My week of Monday 10 to Sunday 16 July 2023 saw me commit geekery for a client, with significant success, but as for public items there was really only a blog post. Winter continues.
I’ll say up front that I have now formally postponed the Public House Forum podcast recording, with a new date to be set in the next few weeks.
In recent years winter has presented a challenge when it comes to balancing my workload, and I’ve had to focus on some billable work — which is good, but the podcast has therefore moved to the back burner. The live recordings are particularly time-consuming, and I’ve made what I think is the sensible decision to not overload myself. I know you’ll understand.
Fox update
I speculated a few weeks ago that maybe “our” fox is dead, because a badly injured fox had been found not far away, and euthanised. However on Wednesday this week a perfectly alive fox was seen in broad daylight crossing a road only a few hundred metres away.
Late-night taxi drivers have told me there’s lots of foxes around. So regardless of whether the fox that was killed was “our” fox or not, I reckon it’s worth keeping the trap in position.
Meanwhile I’ve occasionally seen the BFP (#possum), and nearly every night we see Big Rat, Little Rat, the Third Rat, and occasionally even a fourth rat.
Articles
- Digital developments from Canberra 44. The fallout from the robodebt royal commission dominated the news, but I still managed to find a handful of interesting items. Two of them involve the spooks.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.
Podcasts, Videos, Photos, Media Appearances, Corporate Largesse
None of these things. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear.
Recommendations
OK, you know the drill. A few links to the latest Elon Musk bullshit, and then more general stuff.
- Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped by 50 percent, although he doesn’t seem to have said over what period. According to this Engadget story, “According to an estimate research firm Sensor Tower shared with Bloomberg, advertising spending fell by 89 percent to $7.6 million during a two-month period earlier this year. Per Reuters, Twitter has annual interest payments of about $1.5 billion due to the debt the company took on when Musk took it private for $44 billion”.
- Elon Musk asks why there’s no ‘massive evidence of aliens,’ vows his OpenAI rival xAI will seek to ‘understand the universe’. But then, as I’ve said before, he says a lot of stuff.
- As, as Foreign Policy puts it, Elon Musk’s Twitter Is Becoming a Sewer of Disinformation. “Changes to the platform have systematically amplified authoritarian state propaganda.”
- Meanwhile, while he isn’t paying the rent, Twitter finally begins paying some of its creators. Some really terrible people have been given up to, it is claimed, more than $24,000. And those payments come with caveats.
- Elon Musk’s Tesla plans to launch electricity supplier in Britain.
- And finally, Tesla builds first Cybertruck after two years of delays. Fuck that thing looks stupid.
In other news:
- Patrick Marlborough’s polemic, It’s time for Labor to embrace its villain era, is very good.
- Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI, a very good explanation.
- The 2023 Comedy Pet Photography awards – in pictures.
- There’s a new performance video from SHOW-GO, Make Up Your Mind (Beatbox).
- Finally, if you’re into analog synthesisers, you will enjoy Alex Ball walking you through the magnificently ridiculous Colossus: A once in a generation synthesiser.
The Week Ahead
Monday will be a jumbled-up kind of day. I’m planning to scope out a new client project which has come my way, but I also need to run an errand down to Springwood in the lower Blue Mountains.
On Tuesday I’m meeting a co-conspirator up here in the Mountains, at least once I finish a client meeting — but it’s a different co-conspirator from last week. Update 18 July 2023: No, that’s not happening. I have the lurgi. I’ve taken the day off.
And the rest of it is working through a lot of client work.
Further Ahead
- POSTPONED:
The 9pm Public House Forum 8 livestream and recording, 22 July 2023 at 1pm (TBC). To stay informed you should be on the mailing list, because this date is only tentative at this stage — and to be honest it’s looking unlikely.I’ll announce a new date in the coming weeks. - Aaron Chen’s Chen & Friends, Enmore Theatre, 18 August 2023.
- NetThing Internet Governance Forum, Brisbane and online, 28 August 2023 (TBC).
- APNIC 56, Kyoto and online, 12–14 September 2023. I very much doubt that I’ll be going to Japan, but this is always such a good conference (TBC).
[Photo: While shopping in Sydney’s Thaitown on Wednesday I accidentally bought an entire kilogram of pork neck from my regular butcher. As I took this photographs I was thinking of how to cut it up for future use.]