Van Badham

My latest in the Guardian is about how Australian workers are getting older but the workplace is not growing up.

Victoria’s debt gets a lot of bad press. But the state has made progress in repairing its finances, and in some other states, debt is now growing much faster.

We're getting on with the job of delivering Australia's energy transition.  And we're doing it by investing in the cheapest form of energy and putting downward pressure on power prices.

A broad anti-authoritarian coalition doesn’t need ideological harmony; it needs a shared floor: free elections, civil liberties, and a willingness to hand power back when voters say so.

intelligence is knowing that if i ever looked up anything about Magyar, Lula, or any of the other election winners i would probably not be great fans of their politics wisdom is knowing it doesn't matter because defeating the global chud coalition is all that matters for the foreseeable future

Coalition don’t care if you die of heatstroke in the coming years

Serbia's strongman leader Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement in seismic political shift www.pbs.org/newshour/wor...

hang on, so Bleecker Street was sold to a Pierre Omidyar-backed group that also happens to back Tosca Musk's Passionflix... and now "MUSK" is disappearing from theaters?

lol they really do not want you to see this movie huh

This piece is kind of amazing

James Talarico: We are still very much the underdogs. We're going up against the most corrupt politician in Texas who is backed by the most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world — both the president and Elon Musk are backing Ken Paxton.

Best way to fight back? Vote. Minnesota: You can vote now or cast your ballot by November 3.

In MAGA, parental estrangement is a big issue — and parents are held out as blameless victims. I suspect that's one reason why Vivek Ramaswamy ran an ad celebrating Amy Acton's vile mother. And why MAGA — including Vance and Trump — are backing him. www.salon.com/2026/10/23/r...

We lit a candle for Helen Haines here in Ballarat.

While many of his colleagues in News’ Australian papers have enthusiastically embraced accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith’s recent media tour, Bolt himself is certainly not convinced. www.crikey.com.au/2026/10/23/a... ($) #ausmedia #auslaw Video in this X link x.com/TheKennyDevi...

This is one of the most holy sh*t stories I’ve ever read in my life. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

Trump is torn between needing Republicans to win to continue to protect him and wanting to be the only real winner in the party and that internal conflict plays out at every rally.

*A set of Yandex anecdotes after the bombing of its data centers *For instance: have they been pumping tax-free, non-sanctioned money directly from Moldova to Dubai, well, why wouldn't they www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-st...

I love my big leaky president. I love that various fluids and secretions are escaping his body. I can’t wait until we next get to see his wet leaky gunk dripping from his holes and orifices

Why is this student so upset about the mushroom, though? What could it have done to make her protest across the whole continent

Likely the most important thing I've ever written — if you're an academic and the AI mania unsettles you, here's my best shot at presenting some intellectual tools that might help you articulate why. arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251

The guy who made his fortune by giving Alzheimer’s patients and their families false hope just tried to exploit the sex abuse his opponent suffered as a child for his own political gain. Republicans are a Mad Libs of depraved cruelty and moral degeneracy. Just horrible people.

Holy Christ, what a day. I just blocked 300 raging right-wing fuckwits on Facebook. Can I have a hug?

I am still astonished that I can fill up my car with sunshine

One Nation has been spending a lot of money lately. I took a look at what we know, and what we don't, about where it is coming from and who is involved for @deepcutnews.bsky.social.

What's extremely telling is that there is never once an article like this written from the perspective of the person who cut off their parent.

it was the fuck-aroundest of times, it was the find-outest of times (gift link) www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Recognizing a bad faith plant in a town hall and politely but firmly gutting their gotcha like a fish is an underrated campaign skill.

Advance is harming the campaign, Victorian Coalition members warn. Advance dismisses them as displaying a "galactically stupid misunderstanding of both the electoral position they find themselves in and our strategy for the campaign". #springst www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Lmao this guy was a Josh Hawley Staffer. Complete loser energy through and through.

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

Solidarity, to all democracy-loving people in the United States of America, from under the gum trees in Ballarat, Australia. #NoKings

While everybody’s talking about the flying car, the clock is ticking on the treason.

The Polish Foreign Minister responds to claims that Musk strangled Starlink access to Ukrainian forces costing Ukrainian lives.

Every time this nonsense idea is floated, I think of those adult men who used to insist that the 16 year old girl they were dating was “bright, really bright, really switched on for her age”.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... No better place than an industrial arbitration tribunal for bold stands against inauthentic poetry. Fair Work is precisely where clash between human experience of work fatigue & delusional mythologies of outdated management cultures are brought into sharper view

Australian voters back AI copyright changes — if creators get paid POLITICO Australia share.google/OpYBwdhiNVdL...

I am normal, I don't hang out with platforms and people that sell child porn. That's who I was ten years ago; that's who I've stayed. That's *the big things*. It is the people who have stayed on Twitter who have changed, and who have not realized it. They embrace the dumpster fire, and can't see it.

People ask me this all the time, so I’ll just say: look at the transgender hate panic, a thing that had no organic element and did not arise from the public, and was instead imposed upon everyone by the world’s most hateful, poisonous and malignant media class.

Is Crisafulli Gov stacking Qld bodies with Atlas Network figures? Jack McGuire works with Haycroft (Australian Institute for Progress AiP director) to scupper unions. James Power (ultracon Catholic) IPA board placed on Qld edu board…