Bondi Beach
The fallout from Australia's worst mass shooting (and domestic terrorist incidence) since 1996.
A. Two gunmen (a father and son) have killed at least 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration in Bondi beach, Australia. This is the worst mass shooting (and domestic terrorist incident) since the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. The shootings were ideologically motivated. ASIO has explored historical Islamic State links with the elder gunman. The mass shooting has raised global awareness of antisemitism dangers. Psychologists have provided crisis incident debriefing advice. May the victims rest in power. The mass shootings have renewed the domestic political debate about Australia’s very strong gun laws: the two shooters used registered firearms. Other themes will emerge - such as concerns about “missed warnings” of antisemitism and onshore radicalisation.
B. Relevant to the Bondi Beach mass shooting is the new Cynthia Miller-Idriss book Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025). Also see Shalom Lappin’s The New Antisemitism: The Resurgence of an Ancient Hatred in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2024).
C. I’ve been reading James Reich’s Wilhelm Reich and the Flying Saucers (Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2024) that reframes the controversial psychoanalyst and dissident biologist’s later years. The book analyses a number of films including The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951); Bad Day At Black Rock (1954); and WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) that personally impacted Reich. What is fascinating here is the intersection of Reich’s attempted (idiosyncratic) theory-building; his psychological descent into delusional beliefs and paranoid personality disorder; how state censorship works; and the emergence from 1947 onwards of a UFO cosmology / subculture in the United States.
D. On reading parts of Reich’s book above, The Day The Earth Stood Still has several contemporary nuances. The first part of the film foregrounds the contagion effects of new mass media: television broadcasts, mass society radio, and post-World War II sociological propaganda of threat-driven emotional salience and collective group based integration. The middle part of the film explores using film noir and melodrama genre tropes the risks of early Cold War domesticity and fears of insider threats. The final part of the film deals with savant-like genius; how the United Nations would likely fail due to coordination problems; insights on the diamond trade and hospitals as total institutions (Erving Goffman); and Freudian superego-driven messages about nuclear weapons; rockets; and galactic security. There’s a lot more here beyond the iconic quotes and imagery that is usually cited in science fiction film genre history books.
E. Monash University’s Senior Lecturer Dr Jathan Sadowski has written an informative article about the financialisation of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket - and what these neoliberal market logics will likely lead to.
F. Christian Wiman asks for Harpers Magazine: Is consciousness God?
G. The Nation and Pitchfork list their best albums of 2025.
H. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on the Theory of Knowledge by Professor Declan Smithies.
I. LCD Soundsystem has gone cringe Slate’s Luke Winkie claims. Should I listen to them? (Most of the early 2000s music for me is a blur as the 1970s-1990s were far more influential personally in my Gen X life.)
J. “Pharma Bro” and Wu-Tang Clan rare album buyer Martin Shkreli has a YouTube channel. Here is an almost 2.5 hour interview where Shkreli explains how finance really works from a buy-side perspective.
K. The upcoming film The Wizard of the Kremlin explores the role of political technologists in Vladimir Putin’s rise to become Russia’s President. See the official trailer below. For more on political technologists and how they work in Russia to manufacture consent, read Peter Pomerantsev’s books and watch Adam Curtis documentaries (that mainly use BBC archival footage and an agitprop visual and editing style).
L. How to view the far right in the United States in 2025: MAGA and Silicon Valley are voter blocs who seek President Donald Trump’s attention and social influence over the Executive Branch’s priorities. In policymaking this is called agenda-setting: it is part of what lobbyists; interest groups; the media; and think tanks do. There is now a small industry of books being released on this during the second Trump administration. One of the latest is the independent journalist Jacob Silverman’s Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalisation of Silicon Valley (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2025).
M. Cambodia and Thailand are an Indo-Pacific (regional) geopolitical flashpoint.
N. 20 minutes of life in Sydney, Australia in 1966.
O. A PBS documentary on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space mission to investigate asteroids (a VPN will be needed for non-US viewers).
P. Radiohead’s recent concerts in Berlin, Germany are already being hailed as amongst their career-spanning best. Footage of the third and final date is now on YouTube from the account I Saw It Live.
An earlier set from Copenhagen, Denmark is also now on YouTube.
Q. Polymath physicist and 1965 Nobel laureate Richard Feynman considers in 1985 if machines (computers) can really think: the Holy Grail of contemporary Artificial Intelligence research.