rss – Alfie Chadwick

Why Simple Answers Win (Even When They’re Wrong)

You’ve seen it happen. A journalist asks a politician a direct question, and the politician just… doesn’t answer it. They circle, hedge, qualify. You think: classic evasive…

A Lightweight Peer Review Workflow with Quarto and Hypothesis

If you write in Quarto, you’ve probably run into this: the writing is going well, the document renders beautifully, the code and prose are living together exactly as they…

Constructed Truth, Fourth Wing, And Misinformation

Fourth Wing Spoilers Ahead

Visualising Race Results

As an amateur age group triathlete – and someone who’s a bit obsessed with data – I often find myself scouring through the results section of my races to see how I went…

Stranger Things - Writing Queer Characters

Stranger things part 5 spoilers … kinda

Summer 2025 Reading List

Post-Christmas I always end up with the same happy problem: too many books to read. I do fly through them given the chance, but when work comes back around, and I keep…

FRAMING THE ENERGY TRANSITION

Computational Tools for Analysing Australian Parliamentary Discourse

Alfie Chadwick, Supervised By Libby Lester, Simon Angus, and Mark Andrejevic

The Life of a Showgirl - Taylor Swift

I am of two minds about this album. To preface this, I enjoyed it. But it also seems to symbolise so much beyond the tracks themselves – the current state of our discourse…

Who am I to say anything?

I often find myself thinking that nothing I say is particularly novel or interesting. I’m just repeating and regurgitating the content that I’ve read. But at the same time…

Climate Talks Podcast

Had a great time on the climate talks podcast chatting about the current state of climate change misinformation and what we can do about it.

Reflecting on Reviews

Earlier this year, I set myself a goal – more intentional relationships with the media I consume. This is a shift away from being a consumer and towards someone who actively…

Computers and The work Cycle

I’ve been thinking a lot about the devices I use to work – devices is a bit of a misterm – one device, my computer. I think my computer, like my smartphone, has an…

Intentional Tech

In today’s world, our relationships with tech are more important than ever. Technology acts as the window to our parallel online world, and as a prosthetic to our minds that…

Model for Endurance Training

Endurance training can be a bit daunting from the outside. Everyone is trying to sell a system or a training plan, which you just download and follow. But I often find that…

What Do We Do at Work

I’m trying to work out what I actually do in a day in general (In research), and I came up with this nice little flowchart.

Why am I Chasing Productivity

I sometimes find myself thinking that I need to fit as much as I can into my day. And if I don’t, it’s been a bit of a failure. But I don’t think this is healthy, and I…

Bite Me - Reneé Rapp

Deeply personal, Rapp embraces her chaotic life and sexuality in the 33-minute play, with witty lyrics and storytelling shining through 12 tracks. Unfortunately, the album…

Don’t Tap the Glass - Tyler the Creator

Tyler, the Creator is always going to produce something fun – Don’t Tap the Glass is no different. If anything, the funk and dance influences on the album make this much…

Fantastic 4: First Steps - Matt Shakman

The 2005 version of Fantastic Four is something that lived in my DVD player growing up. But after the 2015 attempted reboot, and the consistently underwhelming Marvel…

Big Men Can(’t) Shoot

It’s almost a fact amongst NBA fans — the taller you are, the worse you are at shooting. And if you look at the stats, it would indicate that this is true. If you are an NBA…

Shoe Dog - Phill Knight

Knight’s memoirs swing quite differently to the usual entrepreneurial story. He doesn’t present himself as a gung-ho hotshot with the next big idea and the will to make it…

Another Now - Yanis Varoufakis

I think it is all too easy to become jaded about the concepts of markets, especially when all you see day in, day out are the failures of markets to provide the fundamental…

Superman – James Gunn

Post Endgame, I haven’t been able to get into superhero movies the same way I did when I was a teenager. Possibly fatigue setting in, possibly the studios spending too much…

AI Allignment Issues

I always find the question of AI alignment a bit interesting. We have some things that are obvious, like it shouldn’t cause undue harm, but what about morality or ethics? If…

Two Factories and a Dragon

Blair wakes before dawn and looks out their window. The gray valley is still shrouded in mist, but already the villagers of Northvein are stirring. They look up to the…

Conclave - Edward Berger

I meant to watch this ages ago — when the Pope died — but never found the time. I knew it had rave reviews, but I was a bit on the fence — how can they make a film about a…

Compatability of Capitalism and Art

F1 is a strange film because it glorifies rejecting money and fame in favor of the pure love of racing, yet it is also one of the most money-driven, ad-filled movies I’ve…

Are you better off buying a house

Australia is a place where ‘getting on the property ladder’ is touted as the best way to get ahead. But why is going into a million dollars in debt considered so good?

F1 - Joseph Kosinski

I like F1; I like the concept of cars going really fast around a track – the politics, the engineering, the tactics. But I didn’‘t like this movie. For a sport with so many…

Per Project Async Tasks in Nvim

As someone who tries to never leave the terminal, an ongoing gripe for me is starting up background tasks—say a Docker Compose server—without using up all of my screen…

The em-dash conundrum

I’m not going to lie, I use LLMs a lot for tidying and editing my writing – think a super-powered Grammarly or spell check. But LLM-written or edited text has a few nuances…

Could we make Mykis free?

When I was in Brisbane, I had the joy of getting to go on trains, buses and ferries that only cost me 50c … it was great. When I’m at home, I literally could catch the train…

I love RSS feeds

I feel like RSS feeds are what the internet should of prioritised – alowing all of us to share our content from our own sites and bring it together, instead of forcing us to…

Why Write a Blog No One Reads

I sometimes think that all the stuff I put up here is just something I could put on LinkedIn or Twitter. But at the same time, the prospect of putting it on LinkedIn feels…

Why are Woolworths and Coles next to each other?

Every set of shops always has the two within a hundred metres of each other.
Besides zoning, what benefit does this serve? Surely they can’t both think they have the better…

What is each session achieving?

I spend a lot of time training, and I’ve read a lot of books about training for triathlon. So when I plan my weeks, I do have a feeling for what I should include and what I…

Fancy That - PinkPantheress

From her opening monotone greeting to the memorable – now retro – samples, PinkPantheress takes the listener on a ride of Y2K-inspired garage tracks. I fear that the success…

Love Triangle - Matt Parker

I’ve been a big fan of Matt Parker’s previous books, so I was pretty confident that I was going to enjoy another entry in his series of pop-maths books. Unfortunately, it…

Addison - Addison Rae

One of my most anticipated albums of the year, Addison Rae’s first album has been on my radar since Diet Pepsi was played on repeat for a good portion of 2024 — it placed…

Debí Tirar Más Fotos - Bad Bunny

This is an album that really falls into the ‘expanding my repertoire’ category. But with it sitting on top of a couple of the Album of the Year so far lists, I felt like I…

Revenge Seekers - Jane Remover

I’m not normally one for hyperpop, maybe due to a bit of snobbery from the SoundCloud music era. But as a way to jump into the genre, I found this album an incredible…

No Hands - Joey Valance and Brae

After listening to their first album a few years ago, I was really excited to see these guys at Laneway. I have to say, it was one of the hypest shows I’ve been to. Coming…

Fact checking isn’t always the answer

Misinformation is a growing global concern, and many believe fact checkers can solve the problem. However, as misinformation becomes more sophisticated, the influence of…

A Dangerous Day to be a Cold One - DARTZ

Another Kiwi band that will inevitably be claimed by the Australians when they get big, DARTZ are slowly getting their recognition across the Tasman Sea. Taking some classic…

Did the Libs Moving Right Hurt the Greens

If you think of the political spectrum as a nice long left-to-right line, we used to have Labour and the Libs sitting centre-right, and the Greens to the left. The parties…

In the Conversation: What political ads are Australians seeing online? Astroturfing, fake grassroots groups, and outright falsehoods

In the lead-up to the 2025 Australian federal election, political advertising is seemingly everywhere.

Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Christine Parker, The University of Melbourne; Giselle Newton, The University of Queensland; Kate Clark, Monash University, and Mark Andrejevic, Monash University

In the Conversation: These 3 climate misinformation campaigns are operating during the election run-up. Here’s how to spot them

Australia’s climate and energy wars are at the forefront of the federal election campaign as the major parties outline vastly different plans to reduce greenhouse gas…

Alfie Chadwick and Libby Lester, Monash University

Some Sexy Songs 4 U - PartyNextDoor and Drake

Like any Zillenial, I have fond memories of Drake. I remember “Hotline Bling” and “One Dance” being the soundtracks to my high school parties. To me, Drake was always…

Fixing My Relationship with Spotify

I grew up in a weird time for music and media in general. I am old enough to remember going to JB Hi-Fi to buy CDs and having piles of DVDs next to the TV, but I am also…

Quick Tip for Displaying Imported Definitions in Quarto

This is a very niche issue that I run into surprisingly often. When I am prototyping something in Python, I end up with my definitions spread across various files that I…

Interview on Community Radio

I had the pleasure of talking to Hélène from 3CR about climate misinformation, my work, and the work we do at the MCCCRH.

The Urgent Need for Data Access in the Age of AI

Climate misinformation is one of the great challenges of our age, with its propagators ranging from distant strangers on Facebook or Twitter to the President of the United…

Optimising the settings for the ODE solver

In the last post in this series, I introduced my method for approximating ODEs. But after re-rereading it, I found myself questioning the step where I convert the ODE into a…

Maximising the Number of Friendship Bracelets for the Taylor Swift Concert

With Taylor Swift coming to Melbourne next week, my house has started its prep for the concert. An important part of that preparation is making friendship bracelets to trade…

A Follow Up on my Hottest 100 Predictions

In my last post I ended by planting my flag and making my predictions for the Hottest 100 for 2023. And on first glance, I’m pretty happy with myself, picking not only the…

Predicting the 2023 Hottest 100

Like many Australians, I spent my last Saturday in January getting hyped for the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown. And for the past few years, there has been a project run by 1…

Making my ODE solver solve ODEs

After writing out the last post where I wrote out a python library for using an improved version of Euler’s method to solve ODEs. But so far, we haven’t been solving ODES…

DIY Dev-Containers

Like most developers, I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with my local installations and dependencies. When working on multiple projects, it is not uncommon to…

Making a Python Library to solve differential Equations

After having the initial idea I wrote up in a previous post, I thought it was a good idea to turn it into a python library so that I can use it as part of my other projects.

A new way to look at Categories in Hugo Blogs

Update: This site is now built around Quarto, but the basis of this idea still holds.

Using Taylor Series to Improve the Euler Method

Euler’s method is a classic way of approximating first-order differential equations. In short, it uses the derivative of a function and starting condition to estimate the…

Modeling Drug Use in Communities

Drugs are chemical substances with physiological effects. Some drugs like opioids, cannabis, alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, methamphetamine, or heroin are of concern to…

Alfie Chadwick, Kevin Dai, Chrysovalantis Thomopoulos