Vale David Stratton, Australian film critic

15 August 2025

The family of the noted film critic announced his death, at age 85, yesterday, Thursday August 2025.

I used to do some film writing (I still do occasionally) but would never describe my efforts as critique. Nonetheless, I used to be invited to preview screenings and premieres, and from time to time Stratton would be present.

Stratton, together with long time collaborator Margaret Pomeranz, were recently inducted onto the Australian Film Walk of Fame, becoming the first non-actors to be accorded the honour. If that doesn’t speak volumes about the regard in which Stratton’s work was held, I don’t know what does.

A four-hundred year, one way, trip to Proxima Centauri? Is this sci-fi?

13 August 2025

A proposal to build a multi-generational spaceship — named Chrysalis — that’s nearly sixty-kilometres in length, and would spend four-hundred years travelling to the star presently closest to the Sun, Proxima Centuri, recently won first prize in the Project Hyperion Design Competition.

The vessel, which would be fitted out with tropical forests, schools, workplaces, libraries, and manufacturing facilities, among other things, could house over two-thousand people. Obviously some travellers on Chrysalis, would live their entire lives only on the gigantic ship.

So far, so good. Aside from the ethical matter of consigning your descendants to a life lived on a sixty-kilometre long tin-can, whether they like it or not. But the proposal becomes a little murkier when we learn the vessel’s precise destination:

Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.

Proxima Centuri b is thought to be habitable? So to recap: someone wants to spend untold trillions of dollars building a massive spaceship, that will carry some two-thousand people, on a four-hundred year long, one way voyage, to a planet thought to be habitable?

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?

Wouldn’t we first want to be one-hundred percent certain the planet in question, Proxima Centuri b, was in fact habitable, in Earth-analog fashion, before even drawing up blueprints for the vessel? Apparently not. Chrysalis‘ designers appear to be so confident Proxima Centuri b is fit for human habitation, they’re laying on shuttles to get people on the ground.

Doubtless passengers are relieved they’re not required to parachute to the surface.

Proxima Centuri b was discovered in 2016. The body is a super-Earth, meaning it is larger than our home planet, but still smaller than the likes of Uranus or Neptune. In addition, the planet is located in what is considered to be Proxima Centuri’s habitable zone. Planets within a star’s habitable, or Goldilocks zone, as Earth is in the Sun’s, are generally deemed to be conducive to life. Temperatures are neither too hot, nor too cold, and water can exist in liquid form.

But talk of Goldilocks zones usually applies more to G-type main-sequence stars, or yellow dwarfs, such as the Sun. Proxima Centuri is a red dwarf star, a rather different kettle of fish. I’m not even sure the term habitable zone should be uttered in the same sentence as red dwarfs.

I’ve written about these stars before. They fascinate me. As mentioned, one is the star nearest to us. They also live for trillions of years (compared to billions for many other stars, including the Sun). Red dwarfs will probably be the last stars shining in the universe.

But, as I’ve said previously, they’re not all that life-friendly, particularly for human life. As I’ve written this before, I’ll be succinct. Planets in the supposed habitable zones of red dwarfs, would be — on account of their relative closeness to the star — tidally locked. One side of the planet forever faces the star, and bakes, while the other, cloaked in perpetual darkness, freezes. Most hospitable.

Red dwarfs also emit powerful flares. The outlook would not be good for the inhabitants of a planet in the path of one of these stellar outbursts. Proxima Centuri b may be possessed of some sort of atmosphere, and water might be present, but the planet is no Earth.

What if, on reaching the distant planet, those aboard Chrysalis find it to be completely uninhabitable? Would they be able to return to Earth? No, because the journey is one way. Passengers would be on a multi-century trip to their deaths.

Of course, the Chrysalis project is hypothetical, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in the idea. If the vessel is ever to be constructed, a more suitable destination planet, not just one thought to be habitable, needs to be chosen.

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Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, return for Northern Lights trip

12 August 2025

It seemed pretty clear 2020’s The Trip to Greece was the final jaunt for British foodies Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. This after travels to the north of England, Italy, and Spain.

But now a new six-part series, The Trip To The Northern Lights, where the pair will venture around Scandinavia, starts production later in 2025, and presumably screens sometime in 2026.

The work of dredger boat operators is safe from AI technologies

12 August 2025

Writers, authors, proof readers, news analysts, reporters, journalists, and editors, are among occupations Microsoft sees as being vulnerable to AI technologies. A blogger, by the way, is each and every of those roles.

But that’s not all. Web designers, interpreters, historians, and political scientists, are in danger. Mathematicians even. The threat isn’t restricted to what might be called desk-bound occupations either. The roles of customer service reps, hosts, models, and telemarketers, are also on the line.

But there are some professions safe from AI (for now). These include hospital orderlies, motorboat operators, floor sanders, water treatment plant workers, and dredge operators.

Dredger boats often trawl through the waters of the lakes near where we stay on the NSW Central Coast. I was watching one such vessel earlier this year, and, ironically, speculated how the work could be carried out by an AI agent of some sort.

A sophisticated under water camera and sonar array, was part of what came to mind. Instead, it looks like the dredger boat crews will be with us for some time to come.

Enshittification, word of 2024, a book by Cory Doctorow 2025

11 August 2025

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, by Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and author Cory Doctorow, will be published in October 2025.

Doctorow coined the word enshittification in 2022. Long story short, the neologism describes how online platforms go from being useful to useless, on account of the greed of their owners.

Facebook and Instagram are good examples of enshittification at work. Once both social networks were populated by content created by members. As time has passed though, much of what appears on these platforms is effectively advertising.

Enshittification was named the 2024 word of the year by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary.

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WI-FI systems capable of identifying people and tracking them

11 August 2025

The way our bodies interact with the radio waves of WI-FI systems can create a signature of sorts, that’s as unique as a person’s fingerprint, and capable of identifying specific individuals. This according to Michael Crider, writing for PCWorld:

At present, the WhoFi system is a proof of concept requiring some incredibly advanced software to implement. But it’s very real, and the hardware used to develop it wasn’t anything special. According to the dataset in the paper, these results were achieved using the Wi-Fi signals generated by two TP-Link N750 routers, which are pretty basic models that aren’t even using the latest, fastest Wi-Fi tech.

Surveillance state, here we come.

Presently the “fingerprinting” technology developed by researchers in Italy at La Sapienza University of Rome, can identify a person with ninety-five percent accuracy. While the tool might be useful for police investigating crimes, there is obviously all manner of capacity for misuse and abuse.

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Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film by Peter Weir, released fifty years ago

9 August 2025

Yesterday, Friday 8 August, marked fifty years since Picnic at Hanging Rock, trailer, premiered in Adelaide, South Australia. They story about some students of a girls’ school who go missing during a picnic, continues to captivate, and baffle, film watchers.

The Sydney born Australian filmmaker Peter Weir has made a slew of top-notch movies. These include Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show, but Picnic at Hanging Rock is by far — to my mind at least — his most enigmatic.

The screenplay was based on the 1967 novel of the same name, by late Australian author Joan Lindsay. Much of mystery enveloping the film stemmed from the belief it was based on actual events. The story is in fact fiction (thankfully).

I re-watched Picnic at Hanging Rock a few years ago, and soon after saw a lesser known Weir feature, The Plumber, which is truly bat shit mad/disturbing. Take a look at the trailer. If not already, Weir’s work should be required learning at Australian film schools.

War of the Worlds 2025, with Ice Cube, scores ZERO on Rotten Tomatoes

8 August 2025

Jesse Hassenger, writing for The Guardian:

The real question is how audiences have made it through an unconvincing cheapie like War of the Worlds — a sci-fi epic that seems to take place in real time yet features a vast and coordinated worldwide mobilization of multiple armed forces — without shutting it off in disgust (it boasts a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Check out the trailer. The 2025 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel — published as a book in 1898 — directed by American filmmaker Rich Lee, had been sitting in the store room since production wrapped five years ago.

War of the Worlds’ zero percent score on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, is in sharp contrast to the one-hundred percent score achieved by 2022’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. At least for a time.

I only learned a few years ago Wells’ novel has an Australian connection, being written as a protest against the treatment of Indigenous/First Nations people in Tasmania, at the hands of British colonisers. In a bid to sway public opinion, Wells portrayed a terrifying invasion of England by powerful extra-terrestrials, to help people comprehend the atrocities taking place in Australia.

Tiny Awards 2025 finalists announced, voting for winner open

8 August 2025

The nominees for the 2025 Tiny Awards have been announced.

Entry for the annual prize is open to personal or non-commercial websites that were no more than a year old in July, with their own unique URL (sorry, TikToks are ineligible).

Voting closes on Monday 1 September 2025, with the winner being named later in September.

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awards, design, IndieWeb, technology

Reasons to leave Substack, how to leave Substack

5 August 2025

The question is — before giving any thought to some of the objectionable content they host — what are you doing there in the first place? Why would you allow your brand to be assimilated by another?

American economist Paul Krugman’s decision to set up shop on Substack, after he stopped writing for The New York Times, plain baffles me. With a profile as impressive as his, Krugman could just as easily started publishing from his own website, with a ready made audience.

He didn’t need to go to a third party publishing platform. Certainly Substack publishes writer’s posts as email newsletters, but if someone wants to syndicate their work by newsletter, there are other options. Writers can earn money through Substack, some do very well apparently, but high profile writers have a number of ways of generating revenue through their own, self-hosted, websites.

You Should Probably Leave Substack goes through some of the options available to writers who want to leave Substack (and preferably publish from their own website).

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