Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Jeff Hoopes (North Carolina) presents Does Voluntary Private Disclosure Reduce IRS Audit Risk? (co-authored with Andrew Belnap and Reed Hadfield) at Duke today, as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:
Julie is an inspiring science educator and Head of Department at Parkdale Secondary College. She champions girls in STEM through targeted programs, curriculum innovation and real-world learning partnerships.
Her leadership is shaping confident, curious future scientists.
KPMG has selected Gary Wingrove as its next global chief executive, with the former head of its Australia business beating UK boss Jon Holt in the race to lead the 276,000-person firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Big Four accounting firm’s global board met in late February to discuss the candidates and recommended Wingrove, who is currently global chief operating officer of the $40bn-revenue operation, after an anonymous vote.
The decision is due to be ratified by the global council, a wider group of leaders of all of KPMG’s member firms, this month, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Holt, who had been viewed as an early favourite for the job, campaigned on a promise of transformation for the global firm after almost five years running KPMG in the UK, where he is seen as having repaired its reputation from a series of audit failures. He oversaw a successful merger of KPMG’s UK and Swiss firms.
Wingrove also set out a vision for running KPMG in a fast-changing industry, according to a person familiar with his pitch. He has been an architect of KPMG’s strategy to force consolidation among its national member firms since joining the global management team in January 2022.
Before that, he ran KPMG’s Australia business for eight years, including through the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unlike traditional companies, KPMG is structured as a network of locally owned partnerships that share a brand, under the global umbrella body that Wingrove will now lead.
The FT reported in January that Holt and Wingrove were in a two-person race to lead the organisation.
Wingrove had “been behind some of the most transformational aspects” of KPMG’s strategy in recent years, including closer integration and “multibillion-dollar investments in technology and AI”, according to a person familiar with the business.
The changes had helped KPMG to be the fastest-growing of the Big Four globally for the past two years, the person said, ahead of larger rivals Deloitte, EY and PwC. As leader of KPMG Australia, he oversaw a near-doubling of revenue, profits and headcount, the person added.
Another person familiar with the race said Holt had pitched himself as the more progressive candidate while Wingrove had been seen by some board members as a continuity candidate with operational strengths. “In the end the majority of the board opted for more of the same. Time will tell whether that’s the right choice,” the person said.
Holt plans to see out the last three years of his term at the helm of the 16,000-person UK firm, according to a person familiar with his thinking, scotching the possibility of an immediate leadership contest at KPMG’s second-largest member firm.
Many senior partners in the UK had been confident Holt would win the global job and had begun jostling for position in anticipation of a vacancy, with a number of candidates being seriously considered until last week, according to one person at the firm.
KPMG International has said its current boss Bill Thomas’s term runs until September 30. “KPMG International has a process under way for electing a new Chair & CEO, which will conclude when the . . . Global Council meets in March,” it said.
London/New York | KPMG has selected Gary Wingrove as its next global chief executive, with the former head of its Australia business beating UK boss Jon Holt in the race to lead the 276,000-person firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
The big four accounting firm’s global board met in late February to discuss the candidates and recommended Wingrove, who is currently global chief operating officer of the $US40 billion-revenue ($56 billion) operation, after an anonymous vote.
Gary Wingrove ran KPMG’s Australia business for eight years, including through the COVID-19 pandemic. Renee Nowytarger
The decision is due to be ratified by the global council, a wider group of leaders of all of KPMG’s member firms, this month, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Holt, who had been viewed as an early favourite for the job, campaigned on a promise of transformation for the global firm after almost five years running KPMG in the UK, where he is seen as having repaired its reputation from a series of audit failures. He oversaw a successful merger of KPMG’s UK and Swiss firms.
Wingrove also set out a vision for running KPMG in a fast-changing industry, according to a person familiar with his pitch. He has been an architect of KPMG’s strategy to force consolidation among its national member firms since joining the global management team in January 2022.
Before that, he ran KPMG’s Australia business for eight years, including through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unlike traditional companies, KPMG is structured as a network of locally owned partnerships that share a brand, under the global umbrella body that Wingrove will now lead.
The Financial Times reported in January that Holt and Wingrove were in a two-person race to lead the organisation.
Wingrove had “been behind some of the most transformational aspects” of KPMG’s strategy recently, including closer integration and “multibillion-dollar investments in technology and AI”, according to a person familiar with the business.
The changes had helped KPMG to be the fastest-growing of the big four globally for the past two years, the person said, ahead of larger rivals Deloitte, EY and PwC. As leader of KPMG Australia, he oversaw a near-doubling of revenue, profits and headcount, the person added.
Another person familiar with the race said Holt had pitched himself as the more progressive candidate while Wingrove had been seen by some board members as a continuity candidate with operational strengths. “In the end the majority of the board opted for more of the same. Time will tell whether that’s the right choice,” the person said.
Holt plans to see out the last three years of his term at the helm of the 16,000-person UK firm, according to a person familiar with his thinking, scotching the possibility of an immediate leadership contest at KPMG’s second-largest member firm.
Many senior partners in the UK had been confident Holt would win the global job and had begun jostling for position in anticipation of a vacancy, with several candidates being seriously considered until last week, according to one person at the firm.
KPMG International has said its current boss Bill Thomas’ term runs until September 30. “KPMG International has a process under way for electing a new chair and CEO, which will conclude when the ... Global Council meets in March,” it said.
“Approximately 20,900 unredacted emails and file attachments sent and received by Jeffrey Epstein over nineteen years, providing previously unknown details of Epstein’s activities and the cases against him.
The data comes from Epstein’s [email protected] email address, dates ranging from 2002 until his death in 2019, with emails continuing to be received until December 2021. This dataset consists of about 18,700 emails and 2,200 file attachments that were exchanged with approximately 700 email addresses, and include emails with his lawyers and Ghislaine Maxwell. Several months before the data was submitted to Distributed Denial of Secrets(DDoSecrets), Bloomberg received a submission of a similar cache of emails from [email protected].
The source for the cache submitted to DDoSecrets stated that they were not the source for Bloomberg, a statement supported by slight variations in the data (such as Bloomberg identifying emails as having been sent to the account in 2022, as opposed to the December 2021 cut-off date for the data received by DDoSecrets). Based on the currently available evidence, the Bloombergarchive was created slightly after the archive that was submitted to DDoSecrets Reserved. The data is only being made available to verified journalists and researchers until we are able to identify which portions can be released unredacted without endangering victims whose identities have not been previously made public and what redactions are necessary for the remaining data. Request access.
On November 26, 2025 the first public tranche was released, containing 13,010 emails or 69.5% of the full set. The publicly released portions of the emails and the rest of the Epstein files can be downloaded and searched here.”
Lifehacker: “If you’re tired of X and Threads, it might be time to move to greener, or perhaps bluer, pastures…It turns out that, with the right platform, it’s possible to like social media again. Bluesky is quite unlike most other social media networks. You have a lot of control over who sees your posts and how they reply to them, plus you can block and mute users en masse and tweak moderation settings just so. If you’re new to Bluesky, or if you’ve just been using the default settings, it’s time to dig deeper into all the ways you can customize your experience…We say it often at Lifehacker: you really should be using RSS.
Just like Bluesky, it’s another way to find or read new blogs and news without relying on an algorithm. And you can even follow Bluesky profiles in your RSS reader of choice, no setup required. Go to a Bluesky profile and add ‘/rss’to the end of the URL. Then, copy it and add it as a source in your RSS reader of choice. Easy peasy. Repeat this for as many profiles as you want, sort them in easy to access folders, and you can now read posts and links from your favorite Bluesky profiles right in your RSS reader, so you can easily mix them in with your articles and blogs…
…Even if you’re on Bluesky, that doesn’t mean you only have to use Bluesky. You can treat Bluesky as your home base, and still post your content to other networks like Threads and Mastodon at the same time, using an app like Croissant. It’s a simple app that lets you connect your Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon accounts all at once, taking advantage of their fediverse connectivity. You can then use Croissant to draft your posts, and send them out to all three networks at once. You can schedule posts, too, which is helpful if you’re using Bluesky in a professional capacity. Croissant costs $2.99/month, or $19.99/year…”
Sorry, is anyone tired of hearing about Spain? Because I'm not. I can never have too much integrity & decency in my life, in my timeline.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the conflict in the Middle East was another example of the failing world order, as he called on Australia to work with Canada to build a new system of middle-power coalitions to replace the ruptured status quo of great-power rivalry.
“Middle powers like Canada, and I would suggest Australia, should recognise that the rupture in the international system represents just that … a clear break from the past, and we need to act decisively to secure our shared future,” Carney said in a speech to the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Wednesday evening.
“Middle powers, working together, cannot only build true sovereignty. We can also help shape the next global order. Australia and Canada can’t compel, like the great powers, but we can convene. We can set the agenda, shape the rules, and organise and build capacity through coalitions that deliver results at speed and global scale”
Spain to Trump: "Spain opposes this catastrophe … governments are there to improve people's lives … not to worsen them .. it is absolutely unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this task use the smokescreen of war to mask their incompetence $ line the pockets of a select few."
After the U.S. senators and the Prime Minister of Spain, now the President of France, Macron, has also opposed Trump and Netanyahu’s aggression against Iran.
The military actions by the U.S. and Israel against Iran have been carried out beyond the limits of international law, which we cannot endorse
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has lashed out at the American-Israeli strikes, underlining his refusal to participate even after President Trump threatened Madrid with economic retaliation.
Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez on the Iran War:
"Spain's position at this juncture is clear and forceful. It is the same position we have maintained in Ukraine and also in Gaza.
No to the breaking of international law that protects us all, especially the most defenceless - the civilian population."
“Most of us search Google the same way we always have: type a few words, scroll, click something that looks close enough, and hope. For a while, that worked. Google handed us a list of links and let us take it from there. What’s happening now is something different. A2024 study by SparkTorofound that nearly 60% of Google searches end without anyone clicking through to a website, and the trend has accelerated since.
By February 2026, Ahrefs found thatqueries triggering AI Overviews now see a 58% reductionin clicks. Google has been systematically inserting itself between you and the original source, answering questions with AI-generated summaries before you ever reach the page those answers came from. The results youdosee are filtered through an algorithm that weighs your search history, your location, and the billions of dollars advertisers have spent to appear for particular queries.
Two people searching identical phrases on the same day can get meaningfully different results without either of them knowing it. And becauseGoogle controls roughly 90% of the world’s search traffic, most people have no frame of reference for what a less mediated search experience would even look like…”
Don’t Build Your House on Rented Land: Why Writers Should Avoid Platform Dependency and How They Can Do So
Via LLRX – Don’t Build Your House on Rented Land: Why Writers Should Avoid Platform Dependency and How They Can Do So – Over the past several years, platforms such as Substack have become increasingly attractive to writers seeking to establish themselves as an independent voice. The appeal is obvious. They are easy to use and can turn a writer into a publisher overnight. No web developer is required. Payment systems are integrated, and distribution is built in. Substack markets itself as a refuge for writers who prefer autonomy to corporate hierarchy. There are good reasons to use Substack and similar businesses, but there are also risks. These platforms are not inherently malign, but they are fragile. This article by Jerry Lawson will focus on Substack, the currently trendy platform, but the key ideas apply to many other platforms.
