different obstacle entirely. The facts are out there, but their implications are repeatedly refused. It is a cultivated imperviousness to what is already known' #palestine #israel #gaza #manufacturingCons...

• Post #3904067

  RE: https://aus.social/@oscarjiminy/116938829627330096 'While we used to pretend data was stored “in the cloud”, the people of Plumpton, about 30 kilometres from Melbourne’s central business district, have recently realised the cloud is more like an enormous vibrating factory that will cover about 490 soccer fields or 8700 residential blocks of land. So much for the housing crisis. If the Plumpton data centre goes ahead, it will use more energy each year than all of the electricity generate...

• Post #3757252

  'New York City principals have been ordered to pause purchases of any new education technology software as the nation’s largest school system continues to wrestle with an AI policy amid a growing backlash' #edTech #technology #pedagogy #ai #genAI https://gothamist.com/news/all-education-tech-purchases-on-pause-as-nyc-schools-wrestle-with-ai

• Post #3755428

• Post #3665318

  RE: https://journa.host/@mathewi/116880822345977642

• Post #3536224

  'When all else fails, “murdoching” is “simply continuing to assert something as true as if no one has ever shown it was false...Instead of it being a way to hold power to account, Murdoch saw it as a means of holding individuals to account”' #polycrisis #media #murdoch https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jul/01/andrew-dodd-matthew-ricketson-getting-murdoch-book-bullying-factory

• Post #3451408

  Anne Pasek @Aepasek@scholar.social 'What are the rules of the road for building AI data centres responsibly? And are such rules, to the extent they exist, appropriate for this new type of infrastructure?' #publicPolicy #ai #polycrisis #environment https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-hamilton-just-hit-pause-on-all-ai-data-centres-this-is-big/

• Post #3440226

  'facts are shocking, and perhaps confusing: the plotters had far-right views, but hoped to kill Republican officials. They chose their targets with the help of a leftwing website that tracks politicians who receive donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee...one of the plot’s alleged ringleaders, Abraham Alvarez, 31, is reportedly an undocumented immigrant from Mexico' #farRight #usPol #trump #alternateTimelines https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/27/trump-as...

• Post #3419136

  'China has moved up the value chain. Its companies aren’t supplying basic components anymore. They are global brands in their own right, and western officials are looking on anxiously as Chinese batteries, cars and drones become increasingly sophisticated. Now, western policymakers are asking the same question their Chinese counterparts were asking years ago: We’d like to beat them. Should we be joining them?' #china #internationalTrade #geopolitics #politicalEconomy https://www.ft.com...

• Post #3418964

  'there was a concern that Russia could lash out if Putin thought he was under pressure as the war shifted to the skylines of Moscow and St Petersburg' #euPol #geopolitics #hybridWarfare https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/26/russia-provocation-baltic-states-poland?CMP=share_btn_url

• Post #3418951

  RE: https://aus.social/@oscarjiminy/116819559904262896 'technology transfers from the US in particular were absolutely critical to seeding the development of what became the industries that these countries were very famous for in subsequent decades. Now, what’s interesting about the cases of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — and I think this is the big contrast with China, and this sets the stage for what makes China’s case so interesting and so important — is that in the case of Japan, South...

• Post #2524041

  ‘On Friday, Politico reported that one of the country's biggest data center developments had guzzled nearly 30 million gallons of water without paying for it. Even worse, the water grab came at a time when nearby drought-stricken residents were warned to restrict their personal water consumption and some reported sudden decreases in water pressure’ #genAi #datacentres #technology #infrastructure #publicPolicy https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/data-center-used-30-million-gallo...

• Post #2524040

  'Plutonium has been described as a physicist’s dream and an engineer’s nightmare because of its superb nuclear properties and confounding physical properties. Compared to uranium, plutonium is more efficient at fission...But it has six different phases, or crystalline forms, that vary in density by up to 25 percent, and modest changes in temperature or pressure can provoke it to go from being as malleable as aluminum to as brittle as glass' #nuclearScience #history #metalurgy #2...

• Post #2524037

  Nesrine Malik 'evidence has been found of the UAE providing arms to the RSF, smuggling weapons and drones to them via Chad, and backing Colombian mercenary forces that are providing critical support to the militia. The UAE continues to deny all these charges, saying it is a neutral party in the war. But this has become an almost comical performance of outraged innocence in the face of common knowledge' #middleEast #sudan #UAE #genocide #geopolitics https://www.theguardian.com/...

• Post #2524036

  RE: https://aus.social/@crk5/116570173857271555 Alt Text for linked toot (with screenshot) as follows: Tweet by Paul Rudnick with an image of the Trump delegation to China descending the stairs of Airforce One. The text reads: 'Trump brought Lara and Eric, Elon and Marco Rubio with him to China. It's similar to when the early settlers brought smallpox to America'

• Post #2524033

  'The proportion of electricity used by vast warehouses stacked with microchips to power AI and the internet has risen 15% worldwide in the past two years as annual global investment in datacentres approaches $1tn (£740bn) – nearly 1% of the global economy, according to the International Data Center Authority' #climateEmergency #polycrisis #coporateRaiders #enclosureOfTheCommons #genAI https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/13/datacentres-electricity-consumption-uk-us-a...

• Post #2524032

  Amy Remeikis 'Anyone who currently owns an investment property will be able to continue to negatively gear it or, put another way, have the taxpayer subsidise them for their loss...you can only do it if you are making a loss. So you have to be prepared to make a loss, which the taxpayer will then subsidise' #housing #ausPol #federalBudget #negativeGearing https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/news-federal-budget/2026/05/13/federal-budget-tax-broke-promises

• Post #2524030

  RE: https://mas.to/@dmacphee/116572723777680587 ‘Trips to San Francisco, New York, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, Mich., Boston and other business centres have also fallen by more than half, according to the data’ #usPol #trump #usEconomy #tourism #maga

• Post #2096761

  RE: https://assemblag.es/@inquiline/116519955102818279 'I want to examine a different aspect of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza: its significance as a ‘world event’, an epochal turning point that also serves to reveal, and so to signify, the nature of the times. I aim to do so in a register that will range between the political, the social, the philosophical and the personal. I argue that ‘Gaza’ signifies a crisis for the moral order that has held sway across much of the West for t...

• Post #1903699

  Interview with Francesca Albanese 'She believes she is up against not just Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s governments, but also “predatory elites” around the world who are prepared to defend the accumulation of unprecedented riches with violence. Israel’s war against Palestinian resistance is one of many battlefields, she says' #humanRights #israel #palestine #unitedNations #francescaAlbanese https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/apr/14/my-life-has-become-a-rollercoaster-fran...

• Post #1885456

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@grantpotter/116490429597831890 'The value one Einstein delivered to humanity is incalculably large. It dwarfs any UBI program you could ever design. And here is the Einstein Argument for UBI in one sentence: if universal basic income enables even one more Einstein to become Einstein over the course of the next century, it will have paid for itself a thousand times over' #ubi #publicPolicy

• Post #1699337

  Ruby Elliott Zuckerman on the Jewish labour bund and Molly Crabapple's book on the same 'the Bund ran a complex network of schools, self-defense squads, athletic clubs, literary journals, unions and local courts, designed to celebrate Jewish life and protect Jews from ever-surging antisemitic hostility...a Bundist meant knowing that he was secular, proudly Jewish, believed firmly in egalitarian values, and was critical about the founding of Israel' #mollyCrabapple #juda...

• Post #1589000

  'many players are not shooting at each other at all...the game has become a sort of social and psychological experiment, raising questions about game design – and the human condition – that have intrigued social scientists, psychologists and criminologists. Roughly one in five players have never knocked out another raider, and half have knocked out fewer than 10' #gaming #psychology #gameTheory #behaviouralEconomics #socialScience https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/apr/15/...

• Post #1578582

  'An open-access “predatory” academic journal has accepted a bogus research paper submitted by an Australian computer scientist titled Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List' #research #spam #marketingAssholes #gmoyfml https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/25/journal-accepts-paper-requesting-removal-from-mailing-list

• Post #1574020

  ‘the most valuable software infrastructure in the world continues to be maintained by people working for free, while the companies building fortunes on top of it never had to pay for its upkeep. Now a powerful new capability has arrived — and as we’ve seen repeatedly in tech, there’s the risk that organizations with resources will receive it first and learn to protect themselves, while others are left vulnerable’ #security #openSource #infrastructure #technology https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04...

• Post #1465694

  I take solace in her existence as much as her work. Reading her struggle is hard but still some kind of comfort. Nesrine Malik 'isn’t this what evil is? A projection on to the world not of overbearing and large intent, but smallness and fear? The consequences of violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it' #trump #usPol #geopolitics #war #25thAmmendment https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/20/trump-presidency-evil-absurd-frightening-i...

• Post #1326296

  RE: https://aus.social/@fullfathomfive/116424164091234805 'In Victoria, Premier Jeff Kennett solved the regional rail problem in the 1990s by closing most of it, having described the regions as "the toenails of the state." Victoria has since rebuilt much of the network, which is considered a great success story and not, as some have suggested, a baseline expectation' #vicPol #kennett #victorianLiberals

• Post #1313468

  'Wing and his colleagues measured a 10-fold concentration of lithium atoms in the upper atmosphere around 20 hours after the uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket. Increasing amounts of metal, such as lithium...are beginning to alter the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere' #musk #bezos #nasa #space #rockets #climateChange https://gizmodo.com/study-confirms-reentering-spacex-rockets-are-peppering-the-upper-atmosphere-with-metal-pollution-2000723932