Rich Haridy

Magistrate throws out AI seatbelt fine as driver appeals begin clogging courts A Queensland court decision casts fresh doubt on the reliability of controversial AI road-safety cameras after clearing a driver fined when his passenger moved their seatbelt during a trip.

Is this system fundamentally set up to make our roads safer?

Or does it exist to quickly and cheaply generate fine revenue for the government?

If the answer is no to the first question then the whole thing should be switched off immediately.

Some emoji have always puzzled me so I went to Unicode to see what they’re officially called

This is “sleepy face” 😪 wtf

in Japan, maybe!

Some post-script that didn't make this piece:

A whole heap of expired websites with high authority can be used to rank well on Search. Buy em up, get their authority. That happened to the dormant Australianaid website.

In 2023, it campaigned for aid.
In 2025, it began listing Best Online Casinos.

Pro-Palestine protest organisers ‘a pack of communists’ intent on confrontation with police, Minns tells budget estimates New South Wales premier faces questions over what he told MPs who attended demonstration opposing Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit

The fact Minns uses the term "pack of communists" tells you all you need to know about him...

image of a skeleton surrounded by fire announcing the second annual taco bell century on saturday june 13. the rest of the text reads: 100 miles, 10 taco bells. ride or don’t. eat tacos, go fast or go slow, ordee at drive-thru on two wheels, crunchwraps, make friend? and nobody threw up last year

save the date, seattle friends, and start training* now

*eating an uncomfortable amount of carbs and cheese before your rides

How the ‘wrong story’ ends up harming nature, and how we can change it Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta (Apalech clan (Wik) Lostmob Nungar) joins the Mongabay Newscast to detail the Aboriginal perspectives behind his latest book, Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures i...

Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta speaks with me about the Aboriginal perspectives behind his book, 'Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking.' The book explains how stories shape society, how they can harm us and the environment, and how they may save our species:

News Corp is essentially an AI ‘input company’, chief executive says, after US$150m deal with Meta Chief executive Robert Thomson says he often speaks to both OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg

Junk in, junk out.

UN calls for investigation into deadly strike on school in Iran The U.N. human rights office on ​Tuesday urged what it called the forces behind a ‌deadly attack on a girls' school in Iran to investigate and share insights into the incident, without saying who it b...

One of the most powerful images I've seen all year.

We are desensitised to the horrors of what is happening in the world right now. Numbers in a headline only mean so much.

Seeing dozens of freshly dug child-size graves on the other hand.

Wonder if Nathan Fielder is gonna double down on his Paramount/Nazi gag in the next season of The Rehearsal?

Says it all about where this merger will end up. Pretty confident Ellison isn't a fan of OBAA 😂

Too sick, too hard - Overland literary journal In January 2020 as the Commissioner to the historic Victorian Royal Commission into the Mental Health System was working away, I was sitting inside the padded seclusion room of the psychiatric ward at...

Writing about my personal experience of psychosis has been tough. This has been one of the hardest and most intimate things I’ve ever written. Please have a read and a share - overland.org.au/2026/03/too-...

I learned very little about how ibogaine works, what the safety issues are, or where the clinical research is currently at.

I did learn plenty however about a company called Ambio that hosts the retreats in Mexico. A commercial company that charges $7,000 and higher for these miracle cures.

It’s an Obscure Psychedelic Used to Treat Trauma. Could It Help Me?

As a first person recounting of modern ibogaine therapy this is a compelling story but I'm increasingly troubled by the lack of critical distance in these kinds of articles.

As an ad for the "miracle drug" it's powerful but I'm not sure what I'm meant to take away from a piece like this?

In May '25, a beloved Australian games website was sold off. It went dark then, a month later, rose from the dead but stuffed full of gambling links and AI authors.

It wasn't the first time, or the last time, this exact thing had happened. And it's still happening.

My months-long investigation 👇

Thanks Starre! Lemme know if you got any crazy ideas! Weirder the better 😉

Get in touch to chat about rates (they vary depending on scope) and ideas. I'm interested in those stories that may have been sitting in a drawer for a while after being "not quite right" for other places.

Share around. Happy to talk.

Contact me: rich[at]refractor.io

#scicomm #science #journalism

I'm open to all stories, from short news pieces to longer, exploratory features. Everything in the spectrum of science is game (biology, geology, psychology, space, medicine).

Refractor has no house style, instead I'm looking for unique human voices, journalistic rigour and compelling storytelling.

CALLING ALL SCIENCE WRITERS!
NEW PITCH OPPORTUNITY!

I'll be leading a new science and health publication called Refractor. It's a spin-off from New Atlas with a new editorial approach. We'll be launching very soon and as Founding Editor I'm calling out to all science writers keen to pitch.

Louise Adler sets the record straight on Adelaide Writers' Week The Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) debacle might have served as a “life lesson” to politicians and lobbyists about the risks involved in interfering with the independence of arts organisations. But as w...

More food for thought from Louise Adler about the idea of 'balance' in the curation of writers' festivals, and the selective hyperventilating about the inclusion of one Palestinian writer: johnmenadue.com/post/2026/03...

Anthony Jeselnik's new book club gives me hope. He's getting people to read!

1st month was Jim Thompson's The Getaway. Dream pulp!

Then he bombarded ppl with Fernanda Melchor's Paradais, an assault of a novel.

Current selection: Vonnegut's Mother Night.

The man has good taste.

Wouldn't be surprised if that's trialled sooner or later.

The actual study frames this all a bit differently. You could draw that line but more specifically it's about a particular type of neural activity suggesting focused neuromodulation could enhance psilocybin induced plasticity.

Of course, I do agree with your general point though 😉

Quaid is a great analogy! I was thinking he was tracking like Alec Baldwin who also failed as that big leading man movie star but Quaid is way more on point.

OpenAI announces Pentagon deal after Trump bans Anthropic Shortly after the president's ban of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, rival OpenAI announced it had done a deal with the Defense Department to provide its technology for classified networks.

And there you go. No one dares beat Sam Altman in a race to the bottom of the ethical barrel.

Vegetarians have ‘substantially lower risk’ of five types of cancer Study shows lower risk for multiple myeloma as well as pancreatic, prostate, breast and kidney cancers

Lots of weird details in the study to undercut that headline.

Vegetarians were twice as likely to get oesophageal cancer.

No difference in bowel cancer rates btw vegetarians and meat eaters but 40% higher rates in vegans!

Reckon I could make a different headline out of those data points.

Flat out absurd decision by the WCSJ to hold a science journalism conference in a country notorious for curtailing press freedom.

Paramount Skydance Poised to Acquire Warner Bros. Discovery After Netflix Bows Out of Bidding War Paramount Skydance is poised to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery now that Netflix has declined to increase its existing offer valued at $83 billion.

A real disastrous outcome. Everyone in Hollywood who played the streamer scare card is gonna eat their words soon.

Mass firings as the company consolidates double assets. Reduced overall outputs. And that's not touching on the terrible people at the top of the business.

Just a few years ago we were talking about trying to stop tech companies from developing autonomous weaponry systems and now we have governments pushing the companies to take the safety limits OFF the AI systems. This is insane.

Of course, the devil is in the details here, and being a press release we have very little detail.

R-MDMA is an interesting drug. Reportedly quite different subjectively compared to MDMA.

Maybe safer? But also, longer half-life so what were the dose days like? We talking 6 to 8 hour sessions?

Really interesting stuff. Phase 2a data from R-MDMA for social anxiety.

No psychotherapy. Just two dose days, 28 days apart.

6-week endpoint reportedly similar to efficacy seen in SSRI trials at 8 to 12 weeks.