I’ve been following the debate around Jim Chalmers’s proposed superannuation reforms with fascination, particularly the story about farmers supposedly “scrambling for answers” when faced with the prospect of paying more tax on their multi-million dollar super balances. The more I dig into this, the more it becomes clear we’re witnessing the death throes of what can only be described as a spectacular tax rort.

Let’s cut through the noise here. The ABC story features a farming family with a combined super balance of $5.5 million who are upset they might have to pay an extra $120,000 in tax annually. But here’s the kicker - if they’re paying $120,000 in tax, they’re making over a million dollars a year through their super fund. And they’re complaining about this?

The internet has been buzzing about this cleaning robot called Loki, and honestly, watching the demo video left me with mixed feelings that I’m still trying to untangle. Here’s this sleek little machine methodically working its way through an apartment - toilet, sink, kitchen surfaces, floors - like some kind of domestic deity finally answering our prayers for freedom from household chores.

My first thought was pure joy. Finally! Someone’s cracked the code on making robots that can actually handle the mundane stuff that eats up our weekends. But then the programmer in me kicked in, and I started noticing the details that had the comments section absolutely losing their minds. The toilet-first approach had people genuinely concerned about cross-contamination, even though the robot clearly swaps out cleaning materials between tasks. It’s fascinating how our brains work - we can accept that this machine navigates complex spatial relationships and makes autonomous decisions about cleaning priorities, but we panic at the thought of it using the same cloth twice.

The tech world never fails to serve up delicious irony, and the latest dish is particularly rich: the music industry is now building AI tools to detect AI-generated music. It’s like watching a snake eat its own tail, except the snake is made of algorithms and the tail costs billions in computational power.

I’ve been following this development with a mixture of fascination and exasperation. The premise is simple enough – record labels and streaming platforms want to identify artificially generated tracks to protect their existing catalogs and revenue streams. But the execution? Well, that’s where things get wonderfully absurd.