FYI #154

• Public Lecture with Professor Ruha Benjamin, November 30, Sydney

• How Time Solved Space, by Steven Johnson

• The End of Everything, by M. John Harrison, The Booker Prize 2026. Extract.

• Nothing Happens Nowhere, by Gretchen Shirm… ‘Setting in fiction is often shaped not by the innate qualities of the landscape itself, but how that landscape resonates with the person who is doing the observing of it.’

• Gold Christmas beetle wins 2026 ABC Australian Insect of the Year vote

• Breaking trust: New report examines deepfakes, democracy and human rights, via the Australian Human Rights Commission

• Australia has picked its national soundtrack – but not its story, by Stacy Jarvis, via The Interpreter… about Australia’s National Songbook

• The Aesthetics of AI, by Carissa Veliz

• Historian Timothy Garton Ash on the World After Trump, via the New Yorker Radio House

• Steal this story, please!, documentary about journalist Amy Goodman