disassociated

Tooth decay. Entropy. Heat death of the universe. These are things to worry about, and we’ve known about them for a long time. But recently scientists have identified something else to lose sleep over: vacuum decay:

Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time.

There’s a lot of theoretical physics (I think) involved, which is way over my head, so there’s not more I can say about vacuum decay. The good news however: vacuum decay will not bring about the end of the universe anytime soon.

About six years ago I decided I wasn’t reading enough novels. Books sat on the side table untouched, gathering dust, and inducing a pang of guilt whenever I took notice of them. I wondered what I could do to get more into reading. One thing I am good at is meeting deadlines, and doing things I put on my to-do lists. If I could regard the period of a library book loan — being three weeks at my local library — as a deadline, maybe I could increase my reading rate that way?

So I took out a library membership, and began to borrow books. I had three weeks to finish a novel. Books could no longer sit on the side table indefinitely. They had to be back at the library after twenty-one days, or else I risked paying a late-return fee. But then I noticed the library offered a one-week loan for recently acquired titles. This so as many people as possible could read new books. And for a while, this is what I did. Read books in a week or less.

Sometimes it was a strain. But if I didn’t finish the book before it was due back, no problem: I’d make a note of the page/chapter I was up to on my online task list. I could then re-borrow the book later, and pick up where I left off. It was a plan, and it was working. I’d gone from reading no books, to sometimes, one a week. At that point I wasn’t really discriminating. I’d go over to the one-week loan shelf, and select any title I felt I could read in seven days.

But I knew it was too good to last. The first thing to come along and burst the read-one-book-a-week bubble, was the pandemic. The library shut its doors when the lockdowns commenced. Automatic three week loan extensions were granted indefinitely to anyone who’d borrowed a book prior. I think I ended up holding my then latest loan for about three-months, before pandemic restrictions eased sufficiently, so I could return it. But the pandemic wasn’t a problem of itself.

I could still borrow books through any number of library-book apps. By this stage, I’d been away from disassociated for three years (so much for the envisaged break of a few months…), and was looking at a return. But I wanted to try experimenting with the blogging format on social media. Instagram (IG) specifically. Blogging on IG was a terrible idea, and I knew it. The inability to embed links into posts being the primary drawback.

Since I’d been reading a lot, I started (a long since gone) IG page, dedicated to Australian novels. In the time the page was online, it garnered several hundred followers, and a surprisingly high degree of engagement. A little too high maybe. People sure wanted to talk about local books. Before long, I was spending most my time conversing with a regular group of followers about books, and everything else, leaving little time to read. A book was now taking several weeks, longer, to read.

I was beginning to run out of material I could write about. And not being able embed links into posts (link in bio, anyone?) was really beginning to annoy me. By this time, it was the fourth quarter of 2021. I quietly resumed writing at a temporary domain, while creating a new WordPress theme for disassociated. By late summer of 2022, I’d closed the IG page, and told followers where they could find me. But blogging, while working, while reading, does not a good blend make.

My book reading rate has slowed right down. The desire to write is in constant conflict with the desire to read, and it looks like the blog is winning. Yet, I see plenty of prolific book bloggers out there. People reading a lot, and writing a lot about that. Good for them is all I can really say. The battle for balance is without end, even if I get a chapter or two in each day. But I’m not the only one who struggles to read, as I discovered from this post at 82MHz.

Do Australian Prime Ministers have time to read books? They may not, but they do have a literary award for Australian publications, created in 2008, of which the 2024 shortlist was announced last week. Five titles, across the six award categories of fiction, non-fiction, Australian history, poetry, children’s, and young adult, were included.

Among books shortlisted are Eventually Everything Connects, by Sarah Firth, in the non-fiction category, and the previously mentioned Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood, in fiction. Welcome to Sex, by Yumi Stynes and Melissa Kang, was included in young adult. The title stirred up controversy last year, after some people objected to certain of the content, claiming some of subject matter was not appropriate for a sex education book.

The backlash was ferocious in some quarters, with staff at some shops selling the title being abused — unacceptable — by would-be customers, while at least one person was convicted of making threats via social media — likewise unacceptable — against co-author Stynes.

The winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards will be unveiled on Thursday 12 September 2024.

The Zone of Interest, trailer, the 2023 film by British director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under the Skin), explores a slightly different aspect of the World War II Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp where over one million Jews were murdered, lives with his family in a house situated right beside one of the camp’s walls. With his wife Hedwig, (Sandra Hüller), the couple attempt to create what they consider to be a “normal” life for their young children.

Hedwig audaciously describes the house, and landscaped gardens, which she designed, as “paradise”, despite its proximity to the concentration camp. The family home is anything but paradise, however. The atrocities unfolding at Auschwitz may go unseen, but they do not go unheard.

There is seldom any let up in the cries of terror, the gun fire, nor the grinding of heavy metallic doors and gates constantly opening and closing. The sounds of furnaces burning, and trains ominously coming and going, are never ending. The family house may be comfortable, but discord and unease hangs heavily in the air. The Höss’ new born baby is frequently unsettled and crying, while their pet dog is almost always restless and agitated.

Paradise is the name Höss and his wife give to their denial of the horrors taking place on the other side of the wall. The Zone of Interest is a confronting and disturbing study of their dismissal. But there are cracks in the façade. Höss desperately seeks a transfer away from Auschwitz, while Hedwig pines to return to Italy, where the family once holidayed. Because try as both might, there is no turning away from the evil both know is taking place.

Coming soon to Threads on the website: the facility to save post drafts, and schedule posts. Post insights, similar I imagine, to those on Instagram, are also on the way, according to a recent thread by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Scheduling posts and saving drafts — at least if using Threads through the website — is going to be a bonus, especially for those who prefer to use the micro-blogging platform as their main web presence. I found the option useful when I used to be more active on X/Twitter.

And for those who like such things, there’s also a fun Easter-egg feature to check out, on the app, which I’ve seen a few people writing about. Tap on the name of a Threads member on their bio, and a popup will appear at the bottom of the screen.

This shows the member’s join date, and Threads badge number. Tap again near the bottom of that, and a full screen animation will appear, displaying the same information.

Marie Le Conte, writing for New Humanist, in a provocatively titled article: the introverts are winning, seems to suggest introverts and extraverts are embroiled in some sort of global conflict.

A quick explainer. People generally fall into one of two personality traits: extraversion or introversion. It’s a scale. You can be close to either end, or in between. In short, extraverts seek stimulation by being around people. They’re often perceived as being outgoing, sociable. Introverts find stimulation internally, in their minds. They’re often absorbed by their thoughts, and as such tend to be reserved.

But you don’t get to choose where on the scale you sit. You can’t just leap from one side to the other, simply because it takes your fancy. You are what you are: introvert or extravert.

But if there’s a battle between the two, I’m clearly reading the wrong news channels, because this is the first of heard of such a struggle. But I wonder if Le Conti knows what it means to be an introvert. It would seem though, introverts, of which I am one, are responsible for all manner of societal ills.

Among these are the growing preference of people to work from home, and conduct many of their social activities by way of social media. Streaming movies (instead of going to a cinema), and performing things like banking and grocery transactions online, are also part of the… problem.

Advances in technology, and make no mistake, that’s what made just about all of these activities possible, are behind this shift in human behaviour. It might make for a great headline to suggest this is all a conspiracy on the part of introverts to achieve world domination, but yeah, whatever.

In the years after [pandemic] restrictions were lifted, many naturally outgoing people — this writer included — have found it that bit harder to get their friends out of the house. Plans somehow require more effort than ever to get made, and are always at risk of getting cancelled at the last minute. A spontaneous pub trip, once a cornerstone of British social life, now takes work to organise.

So, no one want to go the pub anymore? This could only be the fault of introverts. They somehow managed to gain the upper hand during the stay-at-home orders, imposed in many parts of the world, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are now foisting their will upon everyone else. Le Conte, mercifully however, acknowledges the present cost-of-living pressures facing many people, may be playing a part in keeping them at home.

Quite a big part, I’d say. Let’s take the Australian restaurant industry as an example. In Sydney alone, dozens of well-known dining establishments have sadly been forced to close in recent years, mainly as a result of the rising cost-of-living. Cash strapped diners are staying home. I’ll say it again: these closures were caused, largely, by cost-of-living issues. Not because introverts conquered the world.

People are probably reluctant to spend an evening at the pub, because they’re trying to save money. I highly doubt the same people, who were presumably extraverts before the pandemic, mysteriously underwent a sudden personality change, and became introverts afterwards.

Greater global instability, particularly an increase in acts of terrorism, is also seeing more people choosing to stay at home. This is because some people — and I’m not sure how many — are said to be fearful of going out. It has nothing to do with people who have a certain personality trait. It is because of concern for personal safety.

This reluctance to leave the house however, according to Pascal Bruckner, a French philosopher, is a “triumph of the slippers”. In other words, people are more comfortable donning a pair of slippers, and seldom leaving the house, rather than putting on their shoes and venturing into the world.

The so-called triumph of the slippers however, is, apparently, a major victory for introverts in their “war” against extraverts. Bruckner may be a philosopher, whom I thought were generally learned people, but he seems to have little understanding of introverts.

Who will win the war? Bruckner is proudly fighting on the side of the extroverts, but he isn’t exactly optimistic about what’s to come. As he points out, wannabe hermits have a powerful weapon at their disposal: the internet.

Who will win the war? A war between introverts — sorry, wannabe hermits — and extraverts? A “war” the introverts are apparently winning because of the internet. I couldn’t make this stuff up, even if I tried. But we all knew the evil internet was going to come into this sooner or later.

Technologies that allow us to do more online — and not just at home — have no doubt been a boon for introverts. We do, after all, like spending some of our time in quiet spaces, away from others. It’s in our nature. But it’s not just introverts who have found value in being able to do all sorts of things online, rather than in person.

Le Conte’s article may be correct in suggesting people have become more withdrawn from others, and are more obsessed with social media. This may not be a good state of affairs. And no doubt, more of us are conducting a greater number of activities online, things that once required going to a place, and interacting with others.

That’s not necessarily bad of itself. But to suggest the present state of the world is the result of some sort of war, being waged by introverts against extraverts, is outright absurd. I’ll leave it at that.

News sites seem to be the worst, but they’re not alone*. You want to read a news item, but are assailed by a plethora of interfering popups of some sort. But a new feature in the soon to be released iPhone operating system, iOS 18, for Apple’s Safari browser, is a step in the right direction:

As the name suggests, Distraction Control is designed to cut down on distracting elements from articles and webpages, such as sign in windows, cookie preference popups, newsletter signup banners, autoplay videos, and more.

This is welcome news for anyone simply trying to browse the web, and obtain information. I’m not sure what other platforms (e.g. Android) have a similar feature, but distraction-free technology (not to be confused with ad blocking), needs to be more widespread than it is at present.

The other option, of course, for a distraction-free web experience, is to browse #IndieWeb, or independent websites, such as this one, for instance.

* we were looking for some chairs to buy, but gave up after three vendor websites threw an array of popups at us. We just want to buy furniture, leave us be.

Since re-booting disassociated in May 2022, I’ve been slowly (incredibly slowly) restoring selected posts from the previous version of the blog that was online between 2007 and 2017. The restored posts are tagged legacy, and also include a few posts written prior to 2007, going back to 2003.

On checking as I typed this, I see there are presently seventy-four of the old posts back here now. Considering there were about twelve thousand posts originally, bringing back selected older posts is taking quite some time. I don’t intend to restore every last old post though. Some of them are now quite irrelevant and out-dated, and many include an abundance of dead links and long gone URLs.

If twelve-grand seems a lot, many posts were link-blog style, one-sentence affairs. My priority, when time permits, is bring back more of the article-type posts, such as film reviews. Anyway, to get to my point, a couple of posts I restored from February 2015, a mere nine-and-a-half-years ago now, still seem surprisingly relevant today.

One was about an apparently AI powered then Twitter account, called INTERESTING_JPG, which, although now inactive, remains online. INTERESTING would “look” at popular photos, and describe what it saw. INTERESTING’s accuracy was so-so, to the say the least. While AI is certainly a trending topic today, the concept has of course been present for a long time.

The other post I restored, which was originally published on 16 February 2015, was about the apparent demise of blogging, and personal websites. This not quite four years after the #IndieWeb movement, which is very much based on blogs and personal websites, was founded in 2011.

So there we have it. AI and #IndieWeb, two ideas that been with us for quite some time, but are, in a sense, making waves today.

Maybe back in 2006, I was in a discussion with then Australian web designer Jen Leheny, on the then forums of the Australian INfront, a design community we had helped establish in the late 1990’s, about WordPress. I was still using static HTML files to run disassociated, but was considering migrating to the then much in-trend CMS.

Jen said something like: “WordPress is working for me while I sleep.” I was sold. A short time later, I commenced the process of converting disassociated to WordPress.

Fast forward to 2024. A new tool by Meta, being trailed only in America at present, allows Instagram (IG) users to create an AI version of themselves. This… clone, will, says Alex Heath, writing for The Verge, allow IG users “to talk directly with humans in chat threads and respond to comments on their author’s account.”

This will, no doubt, allow harried IG users, influencers particularly, to do two things at once. Create more content. Network. Attend meetings. Take of the business side of their operation. They’ll also be able to sleep, soundly I imagine, in the knowledge the AI version of themselves is working on their behalf, at the same time.

That sounds like the good news, the pluses, of the new technology. As to the downsides. Where do we begin? What, for instance, if an IG AI avatar suggests a follower do something inappropriate, or unlawful? What responsibility might the (human) IG account holder have in that event?

This comes back to what a lot of people see as the incorrect application of AI technologies, including American author Joanna Maciejewska, who would prefer AI did her housework, not her writing. Any IG AI “assistant” should have the same purpose. Shouldn’t the technology be working behind the scenes, rather than taking centre stage?

A dedicated Firefox web browser fan had nearly seven thousand five hundred browser tabs open, all at the same time, at one point. And maybe still does.

Seven thousand five hundred?

I feel I’m lucky to have seventy-five tabs, no, half that number really, open, across the three browsers I run, which include Firefox. That paltry number seems to strain my system. But in excess of seven-thousand open tabs is good going, if you can do it. I’d probably forget what I’d open after a time.