Of Interest - June

Israel, Lebanon and the US

Israel Reignites Regional War

And the news media continues to facilitate the horrors.

Omar Sakr PresentsOmar Sakr

Employment and AI

The “Messy Middle”

Why the years between today and post-AGI abundance will be the hardest political and economic problem of our generation, and why we can’t skip past them

Kinder Futures: Dispatches on AI, Work & What Comes NextMolly Kinder

Labour Aristocracy and the Psychological Wage

Working class support for One Nation: Towards an honest explanation

The rapid surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has forced a question the Australian left has consistently avoided answering honestly: why do sections of the working class support a politics that appears to cut against their own material interests?

Revitalising LabourLisbeth Latham

Its not Popular or Random

Call It What It Is: Foreign Interference

If a hostile state ran this sort of operation to swing our vote, we’d call it foreign interference. It’s time we did.

RedBridge’s latest Insights & IntelAlex Fein

Students Shift in Germany

‘Historic’ wave of Palestinian solidarity grows at universities in Germany

Calls for universities to cut ties with Israeli institutions are rising in the country that condemns the BDS movement.

Al JazeeraNiko Vorobyov

US Capital is Eating Australia's Lunch

We’d add that Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller has been saying for a few years that AUKUS capital flows are a real thing,

Picks, shovels and spaceships prove Australia is being robbed

Gina Rinehart’s $US1 billion SpaceX bet comes as US firms are moving in on Australians in droves. It’s time to wake up.

Australian Financial ReviewAnthony Macdonald

Trump's Imperial Decadence

Organising Blood Sports Invokes the spectre of Imperial Excess

Zuckerberg, Ellison among UFC fans at Trump’s birthday bash

The Meta and Paramount Skydance chief executives were spotted along with members of the president’s family and cabinet.

Australian Financial ReviewHadriana Lowenkron, Yash Roy

House Price Inflation since Howard

For those shedding a tear over house prices falling, these numbers may change your mind | Greg Jericho

An average home would cost $595,500 now if prices were the same relative to income as before John Howard turned the market into an investor casino

The GuardianGreg Jericho

Just a graph

But it does indicate that Australia's nearest neighbour does not buy into the anti-chinese scare mongering of the US alliance

Knowledge Imperialism

Farrell's insight into the political and strategic complexity of AI regulation by the US state is complex and nuanced. The importance of the outcomes has global significance irrespective of whether AI achieves general intelligence and/or
large scale replacement of bureaucratic functions.

(Readers can revisit Farrell's essay on AI's bureaucratic potential here)

Of course the valuations of AI for both hardware and software companies on the US stock exchange is a measure of the simple economic influence of AI technology. This essay makes visible the approaches and methods of knowledge/technology control and restriction as a key element of US imperial power. And it does need to be made plain that the difference between Democrat and Republican/Trump administrations is not whether this power should be deployed, only in the methods that
should be implemented to achieve it.

What the Anthropic fight says about AI regulation

Fables of the deconstruction of American power

Programmable MutterHenry Farrell

The semantics of this clip are mind blowing