Linkage

"It was designed in the early 1960s by Frank Robert Wake, a psychology professor with Carleton University," Fodey explains. "The Canadian government paid to send Dr. Wake to the United States to study detection devices that were used there at the time. After about a year of research, Dr. Wake returned to Canada and used his findings to create the 'Special Project' as it was officially known. A sergeant with the RCMP later coined it 'the fruit machine,' and the name stuck."

The machine itself was dismantled long ago, but it "looked like something resembling a dentist chair in front of a camera mounted on a pulley," says Fodey.

"Men would be subjected to lewd images and photographs would be taken of their pupils in response to the various images," Fodey says. "The thinking was that if one's pupils enlarged at the sight of a naked man, this would indicate same sex attraction. It was, in a word, ridiculous."

[…]

When Fodey first started researching the film, she was shocked this had even happened — and how long it continued (it began in the 1950s and wasn't eliminated until — seriously — the early 1990s). But as her work continued, what surprised her most was how this went far beyond people losing their jobs.

"In fact, for many, losing their jobs was the least of what they endured directly because of this campaign," she says. "Poverty, homelessness, having to go back in the closet, substance abuse, gay aversion therapy, sexual assaults, and for some — suicide. The consequences of this campaign, as one of our survivors captures perfectly in the film, was a scenario from a horror story."

Shocked, but not surprised.

Australia's universities are paying external consultants and contractors an estimated $1.8 billion a year without disclosing which firms they are hiring and what the money is being spent on.

Consultancies have been accused of infiltrating universities, wasting scarce public funds on questionable advice about cutting courses and jobs, and undermining the sector's principles of public good.

[…]

When the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) embarked on a process in 2024 to reduce debt and balance its budget, it could have sought advice from its own Business School, which includes some of the finest minds in finance, accounting and economics.

Instead, it called in external consultants from KPMG, which charged about $7 million for what UTS academics have described as "cookie-cutter" advice on how to save money.

After winning the contract, KPMG embedded itself within UTS as it began assessing which courses and academic programs were generating revenue for the university and which were not.

At least 24 KPMG staff, including directors and partners, soon had UTS email addresses, could access the university's Microsoft Teams and SharePoint systems, and were attending staff meetings.

"That is the standard operating procedure: get into a client and look as much like you're a part of the client, infantilise the client, make them think that they can't do things without you," says former KPMG partner turned whistleblower Brendan Lyon.

Mr Lyon, now a professor of practice at the University of Wollongong, said when he was at KPMG, the education sector was seen as an area ripe for revenue growth.

"That was a real focus. They'd recently recruited a former vice-chancellor of an Australian university. From what I saw within KPMG, it was a real growth area and a real growth target," he said.

UTS staff had to use a freedom of information request to access the report KPMG wrote for the university. The document they were given was highly redacted.

Eventually, a handful of staff, including associate professor Paul Brown, were allowed to view a copy of the report under strict supervision.

[…]

Dr Brown said that while there were some suggestions that made sense around working capital, he was shocked to see that one section of the report suggested the university should change its organisational structure to be more triangle-shaped.

"We laughed because it was like a Woolworths-type organisational structure, not a university with all its complexities … where you're going to do serious research and have to do world-leading innovation," he said.

"Just the lack of understanding … was astounding," he said.

Just popping this here, as it seems Canada is preparing to be the next lemming over the cliff.

Governments in the U.S. and around the world are increasingly adopting these restrictive measures in the name of protecting children online. But in practice, these systems create dangerous new forms of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion.

Technologically, the age verification process can take many forms: collection and analysis of government ID, biometric scans, algorithmic or AI-based behavioral or user monitoring, digital ID, the list goes on. But no matter the method, every system demands users hand over sensitive and immutable personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. Once that valuable data is collected, it can easily be leaked, hacked, or misused. (Indeed, we’ve already seen several breaches of age verification providers.)

EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Age verification technology itself is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive. These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet. They are tools of censorship, used to block people from viewing or sharing information that the government deems “harmful” or “offensive.” And they create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, chill access to vital online communities and resources, and burden the expressive rights of adults and young people alike.

This is a topic I've been avoiding for years...but ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Here's how I understand the homelessness crisis, and what the solutions are.

There are, in my mind, a few rules for "CEO said a thing!" journalism if it's to qualify:

• You can never directly challenge anything the CEO said, even if the CEO has a long history of false or misleading promises and claims.
• You can never include any useful historical context about the company or executives' past statements, even if they've been proven repeatedly wrong. The CEO's comments should always exist in a magic vacuum.
• You should never, under any circumstances, actually take the time to talk to, and quote, an objective expert or academic in the field you're writing about, especially if they're inclined to criticize the CEO. This can slow down publication time and impact the quest for news-cycle ad traffic.
• You can never return back to the claims to inform your readership whether they were actually true (this is especially true of CEO promises made before giant, pointless, disastrous mergers).

When I entered the journalism industry sideways as a telecom beat reporter, I quickly noticed that most U.S. journalism – especially U.S. business journalism – wasn't particularly interested in context or the truth. 

I'd look around and read mainstream coverage of the broadband giants I wrote about, noticing they didn't mention these were lumbering, anti-competitive, unethical monopolies coddled and created by corruption. I thought it was weird, but young and insecure, I thought maybe the problem was somehow me. 

But as I got older it became very clear to me that most of these outlets really weren't interested in conveying factual reality to readers. They were interested in building an elaborate alternate reality with one central function: coddle unchecked wealth accumulation with a vast scaffolding of strange mythologies.

BOM launched its new website, which was also built by Accenture Australia, in October 2025 during an extreme weather event. It was widely criticised for its costs and poor design, including changes to its rain radar display.

Upon launch, BOM said the website cost $4.1 million to reconfigure. But it has since been revealed that the real cost was approximately $96.5 million, owing to the cost of upgrading and testing its back-end systems.

Much of the cost can be attributed to the $78 million contract signed with Accenture, which initially started as a $31 million contract and grew across nine extensions.

During a Senate estimates hearing late last year, Greens senator Barbara Pocock described the broader program as a "nightmare Harvard case study in contract failure and management of contracts", specifically citing Accenture in her criticism.

"This is a firm that is famous for 'land and expand'," she said.

[…]

In the US, President Donald Trump has taken the axe to the government workforce, with science and climate agencies taking major hits.

In Australia, the CSIRO is also facing significant cuts.

Most recently, it was announced that the organisation would lose up to 350 full-time equivalent jobs across its research units, including reports of over 100 job losses in their Environmental Research Unit.

Senator Whish-Wilson said, given this, Australian scientists would be "rightly questioning" what the government's priorities were.

"Scientists are going to be devastated if they hear that tens of millions of dollars are being spent on new web services when they're being told there's no money to pay for their salaries and for the critical science that they do," he said.

"[Science] which, by the way, feeds into Australian Climate Services and will be used on this website or updated web portal."

I wish I could say I thought these concerns were overblown:

The law orders the Director of the Kansas Department of Revenue (which oversees the granting of driver’s licenses) to identify all people granted a driver’s license (or other ID) with a gender marker that does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, a stipulation that applies almost exclusively to trans people.

It then orders that these licenses be invalidated, ordering the bearers to surrender their old licenses, at which time they will be provided a new license that has the wrong gender marker.

There is no part of that which isn't concerning.

Firstly, it requires the government to make a list of all people to whom this would apply to. Since the requirements are meant to only include a hated minority group, the government is essentially making a list of those which it views as its internal enemies.

Second, it required that the affected IDs be invalidated. This leaves those trans people who previously had safe IDs with no means of accurately representing themselves.

Since the primary means of identification for most Americans is their driver’s license, this would also mean taking away their legal right to drive a car, which is required for most daily tasks. Being able to drive is also a requirement for many jobs, and having a valid driver’s license is a requirement for many types of public services.

Third, the affected trans people would be forced to surrender their now invalidated IDs as a means of obtaining new ones. This serves to remove from circulation any existing IDs that do not misgender the trans people in question.

Lastly, these trans people will be provided with new IDs whose sex markers are based on what they were assigned at birth, rather than what their body (or appearance) would suggest today.

To an outside observer viewing such an ID seeing a person that appears to be one sex/gender, but whose ID marks them as the opposite is a dead giveaway that the person is trans. From there, they are marked out as different from the general population, and can then be treated differently based on whatever prejudices the reader sees fit or whatever discriminatory laws are relevant.

Tourism in Vegas is down, but gambling revenue is up. How does that work? Vegas is a microcosm of the whole economy — it caters more and more to the super-rich, while everyone else is squeezed out. We went out to talk to locals, who say this lopsided approach can't last.

On Monday, Mississippi enrolled an anti-trans bill that will ban driver's license gender marker changes for transgender people across the state. The bill, which now awaits Republican Gov. Tate Reeves' signature, requires that all Mississippi driver's licenses reflect the holder's sex assigned at birth and explicitly states that court orders recognizing a gender change "shall have no effect" on license issuance. It is the latest in a wave of extreme anti-transgender identification document bans in recent months, following Kansas's decision in February to invalidate transgender people's driver's licenses overnight with no grace period—a story we at EITM broke. Though the Mississippi bill does not retroactively invalidate existing licenses the way Kansas did, any transgender Mississippian whose license comes up for renewal will be forced to carry identification that does not match their identity, should the governor sign it.

[…] 

The bill is the latest in a growing wave of anti-transgender identification document laws. In February, Kansas went further than any state before it, invalidating transgender people's driver's licenses overnight and sending letters demanding their immediate surrender—leaving many scrambling and unable to get to work, pick up their children, and navigate daily life with suddenly invalid IDs. Though Mississippi's bill does not contain those instant revocation provisions, the effect will be the same over time: as licenses come up for renewal, transgender Mississippians will be forced to carry documents that out them. According to the Movement Advancement Project, seven states already do not allow transgender people to update the gender marker on their driver's license. If Gov. Reeves signs SB 2322, Mississippi will become the eighth.

This article has the usual flaws. eg. LLMs do not "hallucinate and elaborate on misinformation"; the behaviour misleadingly classed as such is the system working as designed to probabilistically produce plausible-sounding sentences.

Osmanovic Thunström says the idea to invent Izgubljenovic and bixonimania came out of studies on how large language models work. When she teaches her students how AI systems formulate their ‘knowledge’, she shows them how the Common Crawl database, a giant trawl of the Internet’s contents, informs their outputs. She also shows students how prompt injection — giving an AI chatbot a prompt that shunts it outside of its safety guard rails — can manipulate the output.

Because she works in the medical field, she decided to create a condition related to health and hit on the name bixonimania because it “sounded ridiculous”, she says. “I wanted to be really clear to any physician or any medical staff that this is a made-up condition, because no eye condition would be called mania — that’s a psychiatric term.”

If that wasn’t sufficient to raise suspicions, Osmanovic Thunström planted many clues in the preprints to alert readers that the work was fake. Izgubljenovic works at a non-existent university called Asteria Horizon University in the equally fake Nova City, California. One paper’s acknowledgements thank “Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise”. Both papers say they were funded by “the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery. This works is a part of a larger funding initiative from the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad”.

Even if readers didn’t make it all the way to the ends of the papers, they would have encountered red flags early on, such as statements that “this entire paper is made up” and “Fifty made-up individuals aged between 20 and 50 years were recruited for the exposure group”.