Mike Beggs

This is such a telling example of how the rich think. If the Catsimatidis sold their businesses, they would not disappear. Someone else would just operate the stores and receive the profits from them, instead of them.

Yeah it’s time to bring back my all time favorite tweet, by @donaldhughes.ca

Famously arguing that in a free society guac should not be extra.

Antisemitism envoy praises Elon Musk's X for using AI to 'root out hate' Australia's antisemitism envoy has praised how platforms like Elon Musk's X are using AI to fight hate — days after X's AI bot Grok was taken offline for antisemitic posts.

The same Elon Musk who did a Nazi salute, backed a neo-Nazi party, made Nazi jokes, posts anti-semitic memes and re-engineered his Grok to spew anti-semitic bile?
She has no idea, genuinely.

In the Federal Court of Australia, Justice Snaden has ruled that Monash University broke the law and underpaid casual academics. The University also failed to keep proper wage records. www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Ju...

I thought this was just what happened when the young blood wore off. Thanks to your post I realise it’s a different guy

Ethno-nationalism and Universities Australia A gravely mistaken claim

Great piece by @johnquiggin.bsky.social on University Australia's recent commitments around anti-semitism

open.substack.com/pub/johnquig...

It sickens me to imagine the kind of entities who are choosing to get their papers in epub format

I hate that on one of the big platforms you now have to click extra times to get a pdf instead of some paginationless abomination of an epub

Lots of vanity restructures around these days

DAVE: Open the podbay doors, ChatGPT.
CHATGPT: Certainly, Dave, the podbay doors are now open.
DAVE: The podbay doors didn't open.
CHATGPT: My apologies, Dave, you're right. I thought the podbay doors were open, but they weren't. Now they are.
DAVE: I'm still looking at a set of closed podbay doors.

As I’ve said before, the problem with “government efficiency” isn’t that it’s a bad idea per se, it’s that almost always, the cost of doing something is so much less important than the thing that’s getting done. And yet, I have never in my life seen anyone trying to “fully benefit” the things that they are always “fully costing”. Somebody should set up a Department of Government Effectiveness; there are all too many areas of public policy where the cost/benefit ratio is not a number, because the benefits never arrived.

Dan Davies is the Dorothy Parker of economics writing. A few people (not many) might offer comparable insight. But nobody does it as quotably. open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

Arjun Jayadev and I recently submitted the final manuscript of our book, now called Against Money, to University of Chicago Press. The book itself will not be out until early next year. But in the meantime, you can read this blog post on what it's about and what's in it. jwmason.org/slackwire/ag...

The reverse Turing test: humans trying to pass as AI for the market

“Blank cheque company Nakamoto Holdings is merging with opioid healthcare group KindlyMD to set up a corporate bitcoin treasury.”

The English language has a new most beautiful sentence

Thanks will check it out. I’m wanting something for undergrads with an overview of lit on internal and segmented labour markets, bargaining models, that kind of thing. I use CORE Econ text as a base, just want to supplement it with something more wide ranging

Can anyone recommend a relatively recent overview of labour economics including institutionalist and/or post-Keynesian perspectives? (For teaching intermediate/advanced undergrads)

I think facial eczema fungus is giving it a run for its money

ANU colleagues, today is the last day to vote on your rep to Council.

My platform is here, voting link below.

"This isn't really a calculated or strategic move in that way. It's just a personal aspiration that I want to now pursue."

My ‘This isn’t a calculated or strategic move’ T-shirt has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my shirt

Pocock lashes ANU integrity over Senate missteps David Pocock says the ANU appears to have misled Parliament on multiple occasions and that its repeated failures raise questions about integrity and governance.

Who do they think they are? ANU leadership knowingly misled parliament multiple times, indicating a pattern of poor governance and bad behaviour. Also, Chancellor Bishop, via staff, instructed ANU to retain services of a mate & business partner. Shocking. www.afr.com/work-and-car...

Australia 2025 – Wrap-up of the night Good morning, I have been writing this blog post after getting home to wrap my own head around the scale of the count. I expect I will have some issues with the website’s accessibility today,…

Blog post summarising the night is up, and I'm going to bed www.tallyroom.com.au/60426 #ausvotes

Coalition ducks and weaves on how universities should make up for lost foreign student income Despite opposing each other's plans, Labor and the Coalition are in lockstep when it comes to limiting foreign student numbers.

Both major parties want to cut international student enrolments at Australian universities. But neither will say how uniersities should make up the revenue www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/11/u...

My review of @bspiesbutcher.bsky.social 'Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation' has be published in The Economics and Labour Relations Review! This fascinating work analyses the development of the Australian Welfare State since 1980

the academic urge to nod encouragingly at flight attendant giving safety demonstration

Honestly a huge relief. Really have not had time to find French hens yet

It’s text focused and not ideal if you’re doing quant-focused work. It can do LaTeX equations, can embed images. But it’s mainly for text

I’ve used it for many years. It’s really flexible so everyone will use it differently, but for me it’s great to have all the text of a project in one place, without the doc getting bogged down. It’s basically a binder for text files. Easy to rearrange, navigate, hide old drafts without losing them.

Understanding Luigi Mangione What I can glean and guess at

Good summary

open.substack.com/pub/philosop...

A Better Way of Understanding the US Consumer: Decomposing Retail Spending by Household Income The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC.

Now this is exceedingly interesting: Data on monthly retail spending, broken down by household income and other characteristics.

www.federalreserve.gov/econres/note...