Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize
14 November 2024
British author Samantha Harvey has been named winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel, Orbital, published by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Books. I don’t know how many novels are set on the International Space Station, I’m sure there’s a few, but Orbital is one of them:
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
I’d been gunning for Stone Yard Devotional, which I read earlier this year, by Australian author Charlotte Wood, who was on the Booker shortlist with Harvey. But I’ll be adding Orbital to my TBR list.
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Booker Prize, Charlotte Wood, literary awards, Samantha Harvey
Things Magazine latest list of links to things
14 November 2024
Things Magazine has been publishing lists of links for over fourteen years, and here’s the latest batch. I don’t exactly know where they source all their links from, which are all top quality, but it’s a process that must take a certain time. Next time someone tries to tell you publishing a link-blog is easier than a long-form writing blog, see if they can do better than Things.
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blogs, history, publishing, trends
Australian high school drama Heartbreak High returns for third series
13 November 2024
The third — and it seems, final — series of Heartbreak High, in the second inception of the gritty Australian high-school TV drama, is on the way. Set at the fictional Hartley High, in Sydney, Heartbreak High originally screened between 1994 and 1999.
A rebooted version of the show debuted in 2022. Series one of the reboot was well received all around, and garnered a one-hundred percent Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating. Series two, while popular with audiences, did not however do so well critically.
The original nineties show was considered ground-breaking (read: in your face), and as I wrote before, Heartbreak High made my high-school days seem like a non-event…
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Australia, entertainment, television
The science of standing desks does not quite stack up
13 November 2024
Pretty popular are sit/stand desks at the moment. I’ve helped a few people assemble them, when they’ve bought one for their home office. Good for your health, sit/stand desks, or so we’re told.
Mainly because you’re not sitting all day while working. Some recent research however, suggests the health benefits of sit/stand desks could be overstated. Sitting for extended periods may not be ideal, but too much time spent standing can also cause problems:
“More time spent sitting didn’t necessarily lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, nor did it increase the risk,” Ahmadi says. “It was a null finding. But what it did do was actually increase their risk of circulatory diseases.” Standing for more than two hours a day increased that risk by 11 percent for every extra half hour, which is bad news for retail workers and the standing desk industry.
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Doomscrolling social media does not result in brain rot
12 November 2024
So say psychologists at the Sydney based University of New South Wales (UNSW):
Dr Poppy Watson, adjunct lecturer with UNSW’s School of Psychology, says while the idea warrants exploration, there is a lack of evidence showing excessive doomscrolling of social media is responsible for the mental fatigue, lack of focus, and reduced cognitive function often attributed to ‘brain rot’.
Doomscrolling is hardly a harmless undertaking either, but the UNSW researchers attribute so-called brain rot, particularly among teenagers, more to poverty, socioeconomic status, and poor diet. Brain rot does not, for instance, seem to have impacted IQ scores, which continue to rise:
If intense, prolonged digital consumption were stultifying young people’s minds, then we could expect to see a drop in average IQ scores between pre- and post-digital generations. But as Dr Watson points out, average IQ scores have risen from the start of the 20th century and into the 21st, known as the Flynn Effect.
This as the Australian government proposal to ban social media access to people under the age of sixteen, has been attracting criticism.
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psychology, social media, trends
Star Bores: A Few Cope, as fourth Star Wars trilogy announced
11 November 2024
For years I was excited by the prospect of a Star Wars sequel trilogy. This, long before what became episodes seven through nine, were even announced. I used to burn the midnight oil reading fan-written Star Wars EU plots and stories, that were published on various Star Wars forums and wikis.
But all three films, when they were eventually released, were underwhelming. The Last Jedi, the only one I remotely liked, seemed to be hated by just about everyone else. But I think the Disney produced sequel trilogy, made after series creator George Lucas had sold Disney the franchise, was hamstrung by the expectations of EU storylines, some of which were decades old by that stage.
Of course, the EU stories were not canon, or official, and differed considerably — to say the least — from Lucas’ vision of a third trilogy. Nonetheless, they prominently featured many of the Star Wars characters we knew and loved, as they struggled to build the New Republic. When the first sequel trilogy film, The Force Awakens (the very title was a portent of things to come…) arrived, we all expected to see the old gang back together again. Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbecca, R2D2, C3PO, plus other hangers-on, who’d joined in as the original trilogy progressed.
Instead we had a confusing array of new characters, Han Solo wearing the same bloody clothes from twenty-years earlier, and director J.J. Abrams, borrowing heavily from Episode Four, A New Hope. I thought to myself: I have a bad feeling about this. Abrams that is, having seen him in action in the re-booted Star Trek films. I knew it was over there the moment Star Trek villain Khan (re)entered the frame in Star Trek into Darkness.
Now a fourth trilogy is apparently in the works. Where this story goes, or who exactly is involved, remains to be seen at this stage. Naturally the Star Wars name will get people along to the cinema to see whatever eventuates, but I wonder what interest this new trilogy will have to early Star Wars fans.
Despite the cameo appearances by the likes of Luke, Leia, Han Solo, et el, episodes seven to nine, did not feel like Star Wars stories. They were a galaxy removed from the earlier instalments, and the magic of the Lucas made films, present even in the prequel trilogy, was nowhere to be found.
But we can live in hope. Dare I say: new hope. After all, Disney has access to some great writing talent, perhaps something amazing is on the way. Until then, may the fourth trilogy be with you…
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entertainment, film, science fiction, Star Wars
Great movie title drops are like clever cameo appearances
8 November 2024
Title Drops, by Germany based data visualisation designer and developer Dominikus Baur, analyses the number of times a movie’s title is mentioned during the story.
It’s something that’s not always possible though. I’m looking at 2001: A Space Odyssey, as an example. Although if you can think of a way it could, somehow, happen, let me know. Time-travel classic Back to the Future, however, is, I think, the gold-standard when it comes to title drops.
I’m not sure movies named for a main character, Barbie for instance, really count. It’s surely a given their name will come into the conversation sooner or later. But something like: “next Saturday night, we’re sending you back to the future“, is self-referential in both a smart, and funny, way.
One thing that seems apparent form the data here is that title drops are becoming more frequent.
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Tune into the vibe, ignore the opinion polls
7 November 2024
Tyler Cowen, writing at Marginal Revolution, last July:
Democrats and leftists are in fact less happy as people than conservatives are, on average. Americans noticed this, if only subconsciously.
Cowen made a whole heap of observations — I’ve quoted but one — about the then upcoming US Presidential election. But it’s tuning into the vibe that interests me. Opinion polls may say one thing, but it’s the mood on the street, if you can tap into it, understand it, that matters.
I can’t say the result was what I hoped for, but let’s keep an eye on the vibe, and see what it tells us going forward.
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America, current affairs, politics
The music has stopped for musicians and their support workers
6 November 2024
Just as it is becoming near high impossible to make a full-time living as an author, unless a writer’s work is regularly topping best-seller lists, the same increasingly goes for musicians. And their support teams. Gone are the days road crews, stage hands, recording studio workers, and the like, can make a full-time living in the music industry.
And Hua Hsu, writing for The New Yorker, notes that the word gig, which once chiefly referred to a music show or concert, has found greater relevance in the on-demand work sector, or gig-economy. Doubtless many music industry workers, and I dare say, one or two authors, supplement their income through on-demand work, in response to fewer opportunities to make a living in their preferred occupation.
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New York Times publishes stinging rebuke of Donald Trump
5 November 2024
On the eve of the US Presidential election, The New York Times has published a strongly worded dis-endorsement of Republican candidate Donald Trump. It’s short, succinct, and well worth reading.
Unlike counterpart publications, including The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, The New York Times issued an endorsement of Democrat candidate Kamala Harris, at the end of September.
The result of the Presidential election is usually clear by early afternoon Wednesday, east coast of Australia time. In terms of the Electoral College numbers that is. I suspect there’ll be quite a number of eyes on the outcome here tomorrow afternoon.
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