Tasmanian Tiger de-extinction is a fairy tale science

22 August 2022

While a group of scientists believe they could revive Tasmanian Tigers — the species has been extinct since 1936 — and have the creatures roaming forests within a decade, not all scientists are convinced. In fact some believe the notion of bringing back the thylacine, is little more than a publicity stunt:

“De-extinction is a fairytale science,” Associate Professor Jeremy Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA told the Sydney Morning Herald, adding that the project is “more about media attention for the scientists and less about doing serious science”.

Time will tell.

Trailer for My Old School a documentary about Brian MacKinnon

20 August 2022

Brian MacKinnon studied at Bearsden Academy, a school near Glasgow in Scotland, until his graduation at age seventeen in 1980. After leaving Bearsden, MacKinnon went to Glasgow University, but his enrolment was revoked after failing course exams. MacKinnon was bitterly disappointed, so he decided — quite literally — to start over again.

In 1993, at the age of thirty, he re-enrolled at Bearsden Academy, posing as a sixteen year old Canadian expatriate named Brandon Lee. For the year he spent there, no one saw through the ruse. None of his classmates were suspicious, nor the handful of original teachers still there, who had taught MacKinnon over a decade earlier.

The deception only came to light after “Lee” had left Bearsden for a second time. Now his story has been made into a documentary My Old School, trailer, by Jono McLeod, a former TV news reporter, who was a classmate of “Lee” in 1993.

[McLeod] says he always gets asked how he did not know that Brandon was an imposter at the time. “It is everyone’s nightmare to wake up at 30 years old and be back at school, so why would anyone choose to place themselves in that situation?” he says.

While parents of some students were alarmed that a thirty-year-old was in close proximity to teenagers, many people were certain MacKinnon’s motives were not untoward, including numerous former students and teachers. He sought only to right a perceived wrong.

While MacKinnon agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, he refused to be filmed, and instead actor Alan Cumming stands in for him. In perhaps attempting to rationalise the escapade, MacKinnon says: “the thing you have to do if you really want to prevail is do the unimaginable.”

Kurzgesagt asks is civilisation on the brink of collapse?

19 August 2022

What if a tragedy — something like a full-blown war, or a deadly pandemic akin to the bubonic plague — befell the human race, plunging any survivors into a new dark age? Would they be able to pick up the pieces and (eventually) restore civilisation as we know it? Is such a catastrophe even possible? Kurzgesagt looks at the question.

At its height, the Roman Empire was home to about 30% of the world’s population, and in many ways the pinnacle of human advancement. Rome became the first city in history to reach one million inhabitants and was a center of technological, legal, and economic progress. An empire impossible to topple, stable and rich and powerful. Until it wasn’t anymore. First slowly then suddenly, the most powerful civilization on earth collapsed. If this is how it has been over the ages, what about us today? Will we lose our industrial technology, and with that our greatest achievements, from one dollar pizza to smartphones or laser eye surgery? Will all this go away too?

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history, video

Rejected authors finding publishers, film deals, on TikTok

19 August 2022

TikTok is proving to be a fertile ground for new music acts looking for a lucky break, with the video hosting app kick-starting the careers of numerous musicians so far.

And authors are also cashing in. Many writers who struggled to find publishers previously, are sometimes finding themselves at the centre of bidding wars between rival publishing houses, after taking a novel idea to TikTok to gauge interest in the premise.

American writer Alex Aster is an example, and in 2021 signed a lucrative publishing deal, and later film rights, for her YA novel Lightlark.

Aster didn’t expect much, especially when she checked in a few hours later to see that her post had only clocked up about 1,000 views. Maybe the books world was right, she thought. Maybe there wasn’t a market for Lightlark, a young adult story she had been writing and rewriting for years, to no interest from publishers. The next day, however, she woke up to see her video had been viewed more than a million times. A week later, Lightlark had gone to auction and she had a six-figure deal with Amulet Books. Last month, Universal preemptively bought the film rights for, in her words, “more zeros than I’ve seen in my life”.

Aster conceded an element of luck was involved though, describing the TikTok algorithm that eventually propelled her to success as “finicky”. Here’s hoping the algorithm will favour other writers.

The fifty best books written since Ulysses by James Joyce

18 August 2022

To mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Irish novelist James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses, British newspaper The Times has ranked the fifty best books of the twenty-first century, according to the nominations of contemporary authors and literary critics.

Between them they have read thousands of books, and their choices reflect this: the oldest book was published in 1924, the most recent in 2009. The list includes writers from Britain, Ireland, the US, Nigeria, India and South Africa, with subject matter just as diverse. You will find scalp-hunting outlaws, organ-donating clones and Wall Street traders.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, and Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, are among inclusions. When it comes to Joyce’s work, I’ve read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but am yet to take on Ulysses, but I will, but I will…

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books, James Joyce, literature, novels

Australia on alert for a third La Nina event this summer

18 August 2022

Another wet summer may be on the cards for parts of Australia, after the Bureau of Meteorology moved the ENSO Outlook to a La Niña alert status.

This status change follows a renewal of cooling in the tropical Pacific Ocean towards La Niña thresholds over recent weeks, as well as the persistence of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) at La Niña levels and strengthened trade winds at La Niña levels. Climate models indicate further cooling is likely, with four of seven models suggesting La Ni Niña a could return by early-to-mid southern hemisphere spring.

If another La Niña eventuates this summer, it will be the third in a row.

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climate, environment, weather

Australian consumer watchdog to investigate Instagram

18 August 2022

Instagram’s recent efforts to mimic TikTok have not only angered users, but have also raised the hackles of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who think the conduct of Instagram owner Meta might be stifling competition:

Australia’s consumer watchdog will examine whether social media behemoth Meta is throttling a potential competitor and entrenching its dominance by aping TikTok’s signature features on its own services, Facebook and Instagram. The next phase of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s long-running digital platform services inquiry will also consider the reverse scenario: whether the emergence of new platforms such as Chinese-owned TikTok and daily post app BeReal is reducing Meta’s power.

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social media, social networks

Buying a car is the biggest purchase you make not a house

17 August 2022

Buying property is the biggest purchase most people will make. The process is given thorough due-diligence. And rightly so. In Australia, depending where exactly you buy, a free-standing house can cost near on one million dollars. You don’t commit to a million dollar obligation without understanding the ins and outs of the undertaking.

Of course a house you paid one million dollars for will end up costing closer to one million four hundred thousand dollars, if you had to fully finance the property, and pay an average interest rate of two and half percent over the course of a thirty year mortgage. Things like maintenance and insurance will also add to the overall cost. But usually that’s ok. Houses are generally assets that appreciate over time, so you’ll recoup the costs when you eventually sell, and, with any luck, make a tidy profit.

But here’s something, buying a house is not the biggest purchase many people will make. Owning a car will be. In Australia, owning a car could end up costing over two million dollars, were a driver to own a succession of vehicles over a sixty year period. How though can a car — even a small vehicle, going for maybe A$25,000 at the dealership — possibly turn out costing two million dollars? Ongoing running costs, which most vehicle owners grossly underestimate, is why.

Berlin based YouTuber TechAltar looked at the long-term costs of car ownership, and made the following conclusions:

Car owners typically underestimate car running costs by fifty-two percent
Thirty to forty percent of semi skilled and unskilled workers incomes will go into their cars, assuming they own vehicles for at least fifty years
Societies subsidise drivers by €5000 each year, so it’s not only car owners who pay

In Germany, a Volkswagen Golf typically costs the owner €7,657 per year to own and run. This includes depreciation, petrol, taxes, maintenance and so on. Based on a conservative study from a few years ago, if you own and use a car of that size over 50 years, it comes to a total cost of €403,179. If we stretch that to 60 years and apply a more realistic inflation rate of 2.5%, that small Golf will incur a lifetime cost of €1,579,583! On a medium income, that’s 30-40% of every euro earned, ever.

To convert those numbers to Australian dollars, a Volkswagen Golf, or an equivalent vehicle, would cost $11,075 each year. Over fifty years the cost is $583,286 (you could buy a modest size apartment for that). Over sixty years of ownership, and applying an inflation rate of 2.5 percent, the cost works out at $2,285,029. $2,285,029: with that sort of money you could buy a house, being, as we all know, an appreciating asset.

While fuel costs, vehicle taxes, and on the road costs might vary between Germany and Australia, I’d say the numbers would be pretty similar. And don’t forget to add in parking and traffic-offence fines. While car ownership is an unavoidable necessity for some people, those with young families among them, remind me again why anyone would otherwise want to own a car. Especially those living in centres with good public transport and cycling infrastructure.

Via Dense Discovery, a weekly, Australian produced newsletter, which I highly recommend you follow.

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economics, travel

Beginning by Dea Kulumbegashvili, how to explain the ending?

16 August 2022

Beginning, trailer, is the 2020 debut feature of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili. Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) is the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness minister, David (Rati Oneli). They have a young son Giorgi (Saba Gogichaishvili). But Yana begins to question her life after their small church is fire-bombed by a group of extremists, during a service one afternoon.

She is frustrated by local police who have little interest in investigating the attack, even though security camera footage clearly identifies the perpetrators. After being assaulted by a man, Alex (Kakha Kintsurashvili), who claims to be a police officer, Yana sinks deeper into despair, but also finds a steely, though grim, resolve. Beginning is equal parts meditative and unsettling. We sense Yana at times on the verge of catharsis, yet never quite attaining the peace of mind she seeks.

But what of Yana’s shocking act at the conclusion of the story? Is her victim intended as a surrogate for the police officer, Alex, whom we see die, possibly having been poisoned, on a dried out riverbed? Does Yana see the patriarchal abuse of women as a cycle with no end? But a cycle she’ll do the unthinkable to try and curb? This is what I saw in the final scenes of the film.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert: the difficult return to a normal life

15 August 2022

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian academic who spent over two years in Iranian jails after being accused of spying, despite no evidence backing up the claims ever being published. Last week Moore-Gilbert wrote about being incarcerated, and the challenges of rebuilding her life, on returning to Melbourne in November 2020.

I am a 35-year-old childless divorcee with a criminal record. It was never meant to be this way, of course. A few years ago I was on track to achieving that comfortable middle-class existence of husband, dream job and a mortgage on a house in the suburbs. I was driven, I was hard-working, I was ambitious. After years of juggling full-time study with multiple part-time jobs I had finally gained an unsteady foothold on the precarious academic ladder. I was working on my first book, an adaptation of my PhD. I taught undergraduate and masters courses, and supervised research students. I used to think I had life more or less figured out, and myself too for that matter.

Incidentally, Moore-Gilbert’s memoir My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison, is among shortlisted titles for the 2022 The Age book of the year award. Winners will be announced when the Melbourne Writers Festival opens on Thursday 8 September 2022.

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