Matthew Smith 🇦🇺

Elon Musk calls for dissolution of parliament at far-right rally in London US-based tech boss was addressing the ‘unite the kingdom’ protest organised by Tommy Robinson via video link

What do you call it when a foreigner incites violence and calls for an overthrow of your government based on extremist ideology?
If this was anyone other than an American oligarch, everyone would be able to name it without thinking twice.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

That’s funny, and helps explain my own reaction to that film, because though I expected to like it (a Day-Lewis epic with great review would normally be my thing) I couldn’t take it seriously at all. I was disappointed and annoyed. Seems like that kind of behaviour doesn’t fly with us Australians!

Don’t worry, I’m not a spelling pedant.
One day Bluesky will add an edit window like Threads so we can make minor edits. In the meantime I try to not care too much about typos.

Yes, it is different, because Christian Americans are raised on charismatic religious speakers. Kirk was terrible at debating confident opponents, but when up against college students he quickly dismissed their lefty opinions in ways that were very entertaining to the young men who agreed with him.

One thing I noticed yesterday from the nervous way many moderate to left straight white commentators covered the Kirk murder, is that even if they’ve been horrified by Trump’s fascism, they expected it’d only threaten minority groups.
They’ve been oblivious.
In a fascist state, everyone is unsafe.

True. We’re lucky we don’t have the same kind of far right leaders who can appeal to young men. US culture has always had charismatic speakers who can wrap everything up with religion & bigotry. Their bigot extremists entertain their audiences in ways ours can’t. Alan Jones came close.

It’s wrong to dismiss Panahi’s involvement in the far right. Her main audience isn’t old Australian tv viewers. She sometimes gets millions of foreign views on her YouTube clips, just look at these recent ones since the Kirk murder. She’s part of the US extremist mediascape.

Some of their more inflammatory clips got over 1m views, which makes it clear they have a large overseas audience for their most extreme content.
It’s weird that we still treat News Corp as an Australian news organisation, they’re not.

It was worse on SkyNews Aust’s YouTube page. Yesterday they were pumping out Kirk videos at almost 100 in under 24 hrs, with some of them explicitly calling him a martyr, blaming the left, calling for a violent response, before they even knew who did it. They’re a foreign extremist group.

Kirk was a bigot for profit. And his people believe hundreds of dead school children are an ok price to pay for gun freedom. They also made a man who tries to use mob violence to overturn elections President. They’re a violent regime who are now morally outraged that it can hurt them too.

In Paris it’s normal to raise a family in a three-bedroom apartment. Why aren’t we building more in Australia? Family-friendly apartments are in fierce demand given skyrocketing house prices. Some councils think mandates might deliver larger units

Fixing this would be an easy way to reduce the Aust housing crisis. Change the rules and build apartments people can live in. Instead, we get tiny ones for singles (because they’re the easiest to sell to investors), and a few larger units at luxury prices. #auspol
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Murdoch’s Sky News Australia is so eager to be part of US MAGA that they’ve posted almost 100 Youtube videos regarding Kirk in the last 24hrs. Some are straight news, others idolising him or blaming ‘the left’ even before anyone knows who the culprit was. Why do we let them operate tax free here?

Plenty of US minority folks (trans, Latinos) are already scared just to be out in public, it’s too late already. Fascism almost always brings violence and oppression for minorities (China, Russia, 30’s Germany), and not fighting back doesn’t make it go away.

Does the same go for Murdoch’s Sky News Aust? They have plenty of fabricated tears over this US anti-gun control extremist, getting millions of views. They weren’t this upset when US schoolchildren or Democrats got shot.

Half right. US media old & new will report on mass movements (or Trump’s crimes, or anything) and move on - unless it’s in the interests of the media oligarchs to push it. When Fox News or Musk want to target an issue, it’s hammered till they get results. Thats what the anti-Trumps don’t have.

Question for Australian readers. If you’ve read any of UQP’s First Nations Classics series, which would you recommend as ‘good reads’ (based on story and quality of writing). It looks like an interesting series, but I don’t know much about most of the titles. #books
www.uqp.com.au/books/%7E/ta...

I’m not sure what age you are, but the constant lying about climate science was started by Howard, News Corp and their associates in the 90’s, when Aust helped the US wreck the Kyoto agreement. They got away with it, made a bundle, and it was a terrible turning point.

The anti-trans hate was actually just a handy replacement for anti-gay hate, after the News Corp political team lost the marriage equality battle. It’s always easy to target minorities, only the choice of targets changes.
But the extreme lying about climate to help corporations, that was a new one.

The US stock market doesn’t seem to care about this bad news. The investor class thinks Donald’s war on America will be profitable (war usually is), and that they don’t need workers anymore anyway (AI will do it!). Not sure what kind of country they expect to have left to spend their money in.

They look like patricians at a very terrible play Caligula has put on and demanded they all watch, and it’s been going on for hours. And they can’t leave or they’ll be fed to the lions.

Enjoyed this year’s Sydney Film Festival. Brazil’s The Secret Agent, and Iran’s It Was Just An Accident were great. And there was Jodie Foster in the French mystery Vie Privee, Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Twinless, and the 1985 anime Angel’s Egg. #film
@sydfilmfest.bsky.social

Most Australians wouldn’t be upset if the deal was cut off. It was a controversial deal to start with, and now that the US is going down the unhinged authoritarian path we’re even less keen on it.

If you want to check if there’s one in your area, search here > silentbook.club/pages/chapte...

Silence please: how book clubs without the chat help focus the mind A Silent Book Club is growing in popularity in Melbourne as an antidote to the social pressure of group discussions

My part of Sydney has so many cafes & parks & bookshops that it probably doesn’t need a silent book club too, but I like the idea of them. If I lived somewhere that didnt have so many reading options I think I’d like having a silent book club nearby. #reading www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Here’s the problem > if we have a renter facing an extreme rise and forced out, and the place is rented at the higher rate to someone else, that huge rise would only be included when calculating new lease rates, not ongoing leases, making it seem like ongoing renters aren’t facing problems!

This analysis conveniently (for the landlord class) minimises the rising rents people on leases are facing because it only counts the rents that can actually be paid. It excludes the renters who’ve faced such high rent rises that they couldn’t pay it and were forced to move (or go homeless).

Also, if renters faced a high rent increase than they could afford, it used to be relatively easy to find something a bit cheaper elsewhere, which is much less likely now. So an unaffordable rent increase is much more likely to lead to a major crisis than it used to.

And they don’t care if this trains young people to trust their bots (who are incapable of caring about you) while driving actual people apart.

The US tech oligarchs designed their algorithms to boost antagonistic arguments to drive engagement, then gave their AI chatboxes an agreeableness bias. They know people like to complain and attack each other, and to be told they’re right, so they’re using humans for one thing and AI for the other.

Egads!
I’ve never heard anyone say it, it feels like a word you only see in old books. But in Mrs Miniver (1942), the family’s son says it, though the actor failed to make it seem like natural dialogue.
Makes me wonder - did English people of the 40’s really go around saying egads?