As the Quarantimes continue, it feels like I flip between thinking everything’s mostly fine and a combination of nostalgia and despair. There was certainly nostalgia, especially for my trip to Thailand two years ago, but my week of Monday 13 to Sunday 19 September 2021 was also surprisingly productive.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Offensively-Named Dispatches from Prison Island Megamix, recorded on Sunday, being a bonus off-season episode of The 9pm Edict. It’s kinda fun.
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Articles
- How surveillance capitalism will totally transform the domain name system, a piece from the APNIC 52 conference citing the inimitable Geoff Huston. I’d pitched another story or two, but they didn’t get picked up. So…
- For your reading pleasure, I’ve also compiled my Twitter threads from the two core conference days, Tuesday and Wednesday.
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.
Media Appearances
- On Tuesday I spoke about Apple’s “emergency” security patch and NSO Group on ABC Adelaide.
- My photo of a CFMEU protest in Sydney was used to illustrate an article in American Thinker, Unions strike all the time. This image has started turning up in various labour-related websites or dictionaries as an illustration of a strike, but it was not a strike.
- A photograph I took from the The Burwood Hotel was used to illustrate an article at Concrete Playground, The Overnight Curfew Will No Longer Apply in Sydney’s LGAs of Concern From Tonight.
Videos, Corporate Largesse
None. But you can subscribe to my YouTube channel. Or you can send me presents.
Recommendations
- 9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed.
- Also, I’ve always loved this blacksmith’s explanation of temperature and steel beams from 2015.
- Mystery Flying Wing Aircraft Photographed Over The Philippines, and it could well be an RQ-180 stealth spy aircraft.
- I asked historians what find made them go ‘wait, wut?’ Here’s a taste of the hundreds of replies, and yes there’s a link to the entire set of answers.
- Japanese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten for 32 Years: Behold the Delicious Illustrations of Itsuo Kobayashi, which is definitely not obsessive.
- Phineas Gage, Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient. As the intro says, “Each generation revises his myth. Here’s the true story.”
- The Ghost Town left Behind by an American Sect of Hollow Earth Believers.
- Man kicks door as he storms out of court: ‘You can’t do that to me’, being a lovely tale of courtroom drama.
The Week Ahead
This will be week 12 of the current COVID-19 lockdown for Greater Sydney. The current theory is that the lockdown will end on Monday 18 October, when the vaccination figures reach a certain target, and possibly a week earlier on 11 October.
Monday and Tuesday will be about getting some geek-for-hire work under way after some delays. That’ll help sort the revenue shortfall for this month.
Update 22 September 2021: I don’t need these medical appointments, so… Wednesday will see a day trip to Sydney for some medical and related matters. En route I’ll try to resurrect keeping a diary — for me not for you — because it’s Dear Diary Day.
On Thursday, which is also the September Equinox, I’ll check out an address and report launch with Senator Penny Wong, Correcting the course: How the Biden administration should compete for influence in the Indo-Pacific, from the United States Study Centre.
At the end of the week I hope to record another special episode of the Edict about Australia’s “plan” to buy or build nuclear submarines.
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†.
- Australian Cyber Conference, Melbourne, 15–17 November 2021 (TBC).
- The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 17–19 November 2021 (TBC).
- NSW local government elections, 4 December 2021.
- linux.conf.au 2022, online, 14–16 January 2022 (TBC).
[Photo: The intersection of Thanon Intrawarowot and Soi Singharat in Chiang Mai, Thailand, photographed two years ago on 14 September 2019, in the Beforetimes.]