Break out the coffee and the cake: a celebration is on the cards. Tomorrow, Threads, Meta’s answer — and much needed foil — to X/Twitter, notches up its first birthday. I was there as the platform began rolling out, and managed to score (just) a relatively low (five-figure) badge … | Continue reading
That’s the good news. Tory Shepherd, writing for The Guardian, says the recently discovered exoplanet, dubbed Gliese 12b, might be able to host liquid water. We all know what that means. If there’s water, there may be life. Gliese 12b is so named because it orbits a star called G … | Continue reading
This is sad and concerning news. The Melbourne based bookseller had become well ensconced in the Australian literary realm, since being founded about twenty-years ago. The company, which is also listed on the ASX (though trading of shares has been suspended), had been struggling … | Continue reading
I might say that of U2, whose music I once really liked, especially the stuff they did in the nineties. Achtung Baby. Zooropa. Pop. Even 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. These albums mostly represented their electronic music phase. I’d have them on loop for days at a time. … | Continue reading
The shortlist for the 2024 Miles Franklin literary award for works of Australian fiction, was announced earlier today. Of the ten novels named on the longlist in May, the following six titles have been included today: Only Sound Remains, by Hossein Asgari Wall, by Jen Craig Anam, … | Continue reading
Given the choice, a regular person, like you or me, who decides they’d like to become a superhero, will choose teleportation as their superhero superpower. In preference to three other choices they could have made: mind-control, flight, or supernatural physical strength. This is … | Continue reading
The Honeyeater is the second novel by Sydney based Australian writer Jessie Tu, and will be in bookshops on Tuesday 2 July 2024. That’s tomorrow. I read Tu’s 2020 debut A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing almost four years ago. It was the story of a once child prodigy musician, wh … | Continue reading
Is there a version of Tetris that requires the player to try and spell words with the Tetris pieces, as they fall from the sky? If there is, I’ve not heard of it. But, that’s not saying much, as I don’t know a whole lot about gaming. Anyway, Tetris Font, developed by Erik Demaine … | Continue reading
What happened, or was there, before the Big Bang that is said to have brought the universe into being? Was there nothing, to which something came? It is the question of the ages. In his recent documentary series, Universe, British physicist Brian Cox posits that the universe exis … | Continue reading
My thanks to Ray for recently adding disassociated to Ye Old Blogroll, a directory of small and independent websites and blogs. Directory websites like Ray’s are invaluable when it comes to promoting the work of Indie and Small Web writers and bloggers, which is often overshadowe … | Continue reading
The Artocalypse is a subscription based community for artists on IndieWeb, created by Chris Shaw at uncountable thoughts. This a great cross-promotional idea, showcasing the work of artists, while also spreading the word about IndieWeb. I dare say some of the participating artist … | Continue reading
Maybe it’s time to start a Windows 11 is going just great website, similar to Molly White’s Web3 is Going Just Great. I say this after reading about another instance of heavy-handedness on Microsoft’s part, at Neowin: Quietly and without any announcement, the company changed Wind … | Continue reading
Whether they are a part of an on-going series of light-hearted clips by Australian cinema group Palace Cinemas, remains to be seen, but the two I’ve caught to date, on their Instagram page, have been pretty witty. The first is in response to the apparent problem of patrons nickin … | Continue reading
Gilligan’s Island was a slapstick American TV series which ran from 1964 to 1967. Despite its popularity, the show was cancelled shortly before filming of a fourth series commenced. I first saw reruns of Gilligan’s quite some time later. A number of movies, featuring most of the … | Continue reading
Less blogging about blogging: The majority of my posts are either platform explanations/justifications or organizational posts. Stuff like, “I’m moving the Archives here” or “I’ve added a ton of Links there.” Other times it’s simple announcements about me moving my blog someplace … | Continue reading
I’m in the process of migrating my OS away from Windows. I’ve been running Linux Mint, considered to be a user-friendly, Windows-like distribution of the Linux family of OS’s, on a backup device for almost two weeks now. It’s been a learning curve naturally, but so far, so good. … | Continue reading
Shares in Australian founded Mexican food restaurant Guzman Y Gomez (GYG: it’s not only an initialism, it’s a ticker code) had a stellar debut on their first day of trading on the ASX, with one market pundit describing the launch as “the hottest float on the stock market in years … | Continue reading
Kathryn Diss and Mathew Marsic, writing for ABC News: For Commander Anton, it’s difficult to imagine returning to his quiet life before the war. The 33-year-old former builder is now a battle-hardened soldier who risks his life every day, just kilometres from the Russian border. … | Continue reading
It’s a favourite around here. Because don’t we love meeting someone we connect with at first sight? But Sunday 16 June 2024, marked the thirtieth anniversary (Facebook link) of the premiere of Before Sunrise, directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke … | Continue reading
How do people who don’t know about IndieWeb, but would like to escape the web-scape funk they’re beholden to, find out about IndieWeb, asks Delyo Dobrev. This is the million dollar question. Everyone and their grandma and their dog is talking about social media’s bad influence. B … | Continue reading
Kate Dwyer, writing for Esquire: Almost everyone mentioned that debut fiction has become harder to launch. For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of … | Continue reading
Intermezzo, the fourth novel by Irish literary fiction author Sally Rooney, will be published on 24 September 2024*. The synopsis is classic Rooney: Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his th … | Continue reading
John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, presented another edition of the Talk Show, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The live show featured usual Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak, who were joined this year by John Giannandrea, perhaps best known … | Continue reading
As I wrote a few days ago, I’m in the process of trying out Linux operating systems, specifically Linux Mint. With the release of Windows 11, I think Microsoft has (finally) jumped the shark. Others will probably argue that happened long before Win 11 came along. They’re likely r … | Continue reading
Or when snuggled up on the sofa, say watching a movie, with your better half? I feel isolated when watching media, and it’s also much harder to snack and get cozy. This is a point — raised by Hacker News/Y Combinator member archagon — and is not something I’d thought of, in regar … | Continue reading
I’m not anti-AI (well, not too much), but when there’s a one-hundred percent reliance on their abilities, and more crucially, the judgements some AI apps make, then there’s a problem. News that (human) writers and journalists, who have never used AI-powered tools in their work, b … | Continue reading
This is a disturbing trend, vendors of software and apps, in particular those that have been around for years, suddenly introducing AI functionality. Indeed, whose idea was this? What Apple announced looks like more of the same that’s been offered lately. Help writing emails that … | Continue reading
Tim Bray: When Lauren was pregnant with a child who’s now turning 25, we purchased a comfy dark-brown leather sofa which fits our living room nicely. What with kids and relatives and employees and cats and Standards Comittees and friends and book clubs and socials, the butt-suppo … | Continue reading
I’ve read a stack of articles recently about Windows 11 (11), the successor operating system (OS) to Windows 10 (10), and am not liking a single thing I’ve seen. Microsoft (MS) will soon begin forcing users to install Windows 11, whether they like it or not. If that’s not toxic b … | Continue reading
Best I keep this brief, especially after complaining about film franchises continually rebooting and retelling the same story. Alien: Romulus (isn’t Romulus a planet in the Star Trek universe? Yeah, I thought so), is a story about some people on a spaceship, whose lives are threa … | Continue reading
Great news for fans of 2019 thriller/comedy/whodunit, Knives Out… a follow up is on the way. Daniel Craig will reprise his role as private detective Benoit Blanc, in Wake Up Dead Man, due for cinematic release sometime in 2025. Check out the teaser/trailer, though it’s more tease … | Continue reading
There has been talk of the four-day workweek for as long as I can remember. We were told about it when I started school. Yet it’s to fully, properly, officially, arrive. The work week is still, for the most part, in many places, five days: Monday to Friday. We don’t live in an ag … | Continue reading
Colonel Sanders founded KFC at age sixty-two. Anna Mary Robertson Moses AKA Grandma Moses, started painting when she was seventy-six, and had an illustrious career spanning twenty-five years. American actor Kathryn Joosten began her Hollywood career aged fifty-six. These are just … | Continue reading
Tangentially related to the last post. Longer novels might pose a challenge to certain readers, especially those who require apps to do the reading for them. But, longer titles are more likely to win literary awards: Judgment and decision-making research suggests several causes o … | Continue reading
Such apps don’t exactly read novels in fifteen minutes, but they scan through them, and produce relatively short summaries. Seems like cheating to me, don’t we read books to be taken along on a journey? Still, I imagine these apps have their uses. Like, where were they when I was … | Continue reading
The Daily Aus (TDA), Friday, 31 May 2024: Rain is forecast across 90% of the country over the coming days as a 5,000km ‘cloudband’ makes its way from WA‘s north to south-east Australia. According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), a ‘northwest cloudband’ is an extensive layer of … | Continue reading
I’m not exactly a fan of large-chain food and beverage outlets. But Sydney based Mexican cuisine fast food restaurant Guzman y Gomez, AKA GYG (to me, anyway) is not quite large-chain. Not at the moment, though there are near to two-hundred stores in Australia, sixteen in Singapor … | Continue reading
Matt Adnate has been named the 2024 winner of the Archibald Prize’s Packing Room Prize, with his portrait of Indigenous Australian rapper Baker Boy, AKA Danzal Baker. As the name suggests, the prize is awarded by the staff of the packing room at the Art Gallery of New South Wales … | Continue reading
I’m a bit late to the party, but such is life in the twenty-first century. The other day WordPress (WP), the CMS that powers disassociated turned twenty-one (Facebook link)*. I’ve been on-board since 2007. You’ll only find a handful of posts from those days though, I rebooted my … | Continue reading
Craig Meerkamper, writing at Spacing, laments the apparent demise of the once omnipresent commercial third place, a kind of neutral zone between home and work, such as a cafe, where people gather. Or where remote workers can set up shop for the day. Coffee houses are one of the e … | Continue reading
Randwick is a large suburb located about five kilometres south east of downtown Sydney, Australia. It is home to the Prince of Wales hospital, Royal Randwick Racecourse, a thriving commercial and retail hub, large bus and light rail depots, the historic Ritz Cinemas, and arguably … | Continue reading
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: write about creative environments. Let’s have a go. A creative environment, as far as I can tell, is not necessarily a place. Not one I can put my finger on, at least. Nor is it a particular time. My creative ideas, if that’s what the … | Continue reading
Weird stuff is happening out on the remote boundary of the solar system. Beyond the orbit of Pluto. You name it, it’s going on out there. Irregularities. Anomalies. Clustering of apsidal lines. Perihelia. And — saving the best for last — a surprising prevalence of retrograde Cent … | Continue reading
ASL? Another artefact of the early days of the (mainstream) internet will soon be no more. Instant messaging service, ICQ, launched in 1996, will cease operating, as of Wednesday 26 June 2024. ICQ (I seek you, get it?) allowed users to chat to pretty much anyone who let them. I c … | Continue reading
Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra, announced this week it was making about three thousand employees, or ten percent, of its workforce redundant. About three hundred people were sent home straightaway — hopefully with some sort of pay-out — while the remainde … | Continue reading
NASA is dead set keen to return to the Moon. But their current plan, called Artemis, is dead set crazy, writes Polish-American entrepreneur and writer, Maciej Cegłowski: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder what’s going on here. If we can put a man on the moon, then … | Continue reading
Konrad Marshall, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald: Run South Yarra co-founder Tom Adair is wary of any suggestion that run clubs are the new Tinder, yet relationships are born here, and side-by-side chats while jogging, he notes, are definitely less pressurised than face-to- … | Continue reading
Two and bit years ago, I spotted an entry on Fandom about a “remake” of the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Being a 2001 fan, I naturally wrote about it. I’ve had a lot of fun with the post ever since. People stumble upon it every now and again, and link to … | Continue reading