- https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback
"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Melbourne
The Moral Grammars of London, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo
These cities rank among the world’s great urban centers. Each holds deep reserves of capital, talent, institutions, and prestige. Yet they do not reward the same virtues. A man who rises with ease in one city may stall in another, … Continue reading
Sydney and Melbourne Talkback: A Comparative History, 1967 to 2026
The convict-versus-free-settler story is the explanation Australians reach for first about almost any difference between the two cities, and that is the warning sign. It explains too much. Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840. Talkback as a legal … Continue reading
The Code: Power, Privacy, and the Closed Rooms of Melbourne
Melbourne runs on a colder grammar than Sydney. Sydney shows its wealth in harbour light, skin, and water frontage. Melbourne hides power behind brick and rain, behind clubs and law and football boxes and family names spoken at lower volume. … Continue reading
Posted in Melbourne
Comments Off on The Code: Power, Privacy, and the Closed Rooms of Melbourne
The Emotional Palettes of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth
Brisbane carries the mood of a slow Sunday in the subtropics. Heat and humidity slow a man down and loosen his hurry. The brown river bends through the center and sets the pace. Colors run warm: jacaranda purple, river water … Continue reading
The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Melbourne Orthodox Jewish Authority
Orthodox Jews in Caulfield and St Kilda do not compete for authority by declaring a desire for power. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their claims as fidelity to halacha, loyalty to Torah life, and responsibility for sustaining … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Anti-Semitism, Jews, Melbourne, Orthodoxy
Comments Off on The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Melbourne Orthodox Jewish Authority
Code of Silence Documentary About Sexual Abuse Inside Orthodox Judaism (2014)
YT: “CODE OF SILENCE, a one-hour COMPASS special, follows the parallel journeys of a fervently Orthodox Jewish father and his now-secular son, after the son breaks the code of silence in Melbourne’s Orthodox community and goes public with his story … Continue reading
Decoding Melbourne Jewry
ChatGPT says: Melbourne Jewry is best understood as a thick, competitive, high-commitment alliance that rewards intensity, institutional depth, and internal status more than harmony or public respectability. Melbourne is the opposite of Sydney in alliance structure. It is larger, denser, … Continue reading
Posted in Melbourne
Comments Off on Decoding Melbourne Jewry