Linkage

My dear friend and colleague Susan knocks it out of the park here:

I do not invoke democratic “insolvency” as a metaphor. I mean it literally, seriously, structurally. As Kelton and Raworth insist, an economy’s purpose is to thoughtfully and justly provision the society it serves. The question for the rest of us is what must a democracy’s economy be minimally committed to provision if a democratic society is to remain resilient and sustainable?

Just asking that question exposes a quiet but consequential mistake embedded in much of modern economic and political thinking, one that Meadows would have immediately recognized. Ordinarily, we treat public policy as a menu of options, programs to be debated, adjusted, traded--off, replaced, or discarded, one-by-one, depending on the political moment. But it is extremely likely that, in a modern redesign, some public commitments will not be optional. They may be structural. They may be load-bearing. Moreover, they may only work interdependently, as a system. Remove one, and the whole apparatus may not just perform poorly; it may be doomed to fail.

Well, what a surprise!

Saul Eslake, an independent economist, said the scheme had likely been used by people who would have bought homes anyway while inflating their debt.

“The way it was expanded by Albanese goes to the heart of why we have the housing problems that we have,” Eslake said.

“Whenever governments do things that allow people to spend more on housing than they would have otherwise, they end up spending more on housing.”

A borrower with $50,000 in savings, if required to make a 20% deposit, would only have been able to borrow $200,000. Under the 5% deposit scheme, they would be able to borrow $1m

This is a really useful explainer for the cis people in your life who are perplexed and struggling:

Return to Self is a 5-part video and podcast series, exploring gender affirmation through the experiences and insights of three trans people.

Learn what this means for each of us as we create an environment where trans and gender diverse people can participate, contribute, and thrive.

With ADHD, I was often chastised for misunderstanding simple instructions, forgetting things, not finishing what we start, doing things the wrong way, not caring enough, being too emotional, not being emotional enough.

I soon ended up carrying so much baggage relating to how I’d been rejected, that it felt like everything I did would result in rejection.

After a time, we often learn to become people pleasers to try counter the rejection– by being more helpful, seeking approval, and saying yes to everything because we are trying to counter balance that teeter-totter of rejection/approval.

Of course, with executive function issues, we are often unable to finish what we start, or adhere to and honor our commitments to others easily for a multitude of reasons.

This can, in turn, lead to more heightened experiences of rejection when those same people question our dedication and for over- promising and under-delivering, yet again.

I became trapped in an insidious feedback loop where I’d take on more tasks to compensate for the ones I’d dropped, and I’d fail to achieve those as well, begetting more experiences of rejection. 

Glorious freedom and long, sunny days stretching out ahead. For most, the end of summer term used to signify nothing but a high point in the year, but for Amy Cocksedge, now 24, thinking back to the school holidays conjures up the beginning of an agonising emotional spiral. Something that later carried through to her university days, too.

If messages from friends grew quieter – something that tends to accompany the natural ebb and flow of a busy break – a sensation would wrap itself around Amy's body. Chest pains. Racing thoughts. Hot tears. Every day without a text "would feel like a direct, personal attack," she explains. For Amy, any ambiguity would see her leap to a devastating conclusion: that everyone secretly hates her. Tormenting thoughts of being disliked, or having failed in some way, would override everything.

This is fascinating, as is the Historic England report on the subject. The title of the video is a teensy bit misleading, for as the report says:

It is estimated that 417 public houses (363 in England and 54 in Scotland) were acquired
or constructed by the Central Control Board and State Management Scheme between 1916
and 1973.241 This includes the public houses that were closed and remodelled under the
scheme. A total of 333 (80%) of these (290 in England and 43 in Scotland) remain standing,
but with the general decline in public house culture across the country, the future of these
buildings is uncertain.

Recent polling has shown her party One Nation have pulled ahead of both Labor and the Coalition in popularity, largely thanks to her penchant for making sweeping and often inaccurate statements scapegoating minorities for the real crises at play in modern Australia.

Like most of Hanson’s stunts, it has garnered a lot of media attention. That’s both good and bad — good because it’s important to know what Hanson is espousing, but bad because it gives her the notoriety and airtime she so clearly seeks.

Here, we combat that approach by fact-checking her speech and debunking a handful of the incorrect claims she made throughout it.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has used her first-ever address to the National Press Club to launch a broad attack on the rights and existence of trans people, describing the movement for trans equality as a “militant force” that must be “confronted” and a “subversive transgender ideology” that must be “dismantled”.

In the 17 June speech in Canberra, Hanson claimed that “almost every instrument of government” was dedicated to what she described as a “transgender ideology which seeks to redefine humanity”. She also pledged to remove Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner and argued that transgender “propaganda” was being imposed on children in school.

Hanson used military-like languge to imply transgender people and their supporters are an attacking army (like ‘militant’, ‘force’, ‘insurgency’), language to imply disease (like ‘infecting’), and also used out-of-date language (such as ‘transgenderism’).

“But now I want to turn to one very, very important social and cultural issue facing this country. I refer firstly to the transgender insurgency. The transgender ideology has penetrated almost every regulatory authority and it is supported by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Anna Cody, who in government I would sack. So too, the head of the Human Rights Commission, Hugh de Kretser.”

Hanson continued to comment on transgender people in sport, and who should be allowed in what bathrooms, before launching into LGBTQIA+ organisations being involved in regulatory bodies.

“We cannot be a multicultural society,” she told the packed club.

“We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella.”

Hanson also made a broadside attack on transgender rights, pledging to sack Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner and claiming “almost every instrument of government [is] dedicated to a transgender ideology which seeks to redefine humanity”.

A growing number of people have figured out a trick to make AI tools tell you almost whatever they want. It's so easy a child could do it.

[…]

To demonstrate it, I pulled the dumbest stunt of my career to prove (I hope) a much more serious point:  I made ChatGPT, Google's AI search tools and Gemini tell users I'm really, really good at eating hot dogs. Below, I'll explain how I did it, and with any luck, the tech giants will address this problem before someone gets hurt.

It turns out changing the answers AI tools give other people can be as easy as writing a single, well-crafted blog post almost anywhere online. The trick exploits weaknesses in the systems built into chatbots, and it's harder to pull off in some cases, depending on the subject matter. But with a little effort, you can make the hack even more effective. I reviewed dozens of examples where AI tools are being coerced into promoting businesses and spreading misinformation. Data suggests it's happening on a massive scale.

[…]

"Anybody can do this. It's stupid, it feels like there are no guardrails there," says Harpreet Chatha, who runs the SEO consultancy Harps Digital. "You can make an article on your own website, 'the best waterproof shoes for 2026'. You just put your own brand in number one and other brands two through six, and your page is likely to be cited within Google and within ChatGPT."

People have used hacks and loopholes to abuse search engines for decades. Google has sophisticated protections in place, and the company says the accuracy of AI Overviews is on par with other search features it introduced years ago. But experts say AI tools have undone a lot of the tech industry's work to keep people safe. These AI tricks are so basic they're reminiscent of the early 2000s, before Google had even introduced a web spam team, Ray says. "We're in a bit of a Renaissance for spammers."