My week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 February 2024 was productive but not especially profitable. I recorded two podcasts, posting one of them on Saturday, and launched next season’s crowdfunding campaign.
Please support The 9pm Autumn Series 2024
As summer draws to a close it’s time to look ahead and fund another series of my terrible podcast for grown-ups, The 9pm Edict.
This week I launched another Pozible crowdfunding campaign The 9pm Autumn Series 2024.
Please click through, read the usual blurb, and maybe even pledge your support — or at least tell your friends about the podcast. You have until 7 March at 9pm AEDT.
At the time of writing we’re almost 14% of the way to Target One.
I’m determined that the podcast should never have those terrible, badly-placed adverts. But that means I need income while I produce them. Thanks to you generous supporters, I’ve been able to do that for a few years now. Let’s continue, shall we?
Podcasts
- The 9pm Artificially Intelligent Millipede Menace with Justin Warren, recorded on Thursday and posted on Saturday. In this episode we talk about panic, generative AI, millipedes, why Taylor Swift fans are so few in number that we need to create more of them using AI, smart toothbrushes, Elon Musk (briefly), disinformation, and the enshittification of everything.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #5. A rush to criminalise doxxing, progress on government AI, a $4.7 billion GST fraud, and more.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning. That will include a link to The Weekly Cybers if you don’t mind clicking through.
Media Appearances
- My photo of CFMEU members on a protest march in Sydney, which dates from 2018, continues to be used by leftie organisations everywhere. Which is fine. This week it turned up in the Morning Star, a British socialist cooperative news masthead, illustrating the story ‘Closing loopholes’ — Aussie government sides with the workers.
Videos, Photos, Corporate Largesse
None of these. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear and when livestreams are scheduled.
Recommendations
My Muskwatch continues. There is something wrong with me.
- Elon Musk denies selling Starlink to Russia after Ukraine claims use in war, reports Al Jazeera. “Moscow says SpaceX’s internet service ‘cannot be officially used here in any way’, which when you think about it is not quite the same thing.
- Elon Musk denies ‘Full Self Driving’ system caused fatal crash of Tesla employee.
- Tesla’s Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all, reports The Register. “‘Literally bulletproof’ but needs constant cleaning to stave off corrosion”. As do I.
- Musk said he wants a 25% stake in Tesla or he’ll build AI and robots somewhere else. He now owns 20.5%.
- Musk ordered to testify again in SEC investigation of Twitter takeover.
- Elon Musk Says Employees Are ‘More Productive’ in the Office. A New Study Says He’s Wrong.
- X accused of taking payments from terrorists, specifically “blue check marks to accounts tied to Hezbollah members, among others”, including “an account run by Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis”. In case you weren’t aware of it, providing services to declared terrorist organisations is frowned upon.
- Elon Musk is finally resigned to making X more like old-school Twitter, but we’ll see.
In other news:
- AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants .
- Air Canada must honour refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot.
- Online cancel culture is fueled by strongly-held political beliefs, says the press release. The peer-reviewed paper is titled The association between political identity centrality and cancelling proclivity.
The Week Ahead
It’s a gentle start to the week, including this Weekly Wrap on Monday afternoon rather than Sunday evening.
Spread over the first three days will be the editing of the podcast I recorded on Saturday with Snarky Platypus — we chatted for way too long about the ABC TV program Nemesis.
Throughout the week I’ll be trying to focus on some client work, and figuring out how to survive for the rest of the month after a period of unexpectedly low income.
I should mention again — I think I’ve said this before — that my plans often talk about doing client work but in reality it often doesn’t happen. Or when it does, it’s a tiny number of hours. My sleep problems work against me, and for some reason it’s been particularly fierce in recent weeks. Sigh.
[Update 21 February 2024: The podcast episode with Snarky Platypus will be posted some time on Friday. Then on Saturday night I’m recording an episode with Scottish author and social researcher David F Porteous III, who’s been on the podcast several time before. If you’re a supporter with TRIGGER WORDS or a CONVERSATION TOPIC for that episode, please get them to me by 9pm AEDT this Friday 23 February.]
Further Ahead
- NEW: Sydney housesitting period, 22 March to 2 April 2024 (roughly). Should you be wanting to catch up with me in Sydney, this would probably be a good time.
- Aaron Chen’s Funny Garden, Sydney, 27 April 2024. I am thrilled for Aaron because he’s now doing six performances at the State Theatre.
- He Huang Tiger Daughter versus the World, Chatswood NSW, 5 May 2024.
- Nina Oyama is Coming, Marrickville NSW, 12 May 2024.
[Photo: Model of a dragon — it seems wrong to call it a sculpture when it’s designed to be illuminated from the inside — to celebrate Lunar New Year on George Street, Sydney. It’s one of a series of all 12 Chinese zodiac symbols that runs down the western side of the street from Town Hall to Haymarket. Photographed on 18 February 2024.]