My week of Monday 5 to Sunday 11 June 2023 was remarkably unproductive. However we celebrated World Gin Day on Saturday and learned more about the remarkable Quong Tart. That’s a man, not a dessert.
Articles
- Digital developments from Canberra 39. It’s that weird gap between Budget Night and Parliament’s winter break, when things tend to be routine. And indeed, we have a bunch of Treasury work.
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
- On Thursday I did the ABC RN Drive “Big Tech” spot, Can Apple keep the Metaverse dream alive? Plus, Google’s DeepMind AI develop “extremely” optimised algorithm tool.
Podcasts, Videos, Photos, Corporate Largesse
None of these things. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear.
Recommendations
As is now usual, here’s a quick update on the Musk-Twitter saga.
- Twitter to pay verified creators for ads in replies, Musk says. Not that I’d pay to be able t be paid, but I reckon my share of $5 million would be three-eighths of fuck all.
- “Twitter was the only tech giant covered by Australia’s voluntary disinformation and misinformation code not to publish data on the volume of local content removed from its social media platform last year,” reports InnovationAus.
- Elon Musk has made some disturbing comments about Jews. Here’s a list.
- And determined to make himself part of every news story, Elon Musk Suggests Unabomber May Have Been Right About Technology.
As you may know, I’ve been thinking of doing this list as a weekly 10-minute podcast that has the internal title Musk Watch but in fact would use the title Rhymes with Sasquash. I’ve decided that I’ll do a pilot episode next week.
And in other news, just two items again this week because this is already late:
- TimeGhost TV’s D-Day 24 Hours was a remarkable documentary. As a media professional I can only empathise with them over the various random glitches that peppered the finished product — typos, video frames that flashed up MAP HERE, and repeated script segments — but put all that aside. This is a significant piece of historiography. After all, 24 hours of spoken word is some 210,000 words or more.
- The Kates (McLennan and McCartney) have written a new crime drama comedy, Deadloch. Watch it. At the time of writing the first four episodes are online and there’s a new episode every Friday.
The Week Ahead
Monday is the King’s Birthday holiday, and I plan to do very little. The week is then a mix of bookkeeping related to my tax filing backlog, some client work, and a solo podcast episode to get a few things off my chest.
Further Ahead
- YET ANOTHER CHANGE:
The 9pm Public House Forum 8 livestream and recording, 24 June 2023 at 12.30pm (TBC). To stay informed you should be on the mailing list.I’m pushing back the date for this episode because I have a lot of client work coming up. However I do have plans for a different kind of special episode. Stay tuned. - NetThing Internet Governance Forum, Brisbane and online, 28 August 2023 (TBC).
[Photo: The bust of Quong Tart in Hercules Street, Ashfield, Sydney, photographed on 11 June 2023. His story is remarkable. See Wikipedia and the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The State Library of NSW also has a student resource page about Quong Tart for year 5 and 6 students.]