My week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 November 2022 included a lot of sleeping. Every afternoon I ended up napping for three to nearly six hours, and I don’t know why. Still, I managed to get a podcast published, did some radio spots, and got some client work done. Not bad.
Don’t worry, I’m seeing my doctor in the coming week for a regular check-up.
Meanwhile, is Twitter about to implode? Like so many others, I’m enjoying one of the world’s greatest destructions of media value.
If you follow me on Twitter and you’d like to stay in touch if I move somewhere else, please leave me your email address at stilgherrian.com/twitterrecovery.
Meanwhile you can find my interim Mastodon presence at the URL eigenmagic.net/@stilgherrian or by searching for @stilgherrian@eigenmagic.net. Not that there’s anything there yet. I’ll make a decision of some sort in the coming week.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Underwater Doomsday Conversation with H I Sutton, recorded last Thursday and posted this Tuesday.
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Articles
- ‘Owning’ your own data is just a metaphor, with Steve Wilson, 10 November 2022.
- Digital developments from Canberra 13, 12 November 2022. Parliament wasn’t sitting this week, but there’s been some action on a couple of fronts.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.
Media Appearances
- One of my ZDNet stories from 2021, Australia’s news media bargaining code is a form of ransomware, and someone paid up, was cited in the paper The Impact of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code on Journalism, Democracy, and the Battle to Regulate Big Tech.
- A single-word tweet was cited in a story at We Got This Covered, Gay erotica writer turns Elon Musk’s Twitter debacle into a sexy novel, in case that’s your thing.
- On Thursday morning I spoke about the dark web on ABC Illawarra.
- A little later on Thursday morning I spoke about the dark web on ABC South East NSW. This second one is the better of the two.
Photos, Videos, Corporate Largesse
None of any of these things. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear.
Recommendations
First, a whole bunch of updates on the Musk-Twitter drama.
- One of this week’s brain-farts: Elon Musk details his plan to turn Twitter into a bank.
- Major ad firm Omnicom recommends clients pause Twitter ad spend – memo. I’ve lost track of how many advertising brokers have warned their clients off Twitter, but it’s quite a few now.
- A disturbing thread: “With Twitter’s change in ownership last week, I’m probably in the clear to talk about the most unethical thing I was asked to build while working at Twitter.”
- The fall of Twitter and the work of creating democratic social spaces.
- I normally try to stay a little distant from opinion pieces that make events all about how it affects journalists, special little petals that we are, but this one has some truths in it: New Twitter boss Elon Musk is the dog that caught the car – with all the journos in the back seat.
- As everyone with a brain predicted, Twitter chaos after wave of blue tick impersonations.
- Chaos unleashed: Elon Musk’s wild ride at helm of Twitter could bring it down.
- Finally, John Birmingham’s AlienSideBoob this week is titled Not words but meanings. It explains how Twitter is about the people, not the platform. Or if you prefer, “It’s all about the friends we made along the way.”
And in other news:
- One to read after listening to this week’s podcast: ‘Tried & Failed’: Vladimir Putin Suffers Another Devastating Loss After ‘Doomsday’ Nuclear-Powered Torpedo Fails To Launch.
- I’d missed this one a couple weeks ago but it’s still a lovely story: Thai transgender activist buys Miss Universe organisation for $31 million, wants to use event to ‘inspire’.
- Back in June The Register has an excellent explanation of non-fungible tokens for dummies.
- There’s a new video from SHOW-GO, If We’re Together (Beatbox). I haven’t said it in a while, but seriously, you should explore this musician’s work.
The Week Ahead
On Tuesday night it’s the final Bond on Tuesday with the last Daniel Craig film No Time to Die (2021). Find a stream and get ready at 8.30pm AEDT. We press PLAY at 8.40pm. And then I think we’ll all have a drink to celebrate the end of this strange journey.
Late on Wednesday night I’ll be watching the TwoSet Violin concert live from Singapore starting at 7.30pm SGT / 10.30pm AEDT.`
Thursday is a day trip to Sydney for a whole variety of reasons.
Other than that, it’s just a bunch of work for clients and, I hope, locking in the final spring series episode of The 9pm Edict podcast for the following week
Further Ahead
As you may have seen on Twitter, I updated last week’s Weekly Wrap to say I’ve pushed back my next crowdfunding campaign a few weeks. I’ve been told that new MacBook Pro models are expected later this month and I’d like to see what happens to the product line-up before making any decisions. The campaign will still start before Christmas, and now run into the new year. With luck my 7-year-old computer will last another two months.
- Victoria state election, 26 November 2022. I’ll probably do something special.
- Annual Industry Boat Cruise, Networking Event & After Party 2022, which is an invitation-only event for the communications and internet industry, Sydney Harbour, 1 December 2022.
- Watterson Christmas Party, Sydney, 2 December 2022. This is another invitation-only event, this time by one of the better tech public relations firms. Also, this is traditionally a very long Friday afternoon.
- Everything Open, Melbourne, 14–16 March 2023 (TBA).
- NSW state election, 25 March 2023. I’ll definitely do something special for this one.
- The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, online, 4–5 April 2023.
- Coronation of Charles III, 6 May 2023, although I have no idea what I’ll actually do about it.
[Photo: My current nemesis, a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita)Â who refuses to be worried by my attempts to chase him away, seen at Bunjaree Cottages on 7 November 2022.]