disassociated

Has Earth, and the solar system, been the subject of visits from extraterrestrials from elsewhere in the cosmos? How else to account for the numerous flying saucer, AKA unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) sightings, of, in particular, the past eighty years? I guess it’s possible visitors from deep space have been our way, at least once in the last several thousand years, drawn here in the knowledge that Earth is capable of hosting intelligent life.

But, any long distance travellers would have to be “very, very lucky”, says Anders Sandberg, of the Future of Humanity Institute, at the University of Oxford, speaking to Peter Brannen, a writer for The Atlantic, in 2018. Very, very lucky to have survived as a species, in an unsafe universe, rather than having somehow circumvented the laws of physics to reach us, that is:

“Maybe the universe is super dangerous and Earth-like planets are destroyed at a very high rate,” Sandberg says. “But if the universe is big enough, then when observers do show up on some very, very rare planets, they’ll look at the record of meteor impacts and disasters and say, ‘The universe looks pretty safe!’ But the problem is, of course, that their existence depends on them being very, very lucky. They’re actually living in an unsafe universe and next Tuesday they might get a very nasty surprise.” If this is true, it might explain why our radio telescopes have reported only a stark silence from our cosmic neighborhood.

The Age of Disclosure, a documentary made by Dan Farah, posits however that extraterrestrials have indeed visited. At least one person whom Farah interviewed claimed to have seen alien beings. There’s the suggestion of a massive cover up. I won’t dwell on that point, but will say this story sounds like the scoop of the century, maybe the whole of recorded history.

Why then not take it the media? Why make us pay to see a film to learn the truth? Can’t someone who’s in the know just call a news conference and spill the beans instead?

Borderlands, Joker: Folie a Deux, Madame Web, Megalopolis, and Reagan, a biopic about the late United States President Ronald Reagan, are vying for the coveted $4.97 gold spray-painted statuette, in the worst picture category of this year’s Golden Raspberry, AKA, Razzie awards.

Recipients in all Razzie’s categories, including worst picture, will be announced on Saturday 1 March 2025, the day before the Oscars, on what is surely the film industry’s night of slights.

Independent Melbourne based Australian book publisher Text Publishing was recently acquired by Penguin Random House Australia, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House (PRH), one of the world’s largest publishers. While the move has been hailed as “exciting” by Text and PRH, some literary commentators do not feel the same way.

Both parties say they are committed to retaining Text’s independence as a PRH imprint, but this isn’t always the long term outcome, says Misha Ketchell, writing for The Conversation:

But history shows that mergers often result in the dissolution of the smaller imprint. To take just one example, Penguin no longer publishes books under the McPhee Gribble imprint. It is precisely the question of which readerships the merged version of Text will cater to that will worry Australian readers and supporters of independent publishing.

Text obviously have their reasons for making the deal, and their independence as a PRH imprint appears to be hard wired into the acquisition agreement. Those concerned about the future of independent book publishing in Australia have reason to be fearful though. Text joins other previously standalone local publishing houses, Affirm Press, and Pantera Press, in being bought out by larger book publishers in 2024. Australia is running low on indie publishers.

TabBoo is, I think, a Chrome only extension that helps deter you from visiting websites you don’t want to see, but can’t help looking at nonetheless.

Load the desired (or undesired, as the case may be) URLs into TabBoo, and each time you go to one of the included sites, a horror movie like jump scare image will appear at random.

I don’t know about anyone, else but after looking at the demo, it struck me TabBoo might actually make seeing some websites more fun, with a jump scare image appearing unexpectedly.

Something like this is also needed for social media, to help those trying to wean themselves off doomscrolling the socials day in and day out.

American pop singer and songwriter Chappell Roan’s 2024 track Good Luck, Babe! was voted the favourite song of 2024 by Triple J listeners in this year’s Hottest 100 music poll.

In taking out the top spot, Roan collected the most number of votes ever for a number one song:

The number of votes clocked isn’t the only landmark fact about Chappell’s win. ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ was her only eligible track for voting and her only song in the countdown, which makes her the first solo female artist to win a Hottest 100 with her sole entry.

There’s also good news for Swifties in the 2024 countdown, Taylor Swift notched her first ever entry into the Hottest 100.

Research recently published in the European Heart Journal seems to make sense:

Drinking coffee in the morning may be more strongly associated with a lower risk of mortality than drinking coffee later in the day.

A shot or two of caffeine earlier in the day must be better than consuming coffee through out. No one needs to be dealing with the prospect of caffeine shakes come evening time.

If the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can adopt ActivityPub as a recommendation, something they did eight years ago, you have to wonder why they didn’t do the same for RSS.

Dave Winer:

The W3C should’ve gotten behind RSS long before they endorsed ActivityPub. They’re controlled by big companies who are truly scared of interop, explains why most of their proposed standards go nowhere.

One of the functions of web standards, published by the W3C, is interoperability:

W3C web standards are optimized for interoperability, security, privacy, web accessibility, and internationalization.

Interoperability, however, is also a tenet of the ActivityPub recommendation:

W3C’s role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.

We can have the ActivtyPub protocol, which has interoperability at it’s core, but not RSS, which is the same.

Sussan Ley, deputy leader of the Liberal (conservative) opposition party in Australia, has likened Elon Musk’s plans to establish a colony on Mars, to the British colonisation of Australia:

Addressing the St Matthew’s Australia Day mass in Albury, Ms Ley insisted that British settlers did not land at Sydney Cove “to destroy or to pillage”, but in an experiment to establish a new society. “In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s Space X’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment,” Ms Ley told the church service.

Despite their intentions, over ten thousand Indigenous Australians were killed in clashes with early Australian settlers, between 1788 and 1930.

Ley’s remarks were made on Australia Day, Sunday 26 January 2025. The day is often marked by protests in some quarters, and greeted with ambivalence by others. There are Australians who would like to move the date away from 26 January, being the day in 1788 that the British established a colony at Sydney Cove. Some Australians, particularly Indigenous peoples, feel that the 26 January date celebrates an invasion, rather than national pride.

Belle Gibson is a former Australian wellness influencer who claimed to have cured herself of several cancers by way of a diet, exercise, and alternative medicine regimen. Her story brought hope to others stricken with similar diseases. But it seemed too good to be true, and it was. Investigations later revealed Gibson had been healthy, and disease free, the entire time.

In addition, Gibson claimed to be making donations to a number of charities, through money she had raised, but these organisations saw little, if any, of these funds. Her story is the subject of a “true-ish” Netflix produced TV mini-series, Apple Cider Vinegar, trailer, which premieres on Thursday 6 February 2025.

I’m not quite sure about the “true-ish” tagline of the series. I take this to mean some of the story is factual, while some is fiction. Netflix say they did not speak to Gibson during production of the show, but worked “carefully” to fend off the possibility of legal action being taken against them.

Australian alternative music radio station Triple J, originally known as Double J, launched fifty-years ago, on Sunday 19 January 1975. Here’s footage of their first few minutes on air (Instagram page), with DJ Holger Brockmann behind the microphone.

With a predominantly youth audience, Triple J especially has struggled with declining ratings in recent years, as large segments of their audience turn to social media for music listening, and discovery. The jays however have been making inroads through podcasts, and their Instagram and TikTok channels, which have sizable followings.