Portrait of the blogger by AI
There are a number of AI features appearing on that site and I was curious what it would recommend for a thumbnail image.
The video is a song about listening and mentions bare branches, so it drew those themes from my Autotuned attempts at singing.
I'd put the music to footage that was the first thing I uploaded on Youtube about 20 years ago, showing a clip of mountain biking outside Wagga where you briefly see my face at the end after I stacked.
So their AI has taken details like my spectacles and beard, as well as the lyrics to produce this image.
At this rate I expect it will be able to generate a video for my music within a couple of years, or maybe create the music too?
Famous Catholic paining and other art
Michael Agzarian is one of my favourite Riverina-based artists
He uses his Advision shopfront in Wagga to make a number of provocative statements and one of the most recent prompted an article on the Region website this weekend.
I am particularly amused by their typo "famous catholic paining" as it seems like an apt slip.
Responsible service of alcohol
One of the outcomes from training for an RSA certification this week was craving alcohol
I haven't felt the need to drink for ages, so my mind turned to the collection of bottles in my dwindling cellar.
While durif usually benefits from cellaring, the year 1998 was sweet and fruity and that meant many of the wines didn't have the same tannin structure you want for keeping them longer term.
The wine reminded me of a wonderful jam that I bought at a church sale, which was cherry with vanilla.
This durif had some oak flavour prompting the latter, while the softness of the body was like juice.
There's a lot I could write about the RSA course, which was a full day and weirdly structured with important details like defining intoxication left until the fifth module.
It also neglected giving detailed consideration to the antisocial impacts of this legal drug, such as the disproportionate number of men who suffer violence from strangers.
However, it was eye-opening for me to learn about the strategies for minimising drink-spiking that impact on women.
Photography didn't kill painting
Just like audio tape was rediscovered by a generation of sound engineers, or the 1994 vampire film Nadja used a Fisher-Price PXL-2000 Pixelvision toy camera.
The constraints offered by a process will appeal to specific projects, which is why I reckon we'll see a longer version of Nolan's The Odyssey after it's had a run in Imax -- where the size of their reels limited the film to under three hours.
Coming to my Census
We
had been remembering an old family friend named Hector Kinloch, who had
a role in the 1967 Referendum through his work at the Australian Bureau
of Statistics.
There
is a widespread idea in the contemporary Australian population that notable referendum was
historic for addressing racism toward the First Nations populations, and
it's idea I heard more than once during the recent referendum for the
Voice in 2023.
The Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies website notes that "many
people think that the [1967] Referendum gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples the right to vote, this wasn’t the case."
The
Wikipedia entry gives a little more detail in identifying that "Voters
were asked whether to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make
special laws for Indigenous Australians, and whether Indigenous
Australians should be included in official population counts for
constitutional purposes."
My
mother told me how she heard directly from Hector how he'd asked at an ABS meeting whether the next Census would
count Aboriginals and it was this decision that had prompted a referendum to include them in
the Australian Constitution.
This seems like one of those moments where a small decision takes on a much bigger result.
However, I can see that it isn't how the event is generally known.
Look how a significant institution like the National Museum of Australia frames the 1967 Referendum as an outcome responding to pressure from protests:
Seeing the way facts are shaped into a narrative is one of the interesting aspects of history, but I expect there's probably a number of factors and even more characters claiming an influence.
It'd be interesting to compare the questions in a Census, because I remember that in previous years there was data collected about how people use their free time.
The Australia Council, I think, used that information to show more people were involved in cultural activities (as simple as reading a book) than in sporting ones (presumably going to watch a match).
Something else to ponder is how the referendum of 2023 for a First Nations "voice" in Federal Parliament and the same-sex marriage plebiscite were both a result of decisions made by Prime Minister John Howard.
Under his government the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was dissolved, which had occupied a role like that of the "voice," and the Marriage Act was amended to explicitly define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
As for Hector, I often remember him at the Friends Meeting House in Canberra as well as being elected in
the first ACT Assembly elections.
He was:
While
I can't find anything online to support Kinloch's role in the 1967
Referendum, I have no reason to doubt my mother's recollection of how he explained events and find myself more
interested in learning about Hector's life.
Nothing to whine about
I opened a bottle of wine the other day that was older than my kids and it reminded me of a lifetime ago when things were less complex.
That $12 bottle tasted priceless.
New Avalanches
Looking forward to hearing a new album from The Avalanches
There are so many happy and meaningful memories that I have associated with their music.
How Alain de Botton can change your life
My partner is often frustrated when I mention a book that I’ve read
This will happen when she’s explaining her thoughts and I’ll chip in with an author or thinker that wrote something similar.
She’ll protest that she arrived at the conclusion with her own reasoning and of course, me being university-educated, can’t see the issue with providing a reference as a kind of handle.
So I’m reluctant to share this excellent video with her.
I’ve followed Alain de Botton for nearly half my life and still recall buying his book about Proust when it was recommended by Barry Jones.
In particular I've been impressed by Alain’s ideas about the role of art and wish more people would realise the important place it can occupy in developing their happiness.
This video about relationships contains a number of lessons that my partner has arrived at through her own thought processes, but since I want to keep her to myself I’ll share Alain’s insights.
In particular he notes how attachment styles vary and this was something my partner observed long ago, that we have similar experiences in our childhoods.
It also describes how being honest with emotions is fundamental to unpacking our personalities and developing new strategies to recognise shortcomings as well as potential.
Too often we pursue relationships with a view they’re meant to be easy, when the really important thing is that they can accommodate and support our growth.
While the whole video works to build an argument, you can skip to the last few minutes and he does a recap of the key takeaway points but if you ask my partner she'll probably say that it's obvious.
Was feeling nervous might delete later
It is one of only four in the world and the exhibit was estimated to be worth $1 million about a decade ago.
Two medical students spent 1,500 hours dissecting an entire human nervous system in 1925.
They began at the brain's base and worked their way down, managing to keep the system in one piece.
The identity of the person whose nervous system is on display is unknown, but Museum Director Jason Haxton has said that the body likely came from a poor house or a prison.
Writers create networks
When I came home I told my son how surprising it was to be the only male in the room.
"Good on you," he deadpanned. "Showing up for your culture."
One of the writing exercises was based on the famous six-word story written by Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
I enjoyed writing a series of short stories, with these being my favourites:
- The bookstore sold only loose pages.
- His voice broke records and cassettes.
- Their cat brought home stray velociraptors.
Matter of perspective
My mother is fond of saying that looking at exhibition allows one to see the world through someone else's eyes.
In that way I think art builds empathy.
There's a similar potential in travel, but it seems as though many people copy a product or buy one.
Here Proust reminds me of an observation in Alan Alda's book, where he talked about learning how to engage in conversation.
His conclusion was that one doesn't wait for an opportunity to speak, but has to be willing to be changed by what they hear.
Cooking with gas
For me there have been experiences where it's less about gaslighting and more about my whim of steel, after I feel strongly about something until I find an alternate perspective and can see a broader view.
That process is an internal one and not easily seen by those who would hold me to a previously held position.
Increasingly I'm learning to bite my tongue until that arrives, but it's taken years to give myself time to consider opinions.
Having kids to reflect those experiences has been a useful part of this learning.
Monoculture myth
One of the Australian political debates in recent weeks has been around returning the country to a monoculture
This has been of of those pointed remarks that stupidly aims at the country’s longterm view of being multicultural because, after all, we’re largely a population of migrants.
In some ways the Australian fear of being swamped by a foreign culture is a response to our unease about the history of the nation, which formed from colonisation of the oldest continuous human cultures in the First Nations.
It’s a potent raw nerve for conservative politicians and has been exploited in fears of “boat people” and most recently been espoused as the desire for a monoculture that was expressed by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
Given my parents were both born overseas, you can likely guess where I sit in this debate.
Wherever you look in the history of Australia (or the continent before that name) it was never a monoculture -- even the centuries of rivalry between the Angilican and Catholic churches points to the conflict between English and Irish migrants from the day soldiers escorted convicts onto a sandy beach.
However, I was watching a Rick Beato discussion just now and realised the notion of a monoculture is another of the “Golden Age” type arguments that somehow propose returning to an earlier time that will never be within reach because technology now prevents it.
There’s this thing that we call the monoculture that were, where hit songs back in 2005 if you had a hit song, everyone knew the song.
It was played at the stores, grocery stores, everywhere you went. It was on the radio, right?
And then the age of algorithms started happening, right?
…And there’s very little shared music because of that.
Magic Mountain's Mr Magic
Leeton's Mr Magic seems worthy of a mention
I remember he entertained a birthday party for one of my kids soon after we arrived in town.
A
few years later and David Boyd was the sole remaining member of a
writing group and asked Western Riverina Arts to help with a
workshop to acquit funds.
There weren't many people at the event, aside from the Regional Arts Development Officer and myself.
David
was a bit critical about the content and the outcome, which I think
might explain how it was he ended up being the sole remaining member.
Later in my role as Communications Officer at WRA I wrote about Mr Magic's workshops, which were a wonderful initiative that aimed to help neurodivergent kids.
The
book details his childhood experiences of WWII and was interesting for
the somewhat dubious deals he made to support himself during those
chaotic years.
I'd need to re-read it to remind myself of the details, but the blurb on the back cover notes:
His childhood experiences gave him the ability of spotting a good business deal when one presented itself. Or to use his favorite [sic] term "A great little earner". But unlike his child hood earners, [sic?] these would all be legit.
After I read the book I
pestered David when I saw him with his dog at the local park, hoping
he'd let me proofread the second volume detailing his life after moving
to Australia.
Another funny detail to share is
that his home used to have a sign out front saying "The Boyd Nest" and
you couldn't help but read it with his English accent!
Lexical gaps
English is such a weird mash of languages that I expect some of the gaps are explained by their origins.
Giant duck?
Went for a walk at Narrandera's wetland this morning
I guess it must be a wood duck!
Now Stop
I was inspired by the idea the signage outside the Leeton Rice Mill could be a creative prompt.
It then surprised me to discover my idea coincided with my 500th video response to these Disquiet Junto projects.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)