From Cameron
Hey folks. I hope you’re all having a great week.
Ray was back from vacation this week so we recorded a couple of new Cold War episodes (still talking about Castro, etc). We talked about an American guy called William Morgan who went to Cuba in the late 1950s to fight for the revolution, became a Comandante, joined Che in taking Santa Clara in December 1958, but then became disenchanted with Castro after he moved towards socialism after the revolution, became a counter-revolutionary, helped prepare for the Bay of Pigs invasion, and ended up being arrested and executed by firing squad. Crazy story.
I recorded a TikTok about how socialism became a dirty word in the West (see below). A lot of my week has been spent working on a white paper about humanoids in Australia for my new project, The Futuristic Group. I’m trying to work out the details of what impacts they are likely to have on Australian society in the next decade. So that’s taxing my brain.
Did my usual 12 hours of kung fu this week. Chrissy managed to split someone’s head open during sparring yesterday, with a spinning elbow, which is verboten during training but she panicked, it happens. Luckily the guy she did it to is a black belt and one of our mentors, so he took it well. She was devastated though! I had to leave my sparring session for a while to help her calm down. Fun fun fun.
Anyway… that’s all my news for the week.
Stay safe. Don’t die.
All the best,
Cameron Reilly
LinkedIn
My Thought For The Day
“The machines that we create, like all other intelligent beings, will be governed in their behaviours by three instincts of survival and achievement: they will do whatever is needed for their self-preservation; they will be obsessive about resource aggregation; they will be creative.
More interestingly, they will most certainly possess three qualities that are always hotly debated. The machines will be conscious, emotional and ethical. Of course, the nature of exactly what they will hold within their consciousness, what will trigger their emotions and what actions their ethics will inform is still unknown, but they will be guided in their behaviours by these human-like qualities nonetheless."
“Scary Smart”, Mo Gawdat
Our TikTok of the Week
This Week’s Episodes
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Life of Caesar · Published 11 June 2026 Titus’ Victory Tour – Vespasian #22Titus wraps up the Jewish War with a five-month tour of the region, dropping in on city after city with two legions at his back and thousands of Jewish captives in tow…. who he then has killed, in as many creative ways as possible, as entertainment. Meanwhile he’s sleeping with Berenice, Jewish princess and co-ruler of the very territory he just levelled, which is complicated. And somewhere in Syria, Josephus spots a river that only flows on the Sabbath, spawning… |
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Cold War · Published 25 June 2026 Cold War 311: ColetillasMikoyan, Soviet deputy premier and ice cream king, rolls into Havana in February 1960 with a 40-person delegation, a science exhibit, and advice for Castro to just take all the American-owned land without compensation. Meanwhile, Cuba’s newspaper workers start inserting little clarification notes next to stories they disagree with…. which escalates until the clarifications are longer than the articles, and publishers start fleeing to Miami to write for the Herald. The oldest paper on the island holds an actual funeral… |
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Renaissance · Published 26 June 2026 Rats, Jews, and the Man with the Flute – The Renaissance #241The Jews have been expelled, the lepers have been burned, and somebody clearly had a plan…. we just don’t know who. We dig into the mechanics of medieval conspiracy theories, how the same story spread across France at a speed that makes you go “hmm,” and why the whole thing is basically a template that’s still being photocopied 700 years later. Also: the Pied Piper of Hamelin was apparently a real event, and the rats didn’t show up until 275… |
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The Bullshit Filter · Published 8 June 2026 Nine Grievances, One Con Man – BS Filter #146Today we cut through the spin on why people actually support Trump – nine real grievances, zero good excuses for picking the worst possible guy to fix them. If you would like to listen to the full episode, sign up and become a supporter of the show! It’s less than the cost of a single coffee a week. The post Nine Grievances, One Con Man – BS Filter #146 appeared first on The BS Filter . |
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QAV Australia · Published 24 June 2026 OIL THAT: QAV AU #925This week we cover the Iran oil sanctions waiver and what it means for the oil price, plus debrief on selling our oil stocks (Karoon, Viva Energy, Brookside) ahead of what turned out to be a nasty drop. Tony does a Pulled Pork on ASX-listed labour hire and training firm Ashley Services Group (ASH), a thinly traded turnaround story with a strong owner-founder and a QAV score of 0.24. We also note the passing of Alan Greenspan, the Credit Corp… |
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QAV America · Published 26 June 2026 The Bunker, the Billionaire, and the Bank That Cared (CARE): QAV America #58This week we dig into Carter Bankshares (CARE), a tiny Virginia community bank that got itself tangled up with a billionaire US senator, a Cold War bunker resort, and nearly $800 million in dodgy loans, then somehow came out the other side with $80 million in cash and a story worthy of HBO. We also cover Alan Greenspan’s passing at 100, the SpaceX float wobble, the Iran sanctions waiver, and why Big Tech’s stock-based compensation accounting might be quietly fleecing… |