A new room for a doomed loom – and the battle to save Australia’s slowly dying crafts | Australian education – The Guardian

"the episode felt like “a perfect snapshot of the state of everything” about the way higher education treats fine arts and crafts: where valuable tools and increasingly rare skills are condemned by, as Halton says, “a decision at the end of a spreadsheet”, while community groups and guilds with scant resources do their best to salvage the remnants." https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/25/a-new-room-for-a-doomed-loom-and-the-battle-to-save-australias-slowly-dying-crafts

"…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

Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/anthropics-new-ai-model-turns-to-blackmail-when-engineers-try-to-take-it-offline/

Restaurant automation gives a glimpse into our working future: precarity, less respect for quality and experience, and more demands on humans https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/21/restaurant-automation-gives-a-glimpse.html

Paper showing LLMs have a “tendency to extrapolate scientific results beyond the claims found in the material” https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/21/paper-showing-llms-have-a.html

Despite the fawning coverage of Bluesky, it sounds an awful lot like old social media https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/20/despite-the-fawning-coverage-of.html

…how automation unfolds, who decides and benefits, and how implementation can truly advance innovation, productivity, and human flourishing https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/18/how-automation-unfolds-who-decides.html

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

Started work in 1977 and still refuses to retire. I’m so sick of this. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2025/05/14/nasas-voyager-1-revives-backup-thrusters-before-command-pause/

Beyond Redistribution: Rethinking UBI and the politics of automation https://benhr.xyz/2025/05/13/beyond-redistribution-rethinking-ubi-and.html

Parking at hospitals has been a disaster for my entire career but it’s getting worse and actively harms patients and their families/supporters.

As the authors point out, a consistent systemic approach has been totally absent. Why is hospital parking so expensive? Two economics researchers explain https://theconversation.com/why-is-hospital-parking-so-expensive-two-economics-researchers-explain-255716

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

“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20% to 30% of code inside the company’s repositories was “written by software” — meaning A.I."

Sadly this only explains part of the user experience. https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/

University of Zürich researchers undertake an ethically shady experiment on a subreddit involving the use of A.I.-generated comments. Astonishingly this was approved the University of Zürich’s Institutional Ethics Review Board. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/fUKMfMPqsP

Welcome to the semantic apocalypse https://benhr.xyz/2025/04/28/welcome-to-the-semantic-apocalypse.html

Has anyone written an oral history of the Whirlpoool forums yet?

More than 2,200 jobs being cut across Australian universities.

It was only a few years ago more that 17,000 were lost during COVID. https://archive.is/hwffl

“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

U.S. National Institutes of Health guts its first and largest study centered on women - Science.org https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-cancels-its-first-and-largest-study-centered-women

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