Shaun Lambert
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alexanderlambrt.bsky.social
Shaun Lambert
@alexanderlambrt.bsky.social
modernity values life over living, and we are all the poorer for it // whomever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
The false dichotomy between university and apprenticeships
Against apprenticeships
Australian political discussion regularly returns to the idea that the solution to our education and labour-market problems lies in “more apprenticeships”.
substack.com
December 5, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
And then here's her reading the audiobook of her book with the fake breathy voice bsky.app/profile/stua...
December 4, 2025 at 4:22 PM
the secret third option: the car, and also whoever designed those shoddy road markings you can just see at the end

there's a lane marking, then like a third of a lane, and some left/right turning dividing thingy
Apparently people are once again asking who's at fault here. We can improve road safety dramatically by revoking the driver's licence of everyone who thinks it's the cyclist's fault.
December 4, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
i think we should chase these people through the streets
December 3, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
"The larger it is, the more it pollutes" - Mayor of Paris
We need more local leaders prepared to speak out and take action on this literal growing threat
www.bbc.com/news/article...
'Carspreading’ is on the rise - not everyone is happy
In the UK and across Europe, cars are becoming longer, wider and heavier.
www.bbc.com
December 3, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
December 3, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
thank you barack obama & the other world leaders of 2008-9 for permanently bestowing this class of sociopaths on us all
The co-founder of Kalshi says: " The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion."
December 4, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
One important thing to note is that it also did not happen in either the immediate postwar era *or* after the occupation was lifted (and you saw actual Class A war criminals like Kishi Nobusuke in office). It happened in the 1970s. In that regard it's very similar to Jim Crow-era Confederate statues
Hot take about Yasukuni: it's somewhere between funny and sad that all the convicted war criminals enshrined there were enshrined after midnight and the people responsible didn't tell anyone for, iirc, several years after doing it.
Okay, gang, great job with the Falklands Discourse this week.

On Friday we're changing gears to a 2-for-1 special Yasukuni Shrine-Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands trollfest.

Then, to ease us into the holidays, we'll be hosting a spicy "Cyprus: who does it really belong to?" debate.
December 3, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Spotify is garbage on every count: Its treatment of artists, its ICE advertising, the CEO's investment in military AI, its leading role in the commodification and AI slopification of music, its terrible audio quality—you name it.

So I quit, and put together a complete guide to getting off Spotify:
How to quit Spotify
This Black Friday, here's a guide to finding the best Spotify alternative
www.bloodinthemachine.com
December 3, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Holy shit this rules
Last week @theverge.com published my essay exploring the limitations of large-language models. This week, that same essay is cited by a federal judge in Michigan to distinguish the process of human reasoning from what these models do. Very, very gratifying.
h/t @robertfreundlaw.bsky.social

holy shit, an accurate legal critique of LLMs. LLMs don't reason because they're just stitching together plausible-looking sentences indifferent to the content
December 3, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Here’s my Spotify Wrapped 🎵✨
December 3, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Satellites keep photobombing the Hubble telescope, and it’s getting worse
Satellites keep photobombing the Hubble telescope, and it’s getting worse
Overcrowded orbits are making astronomers’ jobs harder.
buff.ly
December 3, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
No-strings-attached, zero-means-testing, no-questions-asked cash payouts have been proven, over and over again, to be the most effective form of charity/aid going.

It gets people in housing, and it saves the state money. We know this. It's fact, not theory.
An Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees a staggering reduction in homelessness. The program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years, and at the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.
Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees staggering reduction in homelessness
The state program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years. At the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.
www.streetroots.org
December 3, 2025 at 7:12 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
“AI is clearly sticking around so you have to get used to it” wrong. I don’t have to get used to shit. I am a practiced hater and I can keep this going for decades if I am required to
December 1, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Okay @erinbiba.bsky.social it’s time for my second-most anticipated annual thread: Cats in Christmas Trees (and Battling Menorahs). Starting off strong with Donut.
December 3, 2025 at 4:52 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Labor wants to ban whistleblowers from anonymous FOI requests, charge you to access your own information, and massively expand what they can hide from you.

Only a government addicted to secrecy looks at FOI & thinks "the problem here is that the public gets too much information"
December 3, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Secretary defends job providers' use of payment suspensions, as she's "interrogated the system in a very active way"

So, she's asked about @antipovertycentre.org analysis, showing the system is threatening 5 payment suspensions a minute, & admits she didn't even check this data. Such interrogation!
December 3, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
The @antipovertycentre.org is one of THREE external stakeholders the government has "consulted" during this TCF scandal

All 3 stakeholders (including a peak body for community legal centres) told the Department to turn off payment suspensions, & were ignored
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Centrelink threatening payment suspensions at rate of five a minute, new analysis suggests
Exclusive: As jobseekers continue to have payments suspended, advocates call for the regime to be stopped until it’s proven to be lawful
www.theguardian.com
December 3, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
“Maybe we’re onto something.”

“How can we tell? We’ve only done this 187,623 times with the same success every single time. Could be a fluke.”
An Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees a staggering reduction in homelessness. The program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years, and at the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.
Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees staggering reduction in homelessness
The state program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years. At the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.
www.streetroots.org
December 3, 2025 at 6:17 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
"How could someone be so twisted?" said the media regarding the person making nursery rhyme videos.

From the archive: chaser.com.au/entertainmen...
December 3, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
We are governed by bloodsucking, technocratic morons. more technofuedal enshittification from the incrementalist in chief.
EXCLUSIVE: Funding and support plans for national disability insurance scheme participants will be generated by a computer program and staff will have no discretion to amend them, under a major overhaul of the NDIS to be rolled out next year, @australia.theguardian.com can reveal.
December 3, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
All I want for Christmas is the SMH to do its job

Content warning for road violence and credulous reporting. Yesterday, a person died near Central after being hit by a garbage truck. They were on a speed-limited e-bike at the time, which prompted an awful lot of media outlets to play the hits and…
All I want for Christmas is the SMH to do its job
Content warning for road violence and credulous reporting. Yesterday, a person died near Central after being hit by a garbage truck. They were on a speed-limited e-bike at the time, which prompted an awful lot of media outlets to play the hits and blame kids on e-motorbikes for, as a reminder, this approx 13 tonne garbage truck being driven into this person.
walksydney.org
December 3, 2025 at 5:33 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
Rob Harris suggesting Wells going to NY for the United Nations General Assembly is akin to "Bronwyn Bishop’s helicopter. Sussan Ley’s impulse property buy. George Christensen’s Philippines holidays" shows just what a clownshow of a media outlet Nine news has become.

www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...
With her eye-watering flight costs, Wells has handed her critics the perfect weapon
It’s the simple scandals – the ones voters can explain to each other in a supermarket queue – that bring ministers undone.
www.smh.com.au
December 3, 2025 at 5:16 AM
comparing this to Bronwyn's helicopter is absurd.

also not convinced going economy to the other side of the planet for work is a good idea!

www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...
With her eye-watering flight costs, Wells has handed her critics the perfect weapon
It’s the simple scandals – the ones voters can explain to each other in a supermarket queue – that bring ministers undone.
www.smh.com.au
December 3, 2025 at 5:54 AM
Reposted by Shaun Lambert
2022: Labor will restore the public service.
2023: Labor has brought some temp jobs in-house again.
2024: Peter Dutton wants to cut the public service!
2025: Labor are cutting the public service.
December 3, 2025 at 12:37 AM