There's an influencer here in Vienna who seems to think that if they bury the words 'gifted' or 'ad' in the video description then it's fine to post ad after ad including for companies or enterprises that have little or nothing to do with the ostensible point of their channel.

Josh Gondelman@joshgondelman.bsky.social · 5h ago

Especially when combined with the fact that a-list celebrities (including lots of men outside the traditional realm of "influencer") are doing ads with no shame. It just feels like everything is #spon lately and it's getting more aggressive and invasive than ever!

The climate crisis poses a clear risk to people’s health. June’s hot conditions resulted in the deaths of 395 people in Austria, according to statistics recently published by AGES, the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety. (1/3)

Heat Wave Strikes Back

Vienna is in the middle of its second extended heat wave of the summer, with high pressure and winds blowing from the south creating hot and dry conditions

viennabriefing.substack.com

Bad Deutsch-Altenburg holt sich die Hitzekrone von Stammerdorf zurück

41,2 Grad in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg: Hitze-Extremwert erneut...

diepresse.com

How your email finds me:

Cat Fan

ALT: Cat Fan

static.klipy.com

There was only one thing I could write about in this week's edition of The Vienna Briefing, and that was the ongoing heat wave. open.substack.com/pub/viennabr...

Tyron has said this better than I could, but if you look across almost every area of the economy and society, life is better today than it was 40 years ago. To take just one example, healthcare, you have: GLP-1s, minimally-invasive robotic surgical procedures, mRNA vaccines, new cancer drugs, PrEP.

Tyron@tyron.bsky.social · 9h ago

an unfathomable amount of stuff has got better over the last 40 years - hell, even over the *last 15* - and anyone convinced it hasn't does not remember or know what things were like 15 or 40 years ago.

Der Hitzegipfel: youtu.be/dYDxyIzPe98?....

1776: Sit down, John! (1972 Film Version) 720p

YouTube video by ldm313

youtu.be

Georg Renner@georgrenner.istdaswichtig.at · yesterday

"Jedes Bonsai-Thema war zuletzt für einen Krisengipfel groß genug. Jetzt dampft das Land vor sich hin, aber nichts passiert." www.krone.at/4242781

an unfathomable amount of stuff has got better over the last 40 years - hell, even over the *last 15* - and anyone convinced it hasn't does not remember or know what things were like 15 or 40 years ago.

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 15h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

your restaurants are nicer, people aged 30-50 look unfathomably better, cities are infinitely safer and usually have much nicer public realms, popular entertainment is close to infinitely limitless for a small monthly fee and usually has a much higher baseline quality than the average of those ages

the world was full of cigarette smoke 40 years ago, mental health understanding + treatment is much better than 40 years ago, bigotry (even in this age of resurgence) was far more commonplace 40 years ago. gays were literally dying en masse in an AIDS epidemic and a common view was that it was good!

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Heat Wave Strikes Back

Vienna is in the middle of its second extended heat wave of the summer, with high pressure and winds blowing from the south creating hot and dry conditions

open.substack.com

It doesn't say much for the Conservative Party that this is the quality of candidate who wants to stand for them now—and that they're willing to defend his selection.

Ex-MP urges Tories to drop candidate jailed for campaign of antisemitic abuse against her

Luciana Berger says Joshua Bonehill-Paine should have no role in public life because of ‘his racism and his view of women’

theguardian.com

"Palantir is shifting profits from its European operations to the United States, allowing the Florida-based data analytics giant to pay minimal taxes in Europe, a new report finds."

Palantir funnels earnings to US to avoid European taxes, report finds

A new study finds that Palantir, which boasts of high profit margins in the U.S., barely scrapes a margin in Europe, which helps slash its tax bill.

politico.eu

SpaceX could one day be transformative, for all I know, but short-term, how is a company that reported Q2 revenue of $7.8 billion supposed to grow to $1 trillion in revenue in 2027, as Elon Musk insists it will?

SpaceX's Q2 results top estimates but stock drops on AI capex costs

SpaceX reported second quarter results on Tuesday that topped estimates — its first report as a public company — which comes as the stock has been in a recent free fall.

finance.yahoo.com

I don't think the framing of every political race as a win or defeat for AIPAC is a healthy development in American politics.

Since I'm on a roll with voicing normie opinions, nothing I learn about Hasan Piker makes me appreciate his cultural and media presence

The Verteilerkreis in the middle of an August heatwave is Vienna’s Hades.

Profile of Ellison and $ORCL in the NYT www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/m...

Higher fuel costs have increased Austrian Airlines' losses. The airline is looking to arrest this decline by cancelling flights between Vienna and Graz and some late night connections to Copenhagen, Warsaw and Krakow.

AUA rutscht tiefer in die roten Zahlen

Die im Zuge des Irankrieges stark gestiegenen Kerosinpreise haben die Austrian Airlines (AUA) in der ersten Jahreshälfte 2026 tiefer in die roten Zahlen gedrückt. Um weitere Verluste zu vermeiden, wil...

wien.orf.at

The Vienna Briefing is almost ready to go out to all subscribers tomorrow. Sign up now to avoid missing out.

Heat Wave Strikes Back

Vienna is in the middle of its second extended heat wave of the summer, with high pressure and winds blowing from the south creating hot and dry conditions

open.substack.com

Another record broken. Temperatures hit 40.1°C in Vienna today, up from the previous high of 40°C recorded during the last heat wave.

40,1 Grad: Hitze erreichte neuen Höchstwert

In Wien ist die Temperatur heuer zum bereits zweiten Mal kurzzeitig über 40 Grad gestiegen. Bei der Messstation in Stammersdorf wurde mit 40,1 Grad ein neues Allzeithoch erreicht. Auch für die kommend...

wien.orf.at

Rod Liddle was a piece of shit in both his private and public life, and it speaks to the state of British media that they're praising the man. He presaged the steep downward decline of British broadsheet print columnists into increasingly open racism, misogyny, and hatred of queer people.

Columbia hires former 60 Minutes correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley, fired by CBS News after challenging Bari Weiss, to help train the next generation of journalists

Columbia Journalism School Appoints Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley as Journalists in Residence | Columbia Journalism School

journalism.columbia.edu

His lazy writing was written from the gutter, rotten with misogyny and racism, and contributed nothing of value to public discourse.

Newspaper columnist and broadcaster Rod Liddle dies aged 66

The columnist died in hospital in Middlsbrough on Sunday.

bbc.com

Seconded.

Jack Tindale@jacktindale.bsky.social · 2d ago

Just finished reading King of Kings (about the fall of the Shah) and I really can recommend it. It came out last year but it's exceptionally timely given the current crisis in the Gulf, all the more so considering that the Americans seem to have learnt very little since.

How exactly would that work for a nurse who moved to Austria when they were 35 and only paid into the system for 30 years? Would they have to work until they were 80 to have the right to withdraw a pension?

Die Presse@diepressecom.bsky.social · 2d ago

Tirols Landeshauptmann schlägt vor, erst dann in den Ruhestand wechseln zu dürfen, wenn man mindestens 45 Jahre an Arbeitszeit nachgewiesen hat.

Nigel Farage just took a question from a 'journalist' at his press conference, who turned out to be his former chief adviser Raheem Kassam, who asks him why the media are being so unfair to him

Standards watchdog investigating Reform UK’s Richard Tice

Standards watchdog investigating Reform UK’s Richard Tice

Party’s deputy leader accused of a possible failure to declare an interest, commissioner says ⁠on ​its website * UK politics live – latest updates Britain’s ⁠parliamentary ⁠standards watchdog is ​investigating ⁠Reform UK’s ⁠deputy ​leader, ‌Richard ‌Tice, over ‌a possible failure to declare ‌an interest, ​the commissioner said ⁠on ​its website ​on ​Monday. More details soon … Continue reading...

theguardian.com

The word "Shame!" has reappeared on Vienna's monument to its former mayor, the antisemite Karl Lueger, (though this time in English.)

Lueger-Denkmal erneut beschmiert

Das umstrittene Lueger-Denkmal ist kurz nach seiner Sanierung erneut beschmiert worden. Nicht nur wurde es wiederum mit roter Farbe beworfen, seit Kurzem prangt auch der Schriftzug „Shame!“ auf dem So...

wien.orf.at