In blind taste tests conducted on eighty-four people, American researchers discovered nearly eight in ten study participants preferred instant coffee over drip coffee. The findings have, needless to say, astonished some coffee aficionados. But I’m not sure the news is that surprising. I tried for a while to get into...

Authors Tasma Walton (Instagram link), based in Western Australia, and Robbie Arnott (Instagram link), based in Tasmania, have been named joint winners of the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize, with their novels I am Nannertgarrook, and Dusk, respectively. I’m yet to pick up I am Nannertgarrook, but read Dusk earlier...

Hamilton Nolan writing at How Things Work: If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a […]

Dana G. Smith, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald; People who have strong relationships generally live longer, and the unicorns known as “super-agers” — older adults who have the memory abilities of someone 20 years younger — tend to be especially outgoing. On the flipside, chronic loneliness raises the risk for...

American actor Diane Keaton died a few days aged 79. Keaton will be remembered for many things. Her collaborations with Woody Allen. Her performance in Manhattan Murder Mystery was a stand out to me, but there were many more. Annie Hall (of course), The Godfather, First Wives Club. Even Father of the Bride, where...

Via Jelloeater on Bluesky, Jeppe Larsen’s early memories of the web, from the late 1990’s: I remember the ISP was called get2net and it came with both email and web hosting. The last bit was particularly exciting as get2net had a listing of all homepages made by its customers on their website, which was an […]

Robocart, a US company, has been developing self-driving vehicles that have the capacity to deliver ten different customer orders in a single run. The service, which the company plans to launch in Austin, Texas, later this year, will see customers pay just three-dollars per delivery, pricing many people will find...

The astronauts, who may depart as soon as February 2026, will not land on the Moon though. Their flight sounds like it will be similar to Apollo 8 in 1968, which yielded this incredible photo, taken by William Anders. The Artemis program will potentially pave the way for a longer term human presence on the […]

Taras Buria, writing for Neowin: Windows 10 support is ending in only two weeks, and with a new month here, Statcounter has new data about the Windows market and how different versions perform. This month, the data is rather odd: Statcounter reports that Windows 10 dropped to a seven-year low, while Windows 7 is...

British actor Patricia Routledge died at the age of ninety-six last week. I came to know Routledge through her role as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced bouquet, it would seem), in the BBC produced TV sitcom Keeping up Appearances, which ran from 1990 to 1995. I think the show screened in Australia a little after that...

If you’ve ever wanted to travel back in time so you can put something right, then One More Shot, trailer, the debut feature of Melbourne based Australian filmmaker Nicholas Clifford, staring Australian actor Emily Browning, might be for you. It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, and Minnie (Browning) discovers a bottle of...

de Kretser, who’s novel Theory & Practice (which I’m currently reading), and Morton’s book, Mean Streak, about the previous Australian government’s controversial Robobot debt recovery scheme, are respective winners of the fiction and non-fiction categories. Others recipients, who were announced last Monday, 29...