Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Nestled in the serene landscape in Austria, the Zen House by Prague-based architectural firm Jan Tyrpekl is a 30-square-meter retreat designed for tranquility and connection with nature.
Elevated four meters above the ground on concrete pillars, the house seamlessly integrates with the land below.
After settling in to Windang Beach Tourist Park, being a warmisk autumn day, we headed for the beach to have a cool off swim. The beach was relatively calm, and the water was a good temperature. Windang lies south of Wollongong at the entrance to Lake Illawarra. The name Windang is aboriginal for "scene of a fight".
At 60, we are old enough to know better but too old to care! Here's to running against the wind and swimming against the currents ….
Now that you're 60, it's perfectly acceptable to walk in the kitchen and not know why. You've just been preparing for this moment since you first invaded Windang all those years ago …
We might not be older than sand, but we are definitely older than mobile phones and SMS…
The best part of being a recycled teenager, is that we did all our strange and silly stuff before the internet…
They say time travel is impossible, but I swear you just stepped out of the '70s and into the present. Groovy, man!
Happy birthday!
🎂
🎈
To someone who always puts others first, today we put the spotlight on your 21,915 days of life and your perfected cooking, swimming or surfing tricks and skills 🙏
1964 was a remarkable year...
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
was first published by Roald Dahl
The Beatles
made their first appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
Jeopardy!
game show made its TV debut
Martin Luther King Jr
won the Nobel Peace Prize
Mary Poppins
starring Julie Andrews was released
Shaken, not stirred
was famously said by Sean Connery
Ford Mustang became a popular car
But most importantly of all
Long Hair was born as was Glen…
Turning 60 is like being a teenager again. You get excited about your bedtimes and ignore your curfew.
Now our idea of a wild night is staying up past 10 p.m.
Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get up again. Now we turn down the lights to be economical instead of romantic.
Windang Bridge
Residents requested a operational punt at Windang in 1926 but conditions at the Lake Entrance were not suitable.
In 1936 work began building a timber bridge of Lake Illawarra to connect Shellharbour and Wollongong. The bridge was officially opened 2 April 1938 and was 1,050 feet long with a 12 foot clearance at high tide, a 20 foot carriageway and a 5 foot path. The bridge cost £43,600 to construct.
George McIver was the head builder. A crane was used to pick up huge logs and poles (40 foot long with a big concrete block about 4-5 feet high and 3 feet wide), and lift them into the air about 30 feet. The logs were then released and a pile driver hit the pole into the water, to make the footings.
The bridge builders lived in canvas tents painted with a little lime and cement while they were constructing the bridge.
The townspeople held a party when the bridge was finally finished and everyone walked over the bridge. A corroboree was held near the Windang camping area.
On 22 December 1971 a new cement bridge was completed and opened for south side traffic access, and on 22September 1972 the north side was opened providing a four lane carriageway over Lake Illawarra.
Windang Bridge c.1940 Shellharbour Images Shellharbour City Libraries.
Windang Bridge c.1938 Shellharbour Images Shellharbour City Libraries.
Like all of you, I have spent much of this week processing the two horror events that have cast a pall over Sydney and the nation. After a lot of thought – and yes, some tears – I keep coming back to one word to sum it all up: senseless.
Last Saturday’s stabbing rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction claimed the lives of six people: new mum and osteopath Ashlee Good, young bride-to-be Dawn Singleton, architect and mother-of-two Jade Young, artist Pikria Darchia, Chinese student Yixuan Cheng and Westfield security guard Faraz Tahir. A shocking 18 people were stabbed in total, including Good’s nine-month-old baby. I still can’t get my head around how someone could stab anyone, let alone a baby in a pram, and doubt any of us ever will.
Of all the things said over the past week, the statement that rung most true came from the MP for the federal seat of Wentworth, Allegra Spender. “There was one guy who was trying to do enormous harm,” she said of the attack in her electorate. “But there were hundreds of people who were doing all they could to look after each other and keep each other safe.”
This is something we should all cling to over the coming days as we work through our disbelief, grief and anger at what happened.
The bravery of Inspector Amy Scott in running towards the attacker, Joel Cauchi, and shooting him dead before he could kill others is staggering. Equally brave is Damien Guerot, who is now universally known as “bollard man” due to his actions in challenging Cauchi on an escalator.
ia Darchia, Faraz Tahir and Yixuan Cheng.
The security guards who confronted Cauchi also deserve our thanks. Tahir, who usually worked night shifts but had been asked to help out that day, died in the shopping centre. He was just 30. His colleague, Muhammad Taha, was stabbed but survived. Scott, Guerot and Taha should receive bravery medals, and Tahir should be awarded one posthumously.
Other unsung heroes are everywhere: the paramedics, doctors, nurses and surgeons who helped the victims, store staff who helped protect their customers behind locked doors, and the mental health workers who have been roaming around Bondi to help people struggling to come to terms with what happened. Our political leaders, particularly NSW Premier Chris Minns, have also handled the fallout with great sensitivity and empathy.
I am also extremely grateful to the Herald team for covering this terrible event and its aftermath. Within minutes of the attack, dozens of reporters, photographers, editors, designers and digital specialists volunteered to head to the scene, come into the office or log on from home. Their motivation was to make sure as many people in Sydney were as informed as possible. There are far too many to name, but they did an incredible job, and I am so proud of all of them.
Sydney , and the Herald newsroom, had no time to pause and regroup before a 16-year-old walked into Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the western Sydney suburb of Wakeley on Monday and stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at least six times. The attack was particularly confronting given it was broadcast live via the church’s livestream.
Police fought to contain the riot that erupted outside the Christ The Good Shepherd Church at Wakeley after a large crowd gathered on Monday night.CREDIT: WOLTER PEETERS
The attack triggered a riot as up to 2000 people, predominantly young men, descended on the streets outside the church while the attacker was being treated inside. Dozens of police officers were injured, nearly 100 cars were damaged and six paramedics had to seek shelter in the church.
The violence on Monday night was as disgusting as it was perplexing, given the police were there to help Bishop Emmanuel and to investigate his stabbing.
The attack was quickly declared to be terrorism, further rattling nerves across Sydney. The attacker was charged on Thursday night with a terrorism offence. Some Sydney suburbs are a tinderbox of religious and ethnic tensions, and police, politicians and community leaders are doing everything they can to calm things down. The media has a role to play here, too.
Both attacks were very different, but I have at times struggled with the discrepancy between the rapid declaration of the Wakeley attack as a terrorism incident, particularly given the apparent mental health history of the teenager, and the equally speedy assurance that the Bondi attack was not.
“I well understand the objections,” he wrote. “Each is anchored in bitter experience, and seeks to tell a certain truth. The Bondi attack crystallises the sense, indeed the terror, shared by countless women for decades that violence against them is constant, everywhere and downplayed. And similarly, Muslims have spent this century enduring flatly incorrect canards from politicians and pundits such as ‘not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim’. Every Muslim is familiar with the ritual of public figures declaring attacks to be Islamist based on no information, and then turning out to be wrong.
“But the real problem isn’t the definition of terrorism. It’s in the fact that the label over-determines our response. That it looms so large in our cultural imagination that it eclipses so much else. What happened at Bondi Junction isn’t made any less horrific if we conclude it isn’t terrorism. The victims are no less dead, and their deaths are no less tragic. The problem of violence against women isn’t any less serious. And if the Wakeley church attack is an act of terrorism, that doesn’t suddenly make it worse than the Port Arthur massacre.
“Terrorism is an atrocity, but it is not the only one. We shouldn’t need to apply that label to register our outrage or demonstrate our moral seriousness. We should be capable of being serious enough without it. And if not, that’s something to which we really should object.”
In a week lacking much sense, Waleed’s take comes about as close to it as I’ve seen.
This has been an awful week and the weekend will hopefully give Sydney the chance to reset and recharge. If you or anyone you know needs support, chat to a family member, mate or colleague, or consider calling Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
A few times a day I’ll unlock my phone, see a prominent notification bubble over the app icon for Facebook, Instagram or X, and open it up.
Minutes later, I’m watching a video about a Korean art installation or some such; the subject of the notification (often a complete nothing contrived to get me to open the app) totally forgotten.
Most of us understand that social media is more disruptive than beneficial. Indeed, wasting our time with junk notifications and interrupting our productivity with easily accessible distractions is the least of its dangers.
Billions of people are signed up for Facebook, but how many still need it? CREDIT: BLOOMBERG
Studies have suggested serious implications for mental health, the apps are likely responsible for a steady decline in the quality of public discourse, and online echo chambers distort world events into propaganda with real-life consequences.
In the wake of a pair of stabbings earlier this month, misinformation and hate on social media platforms made the fallout far worse. And yet, millions of us remain hooked. If we wanted to, could we leave it behind? From experience – and anecdotal evidence – the answer is “not easily”, but it’s worth trying.
To be clear, this isn’t about judging people who use social media, and I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with bite-sized entertainment in the form of short videos that have been algorithmically chosen for you, or photos and thoughts from your friends and brands that want to market to you.
In the wake of a pair of stabbings earlier this month, misinformation and hate on social media platforms made the fallout far worse. And yet, millions of us remain hooked.
There’s also nothing necessarily wrong with enjoying something we know isn’t the healthiest for us. A lot of us drink coffee every day, which has benefits and risks, just like social media. Sure, some of that is chemical addiction, but some of it is also because it’s pleasant, and it’s become part of our routine, rituals, and our social and family life.
Yet if you found yourself routinely on your sixth cup of coffee before noon, you’d hopefully recognise there’s a problem there. Coffee also never made itself as attractive and genuinely useful as possible for long enough to gain billions of drinkers, before declining massively in quality and wringing as much money out of its users as possible. Which is, to simplify, largely what social media companies have
Let’s look at Facebook as an example. At one point it was a truly revolutionary communications tool which let you keep up to date with all your friends and re-connect with some you might not have seen for ages.
When you received a notification, it was likely because of a genuine interaction with someone you knew. It served us up memories of years past, provided tools to create groups, and became crucial for things such as keeping track of upcoming events and remembering peoples’ birthdays.
Now, 20 years after it first launched, Meta – the new owner-incarnation of Facebook – is a trillion-dollar behemoth largely thanks to its efforts to exploit the massive user base it built with that communication tool, with several major privacy breaches and other scandals along the way.
At its height, Facebook promised new ways to disseminate news and monetise content, which turned out to be a bad deal for everyone but Facebook.
The genuine human interactions may have largely stopped, but the app is still installed on many of our phones, levering artificial intelligence and psychology to lure us back periodically, in the hopes of exposing us to an ad.
Instagram is largely the same. Faces of our friends appear at the top of the feed promising new updates and thoughts, but a video from a brand or influencer will generally appear directly below, hoping to distract you enough that you’ll scroll down through a feed that is at least two-thirds ads and further “suggested for you” videos.
Both platforms, which have the same parent company Meta, exist to serve our eyeballs up to advertisers.
The more I think about the reasons for keeping the apps in my life, the more I realise I’m still thinking about the apps as they were years ago. There’s an irrational fear that I’ll miss out on an important update from a group, or insight from a followed page, or a friend request from someone I’d like to talk to. But those things hardly ever happen.
Twitter is a little different and a somewhat more sinister case. Built as a social network, it organically became a place for news and discussion, before being acquired by someone ideologically opposed to the idea of news media.
Now called X, the platform is populated by a mix of people looking to exploit its lack of checks and balances to spread their messages or ideology, and people who are still using it because there’s no viable alternative.
That said, it is easier to shape the feed you’d like to see on X – as long as you stay in the “Following” tab.
Unlike on Meta’s platforms, you’re not constantly being shown engagement bait and ads, so, as a method of getting messages only from the people and brands you follow, it’s not too bad. The problem is that bad-faith discussions and misinformation are constantly bubbling just out of view, and have a tendency to explode into your feed when any kind of major event occurs.
Would it be possible for each of us, as individuals, to leave social media behind? It depends on how we’ve been using it.
I’ve been trying to think about what I need it for, so I can move those functions to other places that are more under my control.
Instead of getting articles from enthusiast sites and media via their X account, I’ve added them to Feedly (an RSS reader), or Substack. I’ve tracked down communities for my hobbies and interests on Reddit. I’ve made sure I have WhatsApp groups and contact details for the people I care about.
What’s left is the instinct to hit a button on my phone for an instant distraction or dopamine hit, or random daft videos of magicians or American Gladiators, when I’m feeling stressed or bored. That’s a very tough thing to find a replacement for, but might be in itself a good reason to keep looking.
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Josh and Julie Niland’s fresh and sophisticated diner, Petermen, has been crowned the second-best restaurant globally – and the only Aussie venue to make the coveted top 20 list
“A professor gave a balloon to every student, who had to inflate it, write their name on it and throw it in the hallway. After the professor mixed all the balloons up, the students were given 5 minutes to find their own balloon. Despite a hectic search, no one found their balloon.
At that point, the professor told the students to pick up a balloon and hand it to the person whose name was written on it. Within 5 minutes, everyone had their own balloon. 🎈
The professor said to the students: "These balloons are like happiness. We will never find it if everyone is just looking for their own. But if we care about other people's happiness, we'll find ours too."
Every prophet has to come from civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness.He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and meditation.This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.
Rejection letters have a bad reputation. Because they are unwelcome, and sometimes quite crushing, there’s an understandable urge to catalogue extracts from the more ridiculous ones and point to them as evidence of how catastrophically wrong publishers can be.
And there’s plenty to ridicule. To Sylvia Plath: “But there certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.” To Ernest Hemingway: “It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.” To J.G. Ballard: “The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.”
When Toni Morrison was an editor with Random House her rejection letters tended to be long, with generous suggestions.CREDIT: ALAMY
T.S. Eliot wrote quite a nice letter to George Orwell, rejecting Animal Farm because “what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs”. The letter was appreciative at any rate than the US publisher Dial Press, which argued it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the USA”.
Now we have a glimpse into the rejection letters of an editor who was frank, fair and often very encouraging – and went on to become a literary giant herself.
Toni Morrison spent 16 years as an editor at Random House before she left in 1983 to be a full-time novelist, and in that time wrote hundreds of rejections. They are filed in the publisher’s archives at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the library’s literature curator, Melina Moe, describes them in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
In her time as editor, Morrison championed the works of many writers and was pioneering in her recruitment of black authors. It was down to her that Random House published black activist Angela Davis’ autobiography. But she must have also elected to spend much of her time on her rejection letters.
Toni Morrison championed Angela Davis’ writing at Random House.CREDIT: NICOLE EMANUEL
Moe writes that these letters are “an archive of Morrison’s faith in and sheer love for the written word – and of her kindness”. Sometimes they also show a growing tension between her appreciation of a manuscript’s literary qualities and her reluctant conclusion that it isn’t commercial enough – a tension that has only become stronger in our own times.
Morrison could be brusque and direct, but her letters tended to be long, with generous suggestions. These could be on craft or character, but could also be comments on a changing publishing industry, frustrations with the tastes of the reading public and “sympathies for poets, short story writers and other authors drawn to commercially hopeless genres”, as Moe puts it.
In 1977, Morrison wrote to an aspiring novelist that the work was “extremely honest, forthright and moving in ways I had not expected it to be”. She passed it around the office to get support, but her colleagues found it depressing. “You don’t want to escape and I don’t want to escape,” she wrote, “but perhaps the public does and perhaps we are in the business of helping them do that.”
Morrison’s frustrations might well have played a part in her decision to quit. In 1981, she issued a warning in a speech to the American Writers Congress that “something is terribly wrong” in the industry.
It was the era of global consolidation, which has continued: today, the mainstream publishing world has shrunk to the “Big Five” (Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan). I suspect that if she were a young woman in publishing today, Morrison might be working for a small press with modest print runs but exciting and experimental publications.
The one thing missing from Moe’s perceptive piece is the names of the authors Morrison rejected. Did any of them get published elsewhere, and did any of them eventually become almost as famous as Morrison herself? I do hope so.
