Happy Winter Solstice to all who celebrate AKA me because it's my birthday! 😁🥳 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

ABC commissions catalyse further industry investment. For every $1 the ABC invested in external co-productions, an additional $1.31 was leveraged from other public and private sources, including state agencies, international partners and private investors. By anchoring projects early, ABC investment supports a pipeline of future productions, enabling ideas to progress into viable projects, unlocking multi‑source financing that strengthens the broader market.

https://www.abc.net.au/about/media-centre/press-releases/deloitte-report-finds-abc-commissioned-productions-deliver-772-m/106704518

This song was playing in the Woolies while I was shopping tonight and it really brought back some memories of a simpler time just listening to X&Y on my Discman back in the day. Decided to look up the film clip and I'm very glad I did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAGbq3A9HfA

The media really out here trying their darnedest at making us feel sorry for people who own multiple houses rather than people who own zero houses is really quite baffling

"If anything changes, I will be forced to raise it by the exact amount I already will be" he said to the media. https://chaser.com.au/general-news/landlord-warns-he-will-raise-rent-if/

I wish Australia would do something like this https://itsfoss.com/news/netherlands-forgejo-migration/

Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, has branded the Australian social media ban an “unmitigated disaster” and an “embarrassment” that is teaching kids to accept surveillance from tech companies when they go online. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/04/wikipedia-founder-brands-australias-social-media-ban-an-unmitigated-disaster-and-an-embarrassment

I've been watching a bunch of economics videos lately and it's enabled me to see a bunch of features baked into the system we live in, that I totally just accepted at face value and never really thought deeply about before, like this explanation for why central banks have target inflation and purposely devalue the currency over time.

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Economists want money to be devalued by 2–2.5% every year. This is a designed, intentional feature of the system. Why? It essentially enables corporations to cut workers' wages over time without actively doing so. It's very difficult for a company to cut your actual wage — they'd have to convince you to sign a new contract at a lower pay, and you'd probably say no. But if money is automatically devalued by 2–3% per year, your wage is automatically being devalued by 2–3% per year. Your company doesn't have to cut it — you have to actively fight to prevent it from being cut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So484-4VbxI

I saw a video the other day explaining our persistence in performing the rituals of continual economic growth year after year by likening it to the Cargo Cults that formed in the Pacific after WWII.

We're going through the motions of consumption, consumerism, and expansion, hoping that mid-century prosperity drops from the sky again.

It's like we're treating infinite growth as a law of nature, a gift from our ancestors, completely ignoring that the system we're running is entirely incompatible with the physical constraint of the world we live in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

“Every country that has tried to build its way out of housing crises without dealing with the underlying problem of inequality and distribution has built a slum. The whole world is filled with these places that have had no restrictions on housing, and they built a massive shanty town outside of their city.

“And you think that can’t happen in a country like Australia. I grew up in Ilford, which is a poor suburb of East London...it was a poor suburb for working-class families, and it is now a slum. It’s as simple as that. All respect to the people that live there, is a place of desperate poverty, and those family homes are now expanded backwards, expanded upwards, and rented out by the room.

“Australia is a bit behind on this, but you’re going in the same direction. You will build a super luxury centre surrounded by extremely low-quality slums.”

https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/western-australia/economist-gary-stevenson-warns-wa-can-t-build-its-way-out-of-housing-crisis-20260228-p5o681.html