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
As the famous British author once said, crediting people with things they never said says something about us.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
This pithy saying, attributed to the famed British writer C. S. Lewis, has widely circulated the internet in the last decade. The only problem is, he didn’t say it. It appeared in Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and another version cropped up a few years earlier in This Was Your Life! Preparing to Meet God Face to Face by Rick Howard and Jamie Lash. “Real humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is thinking of ourselves less,” they wrote before quoting Lewis on the topic.
Howard and Lash’s summary of Lewis’s thinking and Warren’s rephrasing has become one of the most common quotes wrongly attributed to Lewis.
Numerous fake C. S. Lewis quotes have gone viral in recent years thanks to the power of social media. Many are pointedly applicable to the present cultural moment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a letter purporting to be from The Screwtape Letters filled Facebook feeds. In the false letter, a demon claims, “The world turned into a concentration camp, without forcing any of them into captivity.” And in recent election seasons, another fake Screwtape letter circulated, congratulating the junior demon on keeping a person “completely fixated on politics.” …
Some popular misattributed Lewis quotes are even further removed from his actual words. Motivational phrases like “You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream” are frequently credited to Lewis. According to William O’Flaherty, author of The Misquotable C. S. Lewis, one of the more bizarre recent misattributions is “Be weird. Be random. Be who you are. Because you never know who would love the person you
Welcome to The Legal Brief, our free weekly newsletter traversing the legal world’s biggest firms, cases and personalities, and its most esoteric gossip. Sign up here to get it direct to your inbox first thing on Friday, before it appears online.
In this week’s issue:
The sunlight is a metaphor – except when it isn’t
Marc Kemp’s only contribution to this saga
Discovery: the latest moves and promotions
Who’s headed to the Samuel Griffith Society shindig?
The English judge rattling NSW Supreme Court view
Allens’ top brass weren’t alone last Friday squirming before Senator Deborah O’Neill’sKPMG inquisition. Up in Sydney, the firm’s ground troops were just as uncomfortable.
Allens has shifted its harbour city HQ into a new set of digs – fittingly, for the oldest firm in the country, in the oldest skyscraper in town by Circular Quay.
Compared to the firm’s former 21st century suite, it’s a downgrade, some staff say. There are gripes about cramped workspaces and narrow corridors. The café has been running out of food.
Staff are getting toasty in Allens’ new home at 33 Alfred St, Sydney. Dylan Coker
Menstrual products, a standard in big firm bathrooms, are sometimes nowhere to be found. There are no floor numbers in the internal staircase – cue some very lost graduates.
And then, a week or so ago, this office-wide email: “Due to the time of year, the sun is currently lower in the sky which may result in more direct sunlight.”
“If the sun is bothering you, please utilise the blinds or consider booking an alternative desk away from the windows.”
This is just the kind of advice you’d expect from a firm whose contribution, for much of the KPMG audit leak saga, has been to prevent the sun from shining in.
Allens’ partner Ross Drinnan was one of those who counselled KPMG through its initial, disastrous strategy of refusing to hand over privileged documents to O’Neill’s committee.
And before that, it was Allens that chose not to turn over every stone when called in to investigate a whistleblower’s claims of leaks and broken confidences. In its first report, Allens mostly exonerated KPMG, even though the law firm:
Thought it would be too much to interview any KPMG juniors
Didn’t bother to consult the affected KPMG clients (e.g. Dexus)
Summoned back to Canberra last Friday, a defiant Drinnan declared he “stand[s] by” the firm’s work – even though several of the whistleblower’s allegations have now been proven.
Allens partners Ross Drinnan and Chris Kerrigan, plus managing partner Marc Kemp. Alex Ellinghausen
Drinnan had a way of squaring this circle: “There is a significant amount of information that is now available, which, if it had been available at the time, may have led to a different result.”
“It was available!” Liberal Senator Paul Scarrshot back. “You chose not to get it.”
In fact, on KPMG’s own evidence, Allens advisedthe auditor that there was no need to go hunting for inconvenient truths – better to just trust denials from a clutch of senior KPMG insiders.
“We had quite rigorous discussions with Allens in regards to [whether Allens should interview others], and we accepted their advice that it was reasonable and proportionate at the time,” KPMG deputy chair Carmel Mortelltold the committee.
KPMG deputy chair Carmel Mortell and chairman Michael Ebeid. Alex Ellinghausen
So Allens had a hand in setting the scope for their inquiry. The law firm’s protests that they were just following orders – or “carefully, thoroughly” working through KPMG’s instructions, as Drinnan put it – count for very little when it was Allens who helped write those instructions.
Corporate clients commission these kinds of investigations, yes, to assure the world they’re getting to the bottom of things, but also to cloak their possible wrongdoing in legal privilege: take our word for it, a bunch of crack lawyers have looked into this, it’s all ok – no, you can’t see the gory details.
Is that why it’s so tempting for the lawyers to do a half-way job? Because they know, normally, their reports will never be released to face public scrutiny?
A spokeswoman for Allens said the firm’s work was consistent with its ethical and legal duties. “We reject any suggestion that the privileged and confidential nature of our legal work diminishes the rigour, professional independence or integrity with which we undertake it.”
Still, it’s hard to disagree with Greens Senator Barbara Pocock:
“Allens, your [original report] is very poor. It is very, very poor work, and I think you should give up investigations.”
President Trump Pockets $2.2 Billion While American Families Lost $219 Billion in 2025
“The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee – Minority issued a report today with new calculations that show that while President Trump made at least $2.2 billion in income in 2025, American families lost $219 billion to rising costs last year under Trump. “The president is supposed to put the American people first, not profit off of them,” said Senator Maggie Hassan, Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee.
“Yet President Trump has prioritized his own financial gain while hardworking families have been left to shoulder rising costs driven by Trump’s tariffs, war with Iran, and other actions. As Americans struggle to afford groceries, pay their utility bills, and make ends meet, the President continues to reward himself and his billionaire backers.”
The Committee found that the average American family lost about $1,625 in 2025 due to inflation under Trump. This means that last year, Trump personally profited more than 1.3 million times the amount that the average family lost. In 2026, rising costs under Trump have continued to hit families; as of June, the average family has paid $3,500+ more in inflation costs under Trump.
Trump’s personal profits have come from new ventures such as the Trump memecoin – which made him around $636 million while nearly one million people who invested in the coin lost, in total, billions of dollars. Trump also profited from Trump and Republican Party events held on his properties and from significant transactions that Trump enterprises conducted with foreign companies and foreign governments.
This report is part of Senator Hassan’s ongoing effort as Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee to quantify the economic impact that President Trump’s actions have on American families, including through her most recent speech on the Senate Floor where she called out President Trump’s continued efforts to raise costs for New Hampshire families. She will continue to push the Trump administration to reverse course on his tariffs, illegal war with Iran, and other harmful actions that have driven up costs in all 50 states.
404 Media: “Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.
Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.
The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own. The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.
Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country…”
See alsoTechSpot: “…Flock’s fastest-growing business is 60 mph police drones that can read license plates from the sky. Privacy groups warn that flying plate readers could expand surveillance far beyond roadside cameras.. Flock is best known for the roadside cameras now operating in more than 6,000 US communities. But the company is increasingly betting on drones that can be dispatched to emergency scenes before police officers arrive.
A Flock spokesperson said the firm has secured more than 200 DFR customers, including police departments and private companies. It’s also ramping up production of its US-designed drones, which will be built in Georgia. In an interview with the All-In podcast, CEO Garrett Langley explained that the drones sit in climate-controlled rooftop docks, usually on police precincts or fire departments. “When a 911 call happens, instead of sending an officer first, you can send a drone,” he said…”
What do these privacy violations have in common? They share a source of data that’s shockingly pervasive and unregulated: the technology powering nearly every ad you see online.
Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called “real-time bidding” (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads—it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you’ve never heard of.
What is Real-Time Bidding?
RTB is the process used to select the targeted ads shown to you on nearly every website and app you visit. The ads you see are the winners of milliseconds-long auctions that expose your personal information to thousands of companies a day. Here’s how it works:
The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks a company that runs ad auctions to determine which ads it will display for you. This involves sending information about you and the content you’re viewing to the ad auction company.
The ad auction company packages all the information they can gather about you into a “bid request” and broadcasts it to thousands of potential advertisers.
The bid request may contain personal information like your unique advertising ID, location, IP address, device details, interests, and demographic information. The information in bid requests is called “bidstream data” and can easily be linked to real people.
Advertisers use the personal information in each bid request, along with data profiles they’ve built about you over time, to decide whether to bid on ad space.
Advertisers, and their ad buying platforms, can store the personal data in the bid request regardless of whether or not they bid on ad space.
A key vulnerability of real-time bidding is that while only one advertiser wins the auction, all participants receive the data. Indeed, anyone posing as an ad buyer can access a stream of sensitive data about the billions of individuals using websites or apps with targeted ads. That’s a big way that RTB puts personal data into the hands of data brokers, who sell it to basically anyone willing to pay. Although some ad auction companies have policies against selling bidstream data, the practice remains widespread.
Data brokers don’t need any direct relationship with the apps and websites they’re collecting bidstream data from. While some data collection methods require web or app developers to install code from a data broker, RTB is facilitated by ad companies that are already plugged into most websites and apps. This allows data brokers to collect data at a staggering scale. Hundreds of billions of RTB bid requests are broadcast every day. For each of those bids, thousands of real or fake ad buying platforms may receive data. As a result, entire businesses have emerged to harvest and sell data from online advertising auctions.
“The Nerd Reich”: Author Gil Durán on Big Tech Fascism
Durán traces the ideological lineage of the current Trump administration back from Vance to Thiel and the far-right-wing monarchist Curtis Yarvin, whose “right-libertarian” political theory has long made the rounds among Silicon Valley elite. “These guys were never libertarians,” says Durán. “Now that they are the government, we see their true face: They’re fascists, and they’re authoritarians.”
The Whole Body of Law, Not Just the Part That’s Trending – Asım Ünlü, Founder of AI Law Tracker, discusses a free tier of his wider online portal on U.S. law. This subsection currently tracks 1,306 regulatory records across 74 jurisdictions, with read access to every binding AI law record in the dataset, across every jurisdiction, linked to relevant primary sources.
