It was quite a productive week, my week of Monday 1 to Sunday 7 May 2023, despite quite a few long nap. The post-production of the Public House Forum recording soaked up quite a bit of time, and I had quite a few drinks while watching the Coronation of Charles III, but there were still a few good billable hours.
Fox update
Another week without seeing the fox at all. Sneaky bugger, this fox. The cameras are still out nearly every night.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Public House Forum LIVE, recorded live at the Royal Exhibition Hotel on Saturday 29 April and posted on Thursday.
Or if you prefer video…
Videos
- The 9pm Public House Forum 7 LIVE, recorded live at the Royal Exhibition Hotel on Saturday 29 April and posted on Thursday. The camera angle is a bit random, and someone thumped it at one point, but the audio is the same, so you get to make your own choice — pictures or not.
The 9pm Edict is supported by the generosity of its listeners. You can throw a few coins into the tip jar or subscribe for special benefits. Please consider.
You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear.
Articles
- Digital developments from Canberra 34. It was the quiet week before the storm of the federal Budget. Still, we have a new quantum strategy, and will soon have a new privacy commissioner. Also in the news, former NSW services minister Victor Dominello.
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 tweets was cited in the paper Tech Panics, Generative AI, and the Need for Regulatory Caution from the Center for Data Innovation, even though it was nothing but a link to a Gizmodo article, ChatGPT Wrote This Article about Large Language Models.
Photos, Corporate Largesse
Neither of these things. I really must clean up and post some more photos.
Recommendations
Ah, the Musk-Twitter saga! When will it ever end?
- “Elon Musk has threatened to reassign NPR’s Twitter account to ‘another company’. In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk said he would transfer the network’s main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person. The idea shocked even longtime observers of Musk’s spur-of-the-moment and erratic leadership style.”
- Elon Musk mocked over embarrassing F1 fail in Miami. “Elon Musk is all about innovation, but his suggestion for an all-electric series was met with mockery for one very obvious reason… The self-styled tech genius seemingly had no idea about the existence of the Formula E competition.”
- “54% of the 150,000 users who signed up when Elon’s new Twitter Blue launched in November are no longer subscribing.”
- “Elon Musk flies private jets more than any other billionaire, releasing over 2,000 tons of carbon emissions in his wake.”
- Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey no longer thinks Elon Musk is the right person to run Twitter.
- And finally from Platformer, Bluesky’s big moment. “A new Twitter clone is surging in popularity. Could it have legs?” I’ll have more to say about Bluesky over the coming weeks.
And in other news, I reached the end of the week with quite a few open browser tabs:
- A wonderful feature from ABC News, Sacrificing the stars. “For millennia humans have gazed up at the wonder of the night sky, but what we can see is rapidly changing because of our quest to be connected…. What you can see here is a capture of the components bigger than 10 centimetres now in low-Earth orbit.”
- Another wonderful piece of data visualisation: Bank failures.
- China’s Now Spurning ‘Ugliest Buildings’ That Symbolized Its Meteoric Rise.
- An interesting concept this. Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design.
- Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM — then came the harassment.
- Ideally I’d have mentioned this last week, but I didn’t know about it: Frankie Boyle’s Farewell to the Monarchy. I was fun watching this before yesterday’s Coronation.
- World’s foremost royal menu collector reveals king’s coronation quiche a far cry from beheaded quails of old.
- I’ve been following a British history channel by a London tour guide, J Draper. A did especially like her recent video Was Shakespeare Gay?.
- “In the depths of World War 2, the Russians were running seriously low on manpower. Faced with the possibility of losing the War, the Russians decided to start recruiting Muppets to fight for them. A short historical thread.”
- From a couple years back, Why Cats Love to Sit in Boxes — Even Fake Ones, According to Science.
- I hadn’t encountered the band Caligula’s Horse before. Today I was introduced to this song, Oceanrise. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead
The AusCERT Cyber Security Conference runs from Tuesday to Friday at the Gold Coast and online. This is always a good conference, but right now I’m not being paid to report on the cybers so I don’t think I can justify the time even to watch a few sessions online. At least not live.
Tuesday is also Budget Night, when the Australian government publishes said document. I’ll be doing a quick analysis of the digital and cyber-related items on Tuesday night from 7.30pm AEST, posting on both Twitter and Mastodon as I go. I’ll turn it into a blog post on Wednesday morning.
Thursday will see another day trip to Sydney for all the usual different reasons.
In between all that, rescheduled from last week, I’ll be doing some of the massive catch-up bookkeeping to, um, “get my tax affairs in order”. This week it’s the 2015–2016 financial year. And of course there’s s bunch of client work.
Further Ahead
- He Huang’s Bad B***h, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville, 17 May 2023.
- Truth, Trust and Hope, “a global dialogue on disinformation and the erosion of public understanding and trust in science”, Nobel Prize Outreach, Washington DC and online, 24-26 May 2023.
- The 9pm Public House Forum 8 livestream and recording, 27 May 2023 at 12.30pm (TBA). I guess there’s a chance this will be rescheduled. You should be on the mailing list.
[Photo: A sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) keeps me company at Wentworth Falls station on 6 May 2023.]