I never thought I’d miss punctuation so much, but as the pauses on social media videos are cut to shreds, I wonder where the assault on our senses will end
It’s not the worst thing about social media, but something dreadful is happening in short-form videos. At first I thought my phone or my broadband was on the blink. Then I assumed I was just unlucky, that this aberration was practised only by the creators of the very few videos I chanced to see. And now I realise that they all do it. It’s mad, it’s driving me mad, it’s going to drive us all mad. Or perhaps it’s just me. I’m the bonkers one, lost and alone in a world I no longer understand.
It’s the way these things are edited. The pauses between sentences, or even the pauses between clauses within sentences, are cut out. Each sentence clatters in to the next, so whoever is talking sounds as if they’ve lost control of their speech. Words tumble out of them in a frantically fast but disjointed torrentThis is my attempt to reproduce on the page how absurd it soundsI really can’t stand itIt’s a crime against civilised discourseIt’s both a symptom and a cause of madnessI never thought I’d miss punctuation and breaths this muchBut it turns out you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s goneTrue thatPreachOr whatever it is they sayI’ll stop now.
Continue reading...It is hoped opening of unit tackling narcotics trafficking will deter people from visiting it as pilgrimage site
Austria has opened a police station in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in an attempt to “neutralise” its toxic legacy, after years of debate over how to stop neo-Nazis visiting it as a pilgrimage site.
Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in a rented flat in the centre of Braunau am Inn and spent the first weeks of his life there.
Continue reading...With soulful eyes and ‘reverse chicken legs’, greyhounds are challenging to sketch. At a fundraising event in Melbourne, Josh Nicholas tries his hand
I’ve done life drawing before, but this time I am a bit worried. The woman across the room from me has done life drawing too, “but not with dogs”.
The problem with drawing people from life is they tend to move. The same is true of greyhounds, but they also don’t understand when you ask them to hold a pose.
Continue reading...From auroras and nebulas to deep sky star clusters, the competition features submissions from amateur astronomers and photographers from Australia and around the world
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