Indigenous Australians report increased instances of racism

2 July 2025

Dana Morse, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Experiences of racism included verbal abuse, social media abuse, being refused entry or service, being prevented from renting a property, and physical violence, with younger First Nations people reporting higher levels of racism than other age groups. Racial discrimination was experienced at the hands of police, taxis and rideshare services, government services, hospitality and utility providers, and employers.

The Australian Reconciliation Barometer is a biennial study, and the only measure of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The most recent study has reported a significant rise in racist incidents in the last ten years. Reconciliation Australia CEO Karen Mundine also notes that while Indigenous Australians are experiencing more racism, many are also now more likely to report these incidents.

Meta wants to copy the photos on your phone and soup them up

1 July 2025

Sarah Perez, writing for Techcrunch:

As the pop-up message explains, by clicking “Allow,” you’ll let Facebook generate new ideas from your camera roll, like collages, recaps, AI restylings, or photo themes. To work, Facebook says it will upload media from your camera roll to its cloud (meaning its servers) on an “ongoing basis,” based on information like time, location, or themes.

In short, if you allow it, Meta will upload the contents of the photo library on your phone to their servers. In return, Facebook (FB) will create all sorts of nice stuff for you, using some of their AI tools.

I’m not a fan of this idea. People have all sorts of private images on their camera rolls, that they have no intention of sharing with anyone. Meta say these images won’t be made public, but I still don’t like the idea of FB keeping private photos on their servers, quite possibly in perpetuity.

Concerned I might accidentally — somehow possibly in pocket-dial fashion — agree to let FB take what’s in my photo library, I’ve since deleted the app from my phone. Unfortunately, a number of friends and family pretty much use FB for doing everything, including keeping in contact (many long since stopped email) with all their friends, so getting rid of FB completely isn’t an option at present.

From now on I’ll login to FB through the website, on my laptop, now and then to check for messages.

Weather ‘bomb’ threatens east coast of Australia this week

30 June 2025

Tom Saunders, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

When a low-pressure system transforms from non-existence to a formidable storm just a day later, meteorologists label it a “bomb cyclone”, or a system that has experienced “bombogenesis”. The expression “bomb” is due to the explosive speed of development, however its usage is restricted only to systems where the reduction in pressure exceeds a specific rate based on latitude.

A low-pressure weather system forecast to form off the east coast of Australia, near NSW, in coming days, might — when it runs into another system near Queensland that’s moving south — form a so-called “bomb cyclone”. A “bomb” occurs when a low-pressure system experiences a drop in pressure of between fourteen to eighteen hectopascals (hPa) in less than twenty-four hours.

This week’s weather system may see a pressure fall of between twenty-two to twenty-four hPa in the course of a day. That’s a lot it seems, it’s not a good thing, and the result might be the aforementioned “bomb cyclone”. This could lead to heavy rain, gale force winds, and damaging surf.

At this stage it’s not known where the low pressure system will be centred. It might be closer to coast, or someway out in the Tasman Ocean. It’s distance from the east coast will determine its impact. Current modelling suggests areas in the vicinity of Sydney, to the north and the south, will see the heaviest rainfalls, together with regions inland to the northwest of Newcastle.

There is also the prospect of this weather system developing into an East Coast Low. These systems bring intense storms and prolonged rainfalls near to the regions where they are centred.

It’s calm and still as I write this on the NSW Central Coast… the proverbial calm before the storm?

Fifteen years ago, my interview with Claire McCarthy, Australian filmmaker

30 June 2025

In 2010, Claire McCarthy’s publicity company kindly gave me the opportunity to ask her about her then upcoming film, The Waiting City, which starred Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton. I published the interview on this day fifteen years ago.

I remember feeling a tad apprehensive preparing my questions as I hadn’t seen the film beforehand, and subsequently didn’t think they were particularly original. All seemed to be well (or well enough) on the night though, as they say.

Margaret Pomeranz, David Stratton, join Australian Film Walk of Fame

28 June 2025

Colloquially referred to as Margaret and David, the long time Australian film critics became, on Sunday 1 June 2025, the first non-actors to be inducted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame.

The pair are perhaps best known for the two film review television shows they co-hosted, The Movie Show, on SBS, from 1986 until 2004, and then At the Movies, on ABC, from 2004 through to 2014.

Among other roles, Stratton served as director of the Sydney Film Festival from 1966 until 1983. Pomeranz meanwhile was a prominent anti-censorship activist, and was once detained by police during a protest. Despite the warmth of their professional partnership, they often disagreed with each other as to the merits of a film. This became a distinguishing hallmark of their collaboration.

In the earlier days of disassociated I wrote a fair bit about film, and often saw Pomeranz and Stratton at various previews screenings and other events. Stratton hosted a conversation with Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 2006.

One evening, while waiting to go into a preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Sydney in 2012, Pomeranz walked right passed me, as she was leaving the earlier screening. “Any good?” I asked her. She nodded politely in response.

The Australian Film Walk of Fame plague awarded to Pomeranz and Stratton earlier this month, is the second one presented this year. In recent years, the Walk, located outside the Ritz Cinema, in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, has been a little quiet. Is this something of a Film Walk of Fame revival?

Foto, an Instagram-like photo-sharing platform and alternative

28 June 2025

A reddish neon heart-shaped light can be seen on a purple coloured striped background, photo by John Lampard

While I am (slowly, very slowly) working to host my snapshot photos here on disassociated, I couldn’t resist signing up for Foto, a new Instagram-like photography platform.

Unlike similar platforms, Foto offers posts in chronological order, free of adverts. Foto also undertakes not to crop any images uploaded by members. Revenue will be generated by yet to come pro features, which members can opt for if they so desire.

Describing Foto as new is not completely accurate though, as the startup has been around for close to three years. In that time, it has, according to a welcome email I received, worked with sixteen-thousand testers (an impressive number), since going into beta about eighteen months ago.

There is, at the moment, in my early hours on the platform, an encouraging degree of interaction.

Despite only having one follower at present, the five photos (including the one above) I have so far posted have garnered up to half a dozen likes, from people I don’t even know. How often does something like that happen on the other, algorithm-saturated, platform?

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Netflix adapting My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin into a TV series

27 June 2025

Talking of Miles Franklin, the late Australian author, not the literary award named in her honour, Netflix is filming an adaptation of her 1901 novel, My Brilliant Career.

Principal photography is currently underway in parts of South Australia, with Melbourne born Australian actor Philippa Northeast in the role of Sybylla Melvyn. Here’s the novel’s synopsis:

Trapped on her parents’ outback farm, Sybylla simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. She longs for a more refined lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing – but most of all to do great things. Suddenly her life is transformed when she is whisked away to live on her grandmother’s gracious property. There Sybylla falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. Soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a ‘brilliant career’.

Anna Chancellor portrays Sybylla’s grandmother, and Christopher Chung has been cast as Harry Beecham. At this stage, word has it the show will screen either later this year, or in early 2026.

While you’re waiting for the TV show, track down and watch Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 film adaptation of My Brilliant Career, which starred Judy Davis and Sam Niell as Sybylla and Harry respectively.

Planet Nine may not exist, but Dwarf Planet Nine might

26 June 2025

The apparent discovery of an extremely distant dwarf-planet, known as 2017 OF201, might put paid to the speculated existence of a likewise far-flung Neptune-size planet, often referred to as Planet Nine, says Isaac Schultz, writing for Gizmodo:

Which brings us, inevitably, to Planet Nine, the theorized distant world posited as a gravitational explanation for the strange clustering of objects in the Kuiper Belt. Other ideas have been floated to explain the phenomenon — such as a ring of debris exerting gravitational influence, or even a primordial black hole — but nothing grips our human fascination like a distant planet, so far away from our solar system’s other worlds that it’s never been observed.

Unexpected variations in the orbits of numerous dwarf-planets and various other bodies, known as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO), usually located beyond the orbit of Pluto, have long puzzled scientists and astronomers. This has lead some of them to believe the solar system hosts a larger planet, which they call Planet Nine.

This body possibly orbits the Sun elliptically, at an average distance of two-hundred-and-fifty astronomical units (AU), or thirty-seven billion KM (compared with an average six billion or so KM for Pluto), and takes ten to twenty thousand years to do so. But its theorised presence might account for the odd orbital behaviour of some TNOs.

But this is where things become intriguing. A 2013 NASA survey of the area surrounding the solar system, apparently detected no indication of any reasonably large planetary bodies beyond the orbit of Pluto. This despite the ability of their technology to perceive Saturn-size objects a tenth of a light year distant.

This discovery of 2017 OF201, which leisurely orbits the Sun once every twenty-five thousand years, and ventures as far away as sixteen-hundred AU, makes sense in this context. It also opens the door to locating potentially many more highly distant dwarf-planets.

The presence of 2017 OF201 however does not completely eliminate the possibility Planet Nine exists, the 2013 NASA study notwithstanding. Sihao Cheng, who participated in finding 2017 OF201, still hopes Planet Nine turns out to be there.

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The 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlist

26 June 2025

Six titles have been included on the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlist, which was announced yesterday:

Chinese Postman, by Brian Castro
Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser
Dirt Poor Islanders, by Winnie Dunn
Compassion, by Julie Janson
Ghost Cities, by Siang Lu
Highway 13, by Fiona McFarlane

2025 could be a good year for Michelle de Kretser if Theory & Practice wins the Miles Franklin, the title won this year’s Stella Prize. I don’t know about anyone else, but I thought the exclusion of Juice, by Tim Winton was puzzling.

The inclusion of Fiona McFarlane’s Highway 13 has also surprised some people. It’s a collection of short stories, and is the first time the format has reached a Miles Franklin shortlist.

The Miles Franklin honours excellence in Australian novel writing annually, and the winner will be announced on Thursday 24 July 2025. See you then.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the third and final Downton film

25 June 2025

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, trailer, directed by Simon Curtis, with a fair chunk of long time Downton cast members reprising their roles, will be released globally on Friday 12 September 2025.

I’ve only ever seen series three of the original TV show, which aired in the second half of 2012, and that’s because I was gifted the DVD set of the series some years later. I saw the first spin-off film, simply named Downton Abbey in 2019, but missed the 2022 follow-up, Downton Abbey: A New Era.

It’s tricky to work out what’s happening based on the little of the story we see in the trailer for The Grand Finale. One thread of the preview seems to revisit the earlier part of series three, where the possibility the Crawley family would have to leave the Abbey, loomed large. But who knows.

There’s no missing the finality of that title though.

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