If social media was all you knew, would you start a blog?

Tangentially related to yesterday’s post. This is something Jatan Mehta asked a few weeks ago. It’s an intriguing question. If social media platforms, Twitter/X, Instagram, etc, had remained as they started, maintaining chronological feeds, displaying content posted by accounts a … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 22 minutes ago

Could these extraterrestrials build and pilot flying saucers?

Kurzgesagt speculates on what extraterrestrial life might look like on planets elsewhere in the galaxy. But this may not be quite what we were expecting… | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 52 minutes ago

Slow and steady wins the culture wars?

Keeping track of what’s happening (or being said) in the world, particularly the United States, in these past few weeks feels like an impossible task. Trying to make sense of it all is another matter entirely. But as Tyler Cowen, writing at Marginal Revolution, seems to suggest, … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 hour ago

Bluesky reaches 30 million members, are you excited, or not?

Social media and micro-blogging platform Bluesky passed the thirty-million member mark last week. It must be an exciting time for the Bluesky founders and backers. Exciting also for members who had been looking for an alternative to the likes of Twitter/X. I say this as one of th … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 day ago

Chappell Roan wins best new artist at the 2025 Grammy

American singer/song writer Chappell Roan, who topped the 2024 Triple J Hottest 100 just over a week ago, was named best new artist at the 2025 Grammys yesterday. Roan used her acceptance to call on record companies to offer more support to emerging artists, in the form of improv … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 3 days ago

Don’t believe all the news you hear on commercial TV and radio

Amanda Meade, writing for The Guardian: People who get most of their news from commercial TV and radio are more likely to believe the conspiracy theory that climate change is a natural phenomenon rather than caused by humans, a new study has found. The research conducted by Monas … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 3 days ago

The Teachers Lounge, a film by Ilker Catak, with Leonie Benesch

The Teachers Lounge (AKA Das Lehrerzimmer), trailer, made in 2023, and directed by Ilker Çatak, is a cross between a (kind of) psychological thriller, and a (kind of) whodunit, set in a German elementary/primary school. I kid you not; the tension is palpable. A person unknown has … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 4 days ago

That’s not a knife: iconic Australian film Crocodile Dundee gets recut

The knife, the editing room knife, has recently been taken to ocker Australian film Crocodile Dundee. Producers deemed the slapstick comedy — that swept the once Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger, and television personalty Paul Hogan, to big screen fame in 1986 — to be out of touch wi … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 4 days ago

Summer sports and the heightened risk of skin cancer

As someone with an extremely fair complexion, any amount of exposure to the sun can be risky, even over the winter months, when ultraviolet (UV) levels are generally lower. Trying though to explain this anyone who does not also have fair skin, is almost an uphill battle. In fact, … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 4 days ago

The chances of aliens coming to Earth are a trillion to one, but still they come

Has Earth, and the solar system, been the subject of visits from extraterrestrials from elsewhere in the cosmos? How else to account for the numerous flying saucer, AKA unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) sightings, of, in particular, the past eighty years? I guess it’s possi … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 8 days ago

Megalopolis, Reagan, among Nominations for 2024 Razzie Awards

Borderlands, Joker: Folie a Deux, Madame Web, Megalopolis, and Reagan, a biopic about the late United States President Ronald Reagan, are vying for the coveted $4.97 gold spray-painted statuette, in the worst picture category of this year’s Golden Raspberry, AKA, Razzie awards. R … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 9 days ago

Text publishing bought by Penguin Random House. Exciting, right?

Independent Melbourne based Australian book publisher Text Publishing was recently acquired by Penguin Random House Australia, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House (PRH), one of the world’s largest publishers. While the move has been hailed as “exciting” by Text and PRH, some lit … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 9 days ago

Jump scares will keep you away from websites you want to avoid

TabBoo is, I think, a Chrome only extension that helps deter you from visiting websites you don’t want to see, but can’t help looking at nonetheless. Load the desired (or undesired, as the case may be) URLs into TabBoo, and each time you go to one of the included sites, a horror … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 9 days ago

Good Luck, Babe! by Chappell Roan tops 2025 Hottest 100

American pop singer and songwriter Chappell Roan’s 2024 track Good Luck, Babe! was voted the favourite song of 2024 by Triple J listeners in this year’s Hottest 100 music poll. In taking out the top spot, Roan collected the most number of votes ever for a number one song: The num … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 9 days ago

For the best health outcomes, drink coffee only in the morning

Research recently published in the European Heart Journal seems to make sense: Drinking coffee in the morning may be more strongly associated with a lower risk of mortality than drinking coffee later in the day. A shot or two of caffeine earlier in the day must be better than con … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 10 days ago

RSS as a W3C standard? Now there’s an idea

If the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can adopt ActivityPub as a recommendation, something they did eight years ago, you have to wonder why they didn’t do the same for RSS. Dave Winer: The W3C should’ve gotten behind RSS long before they endorsed ActivityPub. They’re controlled … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 10 days ago

Colonising Mars the same way Australia was colonised

Sussan Ley, deputy leader of the Liberal (conservative) opposition party in Australia, has likened Elon Musk’s plans to establish a colony on Mars, to the British colonisation of Australia: Addressing the St Matthew’s Australia Day mass in Albury, Ms Ley insisted that British set … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 10 days ago

Apple Cider Vinegar, the ‘true-ish’ story of wellness guru Belle Gibson

Belle Gibson is a former Australian wellness influencer who claimed to have cured herself of several cancers by way of a diet, exercise, and alternative medicine regimen. Her story brought hope to others stricken with similar diseases. But it seemed too good to be true, and it wa … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 16 days ago

Australian alternative music radio station Triple J turns fifty

Australian alternative music radio station Triple J, originally known as Double J, launched fifty-years ago, on Sunday 19 January 1975. Here’s footage of their first few minutes on air (Instagram page), with DJ Holger Brockmann behind the microphone. With a predominantly youth au … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 16 days ago

Group blogs as social network alternatives? A thought experiment

The Verge recently published a list of social network alternatives for people disillusioned with the likes of X, Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, to consider moving to. Having built-up a network of acquaintances and followers on these channels though, I’m not sure how many peopl … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 16 days ago

Will the good old, friendly web, of twenty years ago, stand up

Enrique Rey, writing at EL PAÍS: Like all nostalgic escapism, the myth about a world wide web before the age of sarcasm (and the dominance of big companies) where everything was more sincere and simpler is a melancholic trap. The Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann wrote that when yo … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 17 days ago

The Shortlist for the Australian 2025 Indie Book Awards

The Australian Indie Book Awards span six categories: fiction, non-fiction, debut fiction, illustrated non-fiction, children’s, and young adult, and last week the shortlist for the 2025 awards was published. My main interest is fiction, where Dusk by Robbie Arnott, and The Ledge … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 18 days ago

Time to replace the BMI as a measure, or otherwise, of obesity

The Body Mass Index (BMI), may, at last, be about to be shown the door. Health care experts from across the world have been calling for a new means of defining obesity, according to research published by The Lancet: We recommend that BMI should be used only as a surrogate measure … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 18 days ago

How to fact check in places where Facebook is the whole internet

Upcoming changes to Meta’s fact checking and content moderation policies might precipitate greater free speech in some parts of the world. But the removal of these checks and balances could trigger unrest and violence in other regions, say Libby Hogan and Natasya Salim, writing f … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 18 days ago

My blog is powered by my obsessions

What makes for a good blog? Merlin Mann, writing in 2008, the golden age of blogging if ever there was one, has a few answers to the question: Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, the … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 20 days ago

Demolishing the AC/DC house, and what little rock history Australia has

I’m not really a fan of the band that was formed in Sydney in 1973, and is still going strong, but it seems odd that the house where founders, brothers Angus and Malcolm Young used to live, and founded AC/DC, was not worthy of preserving. For those not in the know, AC/DC are prob … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 20 days ago

Vale American filmmaker, storyteller, David Lynch

The director of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and the surely surreal Mulholland Drive, died on Thursday 16 January 2025. We shall watch Mulholland Drive, which is in the home movie library, this weekend in his memory. | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 20 days ago

Free Our Feeds with Bluesky and AT Protocol. But not Mastodon, ActivityPub?

The Free Our Feeds project launched a few days, prompted in part by changes to fact checking and content moderation policies across Meta properties, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The goal of Free Our Feeds seems admirable, to prevent one person/entity having full co … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 21 days ago

The 2025 Banished Words List has recently dropped

Lake Superior State University’s annual list of words and phrases we should cease using, was published recently. Among inclusions are game changer, era (you know why…), IYKYK (If You Know, You Know), and sorry, not sorry, which I can’t stand. Another term is dropped, but I don’t … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 22 days ago

Prolonged use of social media may make you short tempered

Research from Massachusetts General Hospital, I believe, in the United States, possibly underscores what many of us already suspect: that prolonged use of social media may not be the best: This kind of study cannot prove that your hours of doomscrolling is directly making you Tik … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 25 days ago

The one-hundred best book covers of 2024 by PRINT

PRINT’s annual list of the best book covers of 2024, features double the number of entries as 2023, one-hundred, up from fifty. Either a record number of books were published in 2024, or cover design has become so good more books needed to be included. Among inclusions is a cover … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 25 days ago

HTML: a programming language, not mere markup

Tim Carmody, writing for Wired: Because HTML looks easy and lacks features like formal conditional logic and Turing-completeness, it’s often dismissed as not a programming language. “That’s not real code; it’s just markup” is a common refrain. Now, I’m no stranger to the austere … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 29 days ago

Meta announces major changes to content moderation polices

Justine Calma, writing for The Verge: Meta is essentially shifting responsibility to users to weed out lies on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, raising fears that it’ll be easier to spread misleading information about climate change, clean energy, public health risks, … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 29 days ago

Summer time forming La Nina possibly coming to Australia

Tom Saunders writing for ABC News: Your average La Niña forms in winter, peaks in late spring, then gradually weakens through summer. However, the current edition has not played by the rule book — for only the second time in 75 years, its onset has arrived in the middle of summer … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Rambles.Net, a webzine founded by Tom Knapp in 1999

Rambles.Net is an online magazine founded by Tom Knapp in 1999, and still going strong over twenty-five later. Knapp himself continues to contribute. Rambles is another example of Indie Web in its original inception; I think a Facebook page is the only hint of social media presen … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Indie Web makes all of us property owners online

American engineer and product manager Den Delimarsky offers another way of looking at the core Indie Web tenets of owning your own website domain, and owning your own content. See yourself as a property owner, rather than a renter. If any of your online presence is on social medi … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Inauguration insurance, another form of cookie insurance?

Josh Ellis writes about buying a plate of cookies he had no intention of eating, from an entrepreneurial twelve-year old neighbour going door to door, who was selling them. Why would anyone pay out good money for something they’re not going to consume? Ellis describes the gesture … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Australia, land of the most expensive passport in the world

From yesterday, 1 January 2025, the price of a ten-year Australian passport rose to four-hundred-and-twelve Australian dollars. That’s the cost of thirty-five pints of Victoria Bitter at the local pub. Happy New Year. As a comparison, the new price converts to a little over two-h … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Storing digital data for one hundred years: how is this possible?

Maxwell Neely-Cohen, writing for Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab: If you, right now, had the goal of digitally storing something for 100 years, how should you even begin to think about making that happen? How should the bits in your stewardship be stored with such a t … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Voting open for the 2024 Triple J Hottest 100 music poll

The annual Hottest 100 countdown is part and parcel of the Australian music scene. Hosted by Australian indie radio station Triple J, since 1978, the poll gives listeners the chance to vote for their favourite music of the previous year. The countdown itself takes place on Saturd … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Gravastars and black holes, a weird cosmic double act

The concept of gravastars (or gravitational vacuum stars) is a fascinating alternative to the idea of black holes, although if their presence were ever proved, they would not rule out the existence of black holes. Proposed by Pawel O. Mazur and Emil Mottola some twenty years ago, … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Favourite monospaced font for coding, do people have such a thing?

Code is code, what difference does the font you choose in whatever app you use for coding possibly make? As long as the code works as intended, what does appearance have to do with it? But the conversation I found on the topic — which in fact started months ago — actually relates … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

The ten best novels of the twenty-first century to date

Literary writers at The Sydney Morning Herald canvassed critics, editors, and writers, including Jane Sullivan, David Free, Gyan Yankovich, and Beejay Silcox, to determine the best ten books of this century, or the last twenty-five years. Producing such a small list from a relati … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Tranquil Motion, a new album from All India Radio

I’m talking about the Australian downtempo electronica music act, not the public broadcaster of India. In the hubbub of the silly season, I forgot to mention a new album, Tranquil Motion, was released earlier this month. Track it down on Bandcamp, or your favourite music streamer … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

The web today is not necessarily worse than the early web

Xavier H.M., writing on his Mastodon page: Your neocities blog is cute but I can’t read the 5pt font and your cursor is the size of a bread crumb. The web page is loading so many gifs my computer sounds like a boeing 747. disassociated once, in a way, looked like a Neocities webs … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Time, not dark energy, may be causing the universe to expand

Dark energy does not exist, and the universe, while continuing to expand, is not doing so in a uniform fashion. In other words, the cosmos may look more like a potato, rather than a sphere. This according to recent research by astronomers and scientists at the University of Cante … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

Pack plenty of books and take yourself into internal exile in 2025

The introverts among us live almost permanently in a sort of internal exile, or a rich inner life, as Waleed Aly referred to it during the COVID-19 lockdowns. But the idea of getting away from it all, without actually going anywhere, is gaining traction more widely, writes Jacque … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago

I’ll just be asking for you… Telstra’s 2023 Christmas advert

Let’s flashback a year. Australian telecommunications company Telstra might have hit the right note with its Christmas theme advertising in 2023, by way of this ninety second commercial. The song excerpted in the ad is Oh Christmas, by Brisbane based duo Zefereli. Listen to the f … | Continue reading


@disassociated.com | 1 month ago