15 June 2026
Hockney died aged 88 last week. The work of the British artist and painter, purveyor of bold colours, was required learning in my final year high school art history course.
art, artists, David Hockney, photography
15 June 2026
You don’t see too many mentions of global hamburger behemoth McDonald’s here, but their take on Kane Parsons’ 2026 horror/thriller film Backrooms, is simply finger licking good.
film, food, humour, Kane Parsons
12 June 2026
Although hints of what was to come were there to see, The Social Network, the 2010 dramatisation of the founding of Facebook, had the hallmarks of a feel-good story.
At least from the perspective of would-be entrepreneurs, whose next-big-thing idea, had, against the odds (of course), become the next-big-thing.
A lot has happened in sixteen years though, and there’s not much left in the Facebook story for many people to feel good about today.
Aaron Sorkin, who co-wrote the screenplay for the David Fincher directed 2010 feature, has tapped into the darkness pervading the world’s largest social network, to write and direct a follow-up to the 2010 film, titled The Social Reckoning.
Sorkin initially floated the idea of a sequel in 2024. At that point the American playwright and screenwriter sought to cast a critical light on the part he felt Facebook played in the January 6 insurrection of 2021, in the United States.
But Sorkin’s focus has changed. In The Social Reckoning the negative impact on users mental health is among subject matter explored. As is co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s seeming dictatorial style of management.
Darkness permeates the teaser/trailer. Gloom is banished, but only momentarily, by the glare of bright spotlights shining in our faces. There are no frat-house parties, or swimming pool high-jinks, in this chapter of the social network’s story. This is a bleak world indeed we now find ourselves in.
Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher, Facebook, film, social networks
10 June 2026
Tangentially related to the previous post. Data recently published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests some Australians felt better off during the COVID pandemic, despite lockdowns and other restrictions on their movements, than they do today.
In 2026 people are dealing with cost-of-living pressures, reduced real income, and the potential threat to their jobs from AI, among other things.
In contrast, during the pandemic, many Australians were the recipients of government UBI-like payments. Some were possibly also content with the prospect of not having to work, even if they couldn’t go too far from their homes.
Whoever could have thought some people might one day look on that difficult period with fondness?
Australia, economics, health, pandemic, trends
10 June 2026
A postmortem, perhaps, of the metaverse, particularly as envisaged by Meta, by Nick Heer.
A number of other big tech players also had visions of an all encompassing immersive, digital realm, but aside from sometimes considerable expenditure, not a whole lot came of it.
From where we are now, several years later, the connection between the COVID pandemic, and Facebook’s announcement they were effectively going all-in on the metaverse, couldn’t be clearer.
The world was in the midst of seemingly endless lockdowns, and stay at home mandates. The metaverse pitch was certainly persuasive. We couldn’t live in the real world, so how about instead a vast virtual domain? Who couldn’t help but be excited by the prospect?
I went as far as setting-up a metaverse tag here, which tellingly, hasn’t been used in three years.
But the world we find ourselves in, nearly five years later, couldn’t be much further removed from that of late 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of what was then Facebook, unveiled his vision of the metaverse.
But let’s give Zuckerberg some due here. He had known something big, something groundbreaking, was in our future, declaring three years earlier in 2018, that “every ten to fifteen years or so, there’s a major new computing paradigm.”
The thing of course is this new paradigm turned out to be something else all together.
Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, metaverse, social networks, technology
8 June 2026
Some people are tired of streaming, says Iskhandar Razak, writing for writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
I’m not sure if it’s the actual process of watching, say, a movie online, or having to deal with streaming content providers, that’s fatiguing viewers, it sounds like a bit of both
I’m hardly the biggest consumer of small (not so small) screen media, it’s usually after nine in the evening before we lounge back on the sofa to watch something. The good news there, with such low consumption, is we only need to deal with one (subscription) streaming provider.
We’re fortunate to also have access to the likes of Kanopy, and iView, and their extensive repositories of movies and other shows. But I don’t even regard streaming as streaming, it’s simply a means by which to view a show or movie.
Others see things differently though. Some think streaming is too transient. They have come to miss owning physical copies of the films and shows they enjoy, and keeping them in a home library, sitting a on a shelf.
Surprisingly perhaps, the sentiment is not limited only to people with fond memories of watching movies on DVD‘s twenty-years plus ago. Many buyers of DVD’s and — incredibly — VHS cassettes, in 2026, are in their twenties.
It’s one thing to own all this physical media though, but a way to view it all is still needed. I assume VHS players, in working condition, are available. We still have a modest DVD collection, but need to hook up a small DVD player to a laptop, then to the TV screen, if need be, to watch them.
The DVD player, which isn’t much bigger than a DVD really, is fine. I’m not sure I’d be in favour of a larger player, and having to haul it around, let alone a VHS player. Plus a whole load of DVD’s and VHS cassettes. I’m having flashbacks to VHS cassette tape getting jammed in the player, and rental DVD’s glitching because of damage to the disc.
Streaming has made those particular playback hassles a distant memory. But that’s just the situation here. For others though, it seems owning a large collection of physical media, in addition to the required playback paraphernalia, adds to the viewing experience.
It has also offered a lifeline to some retailers of physical media, whose businesses were brought to the verge of collapse by streaming.
entertainment, film, technology, trends, TV
6 June 2026
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:
For a few dollars per month, consumers subscribing to Instagram Plus ($3.99/mo), Facebook Plus ($3.99/mo), or WhatsApp Plus ($2.99/mo) will gain access to extra features, like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights, among other things.
In addition to these “other things”, Meta also says “more fun features” are imminent.
Too bad I removed all the Meta apps from my phone a while back. I still check in on Instagram and, occasionally, Facebook, through the websites, via my laptop. This has the bonus of restricting exposure to Meta products to work hours only. I don’t know how many, if any, of these new “plus” features will be available through the website though.
Is it smart for someone who writes in the general tech space, to evade these products? Probably not, but Meta is not the entirety of tech.
smartphones, social media, technology
6 June 2026
Jason Koebler, and Emanuel Maiberg, writing for 404 Media:
An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned. “Three phases from addictive app to agentic platform,” the documentation.
Is anyone surprised? The big tech company has long been in the business of building not so much addiction, but rather dependency, on their products.
The Windows operating system (OS) started out, possibly, once, a long time ago, as a good OS. Little by little though, users became ever more addicted/dependent on the OS, through numerous lock-ins and lock-outs. Only when Windows 11 arrived did people realise just how dependent, and trapped, they’d become.
artificial intelligence, operating systems, software, technology
4 June 2026
Search engine DuckDuckGo has experienced a noticeable surge in users in recent weeks, says Rebecca Bellan, writing for TechCrunch.
Many of these new arrivals are concerned about Google’s proposals to significantly change its search experience, through the use of AI, something I think is being called AI Mode.
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.
In addition to its regular search engine, DuckDuckGo also offers a completely AI-free search option.
artificial intelligence, technology, trends
4 June 2026
The news we’ve been waiting for. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the 2022 novel by American author Gabrielle Zevin, is to be adapted to film.
Daisy Edgar-Jones, who starred in the screen adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, has been cast in the central role of Sadie Green, a games designer.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow sadly remains on my TBR list all these years later. Maybe I’ll get to experience the screen adaptation of the story instead.
As an aside, and I don’t by any means know the ins and outs here, but I’m surprised it’s taken so long for this to happen, given the interest in the novel when it was published.
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