The Rot, by Indigenous Australian author Evelyn Araluen (Instagram page), follows up 2021’s Dropbear, which won the 2022 Stellar Prize. The Rot is a recalcitrant study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world. A liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism, these...

I don’t know how this works in other countries, but the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), a statutory authority that regulates communications and media services locally, has allocated a range of non-existent phone numbers for use in things like films and TV shows. Actually, this is the first I’ve...

The bus I’m on arrives at an interchange stop but a minute late and misses the connecting service which left a minute earlier than scheduled. The bean grinder at the cafe breaks down just as I arrive. The door phone at a friend’s apartment is on the blink, and I’m in a phone black spot […]

Located along the shoreline of inner Sydney suburb Circular Quay, Sydney’s Writer’s Walk commemorates well-known authors and playwrights, who are either Australian, or visited the country at some point, with circular plagues set into walkways in the area. Local writers include Miles Franklin and Peter Carey, while...

Brisbane based Australian musician and singer, and founder of Pub Choir, Astrid Jorgensen (Instagram page), recently published her memoir, Average at Best. Average, says Jorgensen, is underrated, given how difficult it is to be the best: By its very nature, ‘best’ is rare and elusive: you’re not going to get much of...

Just about every online publisher has experienced a decline in the number of people reading articles and information published on their websites. Search engines presently do such a good job of breaking down the main points of news reports, blog posts, and the like, that seekers of information are seldom reading the...

Tabbed browsing, was, says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the last significant web browser innovation. Although tabbed browsing didn’t become common place until around 2002, the idea dates back to 1994, with the arrival of InternetWorks, a browser made by BookLink Technologies. Altman seems to be suggesting browsers have...

American actor Ethan Hawke discusses forty years of work, from Explorers in 1985, through to Blue Moon this year, as part of the Vanity Fair Career Timeline series of videos. There’s not a lot what of Hawke does that feels like a run-of-the-mill movie. Dead Poets Society, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, for […]

Elizabeth Spiers, writing at Talking Points Memo: The lesson for me, from the early blogosphere, is that quality of speech matters, too. There’s a part of me that hopes that the most toxic social media platforms will quietly implode because they’re not conducive to it, but that is wishcasting; as long as there are...

The Transformations, the new novel by Sydney based Australian author Andrew Pippos (Instagram page), will be published next week, on Tuesday 28 October 2025. This is a story for the times, if the synopsis is anything to go by: In the fading glow of Australia’s print journalism era, The National is more than a...

Some sad news. Billy Wiz, Sydney based Australian DJ, artist, author, cartoonist, and colourful character in general, died last week. In recent years Billy operated a gallery — in the garden of his street level apartment, on Oxford Street, Bondi Junction — displaying his painting and illustration work, for passersby...

American novelists Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore have launched legal action against Salesforce, accusing the San Francisco based software company of copyright infringement. Tanzer and Gilmore allege Salesforce used thousands of novels, not just their work, without permission, to train AI agents. Salesforce want...