As the coronavirus threat began to rise in late February, Caves Beach resident Daniel Borg was mowing his lawn.
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He was thinking about podcaster Sam Harris, a popular philosopher and neuroscientist, who was ahead of the game.
Harris realised the threat of the coronavirus while most people were looking at the developing situation in China with an eerie sense of disconnection.
"Sam Harris was saying it would be a war," Daniel said.
Daniel's mind turned to World War II propaganda posters he studied at university. He knew the images used for the posters were no longer under copyright.
They included a US Army enlistment call to arms from Uncle Sam with the phrase "I Want You" and an image used to boost female worker morale during wartime that used the phrase "We Can Do It".
Daniel used slogans like "Wash Your Hands" and "Stay At Home" and added advice from the federal health department.
He sent free tailored posters to his clients through his company, Psyborg. The gesture was reciprocated when clients began contracting him to do paid work.
He also created a website, paid tribute to the original wartime artists and gave the new coronavirus-themed images away for free for use as posters. They're available at fightcoronaposters.com.
Power of Podcasting
Daniel Borg is a fan of the Joe Rogan podcast, which Spotify recently bought for about $140 million - a deal considered a game-changer in the sector.
In the age of short attention spans and scrolling quickly through social media feeds, podcasts are doing something different.
Their long-form, conversational style - Rogan's popular podcasts run for two to three hours - sometimes create fresh and compelling authenticity.
Rogan and Sam Harris inspired Daniel to create his own podcast, titled Untethered.
"It's about speaking to real people and real concepts - getting real and raw.
"I like the opportunity to have deeper conversations that you wouldn't normally have. No one normally sets aside a couple of hours out of their day just to talk.
"In my podcast, I'm talking to clients, not really just the work we've done together but them as people and their businesses."
A Glancing Blow
This from the Bureau of Meteorology's Space Weather Services: "A glancing blow from a coronal mass ejection is possible within the next 48 hours".
Let us translate: A solar flare has ejected from the sun, releasing gigantic amounts of plasma and charged particles that could deliver "a glancing blow" to Earth's magnetic field. This means the aurora australis, also known as the southern lights, might be visible in the night sky - mainly in southern states. It is apparently possible to see the aurora from mountainous parts of the Hunter, but you'd have to be lucky.
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