grok – Stilgherrian

13 February 202612 February 2026

The 9pm S-Bend of Technology with David Gerard

A balding clean-shaven white man in spectacles, probably Gen X, looking disdainfully at the camera. Itâ€™s David Gerard! — David Gerard watches patiently as he waits for the AI bubble to burst. (Photo: Pauline Martindale )

As the summer series continues we’re joined once more by David Gerard for a suitably cynical look at what’s happening in and around the AI bubble. Bros, do not send hate mail, but we do not believe your claims.

15 January 202616 January 2026

The 9pm Unnatural Act with a Pig with Patrick Stokes

A middle-aged white man with a greying beard and neat black spectacles wears a black collarless top. He looks at the camera with thoughtful scepticism. — Patrick Stokes is watching you, and thinking. (Photo: Supplied).

Don’t let the title put you off, nor attract you too eagerly. The 9pm Summer Series 2025 continues with philosopher, reprobate, and all-round cleverthinker Patrick Stokes, and a conversation about many, many things. He’s also half of The Fake McCoys.

27 July 202507 August 2025

Weekly Wrap 791: Random parrots and a music podcast

Close-up view of a male king parrot — with his bright red head and chest and yellow-ringed eye — reaching down through the leaves of a banksia branch to eat mixed bird seed from an outstretched human hand.

My week of Monday 21 to Sunday 27 July 2025 saw very limited productivity and quite a lot of sleeping, alas. But at least both king parrot couples visited me, and both males insisted on being fed separately from the rest of the avian babble. Oh, and there was a new music podcast. You should listen to that.

20 July 202510 August 2025

Weekly Wrap 790: I’m still thinking about that trip to my birthplace, which was Gawler

Looking across the street at two classic Victorian-era civic buildings. On the left is a two-storey stone building, three windows wide, with a portico at the front finished in white plaster. Across the top it reads INSTITUTE and on the facade there’s the text “In Memoriam 1914 - 1918”. On the right is a shorter but similar building, with a terrace on top of its portico, and a row of four flagpoles. The flags are limp because there’s no wind, and they can’t be recognised. On the top of the facade is a set of arms (featuring a hawk, wheat, and lion, but drawn incorrectly), and the words TOWN HALL. In between them is a hint of modern architecture, namely the glass entry to a new building behind these two. The sky is bright blue with a few fluffy clouds.

Ages back I suggested that my productivity runs to a fortnightly cycle, and perhaps that’s still the case. My week of Monday 14 to Sunday 20 July 2025 involved quite a lot of sleep, but I still produced a podcast and a newsletter â€” and posted another photo from my recent expedition to South Australia.

14 July 202514 July 2025

Weekly Wrap 789: Podcasts! Three podcasts! (And another view from Granite Island)

A view from a hill on an island. In the right-hand foreground is a pile of massive weathered granite boulders, the upper ones coated in orange lichen where they’re above the salt spray, the lower ones washed bare by the waves. On the left and out to the horizon is the endless ocean under a grey sky. And in the upper right-hand background, running in about a third of the way in from the right of the frame, the distant shoreline ends in a lump of a headland, bare of trees.

My week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 July 2025 was a podcast-productive week, with three episodes recorded and one of them posted. This was despite losing a couple of days to fighting off a cold or something. Such a good week. But the photo is from last week.

03 July 202506 July 2025

Weekly Wrap 787: A late (lack of) news from Adelaide

A two-car diesel multiple unit train approaches a railway station platform in the golden hour of evening sunlight. It has a flat red nose and is otherwise fluted metal, with a grass green band along the windows. The door frames are edged with safety yellow. In the background is a huge eucalypt tree and a moody sky.

My week of Monday 23 to Sunday 29 June 2025 saw the start of a semi-holiday which will eventually total six nights in my home town of Adelaide. I won’t go into the details now, because this is being posted four days late. Rather, I’ll post a few images and some commentary on the coming weekend, and later there will be a podcast. But hey it’s Adelaide, so there’s obviously plenty of good food and wine.