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
Long before block-long queues formed for a viral focaccia, Peter Raineri spent his Saturday mornings navigating a different kind of crowd. Before TikTok and Instagram, customers lined the counter of his Five Dock continental deli, shoulder-to-shoulder, arguing over who was next in line.
When the Raineris floated the idea of a ticket system to manage the rush, regulars revolted. They threatened to boycott the shop – the “Saturday morning stoush” was half the fun.
That communal energy sustained the family-run Raineri’s for decades. Peter, who opened P&R Raineri’s Continental Deli on Great North Road in 1981, died last Saturday, aged 90.
“My mum and dad decided to get into the deli business, which was very popular among the Italian community back then,” Peter’s son, Sam, said.
“They started in the small shop, and it expanded from there. It got really popular over time … people just love to come and see us and have a chat.”
Raineri’s has long been a sanctuary for Italian Australians, stacked with chargrilled eggplant, prosciutto, wood-fired breads and enormous wheels of cheese. It also catered to customers seeking the specific staples of their home provinces. The Herald previously reported on Peter’s understanding of those loyalties: Sicilians drink Torissi, Calabrese drink Mauro, and Neapolitans drink Kimbo.
Peter’s presence at the deli was a main reason customers kept returning, Sam says. He still hears stories about his father decades on.
“My dad was always open to everybody,” Sam said. “Because he treated everyone equally, we got this generational thing. Families, their kids coming in, and it’s like, ‘I remember your dad gave me a panino for free when I was six,’ and now they’re married with kids.”
Despite their generous sizes, the sandwiches are $15, no matter what goes on them. Peter was determined to keep his panini affordable.
Peter’s sons, Joseph and Sam, will keep Raineri’s going, having taken over day-to-day operations when their father, then 86, stepped back to tend to his garden. For the four decades before that, Sam said, his father practically lived at the deli.
Even his death did not stop the doors from opening. Sam said they considered closing for a day, but it wouldn’t have been in his father’s spirit.
“We’re going to close on the day of the funeral, but that’s it,” Sam said. “My dad, he’d always send my mum to people’s funerals. He’d always be at the shop because he was so in love with the shop. That was his life, that was his old mentality – the shop came first, and everything else came second.”
While still coming to terms with his father’s passing, Sam said he is beginning to see those traits in himself.
Sam Raineri, son of Peter and Rosaria, took over running the deli with his brother, Joseph.JANIE BARRETT
Follow the Changes: 9 Ways Web Archives are Used in Digital Investigations
Internet Archive Blogs: “Digital journalists increasingly turn to web archives like the Wayback Machine to follow how things on the Internet break, change or disappear – from deleted posts to quietly edited pages. The web has become not only a source of informationbut also the subject of media investigations, prompting journalists, researchers and activists to use digital archives to reconstruct timelines, verify claims, uncover hidden connections and hold powerful actors to account.
As online materials grow more fragile and prone to disappearance, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been critical in making “lost” web pages available – recently celebrating archiving over a trillion pages. As we’ve previously written about on this blog, the Wayback Machine is an important resource for our work as media researchers, helping us to trace histories of digital media objects (for example, changes in ad tracker signatures of viral “fake news” sites over time). We are also interested in how others use web archives across fields, and what we can learn from each other.
In this piece we draw on the Internet Archive’s News Stories collection to surface practices and use cultures of the Wayback Machine amongst journalists and media organisations. We analysed a dataset of about 8,600 news articles, assembled by the IA via daily Google News keyword searches since 2018. Drawing on a combination of digital methods, machine learning and lots of reading – we surfaced nine ways that journalists use the Wayback Machine in their reporting…” [h/t Barclay Walsh]
From AI tools to Prince Andrew’s arrest: How newsrooms are digging into the Jeffrey Epstein files
Reuters Institute: “Over 3.5 million documents, 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. The Jeffrey Epstein files, released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in several tranches, constituted a disclosure of rare magnitude. This trove of documents opened a window into the ecosystem surrounding a powerful, well-connected convicted child sex offender.
The release offered journalists an opportunity to interrogate a sprawling evidentiary record and trace networks of access and influence stretching across politics, academia, finance and royalty. So far, journalists have broken stories on Epstein’s connections to powerful figures such as Peter Mandelson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, and many others. Yet those revelations account for only a small fraction of what the files contain. As reporting teams continue to excavate the archive, more disclosures are almost certainly to come.
But how are journalists identifying patterns of power and proximity in such a huge trove? What, precisely, are they looking for? And how do they search for it? To answer those questions, I spoke with five editors and newsroom leaders from the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Miami Herald and Bellingcat, who are coordinating coverage of the Epstein files in their newsrooms across multiple beats…”
With no local news, those in news deserts turn to social media feeds, influencers and gossip
Medill: “In local news deserts in the U.S., residents rely heavily on social media and other non-journalistic sources to stay informed, according to a comprehensive survey by the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.
The survey revealed that among people who consume news daily in news deserts, a little more than half (51%) said they get local news from non-journalistic sources, like social media groups, influencers and friends and family. This means that by a small margin, more people in news deserts relied on non-journalistic sources than news organizations to keep informed. The survey, conducted for Medill by the national polling firm Qualtrics, asked respondents which local news sources they relied upon.
The results showed that among news desert dwellers, there was a strong preference for social media news groups (e.g., Facebook groups and Nextdoor) and local television news. About four in 10 people (42%) said they accessed social news groups daily, and they reported the same figure (41%) for local TV news. These were followed by search engines (35%), friends and family (33%) and social media influencers (30%)…”
The downsizing followed several decisions by Bezos that drove away hundreds of thousands of subscribers, from killing the Post’s endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election to announcing that the editorial pages would henceforth be dedicated to “personal liberties and free markets.” But though those moves inflicted considerable damage, the paper had been floundering ever since Donald Trump’s first presidential term, when Bezos proudly added the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to its nameplate and the paper achieved both growth and profitability.
While its principal rival, The New York Times, successfully pivoted by rolling out ancillary products such as games, a cooking app and a consumer guide, the Post lost momentum – and was then pushed off a cliff as Bezos, in my view, started placing a higher value on peace with Trump than on making sure that democracy didn’t die in darkness. I’m a journalism professor and the author of three books about the future of news.
I tracked Bezos’ stewardship of the Post during better times in my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls: How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century.” And I’ve been watching in horror over the past several years as he’s dismantled much of what he built.
The Times, as the nation’s leading newspaper, is unique, and the extent to which other publishers can learn from its example is limited. But if Bezos ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.”
Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.
- Theodor Seuss Geisel aka Dr. Suess aka Theo LeSieg (1904~1991)
The Local Stack: “I wanted the blue checkmark on LinkedIn. The one that says “this person is real.” In a sea of fake recruiters, bot accounts, and AI-generated headshots, it seemed like a smart thing to do. So I tapped “verify.” I scanned my passport. I took a selfie. Three minutes later — done. Badge acquired. I felt a tiny dopamine hit of legitimacy. Then I did what apparently nobody does. I went and read the privacy policy and terms of service. Not LinkedIn’s. Theothercompany’s.
Wait, What Other Company? When you click “verify” on LinkedIn, you’re not giving your passport to LinkedIn. You get redirected to a company called Persona. Full name: Persona Identities, Inc. Based in San Francisco, California.
LinkedIn is their client. You are the face being scanned.
I had never heard of Persona before this. Most people haven’t. That’s kind of the point — they sit invisibly between you and the platforms you trust.
So I downloaded their privacy policy (18 pages) and their terms of service (16 pages). Here’s what I found.
Everything I Gave Them – For a three-minute identity check, this is what Persona collected:
My full name — first, middle, last
My passport photo — the full document, both sides, all data on the face of it
My selfie — a photo of my face taken in real-time
My facial geometry — biometric data extracted from both images, used to match the selfie to the passport
My NFC chip data — the digital info stored on the chip inside my passport
My national ID number
My nationality, sex, birthdate, age
My email, phone number, postal address
My IP address, device type, MAC address, browser, OS version, language
My geolocation — inferred from my IP
And then there’s the weird stuff:
Hesitation detection — they tracked whether I paused during the process
Copy and paste detection — they tracked whether I was pasting information instead of typing it
Behavioral biometrics. On top of the physical biometrics. For a LinkedIn badge.
They Also Called Their Friends – Persona didn’t just use what I gave them. They went and cross-referenced me against what they call their “global network of trusted third-party data sources”:
Government databases
National ID registries
Consumer credit agencies
Utility companies
Mobile network providers
Postal address databases
I scanned my passport for a checkmark. They ran a background check….”
The service, launched in 2018 by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, employs a team of journalists to review the reliability of news sites and give them a score of 0-100, information that is used by consumers and clients including AI companies, search engines, news aggregators, brands and researchers.
Ferguson has targeted NewsGuard, suggesting that it violated antitrust laws and that it was biased, as NewsGuard had given a low score to Newsmax, the conservative news site.
In the lawsuit, NewsGuard claimed that Ferguson has engaged in a campaign extending almost a year “to impose their view of speech nirvana” on the service. The ratings service also claimed that, in the FTC approval of the merger of Omnicom and Interpublic Group, conditions were placed on the combined company that prohibits them from subscribing or relying on NewsGuard.
The merger condition bars Omnicom from doing business with any entity that engages in the “veracity of news reporting or other politically or ideologically contested facts, such as their characterization as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation, ‘bias’ or similar terms.” The provision was added after Newsmax urged a revision to a draft merger order, the lawsuit noted.
The FTC “is brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce, but rather to censor speech. And it has done so simply out of disagreement with NewsGuard’s First Amendment-protected journalistic judgments about the reliability of news sources,” NewsGuard’s attorneys, led by Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote in the lawsuit…”
Westpac and ANZ have reported suspected illegitimate borrowing, joining NAB and Commonwealth Bank on concerns the washing of illicit funds is systemic.
What actually stops a would-be dictator? Political science research points to a single factor above all others: whether enough people can see the threat for what it is.
A New Miami Herald Investigation, Julie K. Brown. “Jeffrey Epstein tried, and often succeeded, in manipulating almost every level of the criminal justice system. For this story,we looked at emails that Epstein shared with people who were involved in his criminal case — and those in the justice system who were mentioned in documents and emails. The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown is a reader-supported publication.
To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What we found: Some of their names are mentioned a lot. Epstein didn’t just stop at getting his sweetheart deal. In the year when he was supposed to be behind bars, he continued to cultivate people in the system to help him get work release, ease his sex offender requirements and to even get a pardon.
Even when he was unsuccessful, the emails show how Epstein’s ability to get that 2008 sweetheart deal only emboldened him to continue his quest to conquer the very people in the criminal justice system who were supposed to hold him accountable. This is the reason I began this project eight years ago. I felt not enough light was shown on how the criminal justice system failed Epstein’s victims.
It’s always been a mystery how and why Epstein was able to get federal immunity even though they had 40 victims. In case someone tries to tell you otherwise — they had supporting evidence like phone logs, message pads — even a report card from one of Epstein’s victims that was found in his Palm Beach home….”
50 years ago, Bruce Springsteen was terrified Columbia Records were going to drop him. He spent six months writing one of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time.
Legendary editor Ann Godoff, an editor and publisher for Penguin Press, has died from complications of bone cancer. She was 76. Variety’s Arushi Jacob wrote, “Godoff spent more than three decades as the head of Random House, nurturing the careers of numerous novelists and nonfiction writers. Her more celebrated authors include Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Ron Chernow, E.L. Doctorow, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Thomas Pynchon, Tom Brokaw, William Styron and Alice Waters.” Be sure to check outSam Roberts’ excellent remembrance of Godoff in The New York Times
Physicist Sean Carroll leads off this video with this line:
I like to say that Einstein is, if anything, underrated as a physicist, which is hard to imagine given how highly he is rated.
And then leads us through a history of modern physics and quantum mechanics that, Einstein and Newton aside, is much more collaborative than you often hear about.
This idea that there are many people contributing and many different parts of the pieces need to put together is actually much more characteristic of how physics is usually done than the single person inventing everything all by themselves.
“I remember walking by a former drug dealer, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, a former mobster and a former preacher all sitting around a table together in the prison yard. Surely this was not happening anywhere else in America.”
Token Anxiety. “This voice in my head that says ‘something could be running right now’ just doesn’t shut off. I’m not even building a company. I’m just addicted to building my random ideas.”
Ministry of Justice orders deletion of UK’s largest court reporting archive
The Times: “The Ministry of Justice (UK) is ordering the deletion of a large archive of court records, raising open justice concerns. Courtsdesk, a data analysis company that supports media and campaigners in monitoring court records, has been ordered by the government to delete its archive, which provides a crucial tool for journalists covering the justice system. The project was approved by the lord chancellor in 2021 to explore how a “national digital news feed of listings and registers can improve coverage of the courts by the news media” by opening up magistrate court records.
According to Courtsdesk, the platform has since been used by more than 1,500 journalists from 39 media organisations and the data provided has highlighted serious failures in the courts system. It said journalists were given no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, the number of court cases listed was accurate on just 4.2 per cent of sitting days and half a million weekend cases were heard with no notification to the press…”
“Why AI Detection Fails on the Fakes That Matter Most. Total fakes are easy to spot. Hybrid fakes slip through. Most AI detectors work like calculators — they output a number. They need to work like detectives — really look at the evidence.”
New Report Helps Journalists Dig Deeper Into Police Surveillance Technology
EFF – “A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales hype about police surveillance technology and report accurately on costs, benefits, privacy, and accountability as these invasive and often ineffective tools come to communities across the nation.
Police technology is often sold as a silver bullet: a way to modernize departments, make communities safer, and eliminate human bias from policing with algorithmic objectivity. Behind the slick marketing is a sprawling, under-scrutinized industry that relies on manufacturing the appearance of effectiveness, not measuring it.
The cost of blindly deferring to advertising can be high in tax dollars, privacy, and civil liberties.“Selling Safety” helps journalists see through the spin. It breaks down how policing technology companies market their tools, and how those sales claims — which are often misleading — get recycled into media coverage. It offers tools for asking better questions, understanding incentives, and finding local accountability stories..”
