My week of Monday 26 February to Sunday 3 March 2024 saw more podcast action even though I was dealing with some annoying blergh. So I’m showing you a photo of a wine glass from four years ago, just before everything was locked down.
Time’s running out! Please support The 9pm Autumn Series 2024
This season’s crowdfunding campaign The 9pm Autumn Series 2024 wraps up on Thursday night.
If you’d like another series of special-guest episodes of my terrible podcast for grown-ups, The 9pm Edict, you know what to do.
Please click through, read the usual blurb, and maybe even pledge your support — or at least tell your friends about the podcast. The 9pm Edict is in all the apps.
You have until 9pm AEDT this Thursday 7 March, just 4 days away. At the time of writing we’re only 33% of the way to Target One, so we need to fix that.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Cheap Booze Cheap AI Chocolate-Free Disappointment, a solo episode recorded and hosted on Saturday. This week I’ve been obsessed with a certain news story out of Glasgow, so I just had to do a segment about that. Also, the episode I’d originally scheduled with David F Porteous is running late — and that’s my fault.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #7. An easy ride for Digital ID bills, ASIO warns of cyber sabotage, cybersecurity advice, a new podcast about disinformation, 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.
Photos, Videos, Media Appearances, 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
What I’m enjoying about the recent Elon Musk news is that it’s generally less and less about his business achievements, such as they are, and more and more about the fact he’s a such a fuckin’ clown.
- “The lawyers who successfully argued that Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package was excessive are seeking a record legal fee worth $6 billion, payable in the electric car maker’s stock, according to a court filing,” as the Guardian puts it.
- Elon Musk sues ChatGPT maker OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman for allegedly ‘perverting’ mission for profit.
- Elon Musk is arguing with his own Community Notes on X. As Mashable reports, “X’s Community Notes feature is a fact-checking tool that’s supposed to allow contributors to add context to ‘potentially misleading posts’. But on Sunday, the CEO himself was arguing with it publicly. It started when Elon Musk shared a post moaning about his new laptop, which he said was forcing him to create a Microsoft account to use it.”
- And then he started whinging directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
- Elon Musk makes ‘things good’ with California bakery after $2,000 pie fiasco.
- Elon Musk’s Neuralink is starting to freak doctors out, reports Quartz. “The claims-to-proof gap is too wide for doctors to be comfortable with Musk’s brain chip implant.” Also, they point out that Neuralink is the third company to install implants in human brains.
- Also at Quartz, Elon Musk would like ‘never went to therapy’ on his gravestone. Mate, there’s no need to tell us. It’s obvious.
In other news:
- From the producers of the excellent podcast series Motherlode about the early hacking scene comes Dark Shining Moment about political disinformation, what the Russians call dezinformatsiya. I’ve linked to the trailer on YouTube, but you should be able to find it in your podcast app of choice.
- As the press release says, “The global ‘Dance your PhD’ competition has been won by an Aussie researcher, who brought all different types of dancers together to help explain his research on eastern grey kangaroos. The video, which includes babies, drag queens, ballroom and ballet dancers shows how kangaroos have distinct and diverse personalities and that they modify their behaviours to conform to those around them.”
- Back in 2005, Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris created a sitcom titled Nathan Barley. “Nathan Barley, played by Nicholas Burns, is a webmaster, guerrilla filmmaker, screenwriter, DJ and in his own words, a ‘self-facilitating media node’. Whilst desperate to convince himself and others that he is the epitome of urban cool, Nathan is secretly terrified he might not be, which is why he reads Sugar Apemagazine, his bible of cool.” Well, someone has posted the whole series on YouTube. It’s an HD AI remaster” version, which mostly works, but the key thing is that the series is there. You’ll either love it or hate it.
- Swedish visual artist Nikolaj Jesper Cyon has been creating maps from different perspectives. I particularly like this map of Africa but with pre-colonial cultures rendered in Arabic. With south at the top, which was common in Arabic work.
- I discovered this through the Map Men episode Why is North up?.
- You may also enjoy this map of where aircraft report low navigation accuracy, which seems to correlate well with areas of known and suspected GPS jamming activity. Note how well it lines up with current conflict zones.
The Week Ahead
On Tuesday I’ll post the podcast with David F Porteous. It will be long and, in its latter parts chaotic. [Update 5 March 2024: At least I hope it’s Tuesday. It may have to slide into Wednesday.]
The first half of the week should also see an attempt at some client work. I know I have an important meeting.
The 9pm Autumn Series 2024 crowdfunder wraps up on Thursday night at 9pm AEDT. Please consider.
On Friday morning I’m recording an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast with Professor Johanna Weaver, former cyber diplomat, head of Tech Policy Design Centre at ANU, and presenter of the podcast Tech Mirror: Reflecting on technology and society. If you’re a supporter with TRIGGER WORDS or a CONVERSATION TOPIC, please get them to me by 9pm AEDT this Wednesday 6 March.
This episode wraps up the summer series, and as you may know I have declared March to be part of summer this year. This pod will be posted the following Tuesday 12 March.
Saturday is a Sydney day for various social activities, at least as currently planned. I may have to cancel that one due to budgetary constraints. [Update 5 March 2024: Yes, I have canceled it. Instead, I have a different social activity in Penrith on Friday afternoon, after the podcast recording.]
Further Ahead
- NEW: Sydney day, 20 March 2024 (TBC). The building I inhabit at Bunjaree Cottages is being fitted with a new roof, so I might get out of the way for the day.
- 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. As a prelude, you might like to watch his show from last year, If Weren’t Filmed, Nobody Would Believe. As he says, “Lucky were filmed”.
- He Huang Tiger Daughter versus the World, Chatswood NSW, 5 May 2024.
- Nina Oyama is Coming, Marrickville NSW, 12 May 2024.
- The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Sydney and online, 2–3 September 2024 (TBC).
[Photo: It’s from just over four years ago, and from my trip to Melbourne immediately before the covid-19 pandemic hit. While I was recording a podcast with Fiona Patten MLC in the members’ dining room at Parliament House, I enjoyed a glass or three of parliament’s own wine from suitably monogrammed glassware. Photo taken 24 February 2020.]