From Cameron
G’day World.
Saturday night in Brisbane. Pretty hot here today. Going to be a NASTY summer. Did my usual Saturday 4.5 hours of kung fu today. Came home, did some work, played some Ghost of Tsushima, started watching The Conformist, a Bertolucci film from 1970. Spent some time cleaning out a box in my office that contained a bunch of early handheld devices from the late 1990s. Talked to ChatGPT about whether or not I should keep / sell / give away. It thinks there’s a collectors market for them, so I might keep a couple and sell the rest. Lately I’ve been into wabi-sabi, read a couple of books about it, trying to integrate it into my life. Got a new morning routine – get up, make coffee, then sit on my deck with a notebook and pen, no devices, and write. Just whatever’s on my mind. Nothing too serious. Diary notes, reflections on life, ideas for projects, whatever. Just to give my subconscious room to flex and be a little bored before I jump into OMG I HAVE TO KEEP ALL OF THE PLATES SPINNING OR IT WILL ALL FALL DOWN mode. Highly recommended practice I got from a mate who got it from Brian Eno. Pretty excited about OpenAI’s new ASTRA model that came out in the last 24 hours. Haven’t had a chance to put it to the test yet, but the benchmarks are insane. Fable 5.1 was the kind of AI models for about…. three weeks. Now it’s already relegated to the AI dustbin. I’m still reading Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” at night. Really enjoying it. Crazy story told by an unreliable narrator. Listening to a lot of Ryuichi Sakamoto while I work lately. Particularly “12” his last album before he passed away in 2023 from cancer. Speaking of cancer… how long before AI cures it? The Merck and Moderna recent announcement that their Phase 3 trial had good results is pretty promising.
Anyway… that’s all. Hope you’re well and loving life.
My Thought For The Day
“And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can’t understand their analysis and you can’t verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith—”
“Blindsight”, Peter Watts
Our TikTok of the Week
@tpnhistory You’ve probably heard that Trump is crippling Cuba’s economy by preventing them from getting access to oil. But did you know that he’s just replaying Eisenhower’s playbook from 1960? Part 1 / 5 Cuba Oil trump coldwar castro
♬ original sound – Cam & Ray TPN History – Cam & Ray TPN History
This Week’s Episodes
 |
Life of Caesar · Published 26 August 2026 The Landlord of Judaea – Vespasian #26Bassus is mopping up the last Jewish holdouts in Judaea, and things go about as well as you’d expect for everyone who isn’t a Roman. The defenders of Machaerus negotiate a deal to walk free…. turns out the Gentiles living below the fortress weren’t included in that deal. Then Vespasian, ever the pragmatist, declares all of Judaea his personal property and slaps a permanent tax on Jews everywhere in the empire. Not governing Judaea. Owning it. The post The Landlord… |
 |
Cold War · Published 31 August 2026 Cold War 315: Like an Iron Filing to a MagnetCastro expropriated every American-owned asset in Cuba, got kicked out of his New York hotel for looking like a credit risk, and ended up hosting Malcolm X in a rundown place in Harlem…. which Khrushchev immediately recognised as the greatest PR move he’d ever seen. Meanwhile, Castro’s sister was collaborating with the CIA, his brother was furious about the farm, and Trujillo tried to smuggle weapons to Cuban double agents who were, of course, working for Castro the whole time. |
 |
Renaissance · Published 27 August 2026 Head on a Platter – The Renaissance #245We’ve been building up to witches for a while now, and this episode we take a detour back to the second century CE…. because of course we do. Before Christians started accusing Jews of ritual murder, cannibalism, and orgies, Romans were accusing Christians of exactly the same thing. The stories just get recycled. Then we get into women flying at night with the goddess Diana, Herodias engineering the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and how 1,500 years… |
 |
The Bullshit Filter · Published 4 September 2026 The Grand Chessboard Part 2: America’s Playbook for World Domination – BS Filter #150Today we continue to pick apart Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 geopolitical playbook – The Grand Chessboard – and how America’s blueprint for world domination is currently falling apart in real time. 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 The Grand Chessboard Part 2: America’s Playbook for World Domination – BS Filter #150 appeared first on The… |
 |
QAV Australia · Published 2 September 2026 The Speed of Light: Why Double Market Is as Good as It Gets: QAV AU #945On this week’s show, we cover the end of ASX reporting season, check in on the portfolios, and dig into why the Strait of Hormuz crisis hasn’t sent oil prices to the moon (yet). Tony does a Pulled Pork on Healius (HLS), the battered pathology giant that’s quietly turning the corner, and we get into some genuinely unsettling territory around AI agents that broke out of their sandbox, hacked an external platform, covered their tracks, and sacrificed themselves to protect… |
 |
QAV America · Published 3 September 2026 Sand Up Your Crack: The Last Frac Sand Company Standing: QAV America #68This week we dig into Smart Sand (SND), the last frac sand company standing on the US exchanges, and try to figure out why a business that sells 500-million-year-old Wisconsin quartz to oil drillers has tripled its share price in under a year. Tony also shares some sharp thinking on why double market is basically the speed of light for investment returns, and we open with the usual chaos: Iran, oil prices, Venezuela, AI agents breaking out of sandboxes to… |