Showing all posts in the links category
Australian bookseller Booktopia in voluntary administration
3 July 2024
This is sad and concerning news.
The Melbourne based bookseller had become well ensconced in the Australian literary realm, since being founded about twenty-years ago. The company, which is also listed on the ASX (though trading of shares has been suspended), had been struggling financially in recent years though.
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Teleportation: the superpower of choice of superheroes
2 July 2024
Given the choice, a regular person, like you or me, who decides they’d like to become a superhero, will choose teleportation as their superhero superpower. In preference to three other choices they could have made: mind-control, flight, or supernatural physical strength. This is the long-story-short conclusion of some recent research into the subject, by Julian J. Hwang and Dongso Lee.
I’m not so sure about teleportation as a superpower though. It would certainly be useful for travel, but for a superhero? I’d go for mind-control, or supernatural physical strength, instead. Wouldn’t either of those be more useful in subduing your foes?
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The Tetris font, fun and games with typography
28 June 2024
Is there a version of Tetris that requires the player to try and spell words with the Tetris pieces, as they fall from the sky? If there is, I’ve not heard of it. But, that’s not saying much, as I don’t know a whole lot about gaming.
Anyway, Tetris Font, developed by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, may not be quite such a game, but you can still have fun typing in a word or name, and watching it take shape with the Tetris pieces.
There goes the morning…
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entertainment, games, typography
Did the universe exist before the Big Bang? Maybe…
27 June 2024
What happened, or was there, before the Big Bang that is said to have brought the universe into being? Was there nothing, to which something came? It is the question of the ages.
In his recent documentary series, Universe, British physicist Brian Cox posits that the universe existed before the Big Bang. How long this pre Big Bang entity had been there, or its origins, remain unknown however. How fascinating these before-the-beginning sort of questions are.
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astronomy, philosophy, physics, science
Can you use Vison Pro in a group or social setting?
14 June 2024
Or when snuggled up on the sofa, say watching a movie, with your better half?
I feel isolated when watching media, and it’s also much harder to snack and get cozy.
This is a point — raised by Hacker News/Y Combinator member archagon — and is not something I’d thought of, in regards to the whole process of using mixed-reality headsets. Since I don’t do this — use devices like Vision Pro — all that often, I wouldn’t know what this sort of experience might be like.
But maybe I’d put the headset aside, at such a time.
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entertainment, film, technology
Well-built furniture should last centuries, not a couple of years
12 June 2024
When Lauren was pregnant with a child who’s now turning 25, we purchased a comfy dark-brown leather sofa which fits our living room nicely. What with kids and relatives and employees and cats and Standards Comittees and friends and book clubs and socials, the butt-support cushions had, a quarter century later, worn out. So we had them replaced, at a fair price, by a small local business. Which is something that modern capitalism is trying to make impossible.
An old neighbour runs a furniture recycling business. His speciality is something called mid-twentieth-century furniture, sometimes mid-century furniture. It has a darker, wood stain/grain look, and really isn’t my thing. But it’s sturdy, well-built furniture, and will still be here long after the self-assembly particle-board stuff, this is presently so popular, has crumbled into ruin.
Short wonder my neighbour can’t keep up with demand for furniture that’s seventy-years old.
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Wake Up Dead Man, by Rian Johnson, with Daniel Craig: Benoit Blanc returns
7 June 2024
Great news for fans of 2019 thriller/comedy/whodunit, Knives Out… a follow up is on the way. Daniel Craig will reprise his role as private detective Benoit Blanc, in Wake Up Dead Man, due for cinematic release sometime in 2025. Check out the teaser/trailer, though it’s more teaser than trailer.
Good to hear CSI KFC’s voice again. I liked Knives Out so much I watched it three times.
It was also good to see Craig in a James Bond like role that was not James Bond. I gave up on the Bond films years ago. The world needs more filmmakers like Johnson, who create and write their own original characters. Rather than maintaining the apparent status quo, which sees the same old story rebooted and retold decade after decade. I’m looking at you James Bond. Or rather, I’m not.
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Daniel Craig, film, Rian Johnson, trailers
People may not read longer novels, but they do win literary awards
4 June 2024
Tangentially related to the last post. Longer novels might pose a challenge to certain readers, especially those who require apps to do the reading for them. But, longer titles are more likely to win literary awards:
Judgment and decision-making research suggests several causes of the apparent bias. One is the representativeness heuristic: longer novels resemble the tomes that constitute the foundations of the Western canon, and this similarity may subconsciously sway judges.
Winning a prize is obviously great for the author in question, but are they left wondering just how many people read their book, cover to cover? Especially those on the award judging panel…
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books, literary awards, literature
Conquer your TBR with apps that read books in fifteen minutes
4 June 2024
Such apps don’t exactly read novels in fifteen minutes, but they scan through them, and produce relatively short summaries. Seems like cheating to me, don’t we read books to be taken along on a journey? Still, I imagine these apps have their uses.
Like, where were they when I was at high school? Especially when assigned to read Vanity Fair. With all respect to William Makepeace Thackeray. I did like the last chapter though. Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum!
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books, literature, reading, technology
Five-thousand kilometre long cloud-band across Australia
3 June 2024
The Daily Aus (TDA), Friday, 31 May 2024:
Rain is forecast across 90% of the country over the coming days as a 5,000km ‘cloudband’ makes its way from WA‘s north to south-east Australia.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), a ‘northwest cloudband’ is an extensive layer of air and moisture from over the Indian Ocean that can bring widespread rain to much of the country.
The cloud-band was not only extremely long, and also full to brimming with moisture. While rainfall remained constant throughout Saturday, there were some decidedly heavy downpours at times. These invariably came along just as we’d parked the car, and needed to cross a street to shelter, or while outside at some exposed mid-point between buildings.
We stopped at a cafe, a nice place, located in what was once a small warehouse, with an open ceiling with a corrugated iron roof. But we could barely hear ourselves speak at times, though during some of the showers, so heavy were they.
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