More accurate headline: 'Labor prioritizes lobby groups over gambling harm.' And I wish journos would stop using "crackdown" to describe Labor's pissweak package. #auspol www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Gambling ad reforms at risk as Labor draws line on major changes

Labor is unlikely to entertain major changes to its gambling ad crackdown despite the bill being 'friendless' in parliament.

abc.net.au

www.afr.com/politics/fed... Aussies are the biggest losers to gambling in the world - $31B/yr - yet Peter Vlandys says it’s extremists who are trying to reign in the gambling corporations. Albanese has allowed himself to be led around by the nose by the likes of Vlandys for way too long.

‘Shows his true colours, and it’s ugly’: Senators hit back at V’landys

After Senate hearings into Labor gambling ad laws, NRL boss Peter V’landys dismissed it as being run by “publicity-seeking extremists”.

afr.com

El-Sayed, Lawrence and McKinney all won progressive campaigns in Michigan last night by talking about climate and clean energy like it was a kitchen-table issue — because skyrocketing energy bills and endless wildfire smoke matter to people.

Something that’s been lost in the NAPLAN reporting today: the equity gap in our school system is growing. First Nations kids, kids living in poverty, and those in regional, rural and remote communities are falling further behind. Most of them attend an underfunded public school.

Will never tire of posting this Benjamin Netanyahu in 2001 bragging about sabotaging peace accords: ‘America is something you can easily manoeuvre and move in the right direction.’ 'We must hit the Palestinians hard ,take them to a state of panic and fear, and the world will not say anything.'

It's gone. "Carney’s climate credibility is falling fast. He would be wise to remember how quickly the country soured to our southern neighbour when faced with a jarring sense of betrayal at Trump’s tariffs and threats to Canadian sovereignty. Carney could face a similar fate if he continues.."

DeSmog@desmog.com · yesterday

Canada is doubling down on fossil fuels as climate-fulled wildfires rage. Read Mitch Anderson's latest below:

“People said we were using an unacceptable amount of power, and with these upgraded facilities that require so much more of it, we’ve shown that we took those criticisms to heart,” said Sam Altman

Technological Advancements Allow Data Centers To Run On Even More Electricity

SAN FRANCISCO—Hailing rapid developments in the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Tuesday that technological advancements were now allowing data...

theonion.com

It’s a war against the rest of humanity and we need to take it a lot more seriously www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...

Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis

Iran conflict windfall over three months reignites calls for companies ‘cashing in on human misery’ to pay for environmental damage

theguardian.com

Stop calling them "data centers." Start calling them pollution centers. 🧵👇

If you show up to Bluesky without following anyone, you'll be treated to a series of posts about art, music, and dogs. If you show up to X without following anyone, you'll be bombarded with right-wing conspiracies and white supremacist slop. It's weird which one is seen as a "political bubble"

NEW: Israel has imprisoned an American teen. Soldiers raided Adam's West Bank home right before his sister’s grad party. They ignored his US passport. As they took him, they blew kisses at his mom. Adam is now the second American in Israeli prison. Trump just hosted Netanyahu for the eighth time.

Israel Has Imprisoned a 16-Year-Old Palestinian-American Boy for Two Weeks

Adam Karakrah is one of at least two Americans in Israeli prison – both held while Trump hosted Netanyahu for the eighth time.

zeteo.com

46 DAYS OF POWER! 🦩🇦🇱 The Flamingo Revolution in Albania is NOT backing down! From the streets of Tirana to Narta Lagoon, people are standing strong for their land, their wildlife, and their future. No corrupt deals, no selling out! Albania is NOT for sale! Keep rising, keep shouting!

"Everything is just data so we can computer it" has broken so many brains I swear

A govt that won't address media ownership concentration via antitrust reforms isn't interested in effective climate policy (ie rapidly winding down fossil carbon mining and burning). As long as the oligarchs control MSM they'll continue to flood the zone with disinfo to undermine climate policy.

The political right in Australia used the same talking points after the Black Summer Bushfires, with two additions: the fires were the work of arsonists and/or the Greens for curbing forestry activities, and "Australia is a land of extremes, it has always burned. What of it?"

Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)@doctorvive.bsky.social · 3d ago

This (from the @wsj.com Editorial Board) distills every denialist trope there is: It implies climate change isn’t exacerbating extreme weather. It calls solutions “costly … nostrums.” It fosters doomerism. And it suggests we can just adapt to or “manage” climate impacts. How is this journalism?

Your regular reminder (so you know I haven't died) that no amount of money can buy back the ecosystems and agricultural productivity that the climate damage from fossil carbon mining and burning causes. A gas tax without an explicit plan to wind down the industry is a plan to destroy the climate.

It's genuinely a massive problem that the median voter both 1) believes "criminal illegal immigrants" to be an astronomically more serious threat than they actually are, and 2) believes that the legal immigration process is substantially easier than it actually is.

Sunsette / Cynthia Skye@sunderedmarches.com · 2d ago

I understand your position, but those are different situations. People straight up both envision a system much milder than exists and cannot imagine a modern world without that imaginary system. By default they have no real grasp of reality on the matter, but are usu. sympathetic to individuals.

"As Ed Husic discovered, a consensus imposed from above is not democratic. Nor is it sustainable. The major political parties might agree that a genocide can be passed over as a minor unpleasantness best forgotten. But that’s a fantasy. Genuine disagreements cannot be papered over like that."

Jeff Sparrow@jeffsparrow1.bsky.social · 2d ago

A piece for @deepcutnews on social cohesion www.deepcutnews.com/p/why-social...

A complete failure. Just spitballing, but maybe the Albanese govt should have consulted with experts instead of Fitzy and Wippa

Australia’s under-16 social media ban failing, study shows: What it means

Australia's internet regulator revealed in a recent study that teenagers are continuing to use social media despite ban.

aljazeera.com

Pauline Hanson is such a fucking coward. Imagine needing to ban the wet lettuce leaves of the ABC, Age and Guardian from your events?!? How could any Prime Ministerial contender possibly handle a meek tut-tutting from limp liberal media?! It's farcical. Auspol is pathetic atm.

"Top US Jewish leader" okay i guess now i have to ask: does the ABC know that there is no CEO of Jews? he's just some fucking guy with a blatant agenda, he doesn't speak for the 7.5 million Jewish people of the US, let alone for those of australia

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au · 2d ago

Top US Jewish leader issues stark warning to Australia on antisemitism

It's laughable that you're implying anyone thought the Conservatives would be better. People are just disappointed that the guy that wrote a book on how we don't need to sacrifice climate goals or any of our other "values" while building a strong economy hasn't even pretended to care about climate.

John's book turned me into a democracy activist. Read it. "The suite of reforms I call Third Draft Democracy includes deliberative democracy & direct democracy—a great tag team—whose value goes up again with private money deleted from politics." #Auspol johnmacgregor.substack.com/p/the-owners...

The ownership of power

Our social, economic & environmental problems are mostly the result of us not having evolved democracy through the last century.

johnmacgregor.substack.com

I agree strongly with this -- in that difficult moment, the possibility of collective effort was conceivable. Not everybody felt it, but many did. I think the political class did not like this one bit.

Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 4d ago

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

Also, state killing of actual drug traffickers is still just murder.

Charles Keener@charleskeener.bsky.social · 4d ago

Trump and Hegseth have launched at least 67 airstrikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 221 people, without any proof they are drug traffickers and, as the Washington Post reported, no evidence that the illegal killings have slowed the flow of drugs

It's not bad as a standalone idea. Except it entirely misses the main threat to our democracy which is the power of the oligarchs and multinational corporations. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The case for a blatantly discriminatory Australian voting system

Older Australians are overrepresented in every sphere of life, from politics to the economy and media … and they’re living longer. It’s time we stack the deck in favour of young people. Here’s how

theguardian.com

Is this what you want for #Australia, @albomp.bsky.social? That's what it looks like to me. I am not alone. We will NOT be #Silenced on #Genocide by #Israel. #auspol

Tony@antonyillahiwarren.bsky.social · 6d ago

Statistically, my granny is a dangerous person.

They hate Fauci because they hate scientific facts and public service. Fauci breaks their worldview of alternate reality fascism in which the "strong" cannot be constrained by facts. So he must be discredited and destroyed.

Altman proclaiming the “singularity”; the Guardian publishing blather about possible AI consciousness; OpenAI and Anthropic blaming their cybercrimes on “rogue models”—the nonsense is coming fast and thick. Time for another MAIHT3k livestream with me & @alexhanna.bsky.social: Mon, Aug 3, noon PT

dair_institute - Twitch

Twitch account for The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR).

twitch.tv

We really need more politicians to embrace a pragmatic approach to climate policy that involves stopping global heating so civilisation doesn't collapse 🤷‍♂️