An at-risk teenager "...fell into a filter bubble where his account was recommended a repetitive amount of content surrounding Suicide & Self Harm & depressive topics, particularly leading up to the date of his suicide..." The TikTok revelations keep coming. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

TikTok Withheld a Safety Feature From Millions. One Died by Suicide

A confidential document says an algorithm adjustment was kept from many users “by design,” as part of an experiment to measure engagement.

bloomberg.com

What if... Hong Kong transitioned away from fossil fuels and let people plug in solar cells on their balconies? “Plug-in systems can be used by renters & people living in apartments... If they’re good enough for Germany and the UK, they’re good enough for us.” reneweconomy.com.au/if-theyre-go...

"If they're good enough for Germany..." New Zealand set to beat Australia to legalising plug-in solar

Major NZ government review finds "no good reason" for preventing Kiwis from using plug-in solar, and may make it legal within a year. Will Australia follow?

reneweconomy.com.au

Going out to fellow fans of 20th century science fiction correlating with 21st century calendar dates: Ray Bradbury forecast we would receive Soft Rains this week... eternal thanks to the great Wallace Wood for the #comix to match en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_W...

We’re past the ‘not on my bingo card’ stage of 2026. The concept of space junk owned by a trillionaire white supremacist smashing into a location on the moon named after Einstein being described as “a certain carelessness…” seems entirely on brand. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

SpaceX rocket hours away from crashing into the moon in unintentional collision

Piece of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket weighing four tonnes will hit the lunar surface on Wednesday at 5,400 miles per hour

theguardian.com

New #ausmusic played on the radio in Hong Kong this week: All-woman rock from Sydney & sweet soul from Melbourne: * Body Type - And What Else? * The Meltdown - Be A Good Man …and an upbeat song about a stolen car & living in Alice Springs * Glenys Rae Virus - Hopeful bandcamp.com/jaydub/playl...

2025-2026 AU Tunes Played On The Radio - Playlist by Jay W

Every Tuesday for the past 11 years I do a 25 minute radio segment on RTHK3 in Hong Kong. Play 2 songs to start, one to the top of the clock - I try…

bandcamp.com

Harry Harrison opens up on dodgy dentists from the mainland operating in Hong Kong: today’s #cartoon

Manya has found lots of examples of these nationalist videos in #China. Tapping into racism like this really is the lowest. bsky.app/profile/many...

Manya Koetse@manyapan.bsky.social · 2d ago

Many of the videos show foreigners engaging in uncivilized behavior and disrupting China’s cleanliness, etiquette, and public order. In these scenes, foreigners are portrayed as dirty, smelly, and disorderly. These videos predominantly feature Indian characters.

There's no more doomier news to scroll than that of those tough little penguins who've survived everything St Kilda throws at them... now in the firing line for bird flu because "... authorities had “probably missed the boat” on vaccination efforts..." www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Australia news live: St Kilda may lose hundreds of little penguins to bird flu; corruption inquiry told of $50,000 branch stacking scheme

Follow live

theguardian.com

You can't stop the wok - the fabulous @bernunithk.bsky.social continuing her great work documenting Hong Kong food culture

Joel Chan@kjoules.org · 2d ago

A fantastic article by @bernunithk.bsky.social on the legend that is Stephen Yan, a Hong Kong-born Vancouverite whose cooking show Wok with Yan aired on CBC from 1980 to 1995 www.scmp.com/postmag/food...

Check-up for the planet from @fionakatauskas.bsky.social - still waiting on the prognosis - today's #cartoon theconversation.com/newspaper-sp...

Curious as to why no media org has put together a map of the extent of the fires burning in the northern hemisphere during this El Nino summer. NASA has this publicly available data, surely some infographics wiz could build on this firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs...

Chinese viral AI videos are turning foreigners into villains, flooding Chinese social media. They depict foreigners as threats to China’s social, moral, and national order. Strong, confident Chinese people confront, violently beat, and humiliate them in defense of their country. See more below🧵

Nevermind the deal making with Iran, perhaps it's all about #Trump and the US war machine running out of ammunition... tonight's #cartoon from @cathywilcox.bsky.social www.csis.org/analysis/six...

I've only just caught up on the Massive Attack story from Singapore... wow. a) interesting they avoided playing Hong Kong this time (played in 2017), b) what will happen when they play Brisbane on Thursday - and someone starts a chant about rivers and seas? www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...

Coming soon to Hong Kong? “The system’s dashboard… tracked more than 700 foreign residents living in the city. In total, it had entries for nearly 12,000 people, which included fugitives, people from Hong Kong & Taiwan, as well as more than 300 foreign journalists.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/w...

How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners (Gift Article)

An unsecured police dashboard was a rare window into how the authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of private data.

nytimes.com

Quality work from @kjoules.org on the abrupt ending of official monthly statistics for Hong Kong: “Without monthly data on registered births and marriages, it will also be more difficult to determine whether future incentives to increase birth rates are effective.” www.kjoules.org/a/3mrp56modh...

RIP Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics (1970-2026)

and what that means for Hong Kong's demographic data. Numberwang 1

kjoules.org

Trump’s odyssey in the Strait of Hormuz trundles on… @rowecartoon.bsky.social calls out the latest horse shit in today’s #cartoon

Like clockwork… or indeed, like the modus operandi of a multi-billion dollar hustle where everybody knows the scam: “announcing you’re holding off on market-spiking military action one day before the Wall Street and Hang Seng stockmarkets re-open…” www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Trump holds off on new strikes against Iran amid emerging 'deal'

Donald Trump says the US will hold off on fresh strikes against Iran, as Middle East allies have agreed to parameters of a deal to end the war.

abc.net.au

This could be a great resource - why not make it public? "In Hong Kong, authorities have developed an AI-driven flood forecasting & alert system capable of 3D simulations, aimed at enabling more timely pre-emptive measures & emergency responses to flooding." insuranceasianews.com/flood-threat...

Flood threat in Southeast Asia is real and growing – time for modellers to strut their stuff as AI leads the way

The key resource for accurate, insightful and reliable coverage of Asia’s insurance and reinsurance market.

insuranceasianews.com

It will never be full… @goldingcartoons.bsky.social with today’s #cartoon tribute to revelations of human creativity being fed into AI models

Anyone else starting to get that disaster movie feeling when there’s been multiple warnings of what’s to come?

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au · 6d ago

Anthropic says its Claude AI model hacked systems of three external companies during safety tests

Today’s #cartoon courtesy @slyngstad.bsky.social as Murdoch media tries to prosecute Fauci for Trump without being sued in a Dominion Voting manner…

Maximum Hollywood meets Hong Kong meets the #Odyssey from the great Victor Chen

Great reporting on China trends from former Hong Kong journalists: "a growing number of online platforms are paying people anywhere between $15 & $700 to license their likeness for AI-generated content" also: "700 AI-related face-theft cases over the past 3 years" restofworld.org/2026/china-a...

In China, people are renting out their faces to AI

New platforms are paying people to license their likeness for AI-generated dramas and ads, creating a new marketplace for biometric identity.

restofworld.org

BYD to hit the market with humanoid robots... but it's bigger than that. "Chinese carmakers are competing with Tesla in a high-stakes race to dominate physical AI." Elon's suing for the right to make & sell AI deepfake porn via X, what does he want his robots to do? www.scmp.com/business/chi...

Surely if the Red Sea is blockaded, Somali pirates are back in action, US and Saudi forces hitting "eastern Iraq" and a drone strike on "a U.S.-owned gas storage tanker at Egypt's Mediterranean port of Damietta..." We're gonna need a bigger map. www.reuters.com/world/iran-w...

How much longer can the #Trump clown show #Odyssey go on? Early nomination for #cartoon of the week/year for @rowecartoon.bsky.social

@rowecartoon.bsky.social · 7d ago

how much longer..?

As Murdoch’s mullahs across multiple platforms launch public character assassinations of Fauci to synchronise with the MAGA show trial… the forgotten/ignored/censored paragraph referencing science and Covid in their missives:

PBS News@pbsnews.org · 7d ago

"Trump's officials went on to tear down a mural with Fauci's face," says Katherine Wu. "Former colleagues have said it seems like essentially everything Tony Fauci touched, they have attempted to dismantle, destroy, or obliterate so that there is no legacy left." https://to.pbs.org/4wuWu3E

The new era of AI voice scams arrives in Hong Kong: “WhatsApp account hijackings, scammers may use AI to fake the voices of people close to you…” Maybe part of the $18 billion allocated for Hong Kong “security” could be spent on protecting citizens from this threat? www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Hong Kong raises alert on AI voices as HK$26m lost to WhatsApp hijackers

Police say one victim was scammed out of HK$10 million by fraudsters impersonating his father.

scmp.com

Today’s #cartoon from @cathywilcox.bsky.social deserves to go global… the northern hemisphere burns while the rapacious expansion of data centres continues