American actor Ethan Hawke discusses forty years of work, from Explorers in 1985, through to Blue Moon this year, as part of the Vanity Fair Career Timeline series of videos. There’s not a lot what of Hawke does that feels like a run-of-the-mill movie. Dead Poets Society, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, for […]

Elizabeth Spiers, writing at Talking Points Memo: The lesson for me, from the early blogosphere, is that quality of speech matters, too. There’s a part of me that hopes that the most toxic social media platforms will quietly implode because they’re not conducive to it, but that is wishcasting; as long as there are...

The Transformations, the new novel by Sydney based Australian author Andrew Pippos (Instagram page), will be published next week, on Tuesday 28 October 2025. This is a story for the times, if the synopsis is anything to go by: In the fading glow of Australia’s print journalism era, The National is more than a...

Some sad news. Billy Wiz, Sydney based Australian DJ, artist, author, cartoonist, and colourful character in general, died last week. In recent years Billy operated a gallery — in the garden of his street level apartment, on Oxford Street, Bondi Junction — displaying his painting and illustration work, for passersby...

American novelists Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore have launched legal action against Salesforce, accusing the San Francisco based software company of copyright infringement. Tanzer and Gilmore allege Salesforce used thousands of novels, not just their work, without permission, to train AI agents. Salesforce want...

In blind taste tests conducted on eighty-four people, American researchers discovered nearly eight in ten study participants preferred instant coffee over drip coffee. The findings have, needless to say, astonished some coffee aficionados. But I’m not sure the news is that surprising. I tried for a while to get into...

Authors Tasma Walton (Instagram link), based in Western Australia, and Robbie Arnott (Instagram link), based in Tasmania, have been named joint winners of the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize, with their novels I am Nannertgarrook, and Dusk, respectively. I’m yet to pick up I am Nannertgarrook, but read Dusk earlier...

Hamilton Nolan writing at How Things Work: If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a […]

Dana G. Smith, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald; People who have strong relationships generally live longer, and the unicorns known as “super-agers” — older adults who have the memory abilities of someone 20 years younger — tend to be especially outgoing. On the flipside, chronic loneliness raises the risk for...

American actor Diane Keaton died a few days aged 79. Keaton will be remembered for many things. Her collaborations with Woody Allen. Her performance in Manhattan Murder Mystery was a stand out to me, but there were many more. Annie Hall (of course), The Godfather, First Wives Club. Even Father of the Bride, where...

Via Jelloeater on Bluesky, Jeppe Larsen’s early memories of the web, from the late 1990’s: I remember the ISP was called get2net and it came with both email and web hosting. The last bit was particularly exciting as get2net had a listing of all homepages made by its customers on their website, which was an […]

Robocart, a US company, has been developing self-driving vehicles that have the capacity to deliver ten different customer orders in a single run. The service, which the company plans to launch in Austin, Texas, later this year, will see customers pay just three-dollars per delivery, pricing many people will find...