A Future on Stage, adapting Back to the Future to the stage

7 August 2026

We missed the sadly short-lived stage adaptation of the 1985 time-travel escapade movie Back to the Future (BTTF), during its brief Australian run, in late 2025. I did however catch A Future on Stage, trailer, a documentary about bringing the original film to the stage as a musical.

The words “we didn’t think we could do this”, and “we had no idea what we were doing”, and similar such, may have been uttered a few times too many throughout — since we know the show eventually succeeded — but otherwise the feature was fun to watch.

Producing films and stage shows are probably equally difficult in their own ways.

It was reassuring to hear Bob Gale, co-creator of the BTTF film trilogy categorically rule out prequels, sequels, and spinoffs, at least so long as he and Robert Zemeckis retain control the story rights.

Despite relatively long runs in the United Kingdom and United States, Back to the Future The Musical didn’t fly in Australia, and played for just four months in Sydney. The disappointing run was attributed to cost-of-living pressures, and the high cost of staging the show locally.

Music, Fashion, Film, the new Charli XCX album

7 August 2026

British musician Charli XCX released her eighth studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, in July 2026. Not so much of the glitchcore this time around, though there’s one or two (digital) scratches in the mix.

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Edition four-hundred of Dense Discovery published this week

7 August 2026

The popular weekly email newsletter, written by Melbourne based Australia curator and publisher Kai Brach, has actually been published five-hundred-and-seventy-nine times, but earlier editions were written under another title. But who’s counting?

True to its tagline, “one email worth opening, every week”, Dense Discovery (DD) is something I’ve been reading for years. Er, this is via the web rather than email, but DD is certainly one website worth reading every week, for all things art, design, technology, and culture.

Here’s to the next four-hundred — or should that be five-hundred-and-seventy-nine? — editions.

Fierceland, by Omar Musa, wins 2026 Miles Franklin Award

7 August 2026

Queanbeyan, NSW, based author and visual artist Omar Musa, has been named winner of the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award, for his 2025 novel Fierceland.

Fierceland is Musa’s second novel, and tells the story of two siblings returning to their home in Malaysian Borneo, for their father’s funeral, having lived overseas for years:

After many years abroad, Roz and Harun return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their father Yusuf — and to reckon with their inheritance. A renowned palm-oil baron during Malaysia’s economic rise, Yusuf built the family’s immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest. What his children know is that he was also responsible for the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.

Harun has become a successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles, Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney. Now they want to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption, dreamers and exiles, thugs and zealots. Most dangerous of all, they are haunted — by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.

The Miles Franklin is awarded annually to Australian novels of the highest literary merit.

Show me an intelligent social media platform; I will show you a dead platform

5 August 2026

Jorijn Schrijvershof’s decision to close the Mastodon instance toot.community, which he established in late 2024, highlights many of the difficulties facing instance administrators on the decentralised social media platform:

Every day, I deal with spam, bots, technical issues, abuse reports, and user conflicts. Much of the moderation ends up being about personal disagreements rather than actual rule-breaking.

As I wrote last week, anyone can set up a Mastodon instance if they want to, but the majority are labours of love, including Aus Social, of which I am a member. They’re not money-spinners.

Unlike centralised social media platforms, such as Twitter/X and Threads, Mastodon instances are usually funded by their founders, together with any donations members might make:

There’s also the financial side. I’m very grateful to everyone who donated, but donations haven’t covered costs for a long time. I’ve had to shoulder most of the expenses, time, and responsibility myself.

It’s also a mistake to believe Mastodon is an oasis of thoughtful and considerate discourse. It isn’t always. There’s nothing wrong with robust discussion, but hostility and antagonism is another matter, even if it’s not of quite the same intensity present on other platforms.

Conflict may not be widespread across Mastodon, but dealing with it, as a someone who is effectively a volunteer admin, is time consuming, and disheartening:

More importantly, I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore. Too often, conversations turn hostile or confrontational. A small amount of conflict and bad actors takes up a disproportionate amount of time and energy.

This was this idea, in the early days of Mastodon and Bluesky, that things would be different, better.

People migrating there thought they were leaving conflict and hostility that was rife elsewhere, behind. And for a time things did feel different. Interactions were relatively civil. There were those who feared this state of affairs would not last though.

But social media is social media, no matter what the platform. Wherever people congregate online, antagonism is seldom far away. As with bad news, discord sells.

The operators of the commercial, centralised platforms, relish tension. It brings in the punters, it engages (and enrages) them. And if the conversation only ever goes in circles, who cares?

Someone once said something like “show me an intelligent TV show, and I’ll show you a dead TV show.” I don’t recall the precise wording, but that was the gist of the quote.

Might it have been Kerry Packer or Rupert Murdoch?

It seems though the same principle applies to social media platforms. But antagonism is not restricted to social media, it’s rampant across the web, to the point it seems endemic to the web.

You don’t need to be a detective to work out why either. The low barrier to entry. The ease with which identities can be concealed. These are of course also advantages, but suit bad actors nicely. People, who supposedly, wouldn’t behave so poorly in face-to-face interactions. Supposedly.

And since every last user of a decentralised social media platform is unlikely to adhere to community guidelines, we’re probably going to see more Mastodon instances close. As with toot.community, trolls and disputes between members won’t be solely to blame, but they’ll be contributing factors.

There’s a thought that social media will kill itself eventually. Users are railing against heavy handed algorithms, abundant AI slop, and misinformation, among other annoyances.

But that day seems far off. Big tech will continue supporting the centralised platforms where the problems are at their worst, particularly if they remain profitable.

Sadly, it’s the not so well resourced decentralised social media platforms that are more at risk of being “killed” though, unless they can receive more support.

Record El Nino event might bring drought, heatwaves, to Australia in spring

1 August 2026

A “record” El Niño event, presently wreaking havoc in the northern hemisphere, is expected to lead to an excessively warm and dry spring in Australia, and, no doubt, other regions south of the equator.

We’ve barely had a winter in my part of the world this year. To be sure, there’s been one or two cooler days, and evenings can get chilly, but the winter woollens have seen little use thus far.

I’ve been dreading the upcoming summer, but by the sounds of it, spring is going to be worse.

But it’s important to remember that El Niño events are but one of several environmental phenomena that play a part in influencing the weather hereabouts.

LinkedIn users can report AI slop, but what about the rest of it?

1 August 2026

Members of the professional network will be able to flag posts they think are AI generated. I haven’t been a LinkedIn participant in years — I have a personal website, why would I? — but it seems to me slop has been a problem on the platform since before AI was what it is.

The threat of toxic content on decentralised social media platforms

31 July 2026

Mastodon is a truly decentralised micro-bloging platform. Anyone sufficiently motivated, and technically proficient, can start their own instance, or community.

Depending on the administrator, instances can be completely isolated, accessible only to its members, or federated, that is, interconnected to all other instances that are likewise federated.

Presently there eight-thousand instances, give or take, and each has, or can have, its own individual community guidelines and moderation policies.

This can mean content permissible on one instance might be unacceptable somewhere else. But if that instance is federated, members’ posts may be visible to just about all Mastodon members.

It’s something that can allow content of a toxic nature to disseminate freely across the Mastodon network, as there are no standard platform-wide moderation policies.

And according to research carried out by Pasan Kamburugamuwa and Olga Scrivner, toxic content is becoming more prevalent on Mastodon.

Tens of millions of people migrated to places like Mastodon and Bluesky, to escape the toxicity that had become rife on other social media platforms. It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that content many consider unacceptable, is taking hold.

Mastodon’s decentralised structure is one of its advantages. For one, it means no single person, or entity, can assume control of the entire network, and do with it as they please.

But decentralisation is a double-edged sword, if it allows people to set up shop in their own corner, and spread content others don’t want to see.

Finding a solution in an environment such as Mastodon’s will be challenging.

David vs Goliath Australian film classic The Castle being adapted for stage

30 July 2026

Feel good Australian comedy classic movie, The Castle, made in 1997, is set the join the likes of Back to the Future, The Color Purple, and Titanic, in being adapted for the stage. The story follows a working class family trying to stop cashed-up property developers seizing their home.

The producers of the film, including Tom Gleisner, Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy, and Rob Sitch, will be involved in the writing and production of the stage show. Fingers crossed then the adaptation will retain the quirkiness and candour of the original film.

Talking of Kennedy and Sitch, I stumbled upon a satirical show they starred in about thirty years ago, Frontline, a send-up of Australian current affairs shows, in the iView archives. It’s a great show, but a lot has changed since the mid 1990’s. I’m not sure something like that could be made today.

When is an exomoon not an exomoon? When it orbits a failed star, not a planet

29 July 2026

Astronomers may have discovered the first moon, or satellite, outside the solar system, about seventy-three light years from Earth.

Plenty of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, have been found, but this might be the first time a moon accompanying one of these bodies has been located.

But there’s a problem. The apparent exoplanet in question is a brown dwarf. These unusual Jupiter size objects often referred to as failed stars. But they are neither planet nor star.

That’s not all though. The brown dwarf hosting the would-be exomoon, is it self orbiting another star. The situation has scientists puzzled. From what I can understand, the moon of the brown dwarf has some substance. It is of a decent size. It is a real moon.

Quite unlike, for instance, the multitude of pebble-size excuses of “moons” orbiting Saturn.

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