It brought mind the time that I fell asleep while riding my bike.
I was returning home from a party in Canberra around 4am among frost and probably too drunk.
Between the Governor General's residence and Scrivener Dam is a tunnel that leads under Lady Denman Drive.
It would've been in that tunnel that I had a micro-sleep, as I awoke to the vibrations from straying off the bike path and found myself passing through the trees among the grassy slope that drops toward the Molonglo River.
Anyway, it wasn't something that I'd recommend!
I am, however, impressed with the fellow in Craig's photo and his ability to nap safely on a bicycle.
Youtube have added this detail to their uploading process and, since I usually stretch and sometimes remix videos, I end up ticking the affirmative option
I recently started following a Facebook page called "Artists Against Generative AI" and was at first kinda amused by their outrage.
Then it occurred to me that this detail in Youtube suggests how human-made videos are soon going to be swamped by AI-made content.
This morning I was reading how little support there is for AI generally:
Among the concerns listed are the worry that AI will devalue what it means to be human.
As the arts are often used to soften a range of issues and already undervalued, I expect the novelties of generating cute content are going to be employed to make AI seem fun as people lose their jobs.
It doesn't impact on my enjoyment of making music or videos, but it seems like I've already become caught up in that process.
This week my newsfeed has featured painted portraits
There was King Charles in red with jokes about him being a Slayer fan ('Reign in Blood'), as well as Vincent Namatjira's painting of Gina Rinehart and her request for it to be removed from exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia.
It seems remarkable since we live in an age when nearly everyone is a photographer and AI is making ridiculous strides toward producing images of every whim within a few keystrokes.
Yet it shows how artists continue to matter and can still shock audiences — or maybe it's all confected outrage?
So I thought I'd add my five cents (rounded up due to inflation and the lack of two cent pieces).
You see it's because I've been reading Manning Clark's book A Historian's Apprenticeship at the behest of my mother.
Manning had a strong influence on Australian history at a time when national identity was being shaped and the fact they tried to make him a character in a musical is really wild.
Some of his observations about the country reflect a different time, like the line "civilisation did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century" was one he clarified later in life.
The Apprenticeship book captures his reflections and influences.
Mum's copy has an inscription from Manning's wife Dymphna, who lived long enough to be recognised for her remarkable contributions to his career.
I remember the last time I saw her she was glowing in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, where they had screened a documentary about her and she was surrounded by friends such as my mum.
(There's a story Mum likes to share about how much I resented going to their house and so I called them "Meatball and Dingbat," which she repeated to them in front of me!)
In Manning's book, which was published after his death, the famous Australian historian discusses how he wrote the volumes of books about our country.
One of the most surprising details is the amount of time he spent looking at portraits and sculptures showing the figures from early Australia.
Manning sought out these artworks and would scrutinise them to see if his impressions of their characters resonated with their representations.
After he'd read the letters written by famous folk, as well as the diaries and stuff noted by their contemporaries, I guess he'd have to visit the painting in person since it was decades before the internet started to give us all this sort of luxurious omniscience.
It seems sorta bizarre that Manning Clark would look at such hagiographic material that was surely produced long after the deaths of the historic figures.
At one point he mentions a visit to an arcade in Adelaide to look at sculptures of Charles Sturt and John McDouall Stuart.
This shows an enduring role that a visual representation can occupy and gives me a new appreciation for the importance of art in our society.
It always seemed like such a quaint tradition that they would paint official portraits of historic figures, yet now I see how much they are looking to the future.
Watched this yesterday and it's the first film in a while where I've wanted to watch it again almost immediately
The story follows a dopey dude into an unbelievable conspiracy and ends with a most unlikely conclusion for an American film.
Lots of laughs and also lots of codes, which may or may not reveal the identity of The Dog Killer if you look further into the film online
If you liked "Inherent Vice" or Coen brothers' comedies like "The Big Lebowski," although this one draws more heavily on Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and "Rear Window" than the brothers' Raymond Chandler influence.
It's got a heap of adult-oriented material though, so not suitable for a general audience.
Part of me is too invested to avoid wanting to use the line and protest my innocence, but I'm learning.
So I was reflecting this morning and realised it's one of the fundamental errors in an argument, when one mistakes the part for the whole.
One bad orange shouldn't reflect on the rest of the bag, for example.
However, the orange juice would be disgusting if we were to extend this metaphor.
As it is painfully obvious when looking at crime statistics to see it disproportionately is men committing the crimes that women are reporting.
Likewise it is clear that men are more likely to commit crime more generally.
I think this is where the discussion needs to move beyond memes and social media outrage.
There are broader measures that would address the concerns being raised, such as taking steps to recognise how breaking an apprehended violence order (AVO) is often an early sign of the need for intervention.
Earlier this century, when terrorism offences began to become a concern for law enforcement, there were observations that those terrorists often had become known to authorities for domestic violence and infringements like AVOs.
It might be necessary to improve the way these early signs are acknowledged and to take steps to ensure they are recorded.
Just as men like me are learning to sit with the discomfort, I expect that males in roles that encounter these situations might need to consider if they are an ally to women or happier to accept the word of the man involved.
This is the kind of sexism that's somewhat easy to be unaware of and I know that I've had it pointed out to me by women at times when I've taken the side of a man and excused their behaviour.
It seems likely the same bias is being demonstrated by men in frontline roles, as well as those in positions of authority.
One anecdote I heard recently was how an AVO was breached 74 times and the Police pressed charges for five of those, before suggesting the victim stop as it was angering the perpetrator!
In this way it helps to think of the need for broader reform, where issues that are clearly based in gender need to be given more than one perspective.
It's a view that extrapolates from where I've been shown to have a blindspot, rather than feeling that I'm on the wrong team in being lumped in with the worst of men's behaviour.
I'm a man who wants to see women to be safe and also to see men get the support they need.
This begins with acknowledging they might not be ready to recognise and seek assistance, so those early signs must be acted on.
Too often I'm seeing discussion around coronial inquests conclude that he was a good guy who must've been struggling in silence.
Let's help everyone involved because men need to recognise the signs of coercive behaviours too.
Yesterday I had an urge to write a song and the following lyrics arrived on the page
As river red gums placed on the plains for many centuries my life as a eucalypt that knows the river flows across a wide red land in squiggles of creeks, still of billabongs and in hills of sand waters have wandered and cast aside the few sentinels that stand
Along these ways Gugabul the mighty cod is known to journey home over one hundred kilometres to a river bend they know do the fish know sometimes we seek a truth when the answer will wait at a place we've known and in absence has grown my love absence has grown my love
Gentle sentinel standing through time roots laid in the dark holder of the heart
In darkness of the soil our roots are intertwined through the vastness of the ground I found a reservoir await with my fingers I create the boundary of my physical state cupped as a vessel sailing the curves of the hills we overtake
Hot winds blow with the hard light of the sun the excited chatter of birds that know no one don't let jealousy tremble your limbs as a leaf would shake you only need to fear what the axe can take my love fear what the axe can take my love
I keep waiting for somebody to joke about a ménage à trois in the Netflix adaptation of Three Body Problem
Let me say how much I enjoyed the books and the Chinese TV show.
The Netflix version reminds me that, like Avatar, they're not afraid to change scenes up.
In this case the result seems a bit like Friends, but they're attractive physicists who argue about working for the military industrial complex and don't have threesomes!
Actually, I think it's obvious the American version has removed everything Chinese except the bits the Chinese originally buried in the book to appease censors.
In particular the scenes from the Cultural Revolution are foregrounded at the expense of detailing the character that starts an alien invasion.
The Panama scene was everything I hoped to see, but the opportunities to show phsicists grappling with questions of science has been diminished.
It's not surprising, they've shrunk 30 hours of the Chinese adaptation into eight hours for the Netflix version and ended up covering ground from the second book.
The theme for the Leeton art competition this year is "dust and rain"
I find their themes irresistable and, unfortunately for me, there's was a change of plans while making my artwork and it ended up being disqualified from competition.
It was shared six years ago but I've got a new appreciation for this dissection of Da Vinci's masterpiece after reading a biography of the artist last year.
Leonardo spent years working on the Mona Lisa and during that time he also made a number of discoveries about the human anatomy.
The artist might be Hannes Kreuzer and I appreciate the way he's captured some of the diversity in Da Vinci's output.
