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polqat
@polq.at
1.4K followers 780 following 77 posts
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Benin coup instegators mocked up as an episode of Family Feud
December 7, 2025 at 12:48 PM
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Skinner Simpsons meme: Academic Economists: Am I out of touch or suffering relevance deprivation? No, it’s the YouTube economists rapidly gaining popularity and cutting through to the public who are wrong!
December 7, 2025 at 7:52 AM
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Market Forces research finds that a list of clean energy companies achieved more than double the investment returns of the FFX 200 over the last seven years.
A graph showing that a list of clean energy companies achieved more than double the investment returns of the FFX 200 over the last seven years.
December 2, 2025 at 2:56 AM
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#FreeWestPapua
West Papua's Morning Star flag with a white star surrounded by a red vertical stripe on the left. and on the right white and blue horizontal stripes
December 1, 2025 at 6:29 AM
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Jimmy Cliff, Geneva, 2019 RIP
November 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM
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On Nazis

"...the lesson for me seems to be fight like hell before you get to the position where the state is entirely taken over by murderous, genocidal psychopaths. It's go hard."

"The lesson I take away from it is move fast."

Dan Snow's History Hit: The Germans Who Rebelled Against the Nazis
“Lastly, people will be reading it wondering what the lessons are here, as the world backslides away from liberal democracy. And the lesson for me seems to be fight like hell before you get to the position where the state is entirely taken over by murderous, genocidal psychopaths. It's go hard. If you're worried about your ability to resist when your life is on the line, go harder earlier. That's completely right. The lesson I take away from it is move fast. I mean, this happened so quickly that there wasn't time to think it through. There wasn't time to see how it plays out. There wasn't time to sort of let's wait. There's another election cycle coming. Let's see what the international community do. None of those things panned out. It moved with lightning speed. And therefore, there is a kind of conclusion about pessimism, which is err on the side of pessimism. Assume the worst and act on that basis rather than hoping for the best, because then you won't be caught short. But yes, you can't afford to wait. These people, several of them did wait. And by the time they were ready to act, their options were so limited and their odds were so stacked against them. Whereas if they had not given time for things to play out and not given things the benefit of the doubt, it would have been wiser. So I do look at a world now in which, as you put it very well, I think the Democratic backsliding is just undeniable. And there is such a loud voice in all of us telling us not to be hysterical. Don't be hyperbolic. Don't overreact. It seems hotheaded to be making these drawing alarmist conclusions. And yet now, having written this book and worked on it for most of the last three years, when I hear people think like that, I think the people who argued that last time were wrong. And actually, there isn't much time. You have to move as quickly as you can. You have to get the support and alliances that you can. You are in a hurry. Well, important words.”
November 21, 2025 at 10:21 AM
polq.at
Political Spectrum
A diagram of the political spectrum. On the left wing are selfless people, and on the right wing are selfish people.
November 20, 2025 at 3:35 AM
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As a sometimes frustrated listener, I was catching up on my LMSUs today and I loved, loved, loved what I will now call the "Activism Monologue" by @lukemenzel.bsky.social from "Let Me Sum Up: Once You Start Down The Wood Side, Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny", 12 Sep 2025. More of this please!
Going back to your question, Tennant, I kind of think, and I'm sure I've been guilty of this in the past. So, I'm going to, I'm going to perhaps critique myself at the same time I'm critiquing you. I think people in the scene are telling more radical elements of the movement that their activism is unhelpful. Is itself pretty unhelpful? Because A, I don't think that they'll listen and B... Well, maybe they'll, they'll listen and they may consider. I don't know that they'll necessarily change their views or maybe they will. Maybe that isn't itself unfair. But I think they're, my point is broadly that there will always be radical elements of the movement that do keenly feel the existential nature of these issues. And, you know, sort of circuitous, slow moving policy debates are not going to satisfy them. And I think that is a reasonable response to the moment we find ourselves in. And I do think there is a social license piece to all of this that does get influenced over time by this sort of action. And we've seen that again, again, in terms of social movements, right? So, while it might not seem to have, be really moving the needle at all in the space of 6, 12, 12 months, 2 years, 3 years, over time, public opinion can flip. And, you know, that groundwork can seem pretty thankless early on. But it can bear fruit over time. From Let Me Sum Up: Once You Start Down The Wood Side, Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny, 12 Sep 2025
November 17, 2025 at 9:48 AM
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Billy Bob Thornton on his anti-renewable energy monologue in Landman “And I mean, when I run into an oil guy, wherever it is, I mean, mainly Texas, but wherever I am, they always bring that scene up and thank me, and thanks for showing people what this is.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0loS...
“Yeah, and the naturalness is the thing, you know? Like, there's a great scene in Landman where you're explaining, which I loved. You're explaining windmills and what green energy and how much fucking horse shit this all is for you to feel good about yourself. I fucking loved that scene. But I know you're Billy Bob Thornton. But in that scene, you're that fucking dude who works for an oil company, who's like, shut the fuck up. Do you know what the fuck you're even talking about? It's because of that naturalness that that works. Yeah, that scene was, I mean, it became huge. I mean, it was all over the internet, that scene. And I mean, when I run into an oil guy, wherever it is, I mean, mainly Texas, but wherever I am, they always bring that scene up and thank me, and thanks for showing people what this is.” From The Joe Rogan Experience: #2407 - Billy Bob Thornton, 8 Nov 2025 Photo of Billy Bob Thornton on the Joe Rogan show
November 8, 2025 at 4:33 AM
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Young Nationals delegate Perrin Rennie warned that abandoning net zero could expose regional Australians to increased risks from natural disasters and potentially result in a loss of votes to the Labor Party.
www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...
One, Young Nationals delegate Perrin Rennie, said “regional Australians will be paying the price for increased natural disasters”. “They will be losing their livelihoods to floods. They’ll lose their homes to fires. We’ll be experiencing more droughts. It is key that Australia does its part to ensure that climate change doesn’t severely impact our regions.” Rennie said an abandonment of net zero could see the Nationals lose votes to the Labor Party as extreme weather events impact regional and rural Australia.
November 3, 2025 at 3:56 AM
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Anti Fascism frog Amphiba on the streets of Naarm, Melbourne peacefully countering the so called “March for Australia” rally 🐸
Anti Fascism Frog, Naarm, Melbourne
October 19, 2025 at 2:00 AM
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Billy Joel on Donald Trump, Nazis, and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017

"We fought a war to defeat these people. The Nazis are not good people. Period."

#antifa
White men marching in Charlottesville in 2017 at the Unite the Right rally with the caption "Jews will not replace us!" Billy Joel at piano saying, "You know, he [Donald Trump] should have come out and said those are bad people" Billy Joel at piano saying, "We fought a war to, you know, defeat these people" Billy Joel at piano saying, "The Nazis are not good people. Period."
October 16, 2025 at 1:42 PM
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@ecomarxi.bsky.social
@ecomarxi.bsky.social ✅ Ceasefire agreement ❌ End of the genocide ❌ Dismantling of apartheid ❌ Liberation for Palestine ❌ True self-determination ❌ Right of return ❌ Accountability for the perpetrators ❌ Accountability for the enablers ❌ An end to Zionism We. Do. Not. Stop.
October 10, 2025 at 9:29 AM
polq.at
🔥
Album cover of Rage Against the Machine's latest release, Live on Tour 1993, with Bullet in the Head cued for my listening pleasure
September 29, 2025 at 1:54 AM
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Bogong, Victoria
Photo of landscape and reservoir at Bogong, Victoria, Australia
September 25, 2025 at 6:27 AM
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Mt Beauty
View of town of Mt Beauty, lake and mountain range behind
September 22, 2025 at 6:26 AM
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AI "companies with budgets orders of magnitude bigger than the public sector, run by man-children with massive egos betting the farm on making a God in a box chimera where all it can do is to bugger up higher education and people's ability to write things." - @mkblyth.bsky.social

Great interview 👇
I think it's a really interesting one is to think about the fact that while China continues to basically dominate sector after sector to invest in battery technology, etc. They've got an approach to Al, but they're not betting the farm on it. And the United States is betting the farm on it. And this is very different from what you usually do. Usually, what the United States does is run a kind of hidden developmental state through universities, through agencies like DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects. And then we make these things, and then they spill out into the private sector. And the great example is Mariana Mazzucotto did this in her book on the competition state. All the key technologies in the iPhone were basically made in public and private universities with federal money. And they had defense applications, and then Steve comes along, puts it in a shiny box, and changes the world. And this is very different. This is now where we've got these massive companies whose investment budgets are orders of magnitude bigger than anything that the universities could muster, or even the public sector would put out. And they're run by man-children with massive egos. So if you think about Meta, I mean Meta has squandered almost a trillion dollars on the metaverse. I mean, it's just bollocks, right? And they can't produce legs. And you have this incredible arms race for this thing called Generative AI, which is never going to happen. It's a complete chimera. It's almost a very Soviet way of thinking. It's like, if we have enough of a quantity of transformation, you get a quality of transformation. You're like, no, that's not how it happens. But nonetheless, we'll spend all this money on this sort of stuff in this insane arms race. And the people at the top still can't tell you what the final use case is. Meanwhile, China is just going sector after sector, let's do batteries, let's do this, let's do this. It really is the strange moment where the cult of the entrepreneur in the United States has blinded the country to what actually we need to do in long term investment. And we've bet the house all on this one critical technology, which as far as I'm concerned, all it seems to be able to do is to bugger up higher education and people's ability to write things. So that would be my side worry on top of all this stuff. But there's an aspect to that where the use of Al appears, if we look at this in terms of power. I have written about this actually for Drilled, where there is an extension to which Al, the next link in the evolutionary train from the way economic modeling was used to argue against doing anything about climate change, which was another Australian pioneering invention, by the way. You can see how the hype and the focus on artificial intelligence as a climate solution and as it will fix everything, it will create new materials, is very much a distraction and a very convenient way to turn people away from investing in and focusing on to just going all in on, you know, wind, solar, batteries, anything. Figure out sodium batteries, you get rid of the need for thermal protection, the cost of EVs dropped by 30%. It's very simple. It's not nearly as sexy as, we are making God in a box. And with that, that might be a good point to end on. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to... We're making God in a box.
September 17, 2025 at 12:39 AM
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Rally Against Racism, Flinders Street, Naarm
Photo of Rally Against Racism crowd at Flinders Street, Naarm facing the station from the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Street
September 13, 2025 at 1:33 AM
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Rally Against Racism
Rally Against Racism poster Rally Against Racism poster
September 13, 2025 at 12:29 AM
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Battle of Naarm, Bourke Street
August 31, 2025 at 4:08 AM
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#FreePalestine
#MigrantsWelcome
#NoToNazis
Naarm
Photo of crowd welcoming migrants and not Nazis
August 31, 2025 at 2:28 AM
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Gadigal Country
#FreePalestine
@antoinettelattouf.bsky.social
Antoinette Lattouf speaking at Hyde Park to stop the genocide in Gaza
August 24, 2025 at 3:29 AM
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Three Sisters, Echo Point NSW
View of landscape including Three Sisters, at Echo Point NSW
August 23, 2025 at 4:11 AM
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Govetts Leap, Blackheath, NSW
Panoramic photo of the landscape from Govetts Leap lookout, Blackheath, NSW
August 23, 2025 at 3:20 AM
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I don’t want my kids going to fossil fuel sponsored universities #StopWoodsideMonash
Podium for Stop Woodside Monash
August 20, 2025 at 2:19 AM