A children’s book titled You and the Universe, written by late British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, will be published in March 2024: The new book is based upon a 2018 partnership Hawking’s family had with the European Space Agency, along with the Greek composer Vang … | Continue reading
Indie Blog, is a blogroll website by Andreas Gohr, akin to ooh.directory and feedle, but with a slight difference. Instead of searchable lists, Indie Blog takes visitors to a random post from one of the websites on their directory. You mightn’t know where you’re going, but that’s … | Continue reading
How many hours of sleep are lost, each night, across the world, to the likes of Facebook, TikTok, Twitter/X, Instagram, and (maybe) Threads? Too many to count, I’m guessing. But there may be a panacea, by way of, ironically, the same tech companies who developed these sleep depri … | Continue reading
The Live Music Archive, part of the Internet Archive, contains close to a quarter of a million entries, dating back to 1959. The chances of tracking down recordings of live performances by your favourite artists and bands are therefore probably pretty good. | Continue reading
London based film writer Manuela Lazić, writing for The Guardian: If the internet has paved the way for the devaluation of cinema via streaming platforms, it has also done the same for film criticism. The democratising effect is undeniable, but so is the cheapening one, li … | Continue reading
A few days after Twitter rebranded as X, company owner Elon Musk announced the X interface would be permanently switched into dark mode. In the usual course of events, dark mode allows users of a website or app to temporarily swap light coloured backgrounds for darker ones. It’s … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Igor Ovsyannykov. The number of people using Threads, Meta’s micro-blogging app, together with the amount of time they are spending there, has continued to decline, according to Israeli web analytics company, Similarweb. It’s certainly not what a lot of people w … | Continue reading
Partners and participants of this year’s abruptly cancelled Asian American Literature Festival (AALF) are staging a smaller version of the event from Friday 4 August 2023, through to Sunday 6 August. Like the original event, which was meant to take place in August, Ghosted World … | Continue reading
Heatwaves, which have been experienced in a number of regions in the northern hemisphere in recent weeks, are being aggravated by increased levels of humidity, which is being precipitated by climate change. While it might be thought higher temperatures would cause moisture to eva … | Continue reading
The best way to understand the universe — to whatever extent that is possible — may be to see the cosmos as an animal. A fascinating, yet somewhat unpredictable animal, says Andrew Pontzen, a professor of cosmology at University College London, writing for The Guardian: It once s … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I wrote about two authors, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, who had filed a law suit against OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. Awad and Tremblay were claiming books they had written were being used to help “train” the AI powered chatbot. They say this had happened wi … | Continue reading
Organisers of the annual Emmy Awards have postponed the 2023 ceremony, originally scheduled for Monday 18 September, until January 2024, citing the on-going WGA and SAG-AFTRA screenwriters’ strikes, according to a Variety report: Vendors for the 75th Primetime Emmys have been tol … | Continue reading
The 2023 Write It Fellowship shortlist was announced earlier this month, and is made up of eleven writers with works of fiction spanning historical, autobiographical, crime, psychological horror, fantasy, memoir, and poetry genres. The Write It Fellowship was established by book … | Continue reading
The world has sweated through its hottest three weeks on record, as heatwaves continue to ravage parts of the northern hemisphere. Possibly the last time temperatures were this warm was one hundred thousand years ago. Typically these records, which track the average air temperatu … | Continue reading
Mary Winter, semiotics specialist at Australian branding agency Principals, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, about the symbolism behind X, the new logo of Twitter, now known as X. The move possibly says a lot about what is going through the mind of Elon Musk, owner of Twitt … | Continue reading
A man has apologised to Australian author Yumi Stynes after making threats against her through social media last week. Stynes has been subjected to a barrage of online hostility recently, amid a backlash against Welcome to Sex, a sex education book she co-authored with Melissa Ka … | Continue reading
Melbourne based Australian actor Sigrid Thornton was last night inducted onto the Australian Film Walk of Fame, at a ceremony at the Ritz Cinema, in Randwick, Sydney, where the Walk of Fame is located. Similar to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on Hollywood Boulevard, in California, … | Continue reading
Nothing compares 2 U, her 1990 hit, a song written by the Prince, sums up, somewhat, the pathos. | Continue reading
Oliver Darcy, writing for Reliable Sources, a newsletter produced by CNN: Twitter, the text-based social media platform that played an outsized role on society by serving as a digital town square, was killed by its unhinged owner Elon Musk on Sunday. It was 17 years old. A zombie … | Continue reading
Rotating Sandwiches, designed by Lauren Walker, has been named winner of the inaugural Tiny Awards, a prize celebrating “the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” Rotating Sandwiches is exactly what it says on the tin — go see for yourself — but if you’re feeling a bit pec … | Continue reading
Sydney based author and Australian Tamil lawyer, Shankari Chandran, has been named winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin literary award, with her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, published by Ultimo Press in 2022. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is Chandran’s third work of fiction … | Continue reading
Still from Barbie, a film by Greta Gerwig. But all of these box-office taking numbers are staggering: One of the prime records Barbie is breaking this weekend is the best domestic start for a movie helmed by a female director, with $155M. That figure beats 2019’s Captain M … | Continue reading
Twitter owner, Elon Musk, says the present blue bird logo of the micro-blogging service will be changed to an X styled emblem, and that an interim logo could be unveiled sometime today. The new branding follows the recent name change, from Twitter to X Corp last April. The change … | Continue reading
Still from Napoleon, a film by Ridley Scott. British filmmaker Ridley Scott takes on the life of French military leader, and former emperor of the French Empire, Napoleon Bonaparte, in his new bio-pic feature, Napoleon. American actor Joaquin Phoenix stars in the lead role, along … | Continue reading
In 2021, Simon Cooper, a University of Sydney worker, rediscovered a first edition copy of The Voyage Out, the 1915 debut novel of British author Virginia Woolf, lurking amongst a collection of science books, where it had been misfiled years ago. What makes the find so remarkable … | Continue reading
Special relatively and cosmic consciousnesses may one day possibly, maybe, precipitate interactions (of who knows what sort) with deceased family and friends. But that day, if it ever arrives, will be in the far, far, distant future. The idea though of making contact with the dea … | Continue reading
Last month the winners of the Lyttle Lytton Contest were announced. The Lyttle Lytton is a literary prize, but not of the usual variety. Instead of celebrating the good or excellent, Lyttle Lytton honours the worst of the worst. In this case bad, or terrible, would-be opening sen … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Lumina Obscura. Is your dead grandmother… still alive? The answer is… … yes… … in a sense. That’s if information in the cosmos is never destroyed, but rather… rearranged. In this case the information I refer to are the atoms, sub-atomic particles, and who knows … | Continue reading
Melbourne based Australian musician Deborah Conway has been writing and recording rock and pop music in her inimitable style for over four decades. Her hits include It’s Only the Beginning, Alive and Brilliant, and Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober? In 1992 Conway won an ARIA aw … | Continue reading
I mention Emilio Estevez’s 2010 movie The Way one day, and the next I learn the American director is working on a sequel to the film, which was set on the Camino de Santiago, in Spain. I also discovered The Way was re-released in American cinemas last May. Estevez describes the f … | Continue reading
A biennial event, the Asian American Literature Festival (AALF) was first held in Washington D. C., capital city of the United States, in 2017, and then again in 2019. After Covid lockdowns put paid to the 2021 event, organisers and participants were keenly anticipating the 2023 … | Continue reading
Still from Camino, directed by Birgitte Stærmose. When I first saw the trailer for Camino, the latest feature by Danish filmmaker Birgitte Stærmose, I couldn’t help but see parallels with The Way, trailer, a film made in 2010, by American actor and director Emilio Estevez. At fir … | Continue reading
Brisbane based Australian author Sarah Holland-Batt, winner of the 2023 Stella Prize, is working on a new book, which will published in Australia and New Zealand by the University of Queensland Press (UQP). A work of creative nonfiction, the new title will be a follow up of sorts … | Continue reading
The curious joined, looked around, and then returned to what they were doing before. Daily active users on Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter’s micro-blogging platform, declined by twenty percent in the days following the app’s red-hot launch, while time spent by users on Threads … | Continue reading
The winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin literary award will be announced in just over a week, on Tuesday 25 July 2023. Ahead of the presentation, The Bookshelf and Book Show have recorded interviews with all six shortlisted Australian authors. View the shortlist here. | Continue reading
American filmmaker Greta Gerwig shares thirty-three films influencing her new feature, Barbie, and a varied collection it is. Titles include Saturday Night Fever, Playtime, The Truman Show, The Philadelphia Story, Heaven Can Wait, Gold Diggers of 1935, and (of course) 2001: A Spa … | Continue reading
Australian cafes are among those bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis. Many are dealing with rising overheads, and reduced revenue, as their customers — who are negotiating increased rent or mortgage payments, among other things — feel compelled to reduce discretionary … | Continue reading
Threads banner image, by Meta. If Threads, Meta’s recently launched micro-blogging app, takes off and becomes as popular as the likes of Twitter and Instagram, a community of book readers and fans is bound to form. As was the case on Instagram, Threads’ Meta owned stablemate, whe … | Continue reading
Threads, Meta’s micro-blogging app, may only be a week old, and boast a relatively small membership of one-hundred million, but some analysts are already predicting, boldly perhaps, the Twitter clone may draw in revenues of eight-billion dollar per annum by 2025: Evercore ISI ana … | Continue reading
Australian food critic Besha Rodell, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald: What is Australian food? Is there even any such thing? These are questions I’ve been pondering, researching and, at times, vigorously debating, for decades. We are not Europe. We are not Japan or Korea. A … | Continue reading
Book cover for Unknown: A Refugee’s Story, by Akuch Kuol Anyieth. Some late news to hand… the National Biography Award 2023 shortlist was announced yesterday, Thursday 13 July 2023, and includes the following six titles: Unknown: A Refugee’s Story, by Akuch Kuol Anyieth The Ghost … | Continue reading
News articles mentioning first edition publications of well-known books have been featuring in the news feeds I read recently, and here’s another one. This time, a first edition copy of The Hobbit, the 1937 novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien, sold for ten-thousand British pounds o … | Continue reading
Australian actor Bryan Brown, speaking at the National Press Club this week, has joined calls for content quotas to be imposed on shows broadcast by streaming services in Australia. Local content quotas have been on the agenda for some time now, and are something Australian feder … | Continue reading
Some of the books belonging to Charlie Watts, the late drummer of British rock act the Rolling Stones, will be auctioned later this year. Watts was no casual book reader though. Some of the items in his book collection include first edition publications of titles including The Gr … | Continue reading
The launch last week of Meta’s Twitter-like micro-blogging service Threads has been a riotous success, if the one-hundred million sign-ups in its first five days are any indication. Threads seems to have been the much wanted breath of fresh air micro-bloggers were waiting for. Th … | Continue reading
I’m a little late to the party, the Loneliness Project, by Canadian graphic designer and illustrator Marissa Korda, has stopped publishing stories, but previous editions remain online for your reading enjoyment. I have to say I like the way each story is presented as a different … | Continue reading
Well this wasn’t part of the plan. Imagine you’ve set yourself up as the editor of a (possibly informal) email newsletter featuring (what you consider to be) interesting, funny, and quirky links. Except no one you send the newsletter to (possibly whether they wish to receive it o … | Continue reading
TikTok has a lot to answer for. It has launched the careers of musicians who recording companies at first refused to blink sideways at, and revived the popularity of some acts who might be considered to have had their day. Fleetwood Mac and Kate Bush, I’m looking at you. But TikT … | Continue reading