MORE TALES OF TERRIBLE TECH
It’s still not clear just how bad the hack of Uber will turn out to be (also, you could write that about virtually every hack of a major platform). Facebook tried to copy its way to success when it got Instagram to mimic TikTok. It’s going poorly. One of the most copied artists in AI-generated art is very unhappy about being copied so much (and here: below is MidJourney’s rendering of “Greg Rutkowski fights a dragon trying to copy him”). Chinese-made surveillance cameras have gaping security flaws that make them easy to hack. And why the next generation of tech giants could be game companies.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Greece is having its very own Watergate. Flying Heap of Crap Watch, part ∞: there are Chinese parts in the F-35, which is a big problem for the Pentagon. The story of 51-year-old Happy — and her strong case for non-human personhood. Russia’s quest for USSR-style hegemony over its former satellites is falling apart as Ukraine throws Putin’s invaders back. And if the Russian president decides to deploy a battlefield nuke in Ukraine, the consequences would be hard to predict — and could be very bad for Russia.
CAPITALISM
All the big four should be compelled to do this: Ernst & Young is splitting into accounting and consulting firms. The rise, rise, rise and rise of academic administrators. Great hatchet jobs of our time: the people behind Axios wrote a book about brevity. And, to be brief, it sucks. Corporate executives are becoming more polarised in the US, a new study shows, and increasingly like to only work with those with whom they’re politically aligned. Elias Greig on the primacy of landlords in Australia. And evangelical celebrity like Hillsong is an eye that must be gouged out.
SIGHENCE
So are we incapable of knowing what we’ll never know? Why logic suggests our limited intelligence is confining us to a narrow understanding of the universe. Why do we experience crisis fatigue? What’s the least amount of information needed to communicate something? On Shannon entropy and the hard limits of lossless communication. The continuing adventures and discoveries of the Perseverance Rover.
LIES, DAMNED LIES… YOU KNOW THE REST
Long-term readers will be aware I have a thing about bodgy reports, studies and statistics trotted out to justify the claims of vested interests. And here’s one that has annoyed me for as long as I can remember. I reckon I first got annoyed about this when I read a similar claim in the early ’70s as a five-year-old.
Today the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) sent out a press release titled “Australians believe fuel excise should be spent on infrastructure”. A “poll of 1910 Australians conducted in August” found that “67% support 100% of the tax raised from motorists through fuel excise be put back into road and transport infrastructure”. On average, the AAA argues, only 54% of fuel excise has been spent on transport infrastructure since 2011.
Motoring groups have been saying this sort of thing for decades. They say it all the time — they most recently said it back in March.
But if you think about this even for a moment, it falls apart. We’re currently running, and have been running for the past decade, a substantial budget deficit. So where is that other 46% of fuel excise going? Into a Treasury bank account marked “fuel excise — do not spend!”? In a hollow log somewhere in a park in Barton? No, it’s being spent on something else. Health. Education. Pensions. Defence.
So what the AAA is really saying is it wants funding for health, education, pensions and defence to be cut and the funding redirected to what the people it claims to represent want — more roads.
Alternatively, it wants other taxes to rise to make up for the funding lost when such a redirection occurs.
Here’s a query for the AAA: which health, education, pension or defence spending do you want to cut, or which other taxes do you want to increase? Because that’s the only way your argument makes sense. Otherwise, STFU.
FINALLY
Stanley Tucci could kill you, if he wanted. But it’s OK, you could do the same to him. More pasta? Once you can fake authenticity, you’ve got it made: on the late style of Tom Cruise. The depression of affluence. Some guy spent a lot of time trying to find out if premonitions were a real thing. You can’t just tell people in red states to “move“. Maigret, Simenon and the culture of excess.
And what does your dog do when you’re not home?
