Winter sunset

The side of a car and a road. In the distance is a bright sunset with plenty of red and orange hues.
Yellow flowers on a grassy slope. Some eucalypts are visible in the distance.

Ice on the car this morning. According to the IPCC I’m supposed to be living in one of the later Mad Max films, not Fargo.

Thin ice patterns on the body of a red car
Giant plastic balls floating in the MLC Centre fountain in Sydney.

Kyorugi

Two boys dressed in tae kwon do uniforms look at sparring in the background, photographed from behind.
A sandstone building in Sydney at dusk. In the foreground a skateboarder travels along the light rail tracks, and looks back towards the camera.

Restaurant automation gives a glimpse into our working future: precarity, less respect for quality and experience, and more demands on humans

Since the automation, the kitchen is usually calm. Park no longer cooks. She monitors the machines, fixes glitches, restocks ingredients, and scrubs dishes, working fast before the next wave of orders crash in. “We each used to work in our own stations, but now we have to master every task to run the entire kitchen alone. It’s really challenging,” she said.

Robot chefs take over at South Korea’s highway restaurants, to mixed reviews - Rest of the World

A masked woman working alongside an automation robot. Pre-packaged foods in pre-stacked bowls are heated on demand and served by the robot arm.
Freescale image of a large awning structure hanging over a walkway. It’s in front of the USNW Library.

What’s the bet they’re going to try to rent it as-is?

A house with huge amounts of overgrowth around a window and on the ceiling. The path to the door appears to have been cleared recently.

More than 2,200 jobs being cut across Australian universities.

It was only a few years ago more that 17,000 were lost during COVID.

Table showing that more than 2,000 job losses have been announced across Australian universities.

Happy Easter to those who partake

The morning sun shining through a stand of trees
A tree lined path with rays of sunlight falling on the lens. It’s a calm, sunny scene.

The stunning autumn days will continue until morale improves.

A panoramic photo of a park with trees and deep blue skies. I rotunda is in the foreground.

Visiting other studio photographers in Lagos, he kept getting the same response: they had all destroyed their negatives. Digital photography had rendered them expensive and obsolete. Even knowing that, learning of their burning was jarring.

Outstanding work from The Continent. Its arrival is the most welcome message I get each week.

A black and white seventies staged portrait of two boys and a girl. All look cool and iconic. The lighting and framing is striking. &10;&10;Title is: Aina Street, Shogunle, Lagos, c. 1970s. Courtesy Lagos Studio Archives. Copyright © Abi Morocco Photos

On murmuration

A murmuration of hundreds of starlings at sunset

I’m a trade policy advisor, ask me anything.

Screencap of claude.ai. Text says Design a simple U.S. tariff rate for each of the 50 largest trading partners, differentiated on a country by country basis, that will eliminate all U.S. trade imbalances. Don’t take geopolitics or political alliances into account. Give me the output as a table of the 50 countries and the required tariff rate as a percentage for each one.

I rewatched V for Vendetta for the first time since it was in cinemas. I wondered “what did old mate Roger Ebert’s make of it”. Not quite what I was expecting.

Roger Ebert&10;V for Vendetta 2005&10;***&10;Watched 16 Mar 2006&10;'Dystopia' with a capital V&10;It is the year 2020. A virus runs wild in the world, most Americans are dead, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator who promises security but not freedom.

18 years old. I know he won’t be around much longer but I’m grateful he is.

A greyscale photo of an old, shaggy looking miniature schnauzer.

Hairdressing sign that instils confidence

A hairdresser shop sign with a decidedly odd (but maybe weird enough to be cool?) iconic description of a male and female appearing pair of people with some genuinely odd looking haircuts. Alt text fails me.
Cockatoos in a palm tree beside a river