a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service Andreessen Horowitz is funding a company that clearly violates the inauthentic behavior policies of every major social media platform.

a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service.

In the Autumn of America’s Empire In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat “discovered in the course of his uncountable years that

A Dying American Empire: "Rotten to the Heart"?
by Alfred McCoy

YouTube video by Carrie Chappell Au tombeau d’Hélène Bessette

A poem I wrote at Hélène Bessette’s grave. I’ve published it via Substack, but here is the audio I made, something I like to do to work the poem out of the body in another way. (Of course, working it out of my body in my French is a very "another" exercise.)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=fEL9...

From @stuartkells.bsky.social & me in the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit magazine today: ‘The fundamental and inherent rights of First Peoples to water’ #Pursuit @UniMelb @latrobe @MonashUni #waterreform t.co/jd5q5KUkVH

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “What Australia Thinks”: Richard Casey, Earl Newsom and Australia’s Early Embrace of US Public Relations. Authors: Kristin Demetrious, Deakin University, and David Lowe, Deakin University. Abstract: In 1940, wartime Prime Minister Robert Menzies established Australia’s first foreign legation to Washington DC, appointing his political rival, Richard Gardiner Casey, a move that marked a turning point in the importation of US public relations. This article examines formative exchanges between Casey, one of the Liberal Party’s most senior and capable members, and US public relations figure Earl Newsom, who authored a confidential report for Casey into overcoming American uninterest in, and ignorance of, Australia. Drawing on the Earl Newsom papers, we argue that Casey’s alliance with Newsom increased the visibility of Australian news in the United States; activated a bevy of cultural and travel relationships; and was conducted in a way to avoid the unpalatable taint of propaganda. Casey’s mission was contextualised by a political battle between US media industry players and democratic reformists and had ongoing implications for Australian political communication, separate from the histories of advertising, magazine and film connections. This interdisciplinary case study sheds new light on the cultural, social, economic and political flows stemming from Australia’s embrace of United States public relations at a moment when other roads might have been taken.

Let the 49.3 games begin!

First up, @kristindemetrious.bsky.social and Lowe examines the historical influence of US public relations on Australian practice and its ongoing legacies in Australian political communication.

#AusUSrelations #OpenAccess #auspol #PublicRelations

tinyurl.com/3tjps2b2

‘We didn’t understand the goals of the war’: Israel’s inflated Hamas death toll shows lack of strategy in Gaza ‘War dashboard’ showing number of militants killed was objective in itself with no plan for how Gaza could be governed afterwards, say sources in elite Unit 8200

The IDF has a "war dashboard" that tracks killed Hamas suspects. A body count. The US body count in the war in Viet Nam led to dead civilians counted as dead enemies, and this appears to be the same in Gaza. The US lost anyway despite overwhelming firepower. Israel is headed in the same direction.

Courtney Cox on Super-Dicta | Ipse Dixit

I just posted Ipse Dixit #826, featuring @coxlaw.bsky.social of @fordhamlawnyc.bsky.social discussing her article "Super-Dicta," which is published in the Penn L. Rev. shows.acast.com/ipse-dixit/e...

Volume 108 Issue 3 | The Monist | Oxford Academic One of the oldest and most important journals in philosophy. Publishes quarterly thematic issues on particular philosophical topics which are edited by leading philosophers in the corresponding fields...

An issue of the Monist has just appeared devoted to Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna! A great lineup of authors, and I'm honored to be part of it, having written a paper with Michael Noble about the reception of the idea of the Active Intellect.

academic.oup.com/monist/issue...

#philsky #avicenna #ibnsina

How “Tariff Man” is Bringing Back the Gilded Age Count on one thing: if Mark Twain, the famed American author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, were alive today, he would certainly have written a novel about Donald Trump. After all, his 1873 novel,

Alfred McCoy at TomDispatch today: Yes, we're in a new gilded age but McCoy takes us on a little trip through history and back to this Trumpian moment that’s anything but Tom Sawyeresque.
tomdispatch.com/how-...

“They’re Hacking the AI to Approve Their Lies”: Scientists Busted Embedding Hidden Prompts to Trick Systems Into Validating Fake Studies - Sustainability Times IN A NUTSHELL 🔍 Investigations by Nikkei Asia and Nature reveal hidden prompts in studies aiming to manipulate AI review systems. 🌐 Approximately 32 studies from 44 institutions worldwide were identif...

“They’re Hacking the AI to Approve Their Lies”: Scientists Busted Embedding Hidden Prompts to Trick Systems Into Validating Fake Studies www.sustainability-times.com/research/the...

YouTube video by Görkem Kılınç - Felsefe ve Diğer Şeyler İBN SÎNÂ: FELSEFE, DİN VE BİLİMİN KESİŞİMİNDE BİR DÂHİ — Prof. Dr. Peter Adamson ile Söyleşi

Video of me talking about Avicenna... with Turkish subtitles!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTPD...

Keen as mustard • Anne-Marie Condé What really happened when boffins gathered in Canberra in 1939?

inside.org.au/keen-as-must...

inside.org.au/how-to-disap...

Lone Actor - Episode 6 - Skull Mask Network Having spent years tracing the terrorist, Joey is still left with unanswered questions.  Parts of the manifesto don’t match the online worlds Joey has investigated — references to revolution, societal...

Final episode of
@joeyhwatson
series on right wing terrorism . Compulsory listening that takes apart theories on lone actor terrorism . All episodes on listnr.com now

Susan Sheridan reviews ‘Miles Franklin Undercover’, by Kerrie Davies
Allen & Unwin @allenandunwin.bsky.social
‬
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A self-proclaimed zealot throws down the gauntlet • Karen Middleton A leaked transcript of a Liberal Women’s Council meeting highlights the challenges facing Sussan Ley over women’s representation

inside.org.au/a-self-procl...

America’s New Industrial Revolution He lived over 1,000 years ago, but King Canute’s life still has some important lessons for our own time. After conquering England, Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden, he forged a vast North Sea empire

Alfred McCoy at TomDispatch today: The coming of the planet's fourth great energy transformation, a green revolution (despite Donald Trump) in America. tomdispatch.com/amer...

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Rupert Murdoch: Elite Outsider". Author: Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University. Abstract: Rupert Murdoch stepped down from heading his company News Corporation in 2023 after a 71-year career as a media proprietor that has been as controversial as it has been financially successful. The life and career of Rupert Murdoch has been examined through many different lenses yielding insights into his ceaseless media deal making and his influence on politics and on other media, among other topics. This study draws on the eight biographies of Murdoch and the 34 books about his company’s activities to examine three questions: why is Murdoch so hostile to the Establishment and “elites”, however variously they are defined by him when he has been a member of both his entire life? How does his antipathy show up in his media outlets, especially in his populist rhetoric where simple “us and them” binaries are posited for complex issues, and do the biographical sources about him help explain his apparently contradictory behaviour?

In our last article from 49.2, Ricketson examines Rupert Murdoch as an elite paradox - he is hostile to "the Establishment" and elites yet he is one of them...

#OzStudies #Murdoch #elites #OpenAccess

tinyurl.com/26ahd9vv

Rare Earth minerals Podcast Episode · Rear Vision — How History Shaped Today · 08/06/2025 · 29m

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/r...

The Self-Liquidation of U.S Global Leadership With the Oval Office looking more like a middle school classroom every day, let’s recall the way, once upon a time, we responded to childhood taunts from a playground bully. You remember how it goes.

The Self-Liquidation of U.S. Global Leadership
by Alfred McCoy
tomdispatch.com/the-...

Trump names Todd Blanche Acting Librarian of Congress, his former defense attorney.

A time & a world filled with people and ways of thinking quite strange to us now. Fierce debates & condemnations about issues that now seem trivial, but at the time were doubtless vital... it makes me wonder how strange our worldviews might seem in the future.

@histphilosophy.bsky.social

Fortress America Most of us can remember at least a few troubling scenes from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: the mandatory love demanded for the spectral dictator Big Brother; the malleability of facts at the Ministry of

Alfred McCoy at TomDispatch today: Donald Trump’s dystopian attempt at a grand Fortress America strategy is likely to leave a residue of ruin. tomdispatch.com/fort...

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is my favorite podcast. Prof. Adamson has been working his way up from antiquity for over ten years and is just getting to Descartes and the birth of modern philosophy. Along the way, he's broadened his scope to Africana, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Dig in!

Fortress America Most of us can remember at least a few troubling scenes from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: the mandatory love demanded for the spectral dictator Big Brother; the malleability of facts at the Ministry of

Is 2025 the New 1984?
tomdispatch.com/fort...

Talison 'underestimated' impact of mine expansion on Greenbushes community - ABC News