Why Jimmy Kimmel would have never been cancelled in Australia

 Why Jimmy Kimmel would have never been cancelled in Australia

Does anyone else jump online, read about US politics and wonder if they’ve been dropped into a George Orwell novel? If only the prose were as polished and witty.

US Government will use Musk’s Grok AI

BoingBoing – regardless of over concerns of “inaccuracies, hate speech, and ideological bias: “Some House and Senate Democrats, along with dozens of left-leaning advocacy groups, have criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy Grok. They claim the chatbot produces inaccuracies, hate speech, and ideological bias, among other concerns, making it unsafe and untrustworthy for federal use. Elon Musk’s Grok AI is now available to federal agencies at a bargain price. The General Services Administration (GSA) announced the deal on Thursday.

Elon Musk’s Father Accused of Child Sexual AbuseNew York Times

Jeff Bezos’ Billionaire Dad Is Hiring a CEO to Run His Family Office WSJ

Who’s Getting Rich Off Your Attention? Kyla Scanlon

Starbase will take partial control of beach near Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch site Texas Tribune

He spilled Peter Thiel’s Antichrist secrets. Now he’s banned from the lectures San Francisco Standard

A history of the Internet, part 3: The rise of the user

Ars Technica: “Welcome to the final article in our three-part series on the history of the Internet. If you haven’t already, catch up with part one and part two. As a refresher, here’s the story so far: The ARPANET was a projectstarted by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Project Agency in 1969 to network different mainframe computers together across the country.

 It later evolved into the Internet, connecting multiple global networks together using a common TCP/IP protocol. By the late 1980s, a small group of academics and a few curious consumers connected to each other on the Internet, which was still mostly text-based. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an Internet-based hypertext system designed for graphical interfaces. 

At first, it ran only on the expensive NeXT workstation. But when Berners-Lee published the web’s protocols and made them available for free, people built web browsers for many different operating systems. The most popular of these was Mosaic, written by Marc Andreessen, who formed a company to create its successor, Netscape. 

Microsoft responded with Internet Explorer, and the browser wars were on. The web grew exponentially, and so did the hype surrounding it. It peaked in early 2001, right before the dotcom collapse that left most web-based companies nearly or completely bankrupt. Some people interpreted this crash as proof that the consumer Internet was just a fad. Others had different ideas…”

Exclusive: University sought secret KPMG staff spreadsheet

How the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5)combat transnational tax crime through enforcement collaboration.

The Week America Woke Up to Oligarchy BIG by Matt Stoller

Hegseth calls mysterious meeting on heels of limiting press access. Coincidence? | Opinion USA Today

Column: Democracy dies when speech and the press are suppressed The Enquirer Journal

Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find Manager's quality control priorities were upside down

Future Liberal leader or party disruptor? Andrew Hastie and the rise of the ‘MAGA right’

WA MP offers a divisive brand of politics that shuns net zero and migration and is anchored in flag-waving patriotism, faith and family

DHS Has Been Collecting US Citizens’ DNA for Years Wired

The University of Technology Sydney denied the existence of a KPMG spreadsheet ranking the research performance of academics, in breach of its EBA, until it was forced to release it. By Rick Morton.

Exclusive: University sought secret KPMG staff spreadsheet

Epstein calendar released by Democrats mentions Elon Musk, who denies visiting his island NBC News

 

Elon Musk gives update on Tesla Optimus progressTeslarati

 

Shooting for the moon. How Elon Musk’s SpaceX is faring Los Angeles Times

RIP Graham White TV exec who established some of the ABC's most iconic series

Graham White, the visionary broadcaster who was instrumental in shaping some of the ABC's most beloved programs, died peacefully on Sunday aged 93.

During a celebrated career spanning more than three decades, White held several senior roles and helped create some of the public broadcaster's most iconic shows.

TV exec who established some of the ABC's most iconic series dies aged 93

How MI6 Fabricated Iran Nuke Fraud Kit Klarenberg

Iran Sanctions Snapback Offers Chinese Oil Buyers a Lucrative Boost Reuters

The UN at 80: ignored and irrelevant Michael Roberts

At least 260 suspects in online romance scams arrested across Africa, Interpol says Euronews

 

‘I’ve never guessed I’d be duped like this’: Lovelorn dater loses $1.4 million in romance scam The Independent

LONGEVITY:  A single blood test can measure how different parts of our bodies are aging

SO DO CLOTHES:  Cancer researchers find tattoos protect against melanoma

How Israel Captured TikTok American Conservative

The 22 Very Online Upstarts Changing the Face of Politics

Wired [no paywall] – subscription access: “Donald Trump’s second term has ushered in a new era in American politics. It’s brasher, crueler, more direct, more super online, and certainly more dystopian. Democrats and sometimes even Republicans have struggled to compete with Trump’s monopoly on the attention market. But the leaders of both parties are only mortal—yes, even Trump—and they’re not going to be around forever. A new generation of political talent is muscling its way onto the scene, armed with new ways of connecting with the masses and original visions of the country they want to live in. Here are the candidates, the influencers, and the insiders on both the left and the right that we think you’ll keep hearing from, and why. You might just remember when you spotted a future president in this edition of WIRED.

Guide to New Politicos

• THE DIGITAL NATIVES →
• THE MAGA BABIES →
• THE HETERODOX REPUBLICANS →
• THE MUTINY ON THE LEFT →
• FROM VIRAL HITS TO POLITICAL STARS→
• THE TEXAS CORNER →
• THE CONNECTORS →
• EXPORTED TO EUROPE →

Explore.org Livecams

• explore.org is a multimedia organization that documents leaders around the world who have devoted their lives to extraordinary causes. Both educational and inspirational, explore creates a portal into the soul of humanity by championing the selfless acts of others.
• explore’s growing library consists of more than 250 original films and 30,000 photographs from around the world. We showcase our work at film festivals, on over 100 public broadcast and cable channels, and on numerous online destinations including explore.org, Snag Films, Hulu and TakePart.
• “At explore we are archivists,” explains founder Charles Annenberg Weingarten. “We strive to create films that allow the viewer to join us on our journey as we go on location and experience what unfolds. It’s like the viewers are traveling with the team.”
• explore features a wide range of topics—from animal rights, health and human services, and poverty to the environment, education, and spirituality. Delivered in short, digestible bites, explore films appeal to viewers of all ages, from children learning about other cultures for the first time to adults looking for a fresh perspective on the world around them.
• explore films include: a woman in Mumbai who has dedicated her life to rescuing young women from prostitution, a priest in Los Angeles who helps gang members reintegrate into society, a project to protect wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and an environmental university in Costa Rica that focuses on sustainable development.
• Individuals and organizations featured in many explore films also receive explore funding in the form of Annenberg Foundation grants. To date, over $69 million has been awarded to over 300 non-profit organizations worldwide.
• explore.org, the online portal for explore, is a community destination where people share thoughts, engage in dialogue, view and email films and photographs, and embed their favorites on blogs and social networking sites.

Bribery, brothels and breaches of confidence

 Anti-corruption chief Paul Brereton continued defence consulting after declaring he had resigned from role

Bribery, brothels and breaches of confidence: ATO officer loses appeal against imprisonment

Tax

A former ATO client engagement officer has lost an appeal against a five-year prison sentence for accepting a $100,000 bribe in return for a favourable tax audit.

By Emma Partis • 29 September 2025

On 12 March 2024, former ATO client engagement officer Wenfeng Wei was sentenced to five years in prison after breaching the Commonwealth Criminal Code on multiple occasions.

He accepted bribes in return for favourable audits and illegally accessed restricted ATO data on associates’ competitors in what the courts described as a “gross abuse of trust.”

In May 2016, Wei was assigned to audit the taxation affairs of Raymond Schlemon and his company, Global World Group.

That August, Schlemon gave Wei a $100,000 cash bribe. In return, Wei undertook the audit in a way that “significantly favoured Shlemon,” assessing him for outstanding tax liabilities of $136,290, when the audit ought to have identified income tax and GST shortfalls of $6.286 million.

Wei, who also had a gambling addiction, laundered the money through casinos to provide an “ostensible source for the money,” court documents said.

He also accessed restricted ATO data concerning Shlemon in an unauthorised way more than 500 times between April 2017 and February 2022. He communicated with Shlemon before, during and after these ‘episodes’ of unauthorised access.

Wei engaged in similar activities relating to another associate, Chao Chang, who operated a brothel in Sydney’s Surry Hills known as ‘The Ginza Club.’

The former ATO officer accessed restricted government data relating to Chang and his business interests over 900 times between August 2017 and March 2020.

Furthermore, at the request of Chang, Wei accessed restricted ATO data on a competitor of Chang’s on 294 occasions. This included personal details, information regarding property transactions, shareholdings and tax returns of the competitor.

The judge described this conduct as “particularly concerning because of the breach of confidence in circumstances where [the competitor] was entitled to expect that a public organisation would protect her from competitors and the gross abuse of trust involved,” court documents read. 

"The offending involved a gross violation of [the competitor’s] privacy as well as of the ATO system.”

Wei was sentenced to five years in prison, with a non-parole period of two years and six months. The sentence commenced on 12 March 2024 and is set to expire on 11 March 2029.

The former ATO officer launched an appeal against his sentence, arguing that the sentencing judge had failed to consider his “contrition and remorse,” and his sentence should be reduced as he had plead guilty and cooperated with authorities.

Last Wednesday (24 September), the NSW Supreme Court rejected his appeal, finding that Wei’s cooperation had not warranted further reductions in his sentence, given that his early guilty plea had already resulted in a 25 per cent reduction in his sentence.

In fact, the judges said that they likely would have given him a stronger sentence, given the nature of his conduct.

“Were I to resentence, I too would impose a materially higher sentence for the bribery offence, even taking into account the evidence adduced on the usual basis against the possibility that this Court might resentence,” justice Mark Leeming noted.

“That is because the offending was serious and sustained, and the errors identified by the applicant are relatively minor in terms of their impact on the process of formulating the appropriate sentence.”

ABC ordered to pay $150,000 fine for unlawfully sacking journalist and presenter Antoinette Lattouf

ABC ordered to pay $150,000 fine for unlawfully sacking journalist and presenter Antoinette Lattouf

A lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump is

Strength in Numbers: “Trump is unpopular Compare Trump’s topline job approval (-11) to that of other recent presidents, and he stands out quite clearly (not in a good way)

 ‘We cannot wait’: EU calls for drone wall to deter Russia after new incident in Denmark Euronews. ‘Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the incident “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date” and said she could not rule out Russian involvement.’

How MI6 Fabricated Iran Nuke Fraud Kit Klarenberg

Kamala Harris, In Rachel Maddow Interview, Hails Jimmy Kimmel’s Return: “We Saw The Power Of The People” Deadline

“A Clusterf**k!”: Real Motive Behind NATO’s Dangerous False Flags Mark Sleboda (video)

The Great European Drone Panic, +US’ Sinister Venezuelan Buildup Simplicius

Drone Strike in Haiti Kills 8 Children at a Birthday Party New York Times. “In March, the authorities in Haiti hired foreign military contractors to operate armed drones to target gangs that terrorize the capital, Port-au-Prince. The contractors work for a company owned by Erik Prince…”

Ooni Pizza

 Scientists find proof that an asteroid hit the North Sea more than 43 million years ago.

Cooking at 500 degrees is easy with this pizza oven – even for beginners The latest Ooni makes dough rise in seconds and cooks steak to perfection – even when things get too hot to handle.

To the folks at Ooni who say the stone base inside their Koda Pro 2 pizza oven will only rarely need light cleaning, I have only one thing to say.

You have never seen someone in a panic, madly trying to shake a rhomboid-shaped pizza from a pizza peel, only to have the entire, meat-loving topping spew onto the 500 degrees pizza stone and bake to ashen smithereens before they could even scream.

The mess certainly cannot be removed by “lightly scrubbing it with water (although this is rarely necessary),” as Ooni’s website puts it.

Which is to say, you have never seen the staff here at the Digital Life Labs attempt to review your very fun and now very filthy pizza oven. Sorry to tell you, but we need a fire hose after the mess we’ve made of it.

Although I fear the stone in the Bluetooth-enabled, high-tech pizza oven is now irreparably stained with burnt-out pizza gizzards, the stone does have two sides to it, and once we get a handle on making pizza dough that doesn’t stick to a pizza peel (a misnomer if ever there was one) we’ll simply turn the stone over for a fresh start.

I, for one, can’t wait. We’ve had a lot of fun, and our early attempts – with the notable exception of the fourth attempt, which in the moments before its cremation looked more like a novel meat-and-cheese trifle than traditional Italian dish – were surprisingly delicious, even if they were, well, square.

And I do mean “moments”. We used an infrared thermometer gun to measure the temperature of the pizza stone inside the Koda Pro 2, and it really does get up to the advertised 500 degrees. The hottest we recorded was 510 degrees at the back of the oven.

At 500 degrees, every second counts. Pizza dough will rise before your eyes, and start to burn in little more than a minute. Steak will get a fabulous, even crust in a minute, too, though it will likely need a reverse sear in the oven afterwards, or it will need pre-cooking in a sous vide bath, or whatever your preferred method is.

We experimented with flat breads, too, and got delicious results very quickly.

One downside is the Koda 2 Pro only offers a Bluetooth connection between the oven and your phone for that remote monitoring. Other digital BBQs we’ve reviewed have a Wi-Fi connection, which allows you to stray much farther from the backyard and still keep an eye on things. With a Wi-Fi connection to the internet, you could rush to the shops to grab some ingredient you forgot and still remain updated by the app.

In contrast, the Bluetooth connection to the Ooni oven would often drop out when we left the backyard of the Labs to venture inside, making it less useful than it might be.

That said, remote monitoring on a pizza oven is far less important than it is on, say, a smoker BBQ, which might take many hours to complete a cook. Once you’ve started cooking at pizza-oven temperatures, you have to attend to the cook at 10- or 20-second intervals, so forget about dashing to the shops. The 80-centimetre length of a pizza turning peel is about as remote as you can get.

It’s worth noting that the app doesn’t extend to controlling the temperature of the Koda 2 Pro, either. There’s no thermostat, no digital control in this oven, and temperature is set like it might be on a gas cooktop: you turn the gas up for hotter and down for cooler.

Turning the oven down is something we wish we had done the first time we tried searing a steak in the oven. The maximum heat wasn’t too much for the steak itself – that came out great on our very first attempt. But 500 degrees was too much for the lovingly seasoned cast-iron griddle we pre-heated along with the oven, that shed its seasoning oil and flash-rusted pretty well the moment it cooled down.

And no amount of water is getting that rust off, let me tell you. It’s going to need chemicals and a wire brush mounted to an angle grinder for sure.

Ooni Koda Pro 2 pizza oven

• Likes | Great pizzas even for beginners. Can do steaks, breads and other dishes too.
• Dislikes | Bluetooth only.
• Price | Ooni Pizza Oven Brush: $50. Ooni Koda 2 Pro Gas Powered Pizza Oven: $1099. Gas bottle: around $75. Ooni Pizza Peel: from $80. Ooni Pizza Turning Peel: $99. Ooni cast-iron Grizzler Plate: $119

Calder Gardens Puts Sculpture in a Loosely Sketched Context

Designed by Herzog & de Meuron and landscape architect Piet Oudolf, a new indoor-outdoor space dedicated to Alexander Calder is an airy if aloof addition to Philadelphia’s cultural forum.

Man Crushed To Death By Andy Warhol Art Car

 Evil people always support

each other; That is their

chief strength.

Matt Webb: “Gin & tonic was invented by the East India Company to keep its colonising army safe [from malaria] in India. Bet the covid vaccine would have been more popular if it got you drunk.”

How to Make Your Dog Laugh Humor Science

Man Crushed To Death By Andy Warhol Art Car

“A man was killed on Wednesday on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall while unloading a 1979 BMW Art Car that was custom-painted by Andy Warhol. … The unidentified man was pinned under the vehicle when a winch securing it on a flatbed truck failed.” - ARTnews