My week of Monday 18 to Sunday 24 November 2024 began with a burst of productivity, including a bunch of podcast work, but the weekend brought fatigue. It also brought some random reflection on the bushfires of five years ago. Time no longer has any meaning.
The photo at the top of the page represents just the beginning. We’re still a few days away from the anniversary of the worst smoke to blanket Sydney.
That was a strange day to go on a Harbour cruise.
Please support this season’s crowdfunder
Summer is mere days away, which means it’s time for the new season’s crowdfunding campaign, The 9pm Summer Series 2024.
The funding goes towards making more special-guest episodes of my inappropriate and often disturbing podcast for grown-ups, The 9pm Edict, and other projects.
At the time of posting we’re 39% of the way to Target One, which is wonderful, but there’s just 11 days left.
Please click though, read, and consider. You have until Thursday 5 December.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Secrets of Dinosaur Club on Ketamine with Snarky Platypus, recorded Saturday last week and posted on Tuesday night.
- I also recorded an episode with space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman aka Dr Space Junk on Wednesday, but I’ve pushed back the editing into the coming week. See below.
The 9pm Edict is supported by the generosity of its listeners. See the crowdfunder mentioned above? You know what to do.
If you miss that deadline you can always throw a few coins into the tip jar or subscribe for special benefits. Please consider. These methods also charge lower fees, and direct payments change none in Australia.
Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #45. Government rushes to pass social media bans for under-16s, ASD issues new threat report, and a whole lot more. A lot 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.
Media Appearances
- On Thursday I did the ABC RN Drive Big Tech spot, Is your medical data safe with X and could Google be broken up? The stories we spoke about were people uploading their health data to feed X’s Grok (gift link), the US Department of Justice wanting Google to spin of the Chrome browser, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang avoiding a prison sentence for that massive crypto fraud.
Photos, Videos, 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
I’ve been summarising the Elon Musk news here for some time. Now it’s inextricably linked to the future of the United States itself. This is a very strange place to be.
- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government, written by the actual Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. One might think that they really don’t understand how any of this works.
- On the other hand, this piece at The Conversation argues that “Love him or loathe him, Elon Musk is a champion of efficiency and could save the US government a fortune“. There’s a somewhat uncritical fanboy vibe to this piece, however, despite the links to research.
- From Jeff Jarvis, ‘Elon Musk’s investment in Twitter seemed insane, but it gave him this power’.
- Inside Musk’s first bitter fight with Trump. I doubt it will be the last, and Much will lose.
- It’s from last week, but it’s a great lesson in how generative AI works. Elon Musk’s AI turns on him, labels him ‘one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X’.
- The myths that made Elon Musk (archive).
There’s so much more this week, but that’s all I can handle.
In other news:
- Chart your fart! “CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, is calling on the community to track their farts, to help scientists better understand the frequency and characteristics of one of the leading gut health symptoms experienced by Australians.”
- Patrick Boyle has produced an excellent documentary, Hard Times – The Great Depression, a modern reinterpretation that avoids making it all about The America.
- I stumbled across this the other day, and while I’m sure it’s aimed at Europeans trying to about The America, it probably has global application. It’s a site that helps you find European alternatives for digital services and products, like cloud services and SaaS.
- Chinese phone hackers ‘had access to every call in the US’.
The Week Ahead
As is so often the case, I am way behind on billable hours. I’ll attempt to fix that on Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday is about editing and posting the podcast with Dr Alice Gorman.
I’ll also try produce a second podcast this week, because in theory I should do another one before the end of spring, which is Saturday. But this might slide into the following week, because I’ll also want to keep plugging the summer series crowdfunder in these episodes.
Further Ahead
- Victoria expedition, 6–9 December 2024. Includes a friend’s birthday event on the Mornington Peninsula Friday 6 to Sunday 8, heading to Melbourne for social things on Sunday night before flying back to Sydney on Monday evening. This trip will almost burn off the last of my frequent flyer points from the Beforetimes, when I used to do a lot more travelling for work.
- Sydney days, 26 December 2024 to 3 January 2025 (TBC). I’m taking every opportunity to spend time in Sydney for reasons which by now you may understand.
[Photo: Five years ago there were major bushfires in NSW. This image of two V-Set trains at Sydney Central station was taken on 21 November 2019.]