Everyone has a book in them, more so bloggers

4 September 2026

I’ve been reading Josh Ellis’ blog for a couple of years maybe, since finding a link there on Dense Discovery once. Ellis has been at it since 2004, so achievement unlocked. In his latest post, he ruminates about writing a book. Acquaintances of his have made the suggestion over the years.

I’ve had the same. “You blog; you should write a book,” people have said to me. And, in the recesses of my HD I have a WIP manuscript sitting there, waiting.

For what, I’m not wholly sure, possibly forty-eight hour days. I continue to rein in my impulse to write/publish though. For now. Like Ellis, I too fear anything I might get published may end up in a bookstore bargain bin. What a way to go.

But Ellis wasn’t just pondering the notion of writing a book; he has written a book, called Jaunty Hair. Congratulations Mr. Ellis, and achievement unlocked again.

Blogging for twenty-plus years however, is not his only claim to fame, Ellis has been writing a column for the North Dakota Burke County Tribune for over twenty-years.

Perhaps then I should shelve my ambitions, as a mere blogger, to write a book, given I lack the appropriate gravitas. Even if I did write a few articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, back in the day.

But here’s the thing. Ellis didn’t so much write a book, more so he realised he already had; in the form of twenty-plus years of blog posts and Burke County Tribune articles.

He complied a selection of his past works, and there was Jaunty Hair. It was a great idea. This is what I mean when I say everyone — well, specifically everyone who has a blog — has a book in them.

There’s a book publishing idea for bloggers, particularly those with a considerable volume of work behind them. The idea of curating previous of my blog posts — which I would refer to as a collection of essays — and publishing them in a book, is appealing. How about you?

But in a sense, publishing a book seems at odds with what I’ve been doing here, online, all this time.

Because there I was, back in the late 1990’s, embracing the web, and believing it would bring about the end of print. In my defence, I wasn’t the only one. Thankfully though, this paperless eventuality did not, or is yet to, come to pass.

Still, there is an allure to seeing one’s name on a book, on a bookshop shelf, even it is bound for the bargain bin. I may yet dust off the aforementioned manuscript, and feed it into a printing press.

When those forty-eight hour days arrive…

Is AI use making people behave more robotically?

3 September 2026

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? It seems not. The more people use AI agents, the more robotic their behaviour comes, says Victor Tangermann, writing for Futurism.

Tangermann’s article brings to mind the trailer for The Social Reckoning, which I linked to a few days ago, and the robotic-like demeanour of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as portrayed by Jeremy Strong.

I doubt it was director Aaron Sorkin’s intention to suggest Zuckerberg’s likely high use of AI has seen his manner become more robotic, but it doesn’t seem entirely coincidental.

The work safest from AI is writing?

2 September 2026

Murat Demirbas suggests the work of writers might be amongst the safest from AI, a notion that defies broader thinking on the subject:

In systems theory, a wicked problem is a problem that lacks a definitive formulation, a clear stopping rule, and an objectively correct solution. Writing is the ultimate wicked problem, because the context is constantly shifting, a piece is never truly finished editing, and the true metric for success is fundamentally subjective.

A wicked problem, I get the sentiment though. I do. I have an old t-shirt that has “I like words” printed across the front. I often think the message should read “I like wrestling with words” instead.

Taxis in Australian capitals will be driverless by 2036

1 September 2026

That sounds like a bold claim. But such vehicles are already transporting passengers in Chongqing and Wuhan in China, and a number of cities in the United States.

Australian entrepreneur Tim Kentley Klay, who several years ago designed a self-driving car that didn’t have a steering wheel, nor foot pedals, says people would rather ride in a driverless vehicle which he describes as being “clean, private, and safe.”

In writing this post, I see my word processor app calls out the word “driverless” as a typo, something I’ve since corrected. It may not have been a “proper” word a decade or two ago, even though experimental driverless cars have been around for some time.

But “driverless car” was included on the 2016 longlist (PDF) for Macquarie Dictionary’s “word” of the year, though it didn’t make it through to the shortlist.

If the streets of Australian capital cities are to be awash with short range driverless taxis by 2036, it’s time for the word driverless to be reconsidered as a word of the year.

Mine, by Adam Ouston, a novel length story written as one sentence

31 August 2026

That’s Mine, by Hobart based Australian author Adam Ouston (Instagram page), which features one incredibly, outrageously, long sentence of perhaps eighty-five thousand words. No full-stops, chapters, or even a few lines of space to break up the text it seems.

I can’t find an official word count for the novel, so made a guess. The hardback version of Mine has two-hundred-and-eighty-eight pages, and if each has perhaps three-hundred words each, then the total number of words would be well north of eighty-thousand.

Whatever the exact number, that’s one long sentence. The synopsis however perfectly suits the seemingly endless flow of words, written in stream-of-consciousness prose:

While searching for inspiration for what will be his final work, an unnamed poet and defender of Tasmania’s wild places finds himself trapped down an abandoned mine in the island’s mountain rainforests. In the darkness he is visited by memories and voices both from his own past as well as the tortured history of the pillaged landscape to which he has devoted his life and work.

That’s quite the predicament to be in. I imagine my thoughts would run into each other ceaselessly, relentlessly, were I in the same situation.

Trailer for The Social Reckoning, the bleak follow-up to The Social Network

31 August 2026

A trailer for The Social Reckoning, directed by Aaron Sorkin, which opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 8 October 2026, and follows-up 2010’s The Social Network, which Sorkin co-wrote.

As I wrote a few months ago, The Social Reckoning is a far darker continuation of the Facebook story. That said, hints of what were to come, namely co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s megalomaniac tendencies, were seeping through in The Social Network.

In this instalment, Jeremy Strong, instead of Jesse Eisenberg, portrays the Meta CEO, and does so with a callous, robotic demeanour, as if Zuckerberg were no more than an AI entity of Meta’s making.

If recent headlines featuring Meta haven’t already, The Social Reckoning may well turn a few people away from Facebook, and social media generally. This would be no bad thing.

Linux, open source operating systems, users exempt from age-verification, in California

31 August 2026

Luke James, writing for Tom’s Hardware:

California’s legislature has passed Assembly Bill 1856, exempting open-source operating systems from the State’s Digital Age Assurance Act months before the law is due to take effect on January 1, 2027.

It’s good news, but Linux, and other open source operating systems, are just, you know, too weird, and probably no one uses them, so, like, why bother with age-verification.

SteamOS is a Linux distribution favoured by gamers, some of whom might be minors. How long that stays on the exemption list remains to be seen though.

Operation Bluebird may yet get new Twitter to fly

28 August 2026

Talk about defying the odds. Maybe. Late last year, Operation Bluebird lunched a bid to “revive” Twitter, the micro-blogging platform Elon Musk bought in 2022.

Operation Bluebird claimed — rather optimistically I thought — they could take control of the Twitter brand, as they believed Musk had abandoned the rights to it, when he renamed the platform X.

X immediately filed a court action opposing the claim, but a US judge has tentatively ruled in favour of Operation Bluebird, backing up their belief X have given up on the Twitter brand.

The ruling isn’t official, but that doesn’t seem to concern Operation Bluebird, who want to go ahead and launch the “new” Twitter.

I’m no power social media user, but I signed up for Twitter early on, and for a time enjoyed using the platform. I have my doubts, but I’d like to see Operation Bluebird succeed.

Home scrolling social media on Friday night instead of going out?

27 August 2026

Possibly, just possibly, related to the previous post.

Recent research by Neal Caren, a professor at the University of North Carolina, has found people in the United States are not going out as much as they once did on a Friday night.

Instead they are choosing to stay home more often than not. The pandemic played some part, but “the growing availability of screen-based alternatives” may be what is driving the trend.

I would be interested to see if this is also the case in Australia. If “screen-based alternatives” are indeed the cause, then I’d think a few more people locally now stay home on a Friday night.

It’s purely anecdotal, but bars nearby are often filled to overflowing on Saturday nights (to be expected), almost empty Sunday night (to be expected), with some closed on Monday night (possibly to be expected). But people seem to be out on Saturday evening, around here anyway.

I can’t speak much for Friday night, as I seldom seem to be near any bars for some reason — has a lot of course to do with not being the biggest drinker — but I’m guessing Fridays would still be about as busy as Saturdays. Or for now at least.

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We need to ask ourselves: why are we addicted to our phones?

26 August 2026

In last week’s edition of Dense Discovery, publisher Kai Brach linked to an article, written by Kate Wagner, challenging the notion that our phones are over overpoweringly addictive.

But they are, aren’t they?

To Wagner’s mind, excessive smartphone use is a behaviour we have developed. But what is at the root of this behaviour? What do we seek in constantly checking our phone?

Why can’t we instead focus on a work task, watch a movie in its entirety, or sit on a train looking at the view out the window, without the need to see what’s happening somewhere else?

Why can’t we even be enveloped by a bit of boredom now and then, and let the emotion take its course, before reaching for the phone?

Wagner’s article is worth reading in full, something you can of course do with your phone.

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