My week of Monday 1 to Sunday 7 June 2026 did see me post a podcast and get some client work done, but there were also two big disappointments.
One disappointment is illustrated above. On Sunday I looked at my list of Sydney suburbs and chose one at random. Chullora, population 14, because its warehouse and logistics zone. But it also holds the Yana Badu Wetlands. “I’ll visit that,” I thought. But when I got there I was blocked by a steel gate with spikes. Apparently it’s a Sydney Water property.
The other disappointment was The Lost Module, which I’ve been complaining about for weeks. The modular wooden box containing one-third of the stuff I’d had in storage for 15 years, and which wasn’t delivered to the Campsie apartment back in March. This week it was declared lost. So in the coming days I’ll be putting together a claim for reimbursement, so I’ll keep you informed. At least I know how it’s going to turn out, broadly speaking.
Meanwhile the crowdfunder is still plateaued at 67% of the third target. I won’t embed the GoFundMe widget this week. I think I need to refresh everything.
And the old wine? Among the things which were properly delivered by the storage company were two bottles of wine, buried among other possessions.
One was a Peter Lehmann Stonewell 2005 Barossa Shiraz, which would now be worth a couple hundred dollars a bottle. It was very nice indeed.
The other was a Yerling Station 2008 Yarra Valley Pinot Noir, which was also very nice, although not of any great monetary value.
As some of you may know, my entire mother’s side of the family is Barossadeutcsh winemakers and adjacent people, so I know wine. Also, I am a generic Adelaide person.
Old wine isn’t necessarily good, and Australian winemakers have developed red wines which are ready to drink earlier than traditional European red wines, but some wines still benefit from ageing. These were some of them.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Rockets are Always Blowing Up with Dr Alice Gorman and Rami Mandow, recorded on Wednesday night and posted on Friday. There’s quite a bit about Pluto, because it may become a planet again.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #120. AUKUS drones to protect undersea cables, Microsoft wants to get you addicted, news of an AI real estate agent chatbot, and more.
Media Appearances
- My photo of CFMEU members on a protest march in Sydney has been used once again. This time it’s conservative sookage masthead — sorry, “the essential news source for freedom-loving Americans” — The New American to illustrate their story UN’s ICJ Invents an International “Right to Strike”. Only certain types of freedom are allowed, apparently. This also illustrates a potential problem with releasing your creative work under a Creative Commons license: You may not like the people and organisations who choose to use it.
Videos, Photos, Corporate Largesse
None of these. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear and when the occasional livestreams are scheduled — like the one this coming Thursday (allegedly).
Some Interesting Links
- With all the talk of large language models (LLMs) having human-like characteristics, I was thrilled to see that someone had built an LLM using many, many goats in Age of Empires II.
- The other day a CIA employee was found with $40 million of gold bars in his house. It turns out, reports the New York Times, that he’d created a secret intelligence program (gift link) to funnel millions of dollars from the federal government to himself.
- Masturbation among birds is ‘natural’ and should not be punished, say experts.
- “An Australian man has been filmed appearing to flash his genitals while being covered in what looked like his own faeces at a tourist hotspot.” In Thailand. There’s a video.
- This week’s suggested follow: YouTuber Scott Manley, who even has a Wikipedia entry. He describes himself as “someone who fell into YouTube because he felt a deep compelling need to teach people orbital mechanics and rocket science so they could play Kerbal Space Program, now, years later the gaming videos are less important and the pure science is the main thrust”.
The Week Ahead
Monday is a public holiday for the King’s Birthday. For the moment I have no plans, but I suspect I may want to catch up on some work. Either way, Tuesday will definitely be a day of random work.
On Wednesday I’ll do the main production on an episode of The 9pm Edict, but I’ll keep the details SEKRIT for the time being.
The Weekly Cybers newsletter will appear as usual on Friday afternoon. So far I have no plans for the weekend.
All through this, however, I’ll be trying to move things in The Great Unboxening.
Further Ahead
- NEW: Newcastle visit, 3–5 July 2025. This was Snarky Platypus’s idea, and I think it’s a good one. I may well record a podcast while I’m up there.
[Photo: The gate preventing me from entering the Yana Badu Wetlands on 7 June 2026.]