David Peetz

Solar storms have influenced our history – an environmental historian explains how they could also threaten our future From communications outages to a brush with nuclear war, solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections have shaped human history.

As our dependence on digital technology increases, so does our vulnerability (in the deadliest meaning of the term) to a Carrington event.

theconversation.com/solar-storms...

A better start to a journal book review? Fight me.

Chances are a fair bit of the training is on “how not to…"

@dongilmer.bsky.social

AFAIK it’s only on the legacy site, to which there are no obvious links, and which will presumably be decommissioned in the fullness of time.

Exxon Sues California Over New Climate Disclosure Laws

Exxon Sues California, saying that requirements that companies calculate new details about greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks violate Exxon’s free speech rights!

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/c...

@barbarapocock.bsky.social Is this consultants (Deloitte I presume) getting BOM to charge for previously free weather services?

The old site will only be available for a few weeks/days, I presume.

But whatever you do, don’t call them BOM!

It’s not a cock-up. It’s a deliberate strategy to get you to pay (something between $174 and $4037 pa, plus a $1699 start-up charge) for things that they used to provide to everybody regardless of capacity to pay.

Hence "Subscribe to become a registered user of our real-time data products".

‘Absurdist leaps of logic’: Robodebt misused in FOI reforms I am furious. Angry, certainly, about the federal government’s proposed freedom of information laws, which mock the very idea of transparency, but seething especially about the justification for them,...

The dishonesty around the use of Robodebt in prosecuting the government’s Freedom of Information secrecy drive is galling in the extreme. I set out some facts that deflate the specious claims being used as cover. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topi...

The New York Times’ “Moderation Advantage” Is a Statistical Illusion After accounting for money and incumbency the supposed electoral bonus for moderate candidates vanishes entirely.

Look. It would be great if there was one simple trick for winning elections. But 'just be more moderate' isn't it.

In fact, you can use the NYT's exact method to 'prove' a 'Progressive Advantage' of +1.4 pts.

This piece shows what's really going on: funded candidates do better than unfunded ones.

the point of the ballroom obvs has nothing to do with aesthetics. it's to create an architectural structure to honor the patronage networks that currently dominate US politics. previous WH venues hosted maybe a couple of hundred people; this hosts nearly 1,000 rich donors.

“I don’t like you either, and I never will. In fact, I’ll tell your organisation about you, and they’ll be very sorry and you’ll be very sorry and it will be a sorry day for everyone except me. Next."

The nations generally considered to be the ‘liberal market economies’ — the most neoliberal-inspired — are the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, all anglophone.

Seems it’s not an advantage to speak fluently the language of the centre of global capitalism.

The nations generally considered to be the ‘liberal market economies’ — the most neoliberal-inspired — are the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ, all anglophone.

Seems it’s not an advantage to speak fluently the language of the centre of global capitalism.

RBA makes a major mistake on the job numbers When the Reserve Bank decided not to cut interest rates at the end of September, numerous reasons were given, but one stands out because it appears to be completely wrong.

This shows how an elementary blunder — in a spreadsheet by some RBA official, I presume — led to the RBA totally misinterpreting the job growth numbers.

The consequence is interest rates higher than they would have been for Australian borrowers.

thepoint.com.au/news/251024-...

All the quotes are things Reagan said in that address. No fakery. They’ve been rearranged, only some bits used, so others edited out. But NONE of the editing misrepresents Reagan’s intent or message. It was a very pro-free trade address.

The Reagan Foundation has prioritised Trump over Reagan.

NEWS: White House secretly assembles revenge cell for Trump w/ spy agencies & cops Trump's team has pulled together the CIA, FBI, DHS, and other agencies as part of a "weaponization" working group.

“Even 'whole-of-government' was too small of a description for what we’re seeing. This is really a 'whole-of-society' strategy that includes deliberate efforts to bend every institution of American life to serve one man’s grievances."

www.treason.io/p/news-white...

"The PhD paradox: Why Australia produces scholars it won’t employ"

www.eurekastreet.com.au/the-phd-para...

New renderings show more details of White House ballroom under construction The Trump administration announced in July that a 90,000-square-foot ballroom with a seated capacity for 650 people will be constructed in the White House's East Wing.

The new word for “organisation that gives bribes” is “donor”.

www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-...

Yes.

Hence a “climate trigger” is much more useful than, and different to, a “no new fossil fuels” slogan.

Awkward as it is, the phrase “climate trigger” at least gets to the purpose. It’s “no new oil and gas” that just sounds more like a slogan.

I get your point about firms lying. True. But a lot of climate trigger stuff is about emissions from end-users, not the mining process. The quantity to be dug up is the biggest factor there. Not so easy to lie. If higher prices make excess production profitable, financial penalties may not matter.

Ask your MP to help stop companies suing over climate action A fossil fuel firm is suing the UK for halting a controversial coal mine, using a secretive corporate court. We’ve been calling on the government to scrap these Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS...

The UK is being sued for stopping a coal mine. Ask your MP to help stop the fossil fuel industry’s secret weapon: act.globaljustice.org.uk/stop-fossil-...

Elite corporate networks and CEO compensation: the causes and consequences of CEO pay premiums Abstract. CEO compensation has expanded dramatically over the past half-century, with network processes playing a pivotal role. We advance research on thes

💼 Why do some CEOs earn way more than others?
Henriksen, Poulsen & Avent-Holt find:
– Elite network ties boost CEO pay
– Weak boards enable pay premiums
– Worker wages drop after CEO windfalls
Status drives inequality—from the top down.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/...
#SER @daventholt.bsky.social

The grifter-in-chief knows no bounds.

Poor white bloke • Frank Bongiorno University-educated Barnaby Joyce takes on the urban elite

Peter Browne's Inside Story Newsletter revived for me memories of writing this account of Barnaby Joyce's memoir a few years back: Poor white bloke, on Inside Story inside.org.au/poor-white-b...

"Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here." Anna Bower Monday, October 20, 2025, 5:40 PM Share On: f X inK My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification.

I glanced down at the message.

“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began.

So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies.

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...