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
It's difficult to say goodbye to someone as amazing as you, but the good news is that your lessons will live on in my memory. Thank you for being an excellent loopmate and mentor …
It is not just a colleague I am saying goodbye to, but a true blue friend. From our regular coffee breaks to those deep conversations about life over lunches at PH and Yarra and beyond, every moment has been special.
I am grateful for your exceptional integrity and the positive energy you brought to the office. Your genuine care for others and your passion for solving problems have been truly inspiring. Your country boy laugh lifted the mood on every floor of 255 GS
And your talent for giving thoughtful gifts peppered with history etc 🎁 was legendary.
To be sure to be sure your rare dedication and innovative spirit will be greatly missed. To boot, there are not many people who would dare to order huge bureaucratic machinery to cease and desist on 7 July or any other day …
Your knack for getting invites to special events such as Super Bowl and other exciting events are legendary in Australia and overseas.
“I’ve counted the hours, I’ve punched in the clock,
Bulldozing rock-hard riffs, more double entendres than you can shake a stick at, and one comically snug schoolboy uniform: These are just a few of the ingredients that have made AC/DC one of the most iconic rock & roll bands for more than 36 years. Songs like “Highway to Hell” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” are classic-rock radio staples, and their 1980 LP, Back in Black, would be the bestselling album of all time if Thrillerdidn’t exist.
"I'm back in the black / I hit the sack / I've been too long I'm glad to be back / Yes, I'm let loose / From the noose / That's kept me hanging about"
"Ride down the highway / Goin' to a show / Stoppin' on the byways / Playin' rock 'n' roll"
"Season ticket on a one-way ride / Askin' nothing, leave me be / Take it all in my stride"
Copilot? Claude (deontological) essentially has a different set of ethics than ChatGPT and Gemini (consequentialism).
Also: "In 2024 ... 7% of those who had studied computer science were unemployed, against just 5.1% of philosophers."
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
– Steve Jobs. I believe that what you have accomplished here with us was great work, and I also believe that there is even greater work out there for you. I hope you love it...
As usual, Abraham Maslow was wrong.
People create art when they're dying, starving, freezing, not only when they are comfortable and have all their needs met.
Because creating art is a fundamental human function. it's a way to say "I was here" and "I saw, thought, and felt something".
According to the Australian Broadcasting Coroporation, the aim of the Institute is to “monitor, test and share information on emerging AI capabilities, risks and harms.”
Dr. Conroy will also continue in her position the lead of responsible AI at the Royal Australian Air Force. Previously, she worked for the Queensland, Australia government on policies for evaluating and managing the risks of AI in government.
‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison
The Guardian: “… Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera.
The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
After a three-week trial, a jury found eight of nine protesters guilty of “providing material support to terrorists”, among other crimes. For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn.
All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison.
Their attorneys announced their intention to appeal, but many supporters are doubtful that anything short of a presidential pardon from a future administration would free them. The Prairieland case was the first tried and convicted under the Trump Department of Justice’s “counter-terrorism” initiatives targeting “antifa” – short for antifascist – a decentralized movement the administration has officially categorized as a “domestic terrorist organization”.
The federal government argued the Prairieland defendants, what they called a “North Texas Antifa cell”, had planned the demonstration as an assassination attempt against a law enforcement officer. The government alleged this conspiracy even though the defendants were loosely connected, and some who attended the protest did not even know each other.
The conviction of the Prairieland defendants has shocked legal and civil liberties experts, who say the Trump administration is making examples of them and setting a dangerous precedent for what this means for the first amendment right to protest and to create and distribute information. “It is not only an attempt at chilling speech,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director at the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent, “but an indication that the [the Trump administration is] going to continue going after protests extremely hard.” In total, 22 people have been charged in connection with the protest: five others took plea deals, another five have state charges pending and three more were indicted last month. What the federal government has described as “antifa extremists” are activists you’d find anywhere in the US: trans people, tattoo artists, vegans and anti-ICE community members who engage in mutual aid. The federal government’s focus on the possession of leftwing literature, including zines, and other basic security measures common in our modern era – like owning Faraday bags, meant to block wireless signals to prevent surveillance; using the encrypted messaging app Signal; or dressing in all-black clothing – is alarming to activists…”
He was once married to the woman who would become one of Queensland’s most divisive and powerful political figures. Today, Walter Zagorski lives alone on a quiet suburban street lined with small boats and weatherboard homes draped in Maroons flags.
At his house in the Brisbane bayside suburb of Wynnum, Zagorski – a postwar Polish immigrant who has rarely spoken to the media – opens up about the pair’s fractious marriage and the influences he believes shaped her.
As she soars in the polls, Hanson has travelled the country telling the story of her life and the circumstances that have shaped her views. Zagorski, watching from afar the woman he married when she was 16, has stayed silent until now.
Pauline Hanson’s first husband Walter Zagorski at home in the Brisbane suburb of Wynnum. WILLIAM DAVIS
Zagorski is initially reluctant to discuss his past. Wearing a flannel shirt and a cautious look as he stands on his concrete driveway, he says while Hanson was once part of his life, “she’s not any more”.
“I don’t trust any [politicians]. They’re not there to look after you. They’re out there to look after themselves … and Pauline, she’s definitely in it for herself,” he says.
“I wouldn’t vote for her. I haven’t voted for her … look at the stupidity that’s going on in the [United] States with [President Donald] Trump.
“The problem is there’s so much dishonesty in the system. Most people don’t know the difference between honesty and dishonesty.”
Hanson first rose to prominence when elected to federal parliament in 1996 for the working-class seat of Oxley in western Brisbane. Originally a Liberal, she was disendorsed over comments she had made calling for an end to welfare for Indigenous Australians.
Her rallying cries against immigration and multiculturalism struck a chord in 1990s Queensland. While she lost her federal seat after a redistribution in 1998, her new party, One Nation, won 11 seats at the state poll that year.
Pauline Hanson working in her seafood shop in 1996.ROBERT ROUGH
Zagorski met Hanson in 1970 while they both had jobs with pharmaceutical company Drug Houses of Australia in Brisbane.
Then in his mid-20s, he lived near the teenager in East Brisbane and would drive her to and from work.
“She was working there. I’d drive her home and that’s it. It just sort of went on from there … It was just one of those things,” he says.
Her parents ran a cafe in the nearby suburb of Woolloongabba at the time.
Pauline Hanson with Walter Zagorski at the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary in 1970. UNTAMED & UNASHAMED - THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In her Perth speech on June 11, Hanson talked about sneaking away from her family home as a teenager to see Zagorski when he was working in the oilfields, and ending up stranded in the outback town of Charleville by floodwaters before the police dispatched her back to her parents.
“[We were] young and stupid in love. So, I get it. I understand,” she told the room in Perth.
“But anyway, we ended up getting married. I had my first child at 17 and I had two children by the time I was 21. We started up a business with my parents, when I was 18 with the young baby.”
Hanson married Zagorski in the regional town of Blackall.
“She had a white blouse sort of thing, everything was good,” he says.
“My best mate didn’t turn up, and it was a bit of a shambles after it got started. Most of the people there were all bloody riggers. The only person [from our families] who showed up was my mum.”
Her office chose not to comment for this story.
In her 2012 autobiography, Untamed & Unashamed, Hanson recalls several of the same events, though details often differ. She wrote her family had come to Blackall for the occasion, and that Zagorski’s mother did not.
“Pauline got into politics because she figured it’d be easy and she’d make more money, that’s all.”
Walter Zagorski, Pauline Hanson’s first husband
In the book, Zagorski is described as “a good-looking guy with a vibrant personality, very young at heart and a loveable character”.
“I came to trust and love Walter … we spent most of our time together going to movies, for a drive, or just being together, even when he worked on his car,” she wrote.
The couple lived in Blackall before moving to Adelaide and then back to south-east Queensland as Zagorski chased work. Their son Tony was born in June 1971.
Decades later, Zagorski remembers a deeply unhappy relationship, and he claims she was unfaithful – disputing he was the father of her second child, Steven. Hanson recounted his claims in her book and strongly rejected this.
Hanson wrote: “Our second son, Steven, was at the heart of one of these issues because Walter believed Steven was not his son. It was important to me that he accepted Steven as his son because he was.”
Pauline Hanson walks with her sons Tony, left, and Steven Zagorski in 2003.REUTERS
Zagorski is still resentful years after the acrimonious split, and says his former partner was motivated only by money.
“In my honest opinion, she was not a nice person,” he says.
“Her parents were the two people that were the guiding force for Pauline. Pauline’s father worked his arse off 20 hours a day every day in the shop.
“Pauline got all her ideas on being dishonest and sneaky and greedy and making more money from her dad.”
Pauline Hanson in the plane gifted to her by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, in 2026. X/PAULINEHANSONOZ
Hanson – about eight years younger than Zagorski – has previously said he abandoned her and her children for long periods without support.
His status as an immigrant was never relevant to their relationship, he says.
In his telling, his mother Lydia was pregnant with him at Auschwitz. He says he came to Australia as a refugee at about five before being taken to an orphanage near Toowoomba.
“I remember my feet dangled over the edge of the boat on the deck, and I was going through the Suez Canal,” he says.
“At that time, one ship went to America, one ship went to Australia … that’s how I got to come to Australia. It wasn’t a choice.”
He says he doesn’t know his exact birthday, but believes it was in 1946. If correct, it’s unlikely he was conceived before the liberation of the concentration camp, though he’s certain that’s the story his mother told.
Hanson, in her book, remembers Lydia as “a strong and independent lady whom I admired and loved very much”.
Zagorski says he doesn’t know where Pauline’s political views came from, and they were of no interest to him when they married.
“I’m not a political man. I’ve got no interest in politics whatsoever.”
Pauline Hanson addressed the National Press Club for the first time in 2026. BLOOMBERG
The couple split after several years, and briefly rekindled the relationship before it fell apart again. Both claim credit for ending it.
Zagorski says she did have an ambitious streak: “I’ve thought about it many times … I think she was looking for something … Pauline got into politics because she figured it’d be easy and she’d make more money, that’s all.”
He later says: “I think that in a way she did care about me.”
Zagorski says Hanson visited his Wynnum home years later to see his mother but she hasn’t contacted him in a long time.
When discussing Australia’s institutions, Zagorski’s language at times echoes that used by his ex-wife and her supporters.
“They’re all in it for themselves. They’re not there to do good for anybody,” he says.
“[Anthony] Albanese, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him … [Angus Taylor] is an idiot. Pauline, she’s about the most dishonest person I know.”
Could he see her winning the next election? “Possibly,” he says, though he says he won’t be voting for her party.
“The only reason she would win would be because people don’t like the other guy. What choices have you got?
Exclusive new polling reveals One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has surged to become the nation's preferred Prime Minister for the first time.
“She might have changed in the last 20 years, I don’t know, but I’ve never known Pauline Hanson to be an honest person.”
Zagorski hasn’t kept photos from his time with his first wife and he never remarried.
He says he no longer speaks to any of his friends or family members, including son Tony, who he believes now lives in Las Vegas.
The saga demonstrates just how little is known about the background of a woman that polling suggests could become Australia’s next prime minister.
Though Zagorski says he rarely thinks about her these days, a neighbour mentions he’s dropped Hanson’s name into more than one conversation.
At the event with Perth’s business elite, Hanson was asked what advice she’d give her 10-year-old self.
“Don’t get married at 16,” she said.
New Court Challenge Against Trump’s Sweetheart Immunity Deal with I.R.S.
Scott MacFarlane Reports – “Former Federal Tax Officials Call Trump’s Settlement with IRS a “breathtaking” and unlawful deal. A group of former federal tax officials, including a former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, are asking a federal judge to intervene and halt President Trump’s immunity deal with the Internal Revenue Service. The sweetheart deal was spawned by Trump’s lawsuit in January against the agency. The lawsuit immediately raised questions about how Trump could conceivably — and lawfully – file a lawsuit against an agency that he helps control.
The former federal tax officials, who served in Presidential administrations of both parties, argue the court must halt the immunity order. In a 23-page amicus brief filed Monday in Miami, the former officials argue the immunity deal is “an unprecedented and breathtakingly improper attempt by the President and the Acting Attorney General to bestow broad civil and criminal immunity upon President Trump.”
They also argue that the settlement deal “sends the regrettable and dangerous message that powerful people can wield their influence not only to avoid having their tax returns reviewed at all, but to place themselves above the laws.”
The amicus brief also said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “settled a weak, time-barred unauthorized disclosure claim to give President Trump a vastly disproportionate gift of total immunity.”
Judge Kathleen Williams dismissed Trump’s lawsuit last month, at the request of both Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department, which represents the I.R.S. But a group of 35 former federal judges have asked Williams to re-open the case and investigate whether Team Trump engaged in collusion in filing and settling the case.
The former judges are also challenging the slush fund, which emerged from the closed civil case. They declaratively accuse the Trump team of a “corruption.” They argue, “The unique facts before the Court in this case strongly indicate possible corruption of the judicial process and fraud on the court. The unprecedented settlement is evidence of that fraud in this case…”
