Stuart Horrex

AI Is A Money Trap In the last week, we’ve had no less than three different pieces asking whether the massive proliferation of data centers is a massive bubble, and though they, at times, seem to take the default positi...

Newsletter: AI is a money trap, with AI companies' ridiculous valuations and unsustainable businesses making exits or IPOs impossible. Elsewhere, data center developers have no exit route either, and US economic growth has become shouldered entirely by big tech.

www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-mone...

this is one of the widest gulfs between popular sentiment and establishment policy i have ever seen in this country

Melinda Gates Says Bill Gates's Work with “Abhorrent” Jeffrey Epstein Led to Divorce The philanthropist added that she realized their marriage “just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him. I regretted it the second I walked in his door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.” www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/0...

In 2016, Ghislaine Maxwell falsely stated, under oath, that she was not aware that Jeffrey Epstein recruited underage girls for sex (you know, the ones she was actually recruiting on his behalf). She was charged with two counts of perjury for this.

Remind me why we give a shit what she says now?

The AUKUS Submarine Deal is Dead The promise to give Australia nuclear submarines is collapsing. A severe industrial crisis in both the U.S. and UK means the AUKUS security deal's central pillar is no longer viable.

“In April, the Pentagon initiated a 30-day review to see if it could simultaneously meet the needs of the US Navy and the Australian demand. Four months later, the review is still not public, but the answer is already clear: the US cannot do both.” #AUKUS #auspol

Women shouldn’t hold office, says GOP woman now running for office “I don’t know if I would vote for any female,” said state senate hopeful Mylie Biggs, the daughter of GOP Rep. Andy Biggs.

This is a real article. No, really. www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/female-...

Bill Corbett 0@billcorbett.bsky.social • 1h Al. What can I tell you. Every single *possible* positive use case l've heard about has felt vastly outweighed by the extremely negative. But even allowing for me just being poorly informed - Al / LLM being sold and promoted by some of the worst sleazebags walking the Earth does not help! ₴ 45 • 408 ... Parker Molloy 0@parkermolloy.com •1h The one area l've found it helpful has been in getting quick transcriptions of YouTube videos. You still have to do a spot check to make sure it didn't mess something up, but it does save time. • 13 ®• • Auto @autotua.bsky.social You're so pressed for time you can't even watch a video?

Me: [points out a perfectly ethical use for AI that doesn't often get mentioned, which runs entirely on my computer.]

Ridiculous person: how dare you

Australia’s potential surrender of creative content to tech giants for free is shocking. Labor must decide where it stands | Josh Taylor The Productivity Commission appears to have bought into tech companies’ brazen arguments – and caught the Australian government off-guard

Well done to Josh Taylor for sinking the boot into the Productivity Commission's risible report on AI. Rubbish like this suggests it's well past time to abolish the Productivity Commission altogether. Put the funding into actual research, not this nonsense www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

we know what solves homelessness: more housing

we know what solves medical debt: universal healthcare

I'm 48 years old and I've never heard a single pundit say this on national/corporate TV

fuck yes.

Just your regular reminder that the Boston Tea Party, which kicked off the American Revolution, was a protest against tariffs…

ASA opposes Productivity Commission proposal for copyright exception - Australian Society of Authors The ASA is dismayed by a Productivity Commission report raising the prospect of a text and data mining exception to Australia’s Copyright Act.

We are dismayed by the Productivity Commission report raising the prospect of a text and data mining exception to Australia’s Copyright Act that would enable Australian authors' work to be used for AI training, without permission or payment.

www.asauthors.org.au/news/asa-opp...

Exclusive: Welfare payments cancelled unlawfully An error in the interpretation of welfare legislation has led to the unlawful cancellation of payments, as the department fails to manage its own compliance system.

I'll be on RN News Breakfast ~8.15am talking about Com'wlth Ombudsman's damning report into this story from November last year. Confirms all and more, as welfare recipients have been saying for YEARS. Ombo report here: www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/asset... www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-cri...

🚨🚨BREAKING🚨🚨

CRIMINALLY ADJUDICATED SEX ABUSER SAYS CIVILLY ADJUDICATED SEX ABUSER NEVER DID ANYTHING CONCERNING AROUND HER: SOURCES

abcnews.go.com/US/trump-adm...

Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diplomats As pressure mounts on the Australian Government over Palestine, a group of highly respected Australians, who have represented our nation overseas, have gone straight to the top with a letter to the prime minister.

Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diplomats https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/open-letter-to-prime-minister-anthony-albanese-mp-from-australian-former-diplomats #Auspol

Serve your country! Defend your culture!

Just in case it’s not already clear that ICE is a white supremacist thug army, Homeland Security is recruiting with a “defend your culture” slogan.

JK Rowling tweeting got a boycott of M&S, stretching facts to the breaking point, and making the world a worse place for absolutely everyone.

The employee asked the girl and her mother if they needed help shopping. That’s it. That’s all. The misinformation, the insinuations (because the facts are inconveniently benign) are EXACTLY what was done to lesbians in the 80s. This is the product of hate and fear, not reality.

Truth. I produced a podcast on why boys should receive the #HPV ‘cervical cancer’ vaccine a few years ago. tl:dr it also protects men against throat #cancer, anal & penile cancers. Imagine! A vaccine that prevents cancers! 💯❤️ www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

A pointed message to governments from Garma Festival

A pointed message to governments from Garma Festival www.croakey.org/a-pointed-me... #publichealth

‘Worrying’ levels of screen time means young people losing confidence to socialise in person, minister warns – UK politics live Culture secretary Lisa Nandy says ‘majority of young people spend all, or almost all, of their free time alone in their bedrooms, online’

This is not caused primarily by "screen time".

It's been caused by the mass eradication of third places for young people in basically every city over the past three decades - and a society that's hostile to the concept of teens socialising in public spaces.

www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Productivity Commission’s shortsighted recommendations are a blueprint for theft of nation’s creative and cultural assets The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance is dismayed by recommendations proposed by the Productivity Commission today, including its resistance to much-needed legislation and regulation that would…

PRESS RELEASE: Productivity Commission’s shortsighted recommendations are a blueprint for theft of nation’s creative and cultural assets
meaa.io/41fM7n1
#StopAITheft

Dozens of public housing residents now in private homes ahead of demolition Almost one in five households displaced by a controversial plan to redevelop Melbourne’s public housing towers have been placed in the private market, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

Such gross incompetence by Victorian Govt re public housing towers & estates;
-Demolishing without considering several viable adaptation proposals, with huge environmental & cost savings
-Failing to first build new public housing on their estates to manage transfer
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Teaching STEM without teaching the Humanities is how you get Spider-Man villians. Teaching Theater without teaching the Humanities is how you get Batman villians.

This made me laugh. And then I sat and thought about it. This is correct.

Research on the economic benefit of Australian creative/cultural industry comes from the govt's own fucking website:
www.arts.gov.au/news/highlig...

Okay listen, let's do some basic maths:

"PC modelling showed that AI would deliver a $116bn boost to the economy over the next decade."
= $11.6bn/year

"Research found that cultural and creative activity contributed $63.7 billion to Australia's economy in 2022–23."
=$63.7bn/year
⬇️
THIS IS MORE

Australia’s potential surrender of creative content to tech giants for free is shocking. Labor must decide where it stands | Josh Taylor The Productivity Commission appears to have bought into tech companies’ brazen arguments – and caught the Australian government off-guard

“Tech companies have devalued the work of creative industries for years. The latest iteration of this is their insistence the AI models they plan to make lots of money from need the labour of all of human creation for free in perpetuity.” - @joshtaylor.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Despite clear warnings that their Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) is cruel and unlawful, Labor has continued to allow suspensions of payments to be used as a weapon against welfare recipients, to the benefit of so-called employment service providers who profit from poverty.

It took Labor almost 12 months to pause cancellations of payments from when they were told it was unlawful. The department knew this was probably illegal but they continued it anyway.

And 2+ years on, tens of thousands of welfare recipients cop payment suspensions every month.

As the ombudsman put it, for someone living week to week, losing a payment, even temporarily, can be catastrophic.

Robodebt taught us these automated systems can’t be trusted with people’s lives.

If Labor continues to allow welfare payment suspensions, it shows they don’t really care about what happens to people on welfare & have learned nothing from Robodebt.

The TCF is an expensive hangover from the Coalition and has been backed in by Labor for far too long.