Monday 23 to Sunday 29 December 2024 was my last full week for the year. I was wondering what photo to use for this final Weekly Wrap, and then Fate provided exactly what I needed. This discarded pie represents your world, Good People. Peck peck peck.
Podcasts
- On Friday I recorded an episode of The 9pm Edict with Snarky Platypus, in which we looked back at our 2024 bingo cards. However I delayed editing it because I wanted a lazy weekend. I’ll do that post-production in the coming week.
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Recommendations
As we approach the end of the year, my deep fascination with Elon Musk has led me to read all manner of weird commentary — most of it from the man himself. It frightens me that such an obviously stupid individual has the ear of so many people in power, and that he’s becoming more and more unhinged as time goes on.
- “Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding has now invested $800 million in Elon Musk’s xAI and Musk has set-up an xAI London company as he aligns with Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform party,” apparently.
- Elon Musk backs AfD party in German newspaper opinion piece, so yeah more support for far-right politics. Someone named Sam Clench has some thoughts on that.
- Elon Musk vows H-1B visa ‘war’ in sign of tension between Trump supporters.
- Video: Trump rejects claims Elon Musk has too much influence, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens between now and 20 January.
- “Relatives of Elon Musk comment on ‘what he has become’ after alleged text message snub.”
- And finally the Guardian has a handy refresher in timeline form: How 2024 made Elon Musk the world’s most powerful unelected man.
Also in the news:
- Patrick Boyle’s Year In Review 2024 is a great look back at the world of money. Also, amusing.
- New from Ze Frank, True Facts: Rays, The Floppy Sombreros of the Sea.
- I spent far too much time going down this rabbit-hole: Galactic Journey, subtitled “55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction”.
- And from last month, “Using a groundbreaking new technique, researchers have unveiled the first detailed image of a photon — a single particle of light — ever taken.” No, I don’t know how this can be a thing conceptually.
The Week Ahead
The week begins in Sydney, where I’ve been staying in an apartment while its owner is on holidays.
Monday, as I write this, will eventually be about podcast post-production, although I’ll aim to post the finished episode on Tuesday — a day which is also New Year’s Eve and during which we’ll produce our bingo cards for 2025.
New Year’s Day is therefore on Wednesday and it will be relatively lazy, with the posting of the bingo cards and, in the evening, a social thing.
[Update 1 January 2025: And on Thursday evening a social thing. There’s only so many days of minimal sleep I can cope with, not from late nights but from environmental factors. One learns.]
The rest of the week is unplanned, except for a scheduled return to the Blue Mountains on Friday afternoon.
Further Ahead
I keep saying I’ll pencil in all the appointments and podcast recording dates “next week”, and then I keep deciding I’ll have a proper end-of-year wind-down. The latter always wins. So there’s no firm dates for these yet.
However I do know what some of The 9pm Edict podcast episodes will be about. In January we’ll look at space with space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman aka Dr Space Junk and astrophysicist Rami Mandow. There will definitely be an episode about conspiracy theories like the Flat Earth, unless that turns out to be true. And writer and columnist John Birmingham will probably join us in February.
We’ll also have those two pilot episodes of the Untitled Music Podcast, which I’ll start organising from next week.
Happy New Year, everyone.
[Photo: The Fate of the Pie, photographed on George Street, Sydney, on 29 December 2024.]