Mohamed Aboelez recently learned his roommate, a person he shared a residence with, had died. But no one called to say so, instead Aboelez read the news on Facebook: I froze. I hadn’t seen Paul in about two days. I had assumed he’d been with his friend. But not dead. Of course no … | Continue reading
Anyone checking into their Instagram or Facebook pages in the last few days, will have no doubt noticed the presence of Meta’s AI “assistant”, named, um, Meta AI. Britney Nguyen, writing for Quartz: The tech giant said on Thursday that it is bringing Meta AI to all of its platfor … | Continue reading
A conquering interstellar civilisation could bring the entire galaxy under its yoke in about a million years, assuming said civilisation could traverse the Milky Way at about ten percent the speed of light. I expect it’d be a multi-generational undertaking. It’d also be up to tho … | Continue reading
From time to time, a few years ago now, I found myself walking passed a bar called The Dock (Facebook page), on Monday evenings. The bar, located in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, was host to something I’d not witnessed at a watering hole before: everyone singing. And, as fa … | Continue reading
An eye-opening article by Constance Grady, writing for Vox. AI and unscrupulous ghostwriters are combining to flood the world with poor quality ebooks, sometimes called garbage ebooks, and giant online booksellers seem to be doing little about it: Here is almost certainly what wa … | Continue reading
When it comes to what’s published online, I consider myself a moderately well-read person. Obviously, I’m not across every last thing posted on the web, but I probably spend a good couple of hours a day following news sites, what’s on the RSS feeds I subscribe to, social media, a … | Continue reading
Gabe Trew, owner of Australian market retailer POP Canberra, decided to run a Valentine’s Day competition this year. He invited social media followers to send him, anonymously I believe, stories about the great love crushes of their lives. Entrants would be in the running to win … | Continue reading
Fans of Star Trek series The Next Generation will be familiar with the communication devices crew members used. Or should I say: wore. The small, yet high powered, long range devices, were typically attached to the shirt of a crew person’s uniform. With a mere tap, those on the s … | Continue reading
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): A shopping centre in Sydney’s east has been evacuated amid reports of multiple stabbings and potentially a number of deaths. An eyewitnesses told the ABC shots were fired. NSW Police said emergency services were called to Westfield B … | Continue reading
And talking of Australian fiction, the shortlist for the 2024 Stella Prize, the Australian literary award that recognises the work of Australian women and non-binary writers, was unveiled last week. The following six title were selected: Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead, b … | Continue reading
I sometimes write about books, novels, here. Usually Australian fiction, which I make a point to read as much of as possible. I’m currently (still) reading Before You Knew my Name, the 2021 debut of Melbourne based New Zealand author Jacqueline Bublitz. I guess therefore that’s c … | Continue reading
Sydney has been adjudged the third best city in the world for coffee, this according to American magazine, Food & Wine. Copenhagen, perhaps unsurprisingly, comes in at number one, followed by Tokyo in second place. But here’s where things may get contentious: Melbourne — perhaps … | Continue reading
Thirty-years ago, last Friday, 5 April, Kurt Cobain, American musician, and founder of grunge act Nirvana, died. It was one of those remember-where-you-were-when-the-news-broke moments. I was sitting on the carpeted stairs of friend’s house, as we listened to a radio report about … | Continue reading
An excerpt from Manuel Moreale’s recent interview — from his excellent People and Blogs series — with Oregon based American web designer and writer, Matt Stein. I rewrite and edit heavily to try and find what I want to say. I wrote obscenely long answers to these questions and ha … | Continue reading
Google seems to have it in for small, and or independent publications and blogs… Google: whatever did we do to you? Changes last month — known as core updates, which occur regularly — to the way the search giant indexes and ranks websites on search results, have seen scads of sit … | Continue reading
In this case, pre-production expenses would appear to relate to the costs associated with procuring illicit drugs, and the services of sex workers. The term came to light during proceedings in the Australian Federal Court last week, in the course of a defamation case between a fo … | Continue reading
Maybe I’ve been watching too much of Universe, the Brian Cox made documentary about, well, the universe, and am way too willing to take in all manner of ideas, no matter how outlandish they may seem. So when this article (PDF), exploring the possibility the Sun is a conscious ent … | Continue reading
The latest Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) survey of the pay and work conditions of Australian musicians makes for grim reading. In particular, the stand-out finding that half of local musos earned less than six thousand dollars last year. Six thousand dollars. The … | Continue reading
Malcolm Knox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald: Then there are rents, insurance, equipment and other fixed costs. In a Sydney suburb near me, a new cafe is paying $5000 a week in rent. At $1000 per 7am-to-1pm shift, they need to be selling 300 coffees a day to make it worth … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Pexels. Rebecca Jennings, writing for Vox, on the tyranny of the personal brand, and the stifling effect they are having on content creators: The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from 9-to-5 middle managers to astronauts to hou … | Continue reading
The first episode of season two of Sydney set, Australian high school drama, Heartbreak High, goes to air on Thursday 11 April 2024. This is a day fans of the rebooted show (which aired in 2022), and indeed the original 1990’s series, will have marked on their calendars. Check ou … | Continue reading
Well, this is interesting. All these years I’ve thought the demise of the dinosaurs was occasioned by the impact of an asteroid that struck Earth sixty-six million years ago. That may be still the case, but some scientists believe relentless volcanic activity, spanning more than … | Continue reading
Pretty much anything British/American film maker Christopher Nolan touches, turns to gold. The Batman saga, Inception, Interstellar, Oppenheimer, Tenet, Dunkirk, The Prestige (which I wrote about way back in 2006), Memento. You name it, they’re all winners. Then consider how well … | Continue reading
The great thing about the Star Wars universe is the way it can move up down left right forwards and backwards. Like any good fiction franchise, the potential to create new stories, new universes within a universe even, are virtually limitless. This even though I’m way behind on a … | Continue reading
Long time readers of Kottke have doubtless seen his semi-regular media diet posts, where he writes about the movies and TV shows he’s seen, plus books he’s been reading. Kottke is a voracious consumer of media if those posts are anything to go by. In comparison, my consumption is … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Pexels. Tangentially related to my previous post… product designer and technologist Matt Webb has created an app, named Galactic Compass (link to Apple app store), that points to the centre of the galaxy. When on the (far less light polluted) NSW Central Coast, … | Continue reading
One of the computers on NASA’s deep space probe Voyager 1 is experiencing some sort of malfunction, with recent signals from the probe containing no usable data. Mission engineers are apparently confident the problem can be resolved, even though Voyager 1 is almost a light-day di … | Continue reading
German animation and design studio Kurzgesagt have been producing excellent informative and educational videos for what seems like half the lifespan of the universe. Let’s hope Peak-Kurzgesagt is a situation that never comes to pass. Their latest video, the Paradox of an Infinite … | Continue reading
Sydney based Australian author Kerri Sackville, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, on the subject of stalkerware, insidious apps that track the activities of a person you want to keep tabs on: But I had nothing to gain from spying on him because I already knew what to do. In … | Continue reading
Four day weather forecasts are now as accurate as one day forecasts from thirty years ago. That’s good news. Access to accurate weather information is perhaps more vital than many of us can appreciate. Weather forecasting has come a long way. In 650 B.C. the Babylonians would try … | Continue reading
Mick Cummins, the Melbourne based former social worker and screenwriter, who won the unpublished manuscript award in the 2023 Victorian Premiers Literary Awards, has had his debut work, So Close to Home, published by Affirm Press. The manuscript was originally titled One Divine N … | Continue reading
Are we at peak Wes Anderson yet? With Asteroid City still showing in some cinemas, maybe some film-goers would welcome a break from the American filmmaker. If that’s not you though, then check out The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, trailer, a short film made by Anderson, based o … | Continue reading
Regulars will have noticed the slowdown in posting at disassociated recently. It’s a tad busy at the day job, but more excitingly I’ve also been working on a large (think novel size) writing project in recent weeks. It’s the same one I’ve been chipping away at for years mind you, … | Continue reading
American climate scientist Zeke Hausfather has described global temperatures in September 2023 as gobsmackingly bananas. This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist — absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and wa … | Continue reading
Norwegian author and playwright Jon Fosse has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for literature, for what judges describe as “his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” Fosse’s work spans over seventy novels, poems, children’s books, essays and theatre play … | Continue reading
Book cover of Incredible Doom Vol 1, created by Matthew Bogart and Jesse Holden. Incredible Doom is a serialised comic strip about two American teenage proto-bloggers, Dougie and Anna, in 1999, by Matthew Bogart and Jesse Holden. If you were on the web in 1999, as I was, this cou … | Continue reading
The recent long running strike by members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in the United States, has ended. But the settlement secured by the WGA not only means fairer pay and conditions for screenwriters, it is also seen as a victory over Generative AI technologies, which w … | Continue reading
Twenty-four hours in an invisible epidemic is an especially poignant edition of visual essay magazine, The Pudding, produced by New York City based journalist Alvin Chang. The epidemic in question is not Covid-19, though the lockdowns triggered by the pandemic have aggravated ano … | Continue reading
The shortlists for the 2023 ARA Historical Novel Prize were announced earlier today. The award is presented in two categories, Adult, and Children and Young Adult. The three finalists in each category are as follows: Adult Salonika Burning by Gail Jones Iris by Fiona Kelly McGreg … | Continue reading
Stefanie Koens has been named winner of the 2023 Banjo Prize for unpublished Australian fiction, with her manuscript titled Islands of Secrets, a work of historic fiction that spans several decades: Shortly before Christmas in 2018, schoolteacher Tess McCarthy flies to Western Au … | Continue reading
Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, writing for The New York Times, suggests sortation, a method of selecting public office holders in Ancient Greece, be given consideration: People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective tha … | Continue reading
In a few weeks Australians will vote in a referendum to decide whether the Australian constitution should be amended to include a Voice, an advisory body, for the nation’s Indigenous people. It’s an idea some people are not in favour of though, including a number of First Nations … | Continue reading
Book cover of Amy Winehouse: In Her Words. Amy Winehouse: In Her Words, published by HarperCollins, one for fans of late British musician and singer Amy Winehouse. Much has been said about Amy Winehouse since her tragic death aged just 27. But who was the real Amy? Amy Winehouse: … | Continue reading
The recent, post pandemic lockdown, sometimes poor behaviour of film-goers has been the subject of some discussion recently. Many of the problems frustrated cinema patrons have reported stem largely from the gratuitous use of smartphones during screenings. It’s enough to make you … | Continue reading
Noctalgia is the recently minted neologism for the phenomenon of missing dark skies at night. Noctalgia is something astronomers could tell you about. Dark, light pollution free, skies are essential for their work, but they’re not so commonplace anymore. And here we have a dilemm … | Continue reading
Nineties supermodels Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington, were household names thirty years ago. At least in my household, that is, because when you had an aspiring fashion photographer in your midst, little that the four did would go unm … | Continue reading
Poison ivy, a noxious plant often found in North America, and parts of Asia, could become more common place as global warming creates an environment conducive to its growth. Poison ivy is poised to be one of the big winners in this global, human-caused phenomenon. Scientists expe … | Continue reading
Australia is officially in the grip of an El Niño weather event. This means affected areas can expect higher than normal temperatures, and reduced rainfall. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology announcement on Tuesday confirmed what many people had suspected for some time. The Bu … | Continue reading