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"

Bankers' bonuses to rise most on Wall Street reut.rs/4c3Mbvf

Bankers' bonuses to rise most on Wall Street

Bank executives' compensation will rise the most among all financial sectors on Wall Street, ​as record revenues on trading and deals boost bonuses, according to ​Johnson Associates, a financial compensation consultancy.

reut.rs

I’m telling you this as a political scientist. The person who is electable is the one who is elected. This can and does change over time. Any and all speculation about “electability” is either puffery or anxiety and is often both.

Julia Azari@juliaazari.bsky.social · 17h ago

One way to be safe is to never write an electability take

In just a few days of following, I've come to look forward to @doctorow.pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow's tech essays. Solid work.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 9h ago

Forget "Don't be evil"; Google's true motto is a form of vulgar spidermanism: "With great power comes no responsibility." The internet's *de facto* boss is an absentee landlord. 1/

Take abortions: fake abortion clinics - where pregnant women are bullied or tricked out of the abortions they're seeking - buy Google ads against the names of *real* abortion clinics. Google makes millions sending abortion-seekers to fake abortion providers: pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/p... 36/

Despite this, Google's ad-sales system will happily sell *anyone* the right to advertise a *different* website for queries for specific merchants, and those ads appear *above* the real result for the business's website. 27/

The too-big-to-care company is still the internet's gatekeeper, but half the guards at the gate have been fired and the other half have pulled so much overtime that they keep falling asleep on the job. Google has become a scammer's paradise. 18/

Google is an absentee landlord. In 2019, they chose to *deliberately worsen* search results in order to make you search repeatedly to find the information you're seeking, because every fresh query lets them serve fresh advertisements: pluralistic.net/2025/05/26/b... 9/

A large spool of thread has been sitting outside my building for days and every time I pass by I wonder how Theseus is faring in the labyrinth without Ariadne’s thread

from this headline I thought he had lost

Politico@politico.com · 13h ago

Progressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted

I'm bringing together leaders in the Australian literature sectors for a big discussion as part of Parramatta's Lit! Who are the "must have" people to be invited to this table? (The Champions/ Changemakers/Culture Shapers) I'm keen to hear your thoughts on who, and why. #ParramattasLitRoundtable

I've stopped to take photos of this ruin before. It's irresistible, especially in the good afternoon light. This place has the most perfect views of the Dutchmans Stern to the west. It's on Arden Vale Road near Quorn.

This went a little different than his nightly interviews with Sean Hannity.

"Archaeologists have uncovered the full floor of Lithuania’s historic Great Synagogue, revealing treasures nearly erased by Nazi and Soviet occupations." www.jta.org/2026/08/04/g...

Archaeologists uncover treasures of Vilnius' Great Synagogue as Lithuanian Jews dispute its future - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Plans for the recovered ruins have sparked a debate over what should be built on the site, and who gets to decide.

jta.org

there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas

لعبة ترامب ! #ايران #كاريكاتير

On the one hand, people in the UK are lamenting the loss of wetlands and ponds over the last 200 years. On the other hand, Kent had a malaria outbreak in 1917-1921 and it was combatted in part by draining wetlands and ponds

Call the cops

SallyRCbra@srpassesiton.bsky.social · 18h ago

This is disturbing. Scammers going door to door claiming to be Home Affairs. The Department has put out a warning. #auspol #ScamWatch

The modern Conservative Party, where Net Zero gets you out and Neo Nazism gets you in

Monsoon downpours cause floods and landslides as climate change and El Nino disrupt rainfall patterns.

India's severe monsoon season causes more than 100 deaths since July

Monsoon downpours cause floods and landslides as climate change and El Nino disrupt rainfall patterns.

aljazeera.com

This week we breached +2.5°C sea surface temperature anomaly in the East-Central Tropical Pacific. That alone qualifies this as an elite event. But we still have 4 months of temperature rise to go. So we are headed into outer space… 2/

*2026 El Niño Ahead by a Mile* It’s remarkable for us scientists to witness El Niño’s evolution. If you had asked us if something like this was possible a year ago, it would have been a definitive no. But here we are… already more than 1C (& 3 months) ahead of the next strongest episode in 1997… 1/

Halfway through Closing the Gap Agreement: 3 of 19 targets on track, 4 getting worse. The Productivity Commission’s 2026 report is blunt about why — self-determination works where allowed to. Justice & child protection are where governments have refused to let go blakandblack.com/2026/08/05/t...

The Arithmetic of Broken Promises: Closing the Gap

Persistent poor results on Closing the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous reflect an ongoing lack of support by governments.

blakandblack.com

Winter in AU is almost over. It's still warm. No surprise given northern hemisphere wildfires now include Scotland & Ireland! A sad new reality. Here in LakeMac days are 18°-22°C. Our cauliflower is almost ready, broccoli too. #ClimateChange #TakeCare 🇦🇺 🐨 🥦 ☀️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇮🇪 theconversation.com/wildfire-ris...

Strong El Niño could push 49 million more people into acute hunger, UN agency says reut.rs/3RJibxX

Strong El Niño could push 49 million more people into acute hunger, UN agency says

A powerful El Niño weather event could push an additional nearly 49 million people into acute food insecurity across ‌some of the world's most vulnerable regions by the end of next year, the World Food Programme said on Wednesday.

reut.rs

Grants scotch whisky was on special at the IGA this week at $66AUD being $17 cheaper. The thing was the week before it was at $47 on special. Something doesn't add up here.

Labor's plans to fix the housing crisis aren't touching the sides. In a nation-wide housing catastrophe, we need rent caps and a massive long term boost in public investment in good quality homes, renting them to people at prices they can actually afford.

Am I reading this right? Google is discontinuing Google Assistant on Google Homes...just so you have to pay for their shitty AI?!

Rates are now as bad as the 1970s, with thousands of miners sick and dying. Mining experts blame toxic silica dust, now more common in mines. n.pr/4yZJVPo

Appalachia's black lung rates highest in nearly 50 years as miners' protections stall

Rates are now as bad as the 1970s, with thousands of miners sick and dying. Mining experts blame toxic silica dust, now more common in mines.

n.pr