My week of Monday 8 to Sunday 14 December 2025 ended badly, with electrical failures at Bunjaree Cottages necessitating fleeing to Sydney, technical outages in the US continued to keep Another Untitled Music Podcast offline, and other amusements. But at least the crowdfunding campaign came to a satisfactory conclusion.
Oh, and I won a couple of meat trays at an RSL club on Sunday. My superpower is intact.
Thank you for supporting The 9pm Summer Series 2025
Thanks heaps to the 52 supporters who brought The 9pm Summer Series 2025 crowdfunder to 86% of Target Three. Here’s what’s happening.
If you missed it, there’s still time. Just go to stilgherrian.com/tip and empty your wallet.
While the formal campaign has ended, the same rewards will apply to every contribution received before 9pm AEDT Christmas Eve 24 December 2025.
And everyone who’s ever contributed $20 or more to my campaigns, past or present, will be eligible to join The Great Unboxening. But more about that in due course.
Podcasts
- On Saturday afternoon Snarky Platypus and I recorded an episode of The 9pm Edict, which will appear any day now. It’s about food, mostly.
- I still have an episode of Another Untitled Music Podcast ready to post, but it’s now looking like the hosting provider PodcastDb is gone. Their hosting server has been dead for two weeks, and their front website has been dead for a week now. Emails have gone unanswered. I haven’t phoned because of the time difference, but I suspect it’s pointless. I now need to find a new provider who can do the geoblocking needed to conform to our music license. Stay tuned.
The 9pm Edict and Another Untitled Music Podcast are supported by the generosity of you, their listeners. Please consider supporting them. You can to throw a few coins into the tip jar directly or subscribe for special benefits. There’s also some specific benefits for supporting AUMP.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #97. Australia’s social media age restrictions have come into force. It’s too early to judge their success or otherwise, obviously, but there’s plenty of commentary. And AI continues to dominate the rest of the news.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.
Videos
- The 9pm Q&A Live, an hour-long chat which I streamed on Tuesday night. The main topics are my critter videos, Australia’s social media age restrictions, wine labelling, my various projects, and my plans for the immediate future.
Media Appearances
- My photo of trade union protesters in Sydney has turned up yet again, this time in a story headlined Ricerca rivela: accogliere le richieste sindacali ridurrebbe le manifestazioni sindacali. Google Translate says that means “Research reveals: accepting union requests would reduce union demonstrations”, which seems likely, yes.
Photos, Corporate Largesse
None of these. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear and when livestreams are scheduled.
Some Interesting Links
I’d planned to post more this week, but I’m exhausted. You’ll manage I’m sure.
- Astounding footage of an enormous lava fountain erupting at Kilauea, destroying one of the cameras filming it.
- The inimitable Ze Frank shows us how little critters use electrostatics to do things in True Facts: Electric Nematodes and Flying Spiders.
- Someone filmed the entire ATARASHII GAKKO! Sydney concert and at the time of writing it’s still online. If you prefer, here’s the Taipei concert.
- The team at TLDR News tried Trump’s cognitive test.
The Week Ahead
For many Australians this will be their final actual working week for 2025. Australians have a distinctly relaxed attitude to the summer holidays. I won’t be able to completely adopt this attitude, but I’ll try. Indeed, as I post this it’s already Tuesday morning.
On Wednesday I’ll edit the episode of The 9pm Edict with Snarky Platypus.
Friday will see my final The Weekly Cybers newsletter for 2025. This should also be the day when I receive the money from this season’s crowdfunder. I hope. Nevertheless I have sorted out a Plan B. Kinda.
We’re taking break from the Saturday apartment hunting this week because Snarky Platypus is travelling. I’ll probably have a lazy weekend locally, which it to say in the Blie Mountains, but we’ll see.
Further Ahead
- Sydney Days, 24 December 2025 to 4 January 2026, some of which will involve being hissed at by a cat.
- I’ve pencilled in a recording of Another Untitled Music Podcast on 28 December, which I hope I can post a couple of days later. Assuming I can sort out a new hosting provider, the weekly Sunday Single episodes will continue across summer.
- The 9pm Edict recording with Snarky Platypus, 29 December 2025, in which we’ll review our bingo card for 2025. This episode will be posted on New Year’s Eve, and our 2026 bingo card will be posted the following day.
[Photo: A Sydney Trains D-Set Mariyung train arrives at Katoomba station in the pouring rain on 12 December 2025.]