One reason why the far-right's ranting about the coming dystopian horror of '15-minute cities' just went away so quickly:

A reminder that Australia's support for unemployed, which was always bad, has gotten much worse over the past 25 years relative to the rest of the OECD

theguardian.com/business/grogo…

My political opinion: If the Albanese Government just gives Chris Hemsworth an AO for services to Aussieness, they will piss it in at the next election.

It’s kind of amazing - and depressing - that advanced nation governments show no sign of having done this.
Australia included.
(Instead, too many nations outside the China bloc are piling into solar panels and, in many cases, electric cars.)

This looks like outer-suburban Australia following the same trends that have already changed US politics.
Labor is losing many of the voters with jobs but fewer years of education.

Fascinating example of a (famous and apparently unstable) bloke sounding completely committed as he blathers out a string of incoherent concepts sitting half-formed in his head.
He almost instantly attracts a bunch of people who say 'that could be true'.
x.com/i/status/17927…

i/o There’s a reason the iconic Kennedy photos are in black and white.

As far as I could tell when I was there, this is a pretty widespread sentiment in Estonia.
Haven’t heard a good counter-argument yet, either.

Seems kind of obvious that we should be teaching spreadsheet use (and statistics) in schools, while teaching trig and calculus only to those who need it - which is, honestly, not many.
(I still regret the fading of my calculus skills.)
Nicholas Gruen

yougov poll on public support for jobseeker being lifted

One of Denmark’s greatest accomplishments: Of its 7800 Jews, Yad Vashem records only 102 were murdered in the Shoah.
A series of individual acts of solidarity made the difference.

When the national myth and international rankings don’t align…

Banning lab-grown meat is idiocy on steroids. “If you managed to create an affordable meat alternative that was functionally identical to animal protein, that could have a gigantic impact on the global emissions trajectory …”
slowboring.com/p/banning-lab-…

A reminder that if Australia has a housing problem, it is not because we are building a low number of new homes by world standards. Supply may not be ideal, but it’s pretty strong.

A reminder that even if Australia decides to ramp up some form of social housing again, we will likely want to keep encouraging private-sector building. This is precisely what many successful affordable-housing locations do.

One of the most shocking graphs of recent days. John Burn-Murdoch at Financial Times on homelessness in UK (disguised) and in USA (in open)
Via Chartbook Top Links Newsletter
adamtooze.substack.com/p/top-links-42…

'People who answer 'yes' in opinion polls asking if they would be prepared to pay higher taxes for better government services are actually answering a different question. That is, should someone else pay more tax so I can get better services?'

Lindsay Tanner

I’m reading this and keep stumbling across amusing facts. So I figured I’d share with Twitter.