disassociated

This to finally spare us the time-wasting, sometimes totally irrelevant, tyranny of the “for you” tab. Chris Welch, writing for The Verge, says Meta has started testing a feature allowing users to select their preferred feed, be it “for you”, “following”, or even one custom made, as the stream they’ll see all the time. It can’t happen soon enough.

If you’re in the test, here’s how to set your default feed: open the Threads app and tap and hold on any feed at the top. From there, choose “edit feeds,” and that’s where you’ll be able to reorder them. Whichever feed you put in the first slot will appear whenever you open Threads.

I’m obviously not part of the test, as I couldn’t set my following feed as the default, but I did take time to setup a custom feed. They seem to be a little like the list feature Twitter has (or had), whereby you can read someone’s account without having to follow them. It’s a great way to set up feeds with a particular focus, without having the same accounts clutter your following feed.

I’m hoping the “test” proves successful, and the ability to select one feed or another as the default, is made available to all Threads members.

Did an extra-terrestrial intelligence attempt to message us in the distant past? Or did an Earth based radio telescope, nicknamed Big Ear, inadvertently eavesdrop in on a snippet of a conversation between two other alien civilisations? These are among some of the many explanations advanced to understand the so-called Wow! signal, a suspected narrowband radio transmission detected by Jerry R. Ehman, an astronomer working on an early inception of the SETI Project, almost fifty years ago.

Despite being a narrowband signal, which might indicate the presence of intelligent life somewhere, there could any number of explanations to account for the supposed transmission. Some sort of natural phenomena, one we do not yet understand, may well be the cause.

But that hasn’t stopped anyone from daring to live in hope, even though no identical, or repeat, signals have seemingly been observed since. Alberto Caballero, a Spanish astronomer, using data collected by the Gaia space observatory, analysed the area of the galaxy where the Wow! originated. He found about sixty stars, similar to our star, the Sun, in the region. For people searching for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence, sun-like stars are a common starting point.

If intelligent life emerged here on Earth, a planet orbiting a G-Type main-sequence star, the Sun, then just maybe the same could happen on an Earth-like plant, around another star similar to the Sun, somewhere else. In his research, Caballero identified a candidate star of particular interest to him, with the catchy name of 2MASS 19281982-2640123, located some eighteen-hundred light years from us. Take a second to consider that. Travelling at the speed of light, the would-be transmission was sent during the height of the Roman Empire.

But, in a galaxy quite possibly devoid of intelligent life, with the exception of humanity — if current indications are anything to go by — how incredible would it be that a narrowband-radio-signal-transmitting-alien-civilisation turned out to be — on a cosmological scale — a mere hop, skip, and jump, away?

2MASS 19281982-2640123, and any planets the star may host however, was eliminated after a radio telescope scan last year. Observations, conducted by two radio telescopes, failed to detect any technosignatures, which would point to the presence of a technological civilisation. But not all is lost, there are another sixty or so possible stars Caballero, and other astronomers, could look at next.

Then again, for those hoping the Wow! was sent by someone, far, far away, perhaps all is lost. Fred Watson, an Australian astronomer, writing for Australian Geographic, says some new research conducted by American and Colombian scientists, has discovered numerous instances of Wow! signal like phenomena throughout space:

In research recently announced, a team from the USA and Colombia have used data from a since decommissioned radio telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico to look for similar phenomena to the Wow! signal. And they’ve found them, differing only from the original in their lower intensity. All these signals carry the wavelength signature of cold hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. It’s commonly expected to be the preferred wavelength for communication by intelligent extraterrestrials — hence the Big Ear’s tuning to this wavelength in the original SETI experiment.

This is not the first time hydrogen has been theorised to be somehow responsible for the Wow!. In 2017, a group of researchers at the Center of Planetary Science said they had determined a hydrogen cloud, accompanying a comet, that was in the region of the galaxy where the Wow! was detected, was the cause. Other scientists, however, were not comfortable with the idea.

It remains to be seen what other astronomers make of the conclusion of the American and Colombian scientists. It seems to me though, the remaining, unchecked sun-like stars, and any surrounding planets, Caballero suspects may be the origin of the Wow!, should be looked more closely anyway. Because one never knows what lurks behind all that hydrogen.

Goorie/South East Australian author Melissa Lucashenko has won the 2024 Mark and Evette Moran Nib literary award, with her 2023 novel Edenglassie. A work of historical fiction, Edenglassie, which links the past with the present, also won this year’s ARA Historical Novel Prize, Indie Book Awards, and the fiction category of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.

Speaking after being presented the Nib, at a ceremony at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion last night, Lucashenko said she intended to give away much of the forty-thousand dollar prize money.

Sydney based Western Australian author Gail Jones was last week presented with the Creative Australia Lifetime Achievement in Literature award.

Jones’ books have won the ARA Historical Novel Prize, Barbara Ramsden Award, and Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. They have also been included on the long and short lists of numerous literary awards, including the Miles Franklin, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and the International Dublin Literary Award.

Australian author Jessica Au’s multi-award winning 2022 novel, Cold Enough for Snow, is being made into a film, says publisher Giramondo. No word yet as to who the lead actors will be, but production is scheduled to commence in 2025, and will be the debut feature of Jemima James.

Fingers crossed this is a faithful adaptation. If you haven’t yet read Cold Enough for Snow, now’s the time. It’s not a long read, but the ending sure packs a wallop.

Online publishing platform Substack, founded in 2017, was all anyone could talk about by 2022. Writers were scrambling to jump on the bandwagon, having heard tales of six-figure revenues being earned by some publishers. Even though we’ve heard those sorts of stories before. I even joined up myself, to see what the fuss was about.

But as someone who’s had their own web presence for decades, I couldn’t see the appeal of incorporating my brand into someone else’s. I think I only ever published one short article there.

But I’d already been hearing Substack appeared to permit the proliferation of misinformation, conspiracy theorists, and far-right ideologies, and was taking no action against the publishers of such content. I have no interest whatsoever in reading that sort of material, but it makes me wonder. Should content some people find objectionable actually be deleted by the administrators of a publishing platform like Substack? And then: how do we define what is acceptable, and what’s not?

For me, hate-speech and anything inciting violence or lawlessness, is unacceptable. Other topics, such as misinformation, and conspiracy theories, may be a little harder to quantify. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, almost everyone I knew complied with stay-at-home orders, and vaccine mandates. However there were some, neighbours, and others I’d see regularly, who hitherto seemed to be no different than me, convinced COVID-19 was a hoax, and the vaccines posed a serious threat.

I’d tell these people I disagreed with what they thought, but their resolve was unstinting. They believed absolutely in what they thought. They were wrong in my eyes, their views plain dangerous to say the least, but this is a democracy, and, like it or lump it, we’re all entitled to our opinion. No doubt, some of these people, would, if they read my blog, object to some of the content I publish here. But does that, of itself, constitute grounds for having it (somehow) forcibly removed?

But back to Substack. American blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash, for one, believes the platform was created to give voice to extremists:

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four.

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, however counters with the idea that Substack is simply an open-for-all publishing platform:

I know quite a few people whose opinions I admire who feel the same way as Dash here. I’ll disagree. I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.

Despite my indifference to Substack, this is largely how I see things as well. I’ve read numerous articles published on Substack, which are just always useful and informative. I’ve never encountered anything hateful, deliberately misleading, or conspiratorial, though obviously such content exists. As it would on self-hosted websites/blogs that are not part of any publishing platform.

Calls to have such content removed seem pointless, unless laws, defamation for instance, are contravened. Fighting fire with fire may be the only option. Writing in response, and criticising material that is hateful or misleading. Do so from your own, self-hosted, independent, website though. Do not allow any publishing platform to assimilate your brand, or your content.

Sales of Australian author Charlotte Wood’s latest novel Stone Yard Devotional have enjoyed a boost, as a result of being both long and short listed for this year’s Booker Prize. The phenomena is sometimes called the Booker bump:

Her publisher says that since winning the Stella Prize in 2016 for The Natural Way of Things, her blistering feminist critique of the patriarchy, “Charlotte’s books have been bestsellers — and Stone Yard Devotional is no exception. Since being longlisted for the Booker Prize, sales have increased by over 30 per cent. We have to date sold over 40,000 copies of this beautiful book.”

Anyone who makes it to even the longlist of any literary award, but goes no further, is a winner if you ask me.

Twitter-like microblogging social network Bluesky is having its moment in the sun. We’ve all seen the multiple headlines of late heralding the arrival of another several million new members, most of whom have migrated from Twitter.

The buzz is similar to that surrounding Mastodon about two years ago. Even if Mastodon’s decentralised structure confused many people. But it’s really not that puzzling. Ignore the decentralised talk — even though that sort of setup is probably a good thing — and just join.

If you’re in Australia, or want to interact in an Australian environment, and looking for somewhere you can discuss pretty much whatever you want (within reason) try Aus Social. For the most part, you’ll still be able to interact with people you know, even if they’re on a different instance (server).

I think if what has happened at Twitter has taught us anything, that’s not to keep your social network eggs in the same basket. Presently, I’m on three networks, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. I’m hardly an active participant on any, but Mastodon is where I see the most response to something I post. Bluesky might be next, while I see the least amount on Threads, which to me, sometimes feels like a daytime soap opera.

But maintaining three social network pages isn’t particularly hard work, as I largely cross-post the same content across them all, as a write once, publish multiple times, strategy. There are apps, such as Croissant, that will do the same thing, if you’re prepared to pay a subscription.

The main reason I suggest having a presence on Mastodon, is because it’s decentralised and independent. No one can stage a complete buy-out, as they did with Twitter, because no one person, or entity, has total control. Every Mastodon instance, which makes up its decentralised network, is administered by different people. And anyone who feels so compelled, can setup their own instance, if they want to.

Bluesky, despite claiming to be decentralised, isn’t really, as Can Olcer explains. This puzzled me when I joined. I envisaged a sign-up process similar to Mastodon, where I had to find an instance I liked, and join through that.

Instead, I signed up at the Bluesky website, and that was it. There were no questions about whether I preferred to be on an Australian instance, a social instance, nothing. None of this is necessarily a problem though, but it does leave open the possibility that Bluesky, as a commercial, potentially profiting making entity, may one day follow in the footsteps of Twitter.

The World Wide Consortium (W3C) has the emissions created by the internet in its sights… who knew just high web caused emissions were?

The mission of the Sustainable Web Interest Group is to improve digital sustainability so that the Web works better for all people and the planet. The digital industry is responsible for 2-5% of global emissions, more than the aviation industry. If the Internet were a country it would be one of the top five polluters. The amount of water, energy, and minerals required increases annually, often putting the burden on developing economies.

Australian author and journalist Katie Cunningham:

My high school English teacher told me that good writing is the tenth draft of bad writing.

I saw this in The Booklist, a weekly newsletter by the Sydney Morning Herald, the other day. Sometimes I feel as if I rewrite everything I post here ten times before publishing it.