Anthony Morris

The high point of Australia's existence as a nation was that time Ice T rapped "Look at Australia / a fuckin' failure"

For as long as I've been alive the primary business model in every area of goods & services has been to create two tiers - expensive, human-made, individualised luxury products for the rich, cheap generic half-arsed slop for the poors - and AI is going to do that to arts & entertainment very quickly

A lot of the time when I see some old past-it artist admit to using AI, my first thought isn't "what a sellout" but something closer to "they know exactly the standard expected of the end product".

forbes.comBillionaires Palmer Luckey And Ben Lamm Spin Up Startup To Genetically Engineer Military DogsBen Lamm of de-extinction startup Colossal has teamed up with Palmer Luckey’s team at Anduril to create a dog that’s optimized for military use. The new “warhounds” will be cloned and gene edited.

Makes sense: movies and TV about dogs in the military has become a rightwing dog whistle in recent years

Amy Feldman@amyfeldman7.bsky.social

*NEW* Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey team up on a new startup to genetically engineer war dogs for the military. Warhound comes out of stealth at $1.2B valuation For @forbes.com with @iainmartin.bsky.social and @mhunterhart.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/amyfel...

Gonna say that throwing a century of fiction using robots as metaphors and explorations of humanity in the bin because you think it’s AI propaganda is pretty much exactly what the scam artists promoting AI want you to do

Comparing a hallucinating autocomplete machine to ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ and deciding the human product is the one to throw out because it features a robot is pretty firmly siding with the scammers vision of things no matter how you try to justify it

abc.net.auAustralia at 'crossroads' as police warn of 'tsunami' of radicalisationLaw enforcement agencies have told a parliamentary inquiry about an increasingly dangerous security environment where children and young adults are being targeted with increasing speed and intensity online.

When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way / From your first cigarette to your last dying day

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au

Australia at 'crossroads' as police warn of 'tsunami' of youth radicalisation online

We need big “Scary Teen Threat Level” signs outside every town like we do bushfire danger level signs, only the ratings go from “Milhouse” to “That ‘come out and play-ee-AYY’ guy from THE WARRIORS”

Thing that struck me most about PRIMETIME is that for ages there was a steady stream of “if this goes on…” science fiction about how television would turn into murder spectacle shows with endless live deaths, and now that kind of horrifying world is soft focus “what were they thinking” nostalgia

Not everything just keeps on getting worse in a straight line to Hell

All this Tim Winton talk has reminded me that while I have seen numerous film and TV adaptations of his work, I have only ever read part of one of his books: his recent post-apocalypse novel The Juice, which I knew was going to be a failure going in and my low expectations were swiftly met

If you're not going to push things in those directions, what's left? Most of the decent recent post-apocalypse stuff has either been from genre experts tweaking things or writers wanting to talk about what survives the end of the world (surprise! it's stories)

The Juice is the kind of novel you get when a best selling author decides their fans might want something a little different. But as a fan of the genre he's dabbling in, that "something different" didn't look very different at all. I doubt I'll go back to it

The Mad Max films work because they have a wacky sense of humour: the premise is the same as a lot of old Judge Dredd comics - that after the horrors of an atomic war and social collapse, the survivors would go insane. Which is entertaining and fun to watch!

Flip side is The Road, which works because it's a master of the bleak and grim taking off the brakes and going "this is my vision of the end of the world". It's compelling because it's pushing a genre to its limit; whatever Winton's abilities, he's not known for going to extremes

The Juice fails because Winton is writing in a genre that doesn't need him; a post apocalypse novel, especially an Australian one, needs one of two things that Winton just doesn't have: either a sense of humour, or a willingness to actually be shocking

In Australia A24 hosted preview screenings of YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING for critics (not me) last week - ahead of its US release date and a full month before it reaches cinemas here. So expect a lot of "it's amazing, so glad I avoided spoilers" coverage from people who saw it before there were spoilers

More like Tim Loseton, amirite?

The Tax Collector For Tax Purposes wait is that right

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This whole thread is worth your while but my two cents: while I enjoy worldbuilding, the real action when it comes to writing fiction for me is plotting out the narrative - the world only exists to support the story, and the story (for me) is all about what happens next

Mel Campbell@incrediblemelk.bsky.social

There’s a real tension between relaxing into a world & finding a satisfying narrative momentum. Next week @morrbeat.bsky.social and I are getting together to start talking out our next novel. We’ve always written by talking our story thru together like a D&D campaign, but what else could we try?

I'm not a writer who thinks their characters "come alive" while writing - characters exist to serve the story - but I have written things where I've suddenly realised a character would act in a way I hadn't planned, and it's the kind of thing that makes the long slog of writing all worthwhile

I seem to have subscribed to a newsletter that is increasingly either about a): how the author thinks AI is probably conscious or alive in some way and b): why he's back on X because that's where all the cool kids are, and I'd unsubscribe but I can't figure out why I signed up in the first place

I mean, I think both those views are the dogshit views of a complete chump, but I'm pretty sure I didn't sign up because I wanted to know what the cool chumps are talking about. So why did I let this person into my house?

@danslevin.funeralsandsnakes.net

I mean, someone who says "I don't like Bluesky because it's too political, at least on X I can avoid that" is someone who is pretty clearly announcing their politics whether they realise it or not

Anthony Morris reposted

Dan Slevin

🧵 goes for NZ too. Remarkable Place to Die, Blue Murder Motel, etc.

Anthony Morris@morrbeat.bsky.social

You know that if I was writing about a trend a year ago for @screenhub.bsky.social then it's definitely played out now: www.screenhub.com.au/news/feature...

screenhub.com.auHow to make an Australian crime series | ScreenHub: Film, TV, Streaming and GamesCrime series are a mainstay of Australian television but these days, getting a new series off the ground means following some very strict rules.

tvtonight.com.auSo there’s this detective who goes to this small town…There are growing calls for crime dramas to stop starting with the same premise.

You know that if I was writing about a trend a year ago for @screenhub.bsky.social then it's definitely played out now: www.screenhub.com.au/news/feature...

TV Tonight@tvtonight.com.au

Obviously there are other ways to set up a murder series - but when you've also got to establish the mystery, and the suspects, and you want to hit the ground running, time is tight. For right now, the "detective returning to their small town home" genre is the hole the industry has dug for itself

Unfortunately the Australian TV industry likes to see itself as edgy, otherwise the first person to create an Agatha Christie-style series where a quirky amateur detective visits scenic Australian holiday resorts & locations and solves mysteries involving small groups of tourists would make a mint

tvtonight.com.auSo there’s this detective who goes to this small town…There are growing calls for crime dramas to stop starting with the same premise.

You know that if I was writing about a trend a year ago for @screenhub.bsky.social then it's definitely played out now: www.screenhub.com.au/news/feature...

TV Tonight@tvtonight.com.au

In Australia especially, a big part of securing funding and overseas sales requires a small town setting: state and tourism bodies don't provide funding for series set in capital cities, overseas audiences want to see Australian scenery, not generic suburbs and city centers

Once you're locked into a small town setting for financial reasons, storytelling demands an outsider lead (or sidekick) - if they already know every nook and cranny, there's no way to explain any of that to the viewer. And someone returning is both a stranger and someone with pre-established drama

tvtonight.com.auSo there’s this detective who goes to this small town…There are growing calls for crime dramas to stop starting with the same premise.

You know that if I was writing about a trend a year ago for @screenhub.bsky.social then it's definitely played out now: www.screenhub.com.au/news/feature...

TV Tonight@tvtonight.com.au

Thing is, there are a number of rock-solid reasons why the crime / mystery series has become the "detective returns to their small town home and gets a frosty reception" genre, and until those reasons change (and they're both budget and storytelling related), we're going to keep on getting them

You don’t really see a lot of SF short stories any more that take current tech developments and extrapolate from there (you know, like “what if your self driving car got hacked like your PC” or “what if your toaster worked like your printer”) and I can only assume it’s to stop giving tech bros ideas

Tech bros will steal any half plausible idea and present it as their own, because it’s the “coming from a tech bro” part that gets the money dudes on board. I’ve come up with half a dozen semi plausible tech schemes for stories, but nobody’s going to give me a cent for the schemes outside a story

Just saw a guy trying to get his massive motor scooter off the train by doing a three point turn that ended up more like a seven point turn and he only got the front wheel out the doors before they started to close

This reminds me of a semi-recent Australian film where at one point a character goes to Mildura train station to leave town, waits a while, then walks back to where he’s staying, and I still don’t know if it was meant to be a plot point that IRL there’s no passenger train service to Mildura

the Curb@thecurbau.bsky.social

In Son of a Gun, Brenton Thwaites character gets off at a train stop which is not a passenger train. In fact, there's no train stop at all. It's a rundown service yard.

Story-wise he just waits for a train that doesn’t arrive so it works either way - but there’s a difference between him changing his mind about leaving and realising he’s trapped! Movie really needed an end credits scene listing all (then) current V/Line services

Anthony Morris reposted

the Curb

@thecurbau.bsky.social

In Son of a Gun, Brenton Thwaites character gets off at a train stop which is not a passenger train. In fact, there's no train stop at all. It's a rundown service yard.

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Looking at the stories covered in the upcoming season of the ABCs pop history show I WAS ACTUALLY THERE and it might be an idea if someone told the national broadcaster that Australian non-political stories occasionally take place outside of NSW

There's two national stories (Julia Gillard's Misogyny speech and Harold Holt's disappearance), and the rest - Threadbo landslide; Cangai Siege; Lismore Floods; and "The Rabbitohs’ Fight Against Extinction" - are events that took place in NSW. All newsworthy, but maybe spread the love a bit?

I take that back: "The Rabbitohs’ Fight Against Extinction" is no more - and probably less - newsworthy than the South Melbourne Swans' or the Fitzroy Lions' battles to stay in Melbourne, and honestly anything to do with a sporting club is barely newsworthy at all unless they crash in the Andes

Just remembered I had a dream last night where I was at this weird publicity event in a giant and visibly crumbling underground carpark and a tiny drunk publicist dressed entirely in black came up to me, sniffed my armpit and said I "smelled like cocaine" so yeah, my career's going great

Anthony Morris reposted

Alice Clarke

@alicedkc.bsky.social

Melbourne friends! If you happen to find a Pikachu somewhere between Elizabeth St and MCEC, could you please let me know? It has this tag on it and is one of my 2yo’s favourites. Please spread far and wide to help find it.

youtube.comWho do you love?YouTube video by The Smb

Gonna go with this one www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW4n...

Sophia_Nyx 🐰@sophianyx.bsky.social

name your fav cover song.

I was kinda joking in my review of THE SOCIAL RECKONING but the more I think about it the more I really do wish Sorkin had gone all Tarantino ahistorical with the ending and had a malfunctioning ED209 “you have 20 seconds to comply” the FB board

Really starting to think that a movie where evil is brought to justice by the bright light of public exposure in the mainstream media just might not be plausible in this day and age

If you make a movie in 2026 about a whistleblower - any kind of whistleblower - that doesn’t end with text on a black screen telling us they “committed suicide” right after they told family and friends they were worried about being killed, you’re having a lend

With much of Australian politics being just "we have to do this thing nobody here wants because of reasons", maybe we should just teach kids in school the reasons why so many local decisions seem to be made for the benefit of overseas interests