Linkage

I mean, imagine if Russia did that. Imagine if Putin started raining military explosives on parts of Ukraine known to be densely packed with children, and then saying the mass-scale child-killing will continue until Ukraine surrenders and that all of the child deaths are actually the fault of the Ukrainians because they still haven’t given Putin everything he wants.

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They’re not just doing this with airstrikes and bullets — they’re doing it with food as well. Aaron Maté has a new article out titled “The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, deceive” which picks apart statements from White House officials about the temporary pier this administration is planning to build on Gaza’s coast over the next several weeks, ostensibly to allow for the arrival of more aid into the enclave.

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Maté explains that Vice President Kamala Harris recently gave a speech in which she said Hamas needs to agree to a hostage deal in order to “get a significant amount of aid in,” which is the same as saying Israel and its allies will help starve Gazan civilians until Hamas capitulates to their demands.

An official study of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) ordered by Rishi Sunak amid efforts to stop them being built has instead concluded they are generally popular and effective and the report was initially buried, the Guardian has learned.

The long-delayed review by Department for Transport (DfT) officials was commissioned by the prime minister last July, as Sunak sought to capitalise on controversy about the schemes by promising drivers he was “on their side”.

Downing Street had hoped that the study would bolster their arguments against LTNs, which are mainly installed by Labour-run councils, but it largely points the other way.

The report, which applies only to England as transport is devolved, had been scheduled for publication in January. However, after its findings emerged, government advisers asked that it be permanently shelved, the Guardian was told.

[…] 

In each of the schemes, the percentage of people backing the LTNs was between 19 points and 31 points higher than the percentage opposed. In a sign that the controversy about the schemes might be largely generated by politicians and the media, 58% of people did not even know they lived in an LTN.

The growth of Israeli settlements amounts to the transfer by Israel of its own civilian population into occupied territories, which is a war crime, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Friday.

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“Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” Turk said in a statement that accompanied a 16-page report about the growth in illegal Israeli housing units.

The report, based on the UN’s own monitoring as well as other sources, documented 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank during a one-year period through to the end of October, which it said was the highest since monitoring began in 2017.

It also said there had been a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of both Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which triggered the current war in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces or by settlers, the report said.

Jacob Smith, from Rights and Security International, a human rights advocacy group, said: “For years, we have expressed concern about how the government’s broad concept of ‘extremism’ could be open to politicised abuses. It appears that this concern has now been realised through a blatant distinction between how the government wants to treat people on the ‘left’ versus people on the ‘right’ under Prevent.

“Our concern is only heightened by government rhetoric during the past few days that appears to be targeting British Muslims and protesters for Palestinian rights. If ‘extremism’ can mean anything the government wants it to mean, that’s a clear problem for democracy.”

Ilyas Nagdee, from Amnesty International, said: “This is yet another crackdown from the UK government to stifle freedom of expression – including political speech and activism – using the blunt instrument that is Prevent.

“Prevent is brazenly being used here to target political expression as it has long been criticised of doing. The government should not be in the business of rolling out training and guidance on what they deem acceptable or unacceptable political ideologies and forms of activism.”

HP has launched in “All-In Plan”. It is an “all-inclusvie printing subscription that delivers the ultimate in convenience.” In the subscription, you choose one of three different printers and that’s it. You set it up, you print, and when ink runs out, they’ll send you more. It’s similar to Instant Ink, but this time they throw in the printer.

The three printers you get to choose from are as follows:

   HP Envy for $6.99/month
   HP Envy Inspire for $8.99/month
   HP OfficeJet Pro for $12.99/month

Now, don’t get me wrong, getting into the subscription is simplicity itself. And given the cost of ink cartridges, the math on these printers isn’t so bad.

But here’s were the bad news comes in. The prices I quoted are only for the “light” printing plan. That plan limits you to printing on 20 pages a month.

House size differs markedly around the world, ranging from 9m² per person in India, to about 84m² per person in Australia. Globally, floor area per person is increasing.

Our study set out to examine the significance of this increase when it comes to home heating and cooling energy requirements in Australia. 

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We found a home designed in 2022 had a 7.6% larger conditioned floor area than a home designed in 2018. And a home designed in 2022 was predicted to require 10% more energy for heating and cooling than a home designed four years earlier.

Professor Wray explores the origins and nature of money from the #MMT perspective.

In this exceptionally thought provoking session Professor Wray links money to debt. He explains the historical connection between the the invention of writing as a way to keep track of credits and debits.

Neural nets are typically trained by “supervised learning”. So they’re presented with many examples of an input and the desired output, and then gradually the connection weights are adjusted until the network “learns” to produce the desired output.

To learn a language task, a neural net may be presented with a sentence one word at a time, and will slowly learns to predict the next word in the sequence.

This is very different from how humans typically learn. Most human learning is “unsupervised”, which means we’re not explicitly told what the “right” response is for a given stimulus. We have to work this out ourselves. 

While negative gearing gets all the hate, it really was John Howard who destroyed our housing market by handing out a big tax-free gift to property investors.

Prior to June 2000, if you made a capital gain (ie a profit from an investment) you discounted the profits by the level of inflation over the period of the investment before paying tax.

Then Howard (and Costello) changed it to being a straight 50% discount.

If you bought a property for $500,000 and 10 years later you’re able to sell it for $1m at a profit of $500,000, rather than pay tax on the whole $500,000, you only pay tax on $250,000. The other $250,000 is yours, tax free.

That is about as sweet as it gets.

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At some point you have to admit what you’re doing has not worked. Or perhaps we need to admit that the aim all along was higher house prices.

Howard infamously said in 2003: “I don’t get people stopping me in the street and saying, ‘John you’re outrageous, under your government the value of my house has increased’.”

The tax policies he put in place worked. They ensured house prices would go up much faster than income and reduce affordability. Maybe it’s time to admit that if we keep them in place that situation will continue.

• In short: Data detailing the air quality at Melbourne's Southern Cross Station has been released for the first time.
• It shows nitrogen dioxide levels in parts of the station have regularly been more than 90 times the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.
• The Victorian government and the station's operator say they've been meeting Australian workplace standards.