Capture, a new novel by Australian author Amanda Lohrey

7 May 2026

The tenth novel by the Tasmania based author, and previous winner of the Miles Franklin literary award, was published last week:

James Mather is a psychiatrist in his sixties. He is invited to take on a new group of patients. All he knows about them is that each one claims to have been abducted by aliens.

His wife, Deborah, is sceptical, but he gets going anyway. His patients tell mesmerising stories. There’s Anthony, for instance, who was camping one night by the Aral Sea; or Mary, the owner of a beauty salon, confronted by a ball of light moving towards her in her bedroom.

James’s research assistant Lucy Cheng sits in on each session. She’s an attractive young divorcee, who has made a study of anxiety, and who takes notes about each conversation.

With the sci-fi tinge, Capture seems worlds removed — no pun intended — from Lohrey’s 2021 title The Labyrinth, winner of the Miles Franklin that year. But who knows, maybe it isn’t.

Converting old London Underground train door buttons into light switches

7 May 2026

Specifically, a Hue light switch, using an old door opening button from a Jubilee line train.

I lived in London for a few years awhile back, and the District line also had door buttons you’d press to open or close the train doors. As I recall it, the doors on all other lines were controlled by the guard. These passenger operated door buttons could be something of a double-edge sword though.

I was travelling to Richmond one afternoon, and a passenger — possibly still on the way from home from the night before — and wanting to alight at a station, was getting the action all wrong in constantly pressing the door button.

He was — unawares, I was pretty sure — cancelling out the efforts of someone on the platform trying to open the door to board the train. There was confusion on one side of the door, frustration on the other, as the door went through a cycle of partly opening, then partly closing.

Maybe these door open and close actions are better controlled centrally, and the door buttons should be used as light switches instead.

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Copyright is meaningless in the face of an AI ‘arms race’

7 May 2026

American author Scott Turow, in conjunction with five publishing houses, claims Meta used material protected by copyright to train its AI agent, Llama.

They make the suggestion the Facebook owner chose not to obtain permission to access the copied texts as they wanted to get ahead of the competition in what’s being called “AI arms race.”

Meta, however, sees their use of the copyrighted material as fair use, and claims courts have ruled this to be the case in the past. What will the court determine this time?

If there is indeed an AI “arms race” in progress, which is undoubtedly the case, I can’t see any developer of AI technologies doing anything that will compromise their industry standing. Even if that means doing the right thing by copyright holders.

How many friends, family, co-workers, know about your blog/website?

2 May 2026

Half the web might know about your blog, but how many of your in-person acquaintances, people in your household, community, or workplace, know you blog?

Do you even tell them? Do you want to?

The question came up at Forking Mad this week, and started me thinking. When I uploaded the first version of disassociated in 1997, I told just about everyone I knew. At that point I aspired to be a web designer, so telling the whole world of my online presence made perfect sense. I ended up working in the industry for a few years, with a role coming about after a design studio in Sydney spotted my website, and contacted me.

Over time though disassociated became more blog than personal website/design portfolio. Having said that, I just about never posted screenshots or links to the work I did commercially, I was happy to let quirky old disassociated do the talking. But after a stint in web design, I decided it wasn’t for me. Somehow, building commercial websites just wasn’t as fun, or satisfying, as the personal work.

That’s when I started doing more writing. In 2007, after years of running this website with static HTML files, I migrated to WordPress (WP) — where, for better or worse — I remain. As a web publishing platform, WP works for me, does what I need, and that’s fine for me for now. I moved to a web publishing platform partly because I wanted to have a go at earning money as a blogger.

And in 2007 I wasn’t alone.

That ambition was achieved, though not quite in the way I envisaged, a story for another time maybe. But somehow moving to a web publishing platform brought disassociated into the limelight, even if I was an actor to the side, the far side, of the stage. Visits skyrocketed, and my in-box was full of messages from people interested to some degree in what I was doing.

At that time also I resided full-time in Sydney, and was often out and about meeting people. I would drag introvert me out to networking events, art show openings, and film screenings.

I had business cards featuring my URL, and handed them out indiscriminately. I most certainly told people about my website then, including family and friends. Once, more as fun, I made up, and printed out, flyers with my URL on tear-tabs, and posted them on noticeboards on the campus of a Sydney university. I wasn’t relying solely on online methods of blog promotion.

But blogging was an all encompassing passion and experience, and, back in those heady days, so much more than merely writing a few blog posts. The picture in 2026, however, couldn’t be any different. Blogs were pushed aside by social media, and the party was over. Actually, strike that. The party isn’t over, it’s just a lot smaller than it was before.

More to the point though, blogs are no longer the talking point they once were. Outside of Indie/SmallWeb circles at least.

When I talk to people I meet in-person and discussion turns to online presences, they expect me to share my social media handles. A blog, or personal website, sounds positively quaint. To the point I sometimes feel awkward even mentioning it. On the few occasions I might say, tell the barista at the cafe that I blog, I end up changing the subject, when I realise their eyes have glazed over.

It’s too bad, because the question has me yearning to supplement my part-time day job by reprising my role as CEO of the disassociated online one-person in-my-dreams publishing behemoth. Even if it is a website/blog, not a social media page. But if you have a website you want the world to know about, spreading the word to more of the people you know in-person is the go I think.

The Top Fifty Australian movies of all time, compiled by The Age/Sydney Morning Herald

30 April 2026

Lindy Percival, Nathanael Scott, Daniel Carter, and others:

This list of our 50 best films will likely provoke debate, but with the aid of 24 experts, including directors, actors, critics, curators and authors, what follows is an inspiring reminder of what we’ve seen so far and a heartfelt encouragement to go on watching our stories on screen.

Spoilers: Crocodile Dundee doesn’t feature, though The Castle does, but overall the fifty selected titles are indicative — I think — of the best Australian film.

Bad Boy Bubby, The Devil’s Playground, Ten Canoes, and Walkabout, are among entries listed earlier on. The top twenty is definitely on the money, with the likes of Nitram, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Snowtown, Beneath Clouds, Somersault, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Animal Kingdom, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Samson & Delilah.

Some of these titles are not easy to watch, but are exemplary instances of local film and storytelling.

Bricks and mortar bookshops making a comeback in the United States

30 April 2026

Andy Hunter, CEO and founder of indie bookseller Bookshop.org, talking recently with Shannon Cudd of Fast Company:

“People are really galvanizing around bookstores as a force for good in our culture,” he says. “You see that in the fact that there are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States. After 20 years of declining numbers, they’re coming roaring back.”

This can only be a good thing.

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Born again social network Friendster aims to resurrect real-life friends networks

29 April 2026

Even after Friendster stopped being a social network I still checked in on the website from time to time. It’s evidently been a while since I did that though.

Last time I looked, Friendster — having gone through a number of changes in direction — was a gaming platform, but, as I’ve learned, ceased operations in 2015.

After almost a decade in the wilderness, American developer and entrepreneur Mike Carson has revived the old virtual community, but things are little bit different this time around.

When I signed up (again) I needed to install the Friendster app on my phone, even though there is a website. The biggest difference, that I can see so far, is in the way you connect with other people.

Instead of searching for people you might know, friending people on the new Friendster requires doing so in person. In order to connect, you and your prospective friend need to scan codes on each other’s phones. I’m no Snapchat power user, but I think they do, or did, something similar.

Friending acquaintances face-to-face means friends networks may be somewhat smaller than some social network users are accustomed to, but as copy on the website tells us, Friendster is “built for real-life friends”. That’s a feature that will certainly appeal to some people.

Australian author David Malouf dies at age 92

29 April 2026

David Malouf, the Miles Franklin and Booker Prize winning author, died last week, Wednesday 22 April 2026, in the Australian state of Queensland.

If you’re unfamiliar with Malouf’s work, Sydney Morning Herald writer Nell Geraets has complied a list of seven “must-read” Malouf titles.

Friction-maxxing, a buzzword to restore balance to your life force

24 April 2026

Canadian author and researcher Kathryn Jezer-Morton documented friction-maxxing in an article (paywalled) for The Cut, in January this year. Weeks later, a Wikipedia page was published about the phenomenon. Is that, then, why friction-maxxing is now referred to as a cultural trend?

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia defines friction-maxxing thusly:

Friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort, resist technology-driven ease, and preserve what proponents describe as meaningful human experiences.

I’ve been seeing references to plain old friction, chiefly across the blogosphere, well before January though. Bloggers using the term in their writing were suggesting there ideally/always needed to be a certain difficulty in what we do, whatever that is. This because we’ve somehow come to expect everything we do to be simple and effortless.

I probably live relatively straightforwardly. I work, then I don’t work. I don’t run marathons, climb mountains, or cross oceans in a sail boat. It seems to me if you want more friction in your life, those sorts of activities make a good start. Friction-maxxing, on the other hand, suggests relying less on automated and algorithm-powered goods and services. And AI.

Instead of ordering food delivery, you should prepare the meal yourself. Rather than dictate notes, or type into a notes apps, you should hand write them on paper. Instead of setting up meetings on video calls, you should arrange a face-to-face gathering. Instead of texting or emailing, you should call, and speak to someone, or meet in person. Frightening, no?

For my part, maybe I should, for instance, see movies at the cinema, not stream them in the frictionless comfort of our home. I’ll let you know how that goes.

The big tech companies and social media platforms tell us “boredom, social awkwardness, and effortful thinking”, among other things, are problems to be eliminated. And now that they have been, so we’re told, friction-maxxing is required to make life trickier again. To restore the balance.

Talking of social media though, to instantly increase friction, reduce, or dispense with social media, set up a personal website, and start blogging. That’ll be a source of friction for months.

But in a world where public transport doesn’t run to timetable, traffic gets gridlocked, computers freeze, websites fail to load, phones find themselves in an area with no reception, the coffee grinder at the cafe breaks just as you arrive, you’re caught out by off-app, non-forecast rain in an open, unsheltered space, who needs to be creating friction?

But none of this is really friction, it’s simply life. Annoyances we must deal with. But it keeps us on our toes, and alive. I’m not then convinced by this… cultural trend.

It seems to me embracing friction-maxxing is an attempt to conceal some other, possibly deeper malady. It’s a smoke screen. A marketing term even. Friction-maxxing is akin to putting a band-aid, not on a small cut or scratch, but something far more serious. Something that likely requires proper diagnosis and treatment. If something’s wrong, distractions are not an ideal solution.

The 2026 Global Book Crawl is in progress

23 April 2026

Nearly missed this, staying focused can be tricky, to say the least, at times like these. The book crawl was established just last year by Federico Lang, who works at Librería Luces, an independent bookstore in the Spanish city of Málaga.

I’m told this year about one-hundred-and-fifty Australian booksellers are involved. The full list of shops taking part globally can be seen here. If book crawl participants collect five stamps in a crawl “passport” — obtainable from any bookshop involved — they become eligible for a reward.

The 2026 event concludes on Sunday 26 April 2026.

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