My week of Monday 6 to Sunday 12 September 2021 was less productive than I’d hoped, but I certainly enjoyed the spring weather, and I have plenty of interesting things to recommend to you.
Media Appearances
- A photo of Sydney Central station that I took in 2013 was used as source material for an illustration in an ABC News feature, ‘I think I’ve accidentally joined a cult’. I love it when people find uses for my pictures.
Articles, Podcasts, Videos, Corporate Largesse
None. But you can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to get a compilation of any new stories by email each Sunday morning. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Recommendations
- The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship. Sit back with your favourite beverage and savour this one. Also check out the ship’s Wikipedia page.
- The wonderful Lexicon Valley linguistics podcast has moved to Booksmart Studios. This recent episode, The Morphing of Critical Race Theory, will be of most interest to my American friends, but John McWhorter’s analysis of how this and other words have changed their meanings is worth listening to regardless or where you are.
- The Lowy Institute discussion “The end of the 9/11 era” is now available as video or audio. Some interesting perspectives here, not all of which I agree with.
- Also interesting is the United States Study Centre’s look back at this era, Twenty years since 9/11 with Major General Duncan Lewis and General David Petraeus.
- Regular readers will know I’m a bit of a fan of TimeGhost and their history video series on World War 2 and other things. Well, the same crew also does Sabaton History, a YouTube channel which explains the historical background to songs by the Swedish metal band Sabaton. Well worth exploring. This week I’ve particularly enjoyed the video Night Witches – Female Soviet Pilots about the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment, and the follow-up video on four remarkable female soldiers.
- Cop Was Instructed to Use Music to Disrupt Filming. Why? Because playing music into the video will trigger copyright blocks, preventing others from seeing the video.
- A series of photos of world leaders waiting for Scott Morrison. What an inconsiderate prick.
The Week Ahead
This will be week 12 of the current COVID-19 lockdown for Greater Sydney, and it’s going to be incredibly busy.
Monday will begin with some errands and some podcast pre-production, though I haven’t decided exactly when the podcast will appear. Perhaps Tuesday? Or Wednesday?
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Then there’s a whole bunch of conferences and seminars I want to catch, and some of them clash, so I’ll have to prioritise them according to which sessions are mostly likely to generate story ideas for ZDNet:
- On Monday, The road from 9/11: The evolution of counterterrorism and extremism from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
- On Tuesday, Previewing the Biden administration’s first AUSMIN meeting from the United States Study Centre.
- Tuesday through Thursday, the APNIC 52 conference. These are always fantastic sources of information and I hope it’ll inspire some ZDNet stories.
- Tuesday evening, the Kaspersky Asia Pacific Online Policy Forum, Greater Cyber-resilience through Cyber Capacity Building.
- Wednesday through Friday, 2021 Indonesia Update. In sickness and in health: diagnosing Indonesia, from the ANU Indonesia Project.
Further Ahead
- Stronger together: how cyber defence alliances could create a stronger digital economy, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, online, 30 September 2021.
- Aussie Backyard Bird Count, 14–24 October 2021.
- NetThing 2021, online, 4–5 November2021 (TBC).
- Australian Cyber Conference, Melbourne, 15–17 November 2021 (TBC).
- NSW local government elections, 4 December 2021.
- linux.conf.au 2022, online, 14–16 January 2022 (TBC).
[Photo: A waratah bud at the very start of its unfurling into a flower, photographed at Bunjaree Cottages on 11 September 2021. This photo is part of my Waratah Sequence 2021, in which I’m tracking the progress of this flower through its life cycle.]