ben_hr

https://benhr.xyz

Sydney, Australia. You can usually find me on the forgotten parts of the web.

Public Key

npub1xd7yz62qz80dc23y4vwu8gxuvatlekkpdv62h04fzd8ujhn390fs2n4z87

NIP-05 Address

ben_hr_nostr@iris.to

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrxlzpd9qprhku9gj2k8wr5rwxw4lumtqkkd9th653xn7ftecjh5cyz8he5

Author Public Key

npub1xd7yz62qz80dc23y4vwu8gxuvatlekkpdv62h04fzd8ujhn390fs2n4z87

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Last Notes

2025-05-24 09:30:53

"…the very language of development was transformed. Buzzwords like “empowerment,” “capacity-building,” and “participation” were stripped of political content and repackaged as apolitical tools of governance. The discourse no longer spoke of justice or structural inequality—it spoke instead of efficiency, best practices, and deliverables. In doing so, development became something done to people, rather than something done with or by them."
As aid ends, empire endures - Africa is a Country https://www.africasacountry.com/2025/04/as-aid-ends-empire-endures

2025-05-16 04:28:25

AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/16/ai-therapy-is-a-surveillance.html

2025-05-06 13:33:52

What’s the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?
"Unless you’re an extreme power user, asking AI questions every day is still a rounding error on your total electricity footprint… The reason we often think that ChatGPT is an energy guzzler is because of the initial statement: it uses 10 times more energy than a Google search. Even if this is accurate, what’s missing is the context that a Google search uses a really tiny amount of energy. Even 10 times a really tiny number is still tiny." https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-chatgpt

2025-04-25 00:28:32

“Maashorst council says [Andy Warhol’s] print of Queen Beatrix from 1985 series Reigning Queens probably taken with the rubbish” - The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/apr/24/andy-warhol-artwork-accidentally-thrown-out-during-dutch-town-hall-renovation

2025-04-24 01:26:51

Beautiful work by Julian Fell and Simon Elvery with this visual storytelling:
Over five decades, here’s how voters have shifted away from the major parties - ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-24/election-data-rise-independents-major-party-drift/105144918

2025-04-19 04:22:59

Which Australian members of parliament consistently voted for compulsory income management for welfare recipients?
Interesting list. https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/policies/298

2024-11-17 06:35:52

It retrospect I should have recognised this as a warning about the quality of the takeaway pizza I’d just ordered.
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/e447850d90.jpg

2024-10-19 13:47:52

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/759976a5d1.jpg

2024-10-14 04:38:35

Wet
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/8c5935d649.jpg

2024-10-13 00:40:44

"With the European Peace Facility, the EU is seeking greater flexibility that will allow it to bypass the African Union and directly fund national and sub-regional military initiatives."
Shadowy interventions - Africa is a Country
https://africasacountry.com/2024/09/shadowy-interventions

2024-10-02 07:35:07

tl;dr the big variation in non-GP specialist fees in Australia is largely due to differences between individual doctors, rather than factors such as patient complexity or structural costs.
Sources of specialist physician fee variation: Evidence from Australian health insurance claims data 🔒
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851024001295?via%3Dihub

2024-09-27 21:39:43

3.5 million Argentinians pushed into poverty this year https://benhr.xyz/2024/09/27/million-argentinians-pushed.html

2024-09-22 23:12:37

Sticking an AirTag on my Kindle just saved me again. If it wasn’t for this I’d have lost it many times by now.
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/5e3ad31c97.jpg

2024-09-09 15:11:00

>The primary risk here, however, is the replacement of actual policymaking by a distorted form of technical action. Despite its claim to assist or even automate the production of policy solutions, AI is incapable of addressing the tricky structural issues that impede actual change.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/ai-for-public-good/public-policymaking-from-ai-to-decomputing

2024-09-08 08:04:03

"We crave assurance that intimacy can survive independent of convenience. We dream of friendship that is interminable, impervious to the passage of time or changes in geography or individual growth."
On group chats - LARB
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/group-chat-group-chats/

2024-09-07 16:59:17

Scholarly communication infrastructure has been beyond its breaking point for a while. Generative pre-trained transformers look increasingly like an epistemological omnicidal weapon that we've failed to contain. https://benhr.xyz/2024/09/08/scholarly-communication-infrastructure.html

2024-09-07 15:13:24

A wistful piece of writing about a We’re wealthier than kings of the past but we remain a kind of peasantry in the thrall of distance plutocrats now. Unmoored without a sense of place. Indentured to the precarity machine of credit and capitalism.
Vanishing World: On Europe’s Disappearing Peasantry
https://lithub.com/a-vanishing-world-on-europes-disappearing-peasantry

2024-09-07 05:47:48

NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose https://benhr.xyz/2024/09/07/nanowrimo-organizers-said.html

2024-09-06 14:23:05

On early 2023… Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero—the enlisted shipboard leader—led a scheme to buy a Starlink for $2,800 and to install it inconspicuously on the ship’s deck. The system was only for use by chiefs… and a Navy investigation later revealed that at least 15 chiefs were in on the plan.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/sailors-hid-an-unauthorized-starlink-on-the-deck-of-a-us-warship-and-lied-about-it/

2024-09-05 08:56:44

Google Scholar is more busted than I thought. Pay for citations schemes exist and may be more widespread than we realise.
Google Scholar is manipulatable - arXiv
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04607v1

2024-09-05 05:54:45

A fascinating long read about the origins of Gaia theory, the early influence of systems theory, and NASA and JPL’s sexist culture in the ’60s.
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/05/gaia-theory-born-of-secret-love-affair-james-lovelock

2024-09-05 05:18:39

"“the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.”"
"The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case wired.com
WIRED - The Latest in Technology, Science, Culture and Business https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/
https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/ https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/

2024-09-05 05:10:52

Rosella outside the window
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/6a5ae85e98.jpg

2024-09-04 01:20:25

I tried to explain this t-shirt to my ten year old niece and she looked at me so pityingly, as if she thought i was suffering a major mental impairment.
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/f8ed2af687.jpg

2024-09-02 01:02:36

Zuckerberg is clearly preparing for a Trump Presidency:
“New Trump Book Threatens To Jail Zuckerberg, Putting Zuck’s Groveling Letter In New Light” - Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/30/new-trump-book-threatens-to-jail-zuckerberg-putting-groveling-letter-in-new-light/

2024-09-01 01:19:18

A glorious start to spring
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/405cfdd573.jpg

2024-08-25 14:00:56

When the Nazis Opened a Propaganda Bookstore in Los Angeles - Lithub
https://lithub.com/bigoted-bookselling-when-the-nazis-opened-a-propaganda-bookstore-in-los-angeles/

2024-08-23 05:30:12

Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke - The Verge
“The lost Library of Alexandria could have fit onto the microSD card in my Nintendo Switch, and yet the cutting edge of technology is a handheld telephone that spews lies as a fun little bonus feature.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/22/24225972/ai-photo-era-what-is-reality-google-pixel-9

2024-08-22 22:22:35

Over the last five years the average open access article processing charge has gone up by 26% to AUD $4,945.
https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/mejor-negocio-mundo-editoriales-cientificas-disparan-precios-multiplican-facturacion_1_11532874.html
via @Andbaker@aus.social
#research #openaccess
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/ad3d190412.jpg https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/mejor-negocio-mundo-editoriales-cientificas-disparan-precios-multiplican-facturacion_1_11532874.html https://aus.social/@Andbaker

2024-08-18 08:55:14

“We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war…But we should.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/

2024-08-16 21:04:37

A sewage crisis in San Diego County reveals the unpolluted truth about the U.S.-Mexico border https://benhr.xyz/2024/08/17/a-sewage-crisis.html

2024-08-13 08:04:01

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/8c75ed9018.jpg

2024-08-09 08:35:07

On the huge achievement that malaria vaccines represent https://benhr.xyz/2024/08/09/on-the-huge.html

2024-08-08 22:20:21

Return to office directives should be predicated on everyone having an office of their own. Forcing staff to hotdesk out of a backpack using lockers that are emptied every day, without even a desk of their own, isn’t an “office”.

2024-08-08 20:33:43

"Ariana Ramsey won an Olympic bronze medal with the U.S. women’s rugby team here last week. A few days later, something almost as exciting happened: She got a pap smear. For free"
https://www.si.com/olympics/american-athletes-taking-full-advantage-of-free-healthcare-olympic-village-france

2024-08-08 12:00:30

Gigwork is a lie https://benhr.xyz/2024/08/08/gigwork-is-a.html

2024-08-08 09:16:05

From respected science journalism to LLM-generated click farming, an interesting analysis https://benhr.xyz/2024/08/08/from-respected-science.html

2024-08-06 09:53:00

"Mr. Murdoch has called his effort to change the trust Project Harmony because he hoped that it might head off a looming family struggle when he dies… But it has had the opposite effect."
https://web.archive.org/web/20240731022242/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/rupert-murdoch-succession-fox.html

2024-08-05 12:10:30

"Already 67 higher education institutions are undertaking redundancy and restructuring programmes. This number is expected to rise as softening demand from international students and high debt servicing costs risks put the sector under even more pressure.
Phillipson has said the government will not step in to prevent insolvencies and refused to commit to raising tuition fees for domestic students, which have, in effect, been frozen for more than a decade, despite pressure from the sector lobby group Universities UK."
UK universities regulator plans for looming insolvencies - Financial Times
https://archive.is/xsP59

2024-08-05 11:29:27

"“A family of Russian sleeper agents flown to Moscow in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War were so deep under cover that their children found out they were Russians only after the flight took off, the Kremlin said on Friday.""
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-an-fsb-agent-deep-cover-russian-sleeper-agents-among-those-returned-2024-08-02/

2024-08-03 05:16:33

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/7b2286e6ad.jpg

2024-07-26 15:59:10

"…phones are connectivity tools rather than attention-consuming blackholes, and people actually talk to each other." https://benhr.xyz/2024/07/27/phones-are-connectivity.html

2024-07-20 11:46:56

"“We are talking about thousands and thousands of kilometers of infrastructure between Europe and the United States and Asia. This is a network that is extremely hard to surveil, to monitor and to protect. This is infrastructure that is highly vulnerable to sabotage.”"
A subsea cable went missing. Was Russia to blame? - Bloomberg
https://archive.is/20240711220242/https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-undersea-cable-sabotage-russia-norway/

2024-07-15 13:31:06

“SimCity Isn’t a Model of Reality. It’s a Libertarian Toy Land - Beneath its playful exterior, the beloved game that inspired a generation of real-world urban designers betrays a partisan view of social planning."
https://www.wired.com/story/simcity-libertarian-toy-land/

2024-07-14 21:53:39

Another one for the WTF Europe file
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/9ccd076e1e.jpg

2024-07-13 07:20:27

Bombo
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/f4fbcea390.jpg

2024-07-12 22:04:49

Fucking TikTok.
"“In a similar vein, some posts featured a sycophantic, yet comedic, admiration for fascist leaders, presenting them as cute and loveable. In general, such memes seek to trivialise extremist content, not least by drawing from the comparative mainstream of meme culture. In the process, this content contributes to the broader memetic struggle waged by factions on the extreme right.”"
Beyond Hitler and Mussolini: TikTok and the Adoration of Minor Fascist Ideologues
https://gnet-research.org/2024/07/01/beyond-hitler-and-mussolini-tiktok-and-the-adoration-of-minor-fascist-ideologues

2024-07-12 12:25:36

Inside Mexico’s anti-avocado militias
https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/11/inside-mexico-anti-avocado-militias

2024-07-10 06:56:41

I’ve had two printers that outlived operating system support for them. I didn’t expect it would happen to sneakers.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/nike-killing-app-self-lacing-sneakers

2024-07-02 21:50:34

A third of land set aside for restoration in worse state than before, Australian offset audit finds - The GUardian
It’s almost like biodiversity offsets are a proposterous activity, designed to distract more than help. Oh wait…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/03/australia-biodiversity-offset-system-land-restoration

2024-06-29 13:27:58

It's the competence, stupid https://benhr.xyz/2024/06/29/its-the-competence.html

2024-06-23 07:13:22

Sounds like an episode of The Gilded Age
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/d5496188e3.jpg

2024-06-22 06:50:38

Lost in the Woo-to-Q Pipeline - The Cut
https://www.thecut.com/article/astrologer-danielle-johnson-murder-suicide-conspiracy-theories.html

2024-06-21 07:03:57

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/fd519a0798.jpg

2024-06-19 09:37:16

Hello fronds
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/7a846235a6.jpg

2024-06-19 08:26:32

Tarps and prayers
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/fc106e34c3.jpg

2024-06-19 06:43:28

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/e17a80afe0.jpg

2024-06-15 03:46:55

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/39da5f7e76.jpg

2024-06-15 01:56:32

Despicable. “The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public.” - Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

2024-06-14 10:13:42

Lionel Hutz
A world without lawyers, 2024
Acrylic on concrete
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/82de183ec7.jpg

2024-06-12 09:34:34

Painting the town red
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/a9bcbd2b79.jpg

2024-06-12 07:47:33

Border Force “officers routinely ask travellers to provide their passcode or password to devices so they can be examined, but they do not have the power to compel passengers to hand over their passcodes, the ABF has explained to the Australian Senate and in guidebooks provided to officers”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/11/australian-border-force-abf-searching-phones-travellers-data

2024-06-09 13:07:08

Anachronism of a Salesman https://benhr.xyz/2024/06/09/i-saw-death.html

2024-06-07 01:47:04

Liquid3, an “urban photo-bioreactor” that a Serbian startup has developed to replace trees.
I, for one, welcome our new green slime overlords.
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/postcard-768x1025.jpg https://liquid3.rs

2024-06-06 23:59:43

On "blood quantum", indigenous identity, and federally recognised tribes in the U.S.A. https://benhr.xyz/2024/06/07/on-blood-quantum.html

2024-06-06 04:19:38

A company that had built its name on celebrating knowledge and expertise was now at the mercy of machines that could not discern the difference between information and wisdom or between factual text and text that mimicked the patterns of factual-sounding writing.
https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/wtf-quora-how-a-platform-eats-itself

2024-06-06 00:17:34

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/a87c70c988.jpg

2024-06-06 00:01:38

The friendly, sad bloke at the cafe
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/7696ee855b.jpg

2024-06-04 03:45:28

"“Playing with conventions, literary or social, taking them apart and exposing them as scaffolding that hides rather than reveals truths can be threatening to those who think they know exactly how the world is supposed to turn. The Trilogy repositions the reader. It forces her to see the world differently. That’s the magic.”"
"Remembering Paul Auster lithub.com
Reader: lithub.com
Literary Hub https://lithub.com/remembering-paul-auster
https://lithub.com/remembering-paul-auster https://micro.blog/bookmarks/6779666 https://lithub.com/remembering-paul-auster

2024-06-04 02:38:48

“a device that dispenses physical “attention receipts” that list exactly how much time you’ve spent watching YouTube videos”
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/1-receipt.jpg.jpg https://www.404media.co/would-you-waste-less-of-your-life-online-if-you-got-daily-attention-receipts/

2024-06-03 20:50:35

Instagram is testing “ad breaks” that force you to stop and look at an ad for a period of time before you can continue scrolling. The internet’s transformation into a pay to play game continues apace.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170682/instagram-unskippable-ads-test

2024-05-30 07:56:40

“A study of 26 years' worth of wolf behavioral data, and an analysis of the blood of 229 wolves, has shown that infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes wolves 46 times more likely to become a pack leader."
https://www.sciencealert.com/something-strange-happens-to-wolves-infected-by-an-infamous-mind-altering-parasite

2024-05-30 02:15:50

Attention cyberloafers
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/034539f9e3.jpg

2024-05-29 09:06:25

Bit harsh on Whitlam
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/aeda9a702f.jpg

2024-05-28 10:48:46

Stunning photo essay about Mexico City’s ancient floating gardens
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/30c8c2eac2.jpg https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2024/may/28/without-them-the-city-would-be-lost-the-art-of-preserving-mexico-citys-ancient-floating-gardens

2024-05-28 06:13:59

"At the turn of the 21st century, corrugated cardboard accounted for just fifteen percent of the U.S. recycling stream. Today, it’s nearly half."
"World in a Box: Cardboard Media and the Geographic Imagination placesjournal.org
Archiving...
placesjournal.org https://placesjournal.org/article/social-history-of-the-cardboard-box/?__s=yxo2kv41x05ers9x0xt1&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Your+Syllabus+This+Week
Image credit Title: Piles of recycling waiting to be sorted Creator: World Resources Institute Date: 2019 Type: Colour digital photo Rights: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/49082060493-1de5da9313-c.jpg https://placesjournal.org/article/social-history-of-the-cardboard-box/?__s=yxo2kv41x05ers9x0xt1&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Your+Syllabus+This+Week https://placesjournal.org/article/social-history-of-the-cardboard-box/?__s=yxo2kv41x05ers9x0xt1&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Your+Syllabus+This+Week https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldresourcesinstitute/49082060493/in/album-72157711828806088/

2024-05-26 08:54:17

‘It’s also no coincidence that the biggest business case for these systems is to help communication in the corporate world: a semantic zone drained of novelty.’ Do chatbots dream of AI poetry?
https://www.faber.co.uk/journal/do-chatbots-dream-of-ai-poetry-calvino-madness-and-machine-literature/

2024-05-23 22:46:08

Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling https://benhr.xyz/2024/05/24/utopian-realism-a.html

2024-05-21 06:33:24

Why doesn’t Hollywood make more mass extinction films?
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/silent-running.jpg https://atmos.earth/why-doesnt-hollywood-make-more-mass-extinction-films

2024-05-21 06:21:05

“The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.” The crisis in French identity since De Gaulle https://benhr.xyz/2024/05/21/the-desire-of.html

2024-05-19 01:56:27

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/943f4edb32.jpg

2024-05-16 07:18:11

A study of 84 countries found 60 multinationals account for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution. Six companies alone are responsible for 13%.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj8275

2024-05-15 22:11:08

"One thing I do have confidence in is my feeling" https://benhr.xyz/2024/05/16/one-thing-i.html

2024-05-14 03:42:05

In what year was the first emoji-like character set developed? Your guess is almost certainly wrong.
Emoji History: The Missing Years - Get Info
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/e576a913b3.png https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/05/10/emoji-history-the-missing-years/

2024-05-14 03:14:56

“I hope this isn’t for weapons”: The boring, repetitive work being undertaken to train AI algorithms, which are increasingly used as tools of war, by people fleeing conflicts https://benhr.xyz/2024/05/14/i-hope-this.html

2024-05-14 02:09:44

As Australian subsidies to fossil fuel producers increase to $14.5b we have to ask, has the election of the ALP made any difference in addressing the climate crisis?
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2024/05/13/subsidies-fossil-fuel-producers-increase

2024-05-07 04:14:14

Pokémon Go Players Invent Fake Beaches on Real Maps to Catch Rare Wigletts. I’m embarrassed to understand that sentence.
https://www.404media.co/pokemon-go-players-invent-fake-beaches-on-real-maps-to-catch-rare-wigletts/

2024-05-04 04:29:10

Family Farms in NSW and Queensland promoted by Covid vaccine-sceptic group Parents With Questions were intended to operate outside a ‘corrupt’ food system. But not all has gone to plan - good piece by Ariel Bogle and Cameron Wilson
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/may/04/investors-with-questions-how-a-clean-food-farm-scheme-born-of-covid-vaccine-fears-descended-into-rancour

2024-05-02 18:59:42

Facebook is the zombie internet, where a mix of bots, humans, and accounts that were once humans but aren’t anymore interact to form a disastrous website where there is little social connection at all.
https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-spam-isnt-the-dead-internet-its-the-zombie-internet/

2024-05-01 15:14:21

Nobody buys books: How celebrity books and backlist bestsellers fund the 96% of books that sell less than 1,000 copies https://benhr.xyz/2024/05/02/nobody-buys-books.html

2024-04-30 02:34:13

Waiting
https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/663/2024/562da5265b.jpg

2024-04-29 21:58:54

The Brazilian JSOC for the environment https://benhr.xyz/2024/04/30/the-brazilian-jsoc.html

2024-04-29 10:17:23

“We are leaving a trail of devastation through the earth with our daily lives and we don’t care about it yet.” https://benhr.xyz/2024/04/29/we-are-leaving.html