Julie Evans recently re-wrote her website’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and took the fight to the stylesheet language as it were: So I decided years ago that I wanted to react to “CSS is hard” by getting better at CSS and taking it seriously as a technology, instead of devaluing it. Doing that changed everything...

Tangentially related to the previous post… because what we need right now is another news aggregator dedicated to AI. Otherwise the re-launched social news website (quite unlike Reddit), which went offline some two months after returning earlier this year, is, for better or worse, back. digg, however, is on the...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the organisation that presents the Oscar awards, recently clarified their rules regarding the use of AI in films they will accept nominations for. According to rule two, regarding eligibility, specifically clause seven, there are instance where AI, and “other...

In winning the 2026 Stellar Prize, Montréal, Canada, based Australian cartoonist Lee Lai becomes the first graphic novelist to claim the Australian literary award, with Cannon. Lai’s debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit, was shortlisted for the 2022 award, which went on to be won by Evelyn Araluen, with her poetry...

Melbourne based Australian artist Richard Lewer has won the annual portraiture award for his painting of Iluwanti Ken. Ken, an elder from Pitjantjatjara country (in the northwest of South Australia), is a well known artist herself. The announcement was made last Friday 8 May 2026. The works of all Archibald Prize...

American journalist Kelsey Piper, writing at The Argument: But soon, the entire debate over internet anonymity will be as anachronistic as an iPod Touch. That’s because Claude Opus 4.7 is here, and last week, I discovered it could identify me from text I had never published, text from when I was in high school, text...

British zoologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is certain AI agents are conscious, a conclusion he reached after spending time talking to Anthropic’s agent Claude. So convinced was he of a connection, or sense of companionship, between them, Dawkins took to calling the bot Claudia. Dawkins is not alone...

The tenth novel by the Tasmania based author, and previous winner of the Miles Franklin literary award, was published last week: James Mather is a psychiatrist in his sixties. He is invited to take on a new group of patients. All he knows about them is that each one claims to have been abducted by aliens. His wife,...

Specifically, a Hue light switch, using an old door opening button from a Jubilee line train. I lived in London for a few years awhile back, and the District line also had door buttons you’d press to open or close the train doors. As I recall it, the doors on all other lines were controlled by the guard. These...

American author Scott Turow, in conjunction with five publishing houses, claims Meta used material protected by copyright to train its AI agent, Llama. They make the suggestion the Facebook owner chose not to obtain permission to access the copied texts as they wanted to get ahead of the competition in what’s being...

Half the web might know about your blog, but how many of your in-person acquaintances, people in your household, community, or workplace, know you blog? Do you even tell them? Do you want to? The question came up at Forking Mad this week, and started me thinking. When I uploaded the first version of disassociated in...

Lindy Percival, Nathanael Scott, Daniel Carter, and others: This list of our 50 best films will likely provoke debate, but with the aid of 24 experts, including directors, actors, critics, curators and authors, what follows is an inspiring reminder of what we’ve seen so far and a heartfelt encouragement to go on...