disassociated

In the search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers, and organisations like SETI, often seek out narrowband radio signals.

Space is full of radio signals, most of them broadband, which usually occur naturally. Neutron stars are but one generator of such signals. Narrowband radio transmissions, on the other hand, are somewhat more likely to be created by an intelligent civilisation. On Earth, for instance, TV transmissions and mobile phones, are among sources of narrowband radio signals.

It makes sense then to look out for such signals in deep space. But some recent research conducted by SETI suggests narrowband radio signals may be disrupted by chaotic flows of ionised gas, and other sources of turbulence in the cosmos:

A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests stellar “space weather” could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect. Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches.

We keep coming up with explanations to account for the apparent absence of intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. Now we’re blaming the weather.

The smart money says there is intelligent life somewhere in the cosmos, but it may not be all that common, nor particularly close to us. There’s a lot of space out there, beyond the solar system.

The size of the galaxy, to say nothing of the universe, is something many of us struggle to comprehend. Even if humanity possessed the means to travel at speeds close to the velocity of light, it would take over four years just to reach Proxima Centauri, the star presently closest to the Sun.

To visit the centre of our galaxy, the journey would take over twenty-five thousand years.

That’s not insignificant. In fact, twenty-five thousand light years constitutes a vast amount of space. An alien civilisation could be tucked in there somewhere, but it might take thousands of years for evidence of their presence to become apparent.

On paper, the chances of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life are better than even.

There are potentially millions, if not more, of exoplanets with environments conducive to complex life in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And if intelligent life can take hold on Earth, it can surely take hold elsewhere. But there are those who think intelligent life on Earth is a fluke, and a lot of things had to go the right way, over a period of billions of years, for this to happen.

Bad “weather” in deep space may well be playing a part in concealing the presence of extraterrestrial technological civilisations. But their scarcity, and extreme distance — potentially tens of thousands of light years — from Earth, probably better explains why there is no sign, yet, of anyone else.

Proposals were afoot to rename Eleventy — often styled 11ty — a blog publishing platform favoured by some Indie/Small Web bloggers, as Build Awesome.

The awesome part of 11ty’s would-be new name derives from Font Awesome, producers of a wide range of icons website publishers can make use of. I’ve used their icons in the past, in place of the text menu items presently in the animated colour bar above the title of this post.

11ty was acquired by Font Awesome in September 2024.

To accompany the renaming, a Kickstarter campaign was, from what I can tell, launched to fund development of a more commercial “website builder” version of 11ty, while the original blog publishing platform would remain free to use.

But both the fund raiser, and renaming plans, have been paused after Font Awesome claimed only a handful of emails promoting the Kickstarter campaign had reached intended recipients.

A backlash by 11ty publishers against the renaming proposal however seems the more likely reason.

Even though 11ty creator Zach Leatherman joined Font Awesome at the time of the acquisition, the company appears to have completely misunderstood the veneration in which the blogging platform, as 11ty, is held by publishers. Why even consider changing the name of such a highly regarded product in the first place, and worse still contemplate something like Build Awesome?

Twelve titles have been included on the longlist for this year’s Stella Prize, the Australian literary award recognising the work of women and non-binary writers.

• 58 Facets: On violence and the law, by Marika Sosnowski
• Ankami, by Debra Dank
• Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, by Natalie Harkin
• Cannon, by Lee Lai
• Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family, by Micaela Sahhar
• Fireweather, by Miranda Darling
• I Am Nannertgarrook, by Tasma Walton
• KONTRA, by Eunice Andrada
• Memorial Days, by Geraldine Brooks
• The Rot, by Evelyn Araluen
• Wait Here, by Lucy Nelson
• Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy

Graphic novelist Lee Lai, whose 2021 title, Stone Fruit, was nominated for the 2022 prize, returns to the Stella this year. Poet Evelyn Araluen, as foreshadowed by yours truly, is also included, with her latest work The Rot.

The Stella shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 8 April 2026.

The second edition of the Internet Phone Book is in the works, and publishers of personal websites are being invited to submit their URL.

I was stoked to be included in the inaugural edition, compiled last year by Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliott Cost, and you can still call me on 492.

Bill Premo:

I don’t know where to start with this but yeah I’m making flash if flash was built in 2026. I’m making it compatible with Linux,Mac, and PC.

If you remember Flash, the animation/multimedia creation application, originally launched by a company called Macromedia, you were on, or near, the web in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

I did little with Flash itself, but dabbled with the somewhat similar Director, also originally a Macromedia product. I used to burn (quite amateurish) presentations onto CD-ROMS. But this was before both were acquired by Adobe.

Flash was — once — the gold standard for creating animations for the web, or for building interactive websites. But Flash had limitations. For one, anything Flash could not be viewed natively in a browser, and needed a plugin to be operative.

Security concerns eventually resulted in support for Flash being withdrawn by Apple, and later many web browsers. Flash was fun, and useful, for a short while, but after a time I refused to visit websites that were Flash powered.

The question in 2026 though; is the world ready for a potential Flash renaissance? If Premo is building Flash for 2026, then who knows. Maybe.

Scott Shambaugh:

An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.

If one AI agent can locate incriminating information about someone, and try to use it against them, it follows other AI agents will do the same.

Naarm/Melbourne based Australian poet Evelyn Araluen has won both the Victorian Prize for Literature, and Prize for Indigenous Writing, in this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, for her second collection of poetry, The Rot.

Araluen won the Stella Prize, one of Australia’s major literary awards in 2022, for her debut poetry collection, Dropbear. Her win in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards surely puts The Rot in good stead to be awarded the Stella Prize again this year.

That would be quite the accomplishment. We’ll find out soon if the possibility is on the cards, when the longlist for the 2026 Stella is announced next week, on Wednesday 11 March 2026.

Chico Harlan, writing for MSM:

Sometime over the next 100 years, human-driven warming could disrupt a vital ocean current that carries heat northward from the tropics. After this breach, most of the world would keep getting hotter — but northern Europe would cool substantially, with Iceland at the center of a deep freeze. Climate modeling shows Icelandic winter extremes plunging to an unprecedented minus-50 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is possible the scenario will not come to pass, but authorities in the North Atlantic Ocean nation are taking no chances, having deemed the prospect a national security risk.

How anyone can claim climate change is a hoax, or non-existent, when it had the potential to result in an entire country literally freezing over is beyond me.

Emma Roth, writing for The Verge:

Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called “Patty,” is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for “friendliness.”

Before the AI powered robots are able to take the place of people working in front line roles in restaurants — the day cannot be too far off — they are going to tell workers how to do their job.

Emma Wynne, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

When Perth mother Lisa Taylor’s 11-year-old daughter slipped one arm out of her seatbelt, the family had been on the road for over two hours, returning from a holiday in Dunsborough over the Christmas period. The transgression was picked up by one of WA‘s new AI safety cameras, which detect people not wearing or incorrectly wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones.

Police in the Australian state of Western Australia (WA) issued thirty-one thousand infringement notices to drivers in the month commencing early October 2025.

AI technology installed in road cameras were intended to target drivers handling phones, and improper seatbelt usage, but appear to have a keen eye, having detected numerous traffic violations.

I’m not aware of the use of AI equipped road safely cameras in other Australian states, though they may be present, but the WA initiative is looking like the future of traffic law enforcement to me.