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liamj47.bsky.social
Labor historian. Political biographer. Star Wars prequels admirer. Author of 'Becoming John Curtin and James Scullin'. My substack "Maintain Your Rage" focuses on Australian political history: https://byrnel.substack.com/
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Peter Dutton wants to WFH being Prime Minister on Sydney harbourfront views & has the absolute gall to push for working parents who regularly access WFH, to manage cost of living pressures + caring responsibilities, to cop the equivalent of a $5,000 pa pay cut & less time with their families #auspol

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

Supermarkets have pumped up their prices to protect their profits & have not cared one bit about their customers who have been at their mercy when times have been tough. The ACTU exposed this in our Alan Fels inquiry, it is fantastic Albo has announced outlawing price gouging

submitted 1 day ago • 21 comments

The Liberals are just so bad at economics. They speak to the orthodoxy with the full support of swathes of the media who also perpetuate that orthodoxy, so it often goes uninterrogated. But the simple fact is the Liberals are just so, so bad at economics.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

If we don't secure the right to disconnect from work, we could be texted war plans by US the Secretary of Defense at all hours of the night

submitted 6 days ago • 27 comments

Analysis suggests Dutton’s attack on the ability to work from home is the equivalent of a $5,000 pay cut per annum He simply doesn’t care about the impact of the cost of living crisis on workers www.news.com.au/national/fed... #auspol

submitted 7 days ago • 4 comments

A really stunning expose of the governance crisis at Australian universities - really grim reading and all too familiar for anyone with experience in the sector

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest people in the world, has said that creative workers “overestimate” the value of their work for training AI. He thinks he should be able to rip off their work for free.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Roses are red Violets are blue

submitted 10 days ago • 2605 comments

While there is a lack of clarity as to current capability, there is none as to intent. Very large and powerful AI developers are explicitly designing systems and tools with the intention of displacing labour.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

There's probably a point here about misunderstanding AI's capabilities. Probably a point about misunderstanding historical methodology. But the broader point is that so many of the 'personalities' that dominate cultural spaces these days are just giant idiots.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

One thing that amazes me about the field of economics is that there are people who will spend literally their entire careers obsessively calculating for measurements that are innately fictitious and reveal almost nothing about the real economy, and insist that decisions are made on this basis.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Michele O’Neil @australianunions.bsky.social President doing final prep for #NPC debate with the bosses starting soon on @abcnewsbot.bsky.social

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Booktopia has a special pre-order offer for my new history of the union movement "No Power Greater" which is being released on the 14th of May. The book is a history of the worker struggle and collective action that has shaped modern Australia (direct link in comment)

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Booktopia has a special pre-order offer for my new history of the union movement "No Power Greater" which is being released on the 14th of May. The book is a history of the worker struggle and collective action that has shaped modern Australia (direct link in comment)

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want these products in their homes. Sold under the false flag of convenience, they are really just massive data collection schemes, part of how big tech companies like Amazon seek to reorder our lives around its drive for profit.

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Really great insights in this piece by @davidpierce.xyz for @theverge.com on "Bad AI" - not that AI is bad per se, but a lot of the offerings are just junk with AI in them, rather than well considered products/tools based on clear and observable need. www.theverge.com/gadgets/6280...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

Gee Sam, where did all the data for that training come from? @asauthors.bsky.social @withmeaa.bsky.social

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

A bot developed within the General Services Administration in the US designed to augment some work tasks is now central to DOGE's plans to automate work amid its strategy of laying off workers and/or finding means to effectively coerce these workers into resigning.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

Between 1958 and 1970, Bob Hawke was the ACTU Advocate to the Arbitration Commission. Every year he argued on behalf of the union movement for wage improvements for working people.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

Interesting piece in the Conversation on the simple economics of Gen AI at the moment. Big tech companies have tried to sell their products based on hype for future potentials that far exceeds current capabilities.

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

In his latest blog post, Sam Altman of Open AI opines about the potential for Artificial General Intelligence to exacerbate inequality, noting that it will likely further disrupt the power balance between capital and labour towards capital, and this requires 'early intervention'.

submitted 48 days ago • 1 comment