BUDDY COP MOVIES FROM HELL

Neoliberalism and nationalism are, ostensibly, incompatible. The belief in open borders and the ability of labour and investment to flow wherever the market can make best use of them directly contradicts nationalist sentiment that values border control and one’s own tribe above all others. So what happens when a neoliberal party and a right-wing populist party form a government? Austria’s neoliberal OVP and the near-fascist FPO are finding out and it’s not pretty. And speaking of strange bedfellows, the hard left in Europe is finding common cause with the far right when it comes to Russia.

WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING?

Do you have a bullshit job? It was Douglas Adams who first identified that a huge chunk of service industry jobs literally had no purpose and could simply be scrapped (or their workers dispatched in a giant space ark) without any noticeable impact on society. David Graeber has explored the issue in more detail, starting with his famous 2013 article, and it turns out many workers think Adams had a point — they work in jobs that could vanish without anyone noticing.

Which brings us to our Stat of the Week from the Reserve Bank’s latest chart pack. It sums up better than any other graph I’ve seen how Australia is becoming a service economy; look at how rapidly household services have grown as a source of employment since 2012. The only “making things” job with any appreciable growth has been construction.

And even if we all suddenly became healthy and stopped ageing, that wouldn’t halt the rise and rise of service jobs, according to new Australian research. Accountancy courses, anyone?

#INTERNETOFSHIT

Lots of positive responses (well, negative responses, but in a good way) to last week’s links on the #IoS. I’ll keep up the stories about needlessly-connected homewares gifting priceless opportunities to hackers, but meanwhile, we’re utterly stuffed anyway due to the looming arrival of quantum computing. Quantum computing has been talked about for maybe 15 years that I can recall, but it’s now nearly within reach as a commercially available tech, which means normal encryption will be useless in a few years’ time. Then again it’s not like our government, corporations or NGOs can protect our data now. But can’t we use BLOCKCHAIN?!!! Well, alas…

GAMECHANGER! BLOCKCHAIN’S ACTUALLY RUBBISH

Sick of the hype about blockchain and cryptocurrencies? Tired of endless stories about what a “gamechanger” blockchain is? FT Alphaville’s got your back. The long-time blockchain sceptics report from a recent House of Commons hearing where even blockchain evangelists admitted major problems with it.

REPORTING LIVE FROM A NIGHTMARE

One the most Sisyphean tasks in US journalism must be to write another take on another school massacre. The Atlantic‘s David Frum understandably offers no profound insights about the latest one in Texas, but he has an excellent catalogue of statistics and suggests that a moral movement against gun lunacy comparable to religious awakenings might be underway. Meanwhile over at Harper’s, Seymour Hersh has given a fascinating account of how he broke the My Lai massacre story in 1969 (the massacre occurred just over 50 years ago, in March 1968).

TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING

And if you’re not depressed enough about how bleak life can be in the US, here’s a map of US “abortion deserts” — areas where women have to travel more than 100 miles to access reproductive health services.

Meanwhile, why did Donald Trump make such a spectacle of welcoming home three American hostages who had been held by North Korea? For domestic political gain, of course (Nixon did the same with POWs). Only problem is, did Trump thus accidentally signal how valuable future US captives might be for countries looking to get something from him?

AND FINALLY…

Nayuka Gorrie both challenges white and heterosexual definitions of family and reflects on the anti-marriage equality campaign from an Aboriginal, as well as queer, perspective, in this wonderful piece.