It was quite a productive week, my week of Monday 8 to Sunday 14 May 2023, despite me being completely unproductive on Thursday because long lunch. Lots of client work, a podcast, and a long blog post.
Fox update
Yet another week without seeing the fox at all. I did find a problem with one of the cameras, but since the other one was only showing rats, plus one ring-tailed possum, I’m pretty sure the fox hasn’t been around.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Extra: Vertical Hold episode 428, “Is Google’s Pixel 7a a winner, How is the budget fighting cybercrime?”, recorded on Wednesday, with the original podcast being posted on Friday, and this top-and-tail being posted on Saturday.
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Articles
- Digital developments from Canberra 35: Budget Special. On Tuesday night Australia’s treasurer Jim Chalmers released the nation’s Budget for 2023–2024. I’ve gone though it to find things related to the digital and cyber realms, plus a few other items that caught my eye. This is a loooooong post!
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning. When it works.
Videos
- 009 One Minute of King Parrots, which is what it says, shot on Sunday afternoon.
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Media Appearances, Photos, Corporate Largesse
None of these things. I really must clean up and post some more photos.
I should also note that I think there’s only one instance of corporate largesse since the Beforetimes. Most of the largesse involved lunches and travel, and they fell off a cliff.
Recommendations
Some big announcements at Twitter this week.
- From dealing with Musk to fixing Twitter Blue: what’s in the next CEO’s in-tray? Sure, he’s been talking about stepping down for ages, but this time he’s named a name, Linda Yaccarino. She has quite a few challenges ahead of her.
- Much also reckons Twitter will get encrypted messages, but then he says a lot of things.
- Twitter succumbs to Erdogan’s pressure, silences key voices in Turkey on election eve.
- Russians Beat Tom Cruise and Elon Musk to the First Film Shot in Space. It involves surgery in zero gravity, which the BBC explained in 2015.
- Musk tweeted about some lame fuckin’ cryptocurrency bullshit and the price went up 5,000%. Totally real money.
- And finally, Billionaire George Soros Cuts His Ties to Elon Musk. So does this mean Musk is no longer part of the globalist conspiracy?
And in other news:
- An excellent explainer from the New York Times, How generative A.I. really works. It’s a follow-up to their rather good five-part series, How to Become an Expert on A.I. But yeah, you won’t become an expert.
- Joe Aston at the Financial Review has written a fierce piece bout the departing Qantas boss, How low will Alan Joyce go?.
- Since the nation is having a general election today you might as well catch up. Turkey or Türkiye? Why the country changed its official name (9 Feb).
- It’s also Thailand’s general election today. Here’s a curious story from two months ago, The mystery surrounding the hospitalisation of Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha. All we know is that the princess collapsed on 14 December last year, and was in a coma for at least three weeks — and since then there’s been no news whatsoever. I’m told the gossip in Thailand is that maybe she’s even dead and the palace isn’t announcing it until after the election. Pure speculation, obviously, but typical of the level of secrecy surrounding the Thai royal family.
The Week Ahead
On Wednesday I’ve got one of those long client handover and training meetings, and then in the evening I’m catching He Huang’s Bad B***h at The Factory Theatre in Marrickville as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival. You should check out her stuff on YouTube.
I’ll stay in Sydney until Thursday for some health-related appointments before doing the usual shopping and errands and returning to the Mountains.
I’ll probably record a solo episode of The 9pm Edict podcast because it’s been a while. Probably on Saturday, because that’s also World Whisky Day. [Update 21 May 2023: This won’t be happening. Indeed, I didn’t even have a whisky!]
Further Ahead
- Truth, Trust and Hope, “a global dialogue on disinformation and the erosion of public understanding and trust in science”, Nobel Prize Outreach, Washington DC and online, 24-26 May 2023. The livestreams will be at an awkward time for me, so I’ll probably just pay attention to the resulting news stories.
- NEW DATE: The 9pm Public House Forum 8 livestream and recording, 10 June 2023 at 12.30pm (TBA). To say informed you should be on the mailing list.
- World Gin Day, 10 June 2023. I’m pretty sure this will just be a small social thing with friends after the podcast recording, but you might like to organise a gathering of your own. Because, you know, gin.
[Photo: Pacific National locomotive number 9315, a UGL Rail C44aci class unit, leads an empty coal train through Wentworth Falls station on 12 May 2016. I haven’t been taking many photos these last few weeks, so I’ve had to hit the archives.]