My Bedroom TV Is Bigger Than My First House

...and somehow, you still think you could have gone a bit bigger.

I was sitting in bed the other night, watching television, when I had a rather disturbing thought. My bedroom television is seventy-five inches.

Seventy-five.

And the really worrying part? I don't even think of it as big anymore. In fact, when we bought it, my first thought was, "It'll be fine for the bedroom." The bedroom. The lounge still has the bigger television.

There are only a couple of inches between the edges of the television and the wall. Any bigger and we'd have to knock through into the neighbour's lounge room.

Somewhere along the way, we've completely lost our sense of perspective.

I remember when televisions were pieces of furniture. They had polished wooden cabinets. You didn't hang them on the wall. You built the room around them. If they stopped working, your dad would walk over and give them a decent thump on the side. Nine times out of ten, that fixed the problem.

If you wanted to change channels, you didn't reach for a remote. You reached for the youngest child. "I'm not getting up!" "You've got younger legs." That was our remote control.

There were four channels if you were lucky.

Nothing was on after midnight except static. And somehow... we survived.

Now we complain because Netflix takes three seconds to load. We've become impossible to satisfy. The other day I realised we'd bought a new television. Not because the old one had broken. Not because the picture was bad. Not because it was too small.

Simply because there was a sale. The old television didn't go to landfill, of course. No Australian household throws anything out. It simply gets promoted. Or demoted depending on how you look at things.

The new television went into the bedroom.

The old bedroom television moved elsewhere.

Everything gets a second career. Televisions. Speakers. Coffee machines. Even towels. Nothing retires in Australia. It just gets reassigned.

Sometimes I wonder what my younger self would think if he walked into my house today.

A seventy-five-inch bedroom television. Cappacino at the touch of a button. Music following me from room to room. A robot vacuum cleaning the floor.

He'd probably think I'd become a millionaire. The truth is, I'm just an ordinary woman... ...living in a world where ordinary has quietly become extraordinary.

And that's the strange thing about progress. It doesn't happen all at once. One day you wake up and realise your bedroom television is bigger than the first flat you ever rented...

...and somehow, the Squeeze still thinks we could have gone a bit bigger. 

AI Didn't Make Us Lazy. It Just Gave Us Permission

Remember when you had to actually know things? Not everything. Just... enough to get by.

You'd write your own emails. Think of your own birthday messages. Struggle through a school assignment. Argue with your partner using words you came up with all by yourself.

Now

"ChatGPT, write my resignation."

"ChatGPT, write a heartfelt wedding speech."

"ChatGPT, explain quantum physics to me like I'm five."

At this rate, people will soon be asking AI to decide what takeaway they should order because choosing between pizza and Chinese is apparently an intellectual burden.

We've become a civilisation of prompt engineers. Not engineers. Prompt engineers. The hardest part of many people's day is typing, "Can you make this sound more professional?"

The worrying thing isn't that AI can write.

It's that so many people have stopped trying.

Every email now sounds as though it was written by the same cheerful corporate robot. "I hope this email finds you well." No, it doesn't.

It found me deleting another twenty-seven AI-written emails that all begin exactly the same way.

Everything is becoming suspiciously polished.

LinkedIn posts sound identical.

Company newsletters sound identical.

University assignments sound identical.

Even online arguments are becoming suspiciously articulate. Half the internet suddenly knows the phrase "it's important to recognise the nuanced implications..."

No, Karen.

Last week you couldn't spell "nuanced."

The funniest part is that people are using AI to save time... then spending the time they saved watching strangers' clean carpets on Facebook.

Humanity has finally invented a machine that can do our thinking. And we've rewarded ourselves by using the extra time to watch someone cleaning their carpet. And it never works! I've watched hundreds of 'how to clean your mattress like it came from a hotel!' It doesn't work.

What a species.

The irony is that AI isn't replacing human intelligence. It's replacing human effort. There's a difference.

AI can write a speech. It can't care about the person you're giving it to.

It can write a joke. It can't know whether your mates will laugh.

It can generate ideas. It can't live your life.

The best writing, the best music, the best conversations and the best friendships still come from people who put a little bit of themselves into what they create.

AI isn't the end of humanity.

But it might be the end of us bothering.

And that's not the machine's fault.

That's ours.

Your Phone Knows You're Bored Before You Do

I don't remember deciding to pick up my phone.

That's the strange part.

It just... appears in my hand.

I'll be making a cup of coffee, waiting for the milk to do it's thing, and somehow, I'm standing there watching a bloke in Finland restore a 1938 tractor with nothing but sandpaper and optimism.

I don't even own a tractor.

Five minutes earlier I wasn't bored. I was simply waiting.

There used to be a difference.

We used to stare out windows. We watched people. We daydreamed. We let our minds wander. Occasionally we even had an original thought. Now there's no gap too small for a screen to squeeze into. 

Waiting in line? Phone.

Commercial on television? Phone.

Someone takes longer than three seconds to answer a text? Phone.

Red traffic light? Well... hopefully not. Although judging by some drivers, I'm not entirely convinced.

The frightening thing isn't that our phones distract us.

It's that they seem to know we're about to be distracted before we do.

I swear mine senses the slightest dip in stimulation.

The moment life slows down; my thumb starts moving almost on autopilot. Before I've consciously made a decision, I'm scrolling through videos of dogs wearing sunglasses, someone baking sourdough in Tasmania, and a heated debate about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

I don't even like pineapple.

I do sourdough.

The algorithms are frighteningly good.

They know I'll stop for a clever headline.

They know I'll watch a dashcam crash.

They know I'll click on an article that begins with, "Scientists have made a shocking discovery..."

Nine times out of ten, the shocking discovery is that mice prefer cheese. Thanks for that. Somewhere, thousands of computers are quietly building a digital version of me that probably knows me better than I know myself.

It knows when I'm awake. It knows what makes me laugh. It knows what annoys me. It probably knows I'm thinking about making another cup of coffee before I do.

The scary part isn't that artificial intelligence is becoming smarter.

It's that we're becoming more predictable.

We've trained ourselves to reach for our phones whenever life becomes even slightly... empty.

We've forgotten that boredom isn't actually a problem. It's where ideas come from. It's where imagination lives. It's where you notice the clouds, overhear funny conversations, remember something important, or simply enjoy five minutes of peace.

Instead, we've filled every tiny crack in our day with endless scrolling.

And somehow, despite having the entire world's knowledge in our pockets, most of us spend that precious time watching strangers organise their pantry.

Perhaps the phone doesn't know we're bored before we do. Perhaps we've simply forgotten what it feels like not to be entertained every waking second.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check something on my phone.

I've completely forgotten what it was.

Funerals, Potholes and Pokies

The alarm went off at 7.30 a.m.

I know that doesn't sound particularly early to most people, but these days it felt positively cruel. There was a time I'd be up before the birds without a second thought. Now, anything before eight requires negotiation.

Outside it was freezing. Rain was drizzling down, the sky was grey, and all I wanted to do was crawl back under the doona.

Instead, I climbed into the car with my brother and sister and headed for Bendigo for my aunt's funeral.

It's about two and a half hours on a good day.

Yesterday wasn't a good day.

The traffic crawled for what seemed like forever, and once we escaped that, we were introduced to another Victorian attraction... potholes.

Honestly, Jacinta Allen, perhaps instead of announcing another shiny new project, you could spend a few dollars filling the craters between Geelong and Bendigo. Some of those holes were big enough to have their own postcodes. I was half expecting to see road signs saying, "Welcome to Pothole. Population: Three Hubcaps."

Eventually we arrived.

Funerals are odd occasions. Nobody wants the reason for the gathering, yet it becomes a family reunion all the same.

We caught up with cousins, uncles, aunts and relatives we hadn't seen for years. Stories started flowing almost immediately. The older stories became funnier with every telling, and by the end of the afternoon we were all laughing about things that happened decades ago as though they'd happened last week.

My aunt made it to ninety-one. That's a pretty good innings. I think she'd have been pleased that there were more laughter than tears.

After the formalities, everyone headed across to the hall for afternoon tea; where we dumped half the people and headed off to the RSL.

A few drinks somehow became quite a few drinks, and before long someone suggested a visit to the pokies. As it turns out, my aunt must have been looking after me because I walked away two hundred dollars richer. 

Thank you, Aunty.

My sister and I, loath to stay any later and watch the chorus of the shouts for "whiskey!!" went home at about 9.30 where we staggered to bed.

This morning it was time to head home.

I travelled back with my brother and my two sisters, bouncing our way down the same pothole-infested road towards Geelong.

It gave us a few more hours to chat, laugh and remember.

Funny how funerals work.

You go to say goodbye to one person, but somehow end up reconnecting with everyone else. It was a long couple of days; but I'm glad I went!

Cold.

Wet.

A little emotional.

A little blurry by the end.

Alot of laughter and memories.

And I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The Sharks Haven't Changed... We Have.

Every time there's a shark attack, the headlines are almost identical. "Something must be done."

As though the sharks have all held a meeting somewhere off the coast and decided this is the year they're finally coming after us.

Here's the thing. The sharks haven't changed. Not one little bit.

They've been swimming around Australia's coastline for millions of years, doing exactly what sharks do. They hunt. They eat. They occasionally mistake people for lunch. It's hardly a new business model. We're the ones who've changed.

We've built cities along the coast. We surf before work. We paddleboard at sunrise. We kayak, jet ski, foil board and swim hundreds of metres offshore. Then we wonder why we occasionally bump into the locals.

Imagine if a shark started swimming laps in Kardinia Park during a Cats game. People would think it had completely lost its mind. Yet every summer we wander into the sharks' home, wearing black wetsuits that vaguely resemble seals, splashing around at dawn and dusk, then seem genuinely surprised when a curious shark turns up.

For years, our answer was simple. Catch the sharks. Cull the sharks. Blame the sharks.

But something interesting is happening.

Instead of trying to change the sharks, we're finally changing ourselves.

We're using drones, smarter surveillance and better technology to spot sharks before people swim into trouble. It seems obvious now, but it's a much more sensible approach than expecting a 400-million-year-old predator to suddenly read the warning signs.

The sharks are still doing exactly what they've always done.

We're just getting better at living alongside them.

Maybe that's the lesson.

Not everything dangerous exists because it's out to get us.

Sometimes the world is simply being the world.

The ocean isn't safe. It never promised to be. The mountains don't apologise for avalanches. Snakes don't issue press releases. Crocodiles don't put up warning signs outside their favourite river. Nature doesn't have a personal grudge against us. It just doesn't know we're the main characters in our own story.

Perhaps that's why I like the idea of using technology to help us rather than trying to punish nature for behaving naturally.

The sharks haven't declared war on humans.

They didn't change.

We did.

And perhaps that's exactly how it should be.