New Matilda

The universe is celebrating the apparent never-ending descent of Donald Trump in the polls. Or so we’re lead to believe. Only one problem… the polls don’t show that. At least, the one Newsweek decided to crow about a few days ago doesn’t. Chris Graham explains. I’ve written about this many times in the past, mainly because it’s part-hobby (polls and numbers) and part bugbear (media misreporting polls and numbers). So here we go again….

Not since a kid on a roof with an automatic rifle took a little chunk out of Donald Trump’s pro-gun ear has the US president had to confront a more bitter irony linked to his extraordinarily shitty behaviour in office. Chris Graham explains. In a country wracked with angst and uncertainty, there is one thing that will definitely happen, sooner or later: Donald Trump will lose office, and/or die… and not necessarily in that order.

I’ve got some good news, and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that Martin McDonagh, the genius Irish filmmaker and playwright behind Three Billboards Outside Billings, Missouri has released a new film. The bad news is… I’ll get to that at the end of the story, because it’s genuinely upsetting. Early and bold prediction, Wild Horse Nine is going to be the best film released in 2026.

If you were looking for a single video that best encapsulated why so many people the world over feel an ever-increasing disdain for police, then this clusterf*ck out of the US might be for you. The story begins with a June 2024 complaint from a woman named Katherine Jensen to the local police department in College Park, a small city on the fringes of Atlanta, Georgia. Police bodycam footage of the incident reveals Jensen alleging that a man named Charles Read, her ex-boyfriend, assaulted her.

In Australia, we’ve built an economy that cuts off our nose to spite our face — or, more politely, one that relies on exporting the fossil fuels driving climate change to pay for our imports and our appetite for expensive things. It works, right up until it doesn’t. And when it cracks, as a small war on the other side of the planet has just reminded us, we’re forced to confront just how exposed we’ve left ourselves. Geoff Russell weighs in.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when “just asking questions” meets a complete lack of curiosity about the answers, the ABC has provided a neat case study. Recently, Aunty ran a story suggesting that a Bureau of Meteorology temperature record in southern Victoria might not stack up — not on the basis of competing data, but because a local bloke reckons it just doesn’t feel right. It’s a small story, admits Chris Graham, but it speaks to a much bigger problem.

Australia’s halls of power don’t look all that different to the halls of our private school’s across town in high-flying electorates. Rachel Payne MP – a self-described ‘cat lady’ and ‘weed smoker’ from the industrial city of Newcastle, wonders aloud why that is. I have been a Member of the Victorian Parliament for almost four years and there’s one word that is conspicuously absent in the chamber – class.

Violence is never the answer, until it is… and that moment arrived spectacularly for ‘influencer boxer’ Nurideen Shabazz this week not once, but twice in 24 hours after the attention-hungry Youtuber discovered what ‘F*ck Around And Find Out’ (FAFO) really means.

Broken Hill in the Far West of Outback New South Wales has just come through one of the most severe heat events in its recorded history. And as tends to happen in extreme conditions, the temperature didn’t just melt bitumen — it melted tempers, certainty, and a few long-held myths about what constitutes a “normal” outback summer.

As Artificial Intelligence slowly takes over the world – and more than its fair share of our energy consumption – there’s growing pressure on AI companies to ‘go green’ and power their massive data centres with renewable energy. But do the numbers – and not just the ones associated with profit – actually add up? Geoff Russell wades into the mire. A recent Australian Financial Review article reported praise for our renewable resources as giving us some kind of edge in the data centre boom.