Sunday, October 19, 2025

No Kings: What will Australia be like in 2058? A new novel imagines division, unemployment — and activism What if every law needed a vote? A gripping vision of future Australia where one public servant risks everything to make change stick

No Kings rallies lack Soros czechs 🦋🐸🦋


A Long-Awaited Longevity Mystery Solved Ground Truth


Rock is for the young, but rockers can age gracefully.


Triolo’s memoir, The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere, is about three meaningful circumambulations the author completed around three separate sites, and how the practice of walking in circles might offer a unique approach to grappling with crises that are environmental and personal. The narrative details Triolo’s walks around Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash; California’s Mount Tamalpais; and the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, the largest Superfund site in the United States.

The Wisdom of Walking in Circles


What if every law needed a vote? A gripping vision of future Australia where one public servant risks everything to make change stick.

Saturday, October 18, 2025

CHARTER: Czech Writers, Including Ivan Klima, Created An Anti-Authoritarian Manifesto In 1977

 

Worried about turning 60? Science says that’s when many of us actually peak


Czech Writers, Including Ivan Klima, Created An Anti-Authoritarian Manifesto In 1977

In the U.S. (and other countries dealing with regimes antithetical to art), cultural workers could sure learn something from Charter 77. - LitHub


FlightAware is Central to Aviation


Marcus Willaschek, Kant: A Revolution in Thinking.  A very good book, perhaps the best introduction to Kant?  Though for me it is mostly interior to my current knowledge set.

Matthew Bell, Goethe: A Life in Ideas.  A beautiful book, now in English we have Nicholas Boyle’s work and also this.  Bell is wise enough to understand and valueIphigenia auf Tauris, a good test for Goethe appeciation.  Although I had a library copy out to read, I went ahead and bought a copy of this one to own.

Benjamin Wilson, Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex is both interesting and has plenty of information on early Thomas Schelling and his precursors.

Very well researched is The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China, by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li, with Claire Cousineau.

Peter Baxter, Rhodesia: A Complete History 1890-1980.  The most complete history of the country I have been able to find.  Many of the other books contain a few dominant, non-false narratives, but one gets tired of that?  I say LLMs come especially in handy for learning this history.

Luka Ivan Jukic, Central Europe: The Death of a Civilization and the Life of an Idea.  I took this sentence to encapsulate the main lesson of the book, namely that this does not usually work: “Central Europeans were, as ever, masterfully adept at rearranging polities into new configurations.”

I enjoyed Maxim Samson, Earth Shapers: How We Mapped and Mastered the World, From the Panama Canal to the Baltic 

Who maintains the scaffolding of freedom?

SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN

People in business, especially tech, love progress and innovation. They believe they’re the ones dragging the world forward while everyone else clings to the past. But for decades, they’ve been too narrowly focused on their own projects, on funding a new battery, or coding a new app, or building a better venture capital business. The most successful people become so good at one thing that they forget about the broader conditions that make progress possible in the first place.

How a collector stole thousands of butterflies from Australian museums.


The relationships between writers and publisherscan be as long-lasting and as complicated as any marriage

I apologize when I'm wrong. I own that shit.
I do not apologize when I'm provoked. You lit the match. Now eat the fire.

 

Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous “Nobody’s Girl” doesn’t break political news, but might break your heart.


Zadie Smith Ponders The Point Of Essay-Writing

My entire future rested on a few essays written in the school hall under a three-hour time constraint? Really? In the nineties, this was what we called “the meritocracy.” - The New Yorker


The relationships between writers and publisherscan be as long-lasting and as complicated as any marriage. Consider Gustave Flaubert and Michel Lévy... more »


New Books

Rambling man. Peter Matthiessen travelled to places most writers would never dare to go. What was he running from — or to?... more »


Essays & Opinions

More than 300 years after the reading revolution ushered in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying. The result: We're dumber, less creative, and less free ... more »


Oct. 13, 2025

Articles of Note

Facing a likely ban at home, the first Slovak novelwas approved by royal censors in Vienna and published by a German printer... more »


New Books

Sylvia Plath and the "slicks." Her apprenticeship was shaped by a determination — and the financial need — to appear in women's magazines... more »


Essays & Opinions

The “idiot savant” was a rare curio — genius in one context, helpless in others. The discourse has evolved, but the fascination remains... more »


Oct. 10, 2025

Articles of Note

Starbucks never changes, but rivers dry up and democracies collapse. The world we inhabit would be utterly bizarre to our agrarian ancestors... more »


New Books

James Schuyler didn't sound like other mad poets of his era. His style wasn't frenetic. But that doesn't mean madness didn't alter his sensibility... more »


Essays & Opinions

A new emphasis on sobriety and moderation renders foreign F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “alcoholic mist” and “lush and liquid garden parties”... more »


Oct. 9, 2025

Articles of Note

Who will win this year’s Nobel Prize in literature? Bookmakers are favoring Can Xue and László Krasznahorkai... more »


New Books

Before he was a bearded celebrity, a Great Man, young Tennyson was gauche, beautiful, ringed by tobacco smoke, and far more interesting... more »


Essays & Opinions

With CRISPR, it turns out that playing God is neither difficult nor expensive. But should we harness this incredible technology?... more »


Oct. 8, 2025

Articles of Note

An unprecedented grand tour of bibliophilic crime: 170 rare Russian books, valued at more than $3 million, gone... more »


New Books

Goethe’s philosophical coordinates came initially from Rousseau and Spinoza, two thinkers who appealed to and fortified his own disposition... more »


Essays & Opinions

Ann Goldstein and the art of translation: "The goal is to make a writer sound as much like him or herself as possible. Not like you"... more »


Oct. 7, 2025

Articles of Note

The book business may be centered in New York, but when it comes to advances for debut authors, the attitude is pure Las Vegas... more »


New Books

In 1486, Giovanni Pico was young, handsome, rich, and on his way to Rome to dazzle theologians and the Pope. It didn’t go well... more »


Essays & Opinions

For a decade, Francis Fukuyama has been trying to explain the rise of global populism. Now he has an answer... more »


Oct. 6, 2025

Articles of Note

One of Kafka’s great themes is paradox. Here’s one: His work defies translation, yet it has attracted very ambitious, talented translators ... more »


New Books

Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber says academia must listen to its critics. So why isn’t he taking his own advice?... more »


Essays & Opinions

While many of Gertrude Stein’s books are modern classics, some are ignored as too avant-garde. It’s time to rediscover them... more »


Oct. 3, 2025

Articles of Note

The dodo, the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger: One company believes it can bring them back, making animal extinction a thing of the past... more »


New Books

The history of vanilla — the world’s favorite flavor — is rife with counterfeiting, pilfering, piracy, smuggling, and account fraud... more »


Essays & Opinions

In 1956, Gore Vidal declared: “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag”... more »


Oct. 2, 2025

Articles of Note

Rachel Ruysch’s reputation once rivalled Rembrant’s. Now, due to snobbery and sexism, her paintings are compared with wallpaper... more »


New Books

An instant classic that has endured for seven centuries, the history of the reception of Dante’s Divine Comedy is a history of Western taste... more »


Essays & Opinions

Many writers find writing agonizing. Few have expressed that feeling as vividly as Cynthia Ozick... more »


Oct. 1, 2025

Articles of Note

Biographers have been likened to fiction writers and professional burglars. Richard Holmes takes a different view... more »


New Books

Know your meme. In the early 2000s, technology, art, and amateurism combined to reach such cultural achievements as LOLcats... more »


Essays & Opinions

Mary Carleton, the “German Princess,” charged with bigamy and theft, was a sensation in 1660s London. More than 500 people visited her in jail... more »


Friday, October 17, 2025

Unpublished Jack Kerouac Story Discovered In Mafia Boss’s Papers

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.

The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.

The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.

The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.

A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.

The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.

The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.

The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.
~ Seth Godin


Unpublished Jack Kerouac Story Discovered In Mafia Boss’s Papers

“The two-page typewritten manuscript signed by Kerouac in green ink is titled ‘The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing’ and is dated 15 April 1957, five months before … On the Road was published. It was discovered last year during the disposal of items owned by (mafia don) Paul Castellano." - The Guardian
October 14, 2025



A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech

 

A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech

The New York Times Gift Article: “Cory Doctorow’s new book looks to offer comfort, and solutions, to the inescapable feeling that digital platforms have gotten worse.

 Over the course of a nearly four-decade career, Cory Doctorow has written 15 novels, four graphic novels, dozens of short stories, six nonfiction books, approximately 60,000 blog posts and thousands of essays.And yet for all the millions of words he’s published, these days the award-winning science fiction author and veteran internet activist is best known for just a single one: Enshittification.

 The term, which Doctorow, 54, popularized in essays in 2022and 2023, refers to the way that online platforms become worse to use over time, as the corporations that own them try to make more money. Though the coinage is cheeky, in Doctorow’s telling the phenomenon it describes is a specific, nearly scientific process that progresses according to discrete stages, like a disease. 

Since then, the meaning has expanded to encompass a general vibe — a feeling far greater than frustration at Facebook, which long ago ceased being a good way to connect with friends, or Google, whose search is now baggy with SEO spam. Of late, the idea has been employed to describe everything from video games to television to American democracy itself. “It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying,” Doctorow said in a 2024 speech. 

On Tuesday, Farrar Straus & Giroux will release “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It,” Doctorow’s book-length elaboration on his essays, complete with case studies (Uber, Twitter, Photoshop) and his prescriptions for change, which revolve around breaking up big tech companies and regulating them more robustly. 

Still, given the thousands of words Doctorow has already, characteristically, written on the subject, the question arises:

 Why write a book at all? Over an avocado malted and poached eggs at a Lower Manhattan diner, Doctorow used a nerdy simile — care of Nintendo’s “Legend of Zelda” series of games — to explain. “The books are kind of like the save game point in a long ‘Zelda’ game,” Doctorow said. “The articles are like the individual missions, but the books are where I crystallize everything up to that point.” 

And if it’s possible to crystallize such a prolific writing life into a single word, this one isn’t half bad. “It might look like he’s all over the place because he does so many things, but they are all part of a coherent plan — his push to make a more humane and democratic, user-friendly, non-capitalist, non-exploitative internet,” said Kim Stanley Robinson, the eminent science fiction author and a friend of Doctorow’s…”

Trump Team Plans IRS Overhaul - The Surveillance Empire That Tracked World Leaders, a Vatican Enemy, and Maybe You

The effort would install a Trump ally at the agency’s criminal unit who has drawn up a list of investigative targets



Physician heal thyself: Royal College power-struggle spills into Court

Another board spill is afoot at the Royal Australian College of Physicians as accusations of bullying and a cover-up spill into Court. Stephanie Tran reports.

On Tuesday, the Fair Work Commission began hearing a stop-bullying application filed by the president-elect of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), Dr Sharmila Chandran, against the college’s current president, Professor Jennifer Martin.







Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.

 It was early June and Guenther Rudolph was in an expansive mood. Sharp-suited, relaxed, and charming, he was standing in a booth in Prague’s Clarion Congress Hotel. Every year the Clarion hosts an exclusive gathering: the premier get-together of the surveillance industry, called ISS World Training, where law enforcement and intelligence officials from across the globe mingle with representatives of leading spy companies. People outside the business—including journalists—are barred from entry.

On the hotel’s first floor, vendors lined up to sell their wares, and digital displays pulsed with inspiring slogans: “eliminate the unknown,” “saving lives.” Products ranged from hidden cameras to drones to “open source intelligence” and “AI-powered analytics.” But the largest, glitziest, and busiest booths advertised access to people’s phones.


Police probe suspected international crime boss’ links to Sydney day care kill plot 
Riley Walter October 15, 2025 
 An international crime syndicate allegedly helmed by a man formerly of Sydney is suspected of being linked to a recent surge of gang-related violence, including a foiled alleged murder plot outside a day care centre. 
Daniel Rodney Badger, 40, has emerged as a key suspect in Sydney’s underworld and its ongoing conflicts after detectives seized $260 million worth of drugs allegedly belonging to his syndicate.
On Wednesday, the Herald revealed Badger’s syndicate was believed to have ordered the murder of Sydney woman Thi Kim Tran after her husband was accused of stealing 80 kilograms of methamphetamine from the group.

 


SpongeBob SquarePants Cooking Meth and Fake JFK Speeches: How the Sora 2 Launch Went Sideways Rolling Stone 


Remedies for Ridiculous House Prices Steve Keen


Crisis: One in four Scots directly affected by homelessness Scottish Housing News


Will the SNP Reform or Rebrand? BarrheadBoy



Glencore disclosures raise questions over mining giant’s tax bill 
Luke Kinsella Oct 8, 2025
 Glencore, the Swiss commodities giant in line to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government handouts for its struggling Mount Isa copper smelter, paid below Australia’s corporate tax rate last year. 
Filings with the Australian Taxation Office showed the mining giant’s main holding company, Glencore Investments, paid an effective 24 per cent tax on its $7.9 billion in taxable income in the 12 months to the end of June 2024. Its parent company, Glencore Holdings, reported a taxable income of $5.9 billion but paid no tax at all, according to the new filings.

TPB continues compliance crackdown on PwC, broader industry

Tax watchdog launches new probe into current and former PwC partners 
Edmund Tadros Oct 16, 2025 

 The country’s tax watchdog is investigating current and former PwC partners for potential code breaches, prolonging the firm’s pain from its long-running scandal over the leaking of government information. 
The number of individuals and the nature of the Tax Practitioners Board’s inquiries are unclear, but the new probes are expected to be completed by next year. The regulator is also investigating senior figures from other major firms, according to people not authorised to discuss ongoing inquiries.

 Also looming over the firm is the Australian Federal Police’s investigation into the actions of former partners relating to the tax leaks matter, known as Operation Alesia. AFP assistant commissioner Stephen Nutt told a Senate hearing last week that officers had “so far” reviewed 90,000 documents in the ongoing probe and that the “investigation is very much ongoing”.

PwC has been working to move on from a scandal that erupted after it was revealed that former partner Peter Collins shared confidential information with PwC personnel to market the firm’s tax services. The firm then designed schemes to help clients sidestep the tax laws that it was helping develop.
The scandal’s fallout led to hundreds of PwC partners and thousands of staff leaving the firm, an unprecedented crackdown on tax advisers and the prospect of wholesale changes to the way the major accounting firms are regulated. PwC’s current chief executive, Kevin Burrowes, has responded by pushing through extensive reforms to the way the firm is governed and operates since his appointment in the middle of 2023.

Four findings

Peter de Cure, the chairman of the Tax Practitioners Board, told a separate Senate estimates hearing last week that the board had completed the four investigations into the tax leaks matter, making findings against two current and two former PwC partners. This means that all 10 of the announced investigations into the leaks matter have now been completed.
The unnamed individuals, de Cure said, had breached the Tax Practitioners Board’s code to act with “honesty and integrity”.
He also said that one of the former partners has appealed the finding: “There is one further case ... the tax agent in that matter is exercising their appeal rights, and the Federal Court has provided confidentiality orders in relation to that matter, so I’m not at liberty to discuss that matter any further.”
The two current PwC partners sanctioned were not directly involved in sharing confidential information but failed to take appropriate action over the matter, according to people familiar with the details of the finding who asked for anonymity to speak more freely.
Pressed by Greens senator Barbara Pocock to explain the value of a confidential sanction, de Cure replied: “It is not behaviour to the extent which is warranted at a more severe penalty ... and [they] are expected to improve their compliance with the code in the future.”
The findings follow the board sanctioning former partner Peter Collins and ex-PwC chief executive Tom Seymourover the tax leaks scandal. Collins was deregistered by the Tax Practitioners Board for dishonesty and for sharing confidential government briefings with PwC partners and clients. 
Seymour was also deregistered, in his case for failing to act on signs that secret government information was being shared by tax partners at the firm. Collins has not commented publicly on the sanction, while Seymour has said the Tax Practitioners Board’s findings were incorrect.

PwC ‘committed to change’

Separately, another former PwC partner, Richard Gregg, has been deregistered by the Tax Practitioners Board for making “false or misleading statements in applications for the [R&D Tax Incentive] for multiple clients”. This sanction was unrelated to the tax leaks matter. Gregg, who has not practised as a tax agent since last year, settled a defamation action against PwC this year for being wrongly linked to the firm’s tax leaks scandal.
In August, the Finance Department lifted a ban on PwC working for the government, angering Pocock and Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, who accused the firm of failing to answer questions about aspects of the leak.
PwC Australia remains under the supervised remediation of the firm’s global operation following the tax leaks scandal and partially funds the salary of Burrowes. Under his leadership, the firm has fulfilled all but one of its 47 “commitments to change”. This includes appointing independent directors and becoming the first big firm to publish local audited accounts.
The Tax Practitioners Board and PwC declined to comment.
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 leads our coverage of the professional services sector. He is based in our Sydney newsroom. Email Edmund at edmundtadros@afr.com.au

 

         TPB continues compliance crackdown on PwC, broader industry

As the PwC tax leaks scandal remains front of mind for the industry, the Tax Practitioners Board is launching an investigation into current and former PwC partners for potential code breaches.

By Imogen Wilson  

As the TPB continues down the path of a sharpened focus on delivering a fair, data-driven, risk-based compliance program, it is looking to delve deeper into the conduct of current and former PwC partners.

Yesterday morning (16 October), The Australian Financial Review reported that the “tax watchdog” had launched a new investigation putting current and former PwC partners under its microscope in the long aftermath of the big four firm’s tax leaks scandal.

According to the Financial Review, “The number of individuals and the nature of the TPB’s inquiries are unclear, but the new probes are expected to be completed by next year.”

“The regulator is also investigating senior figures from other major firms, according to people not authorised to discuss ongoing inquiries,” the Financial Review said.

The launch of the alleged investigation comes after the TPB unveiled its 2025–26 corporate plan in August and TPB chair, Peter de Cure, shared the regulator’s view on an Accountants Daily podcast in July.  

For the duration of the next financial year, de Cure said the TPB would take a sharpened approach and focus on a fair and data-driven risk-based compliance program, supporting tax practitioners and the public, contributing to informing the tax and regulatory system as well as further enhancing its capabilities.

Off the back of the uncovered PwC scandal, de Cure said the TPB would aim to promote voluntary compliance, while ensuring fairness for ethical practitioners.

“These priorities will address systemic issues like tax fraud and shared risks such as personal tax obligations, while also targeting promoters of tax schemes, unregistered preparers and professional misconduct to protect vulnerable Australians from financial abuse,” he said.

“These priorities are based on data, complaints and key risks in our compliance program. Sharing our compliance priorities helps the tax profession to review and improve services, protecting their clients, practice, and the integrity of the profession.”

In a podcast episode with Peter de Cure earlier this year, statistics on whistleblower reports under the TPB’s regime – which came into play in 2024 – were also shared, with over 1,100 whistleblower complaints having been received by the watchdog.

The whistleblower arrangements were introduced last year on 1 July to individuals who ‘blew the whistle’ about related entities to the TPB to assist it in performing its functions and duties under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009.

On this, de Cure said since the enforcement of the reforms, the TPB had received a total of 1,111 complaints, of which 601 qualified for disclosure and 106 had an eligible relationship.

“For the first time, the TPB is now an eligible whistleblower recipient. So, we have a system with the ATO where the complaints can be made direct to us, direct to the ATO or to the government at large. Now we have a process with the ATO where we triage those complaints and divide them between ourselves,” he said.

“The right ones that are about the ATO go to them, the ones that are relevant for us come to us. Over the period, we've received a total of 1100 complaints, of which 601 qualify.”

Accountants Daily has reached out to the TPB for comment to confirm the recently launched investigation into current and former PwC partners as reported by the Financial Review