Fishwick Papers: The "Bad Mean Hate Words" Edition

Evening you veritable angels!

I am starting to wind things down for the end of the year, and am very much relishing being in a position to be able to do that. I’ll have one more Fishwick Papers in late December to properly reflect on the year (and share the 2023 Wordplay Quiz), so instead I want to tell you about the few things happening right now!

I’m doing a one-off performance of my award-nominated solo show All The Hallmarks of a Christmas Movie this Friday at Improv Theatre Sydney. It's an improvised festive romantic comedy in the style of (but definitely not breaching the intellectual property of) a major production company who also makes greetings cards. Last time I did it was in late August, so please come along for a more seasonally-appropriate version!

I have a few other shows happening here and there around Sydney this week, details here.

Ooh, and I was chuffed to recently be invited on the Improv Chronicle podcast and absolutely nerd out on improv theory. If that’s the sort of thing you’re into please take a listen!

Finally, my friends at The Barden Party are bringing their new production of Romeo & Juliet to Sydney and Melbourne late this year and early next year. They perform in parks and open-air venues, but their bread and butter is performing in people’s back gardens. If you’d like to book a private show of some raucous and irreverent Shakespeare, I can’t recommend them highly enough!

Now, on with the links

Scene With/Without

• The truth about ‘lesbian erasure’

• A Brooklyn neighbourhood polices itself for five days

• A new tool lets artists poison the data of generative AI

• We made an entire movie without revealing our main character's gender

Time Jump

• How Sydney’s most toxic river is fighting back

• The mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge

• New York invented modern nightlife

• Naming dinosaurs in Te Reo Māori

Status Transition

• The new media goliaths

• Why the internet isn’t fun anymore

• Not feeling lucky: The enshittification of Google

• Starfield is the death of videogames as we know it

Word at a Time

• Explaining Elon Musk’s latest lawsuit in plain English

• A free(!) textbook on the essentials of linguistics

• How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

Supercut Of Things That Contain A Specific Feature Of The Week

• Songs that stop on the word “Stop”