← 2023 January 2023

  • Don't believe everything AI tells you. This bio sounds right, but it's not. From what I understand I've never been in Vogue, The Knot, or Martha Vomit Stewart Weddings. I am not a founding member of the AFCC, and I've not been Sydney-based for over a decade. I also don't write my couple's vows.

  • Dan Shipper writes:

    "Honestly, I’m usually annoyed when something gets trendy"

    and I felt seen. So his article Permission to Be Excited About AI obviously spoke to me.

  • From Love Matters More by Jared Byas 📚

    "Social media encourages the myth that who we are is defined by the opinions we type. But the older I get, the less interested I am in how well people can script their beliefs in front of a computer and the more interested I am in how tenaciously they go about grinding out their moral existence. I’m impressed when someone can get up every single day, determined to be a better human being than he or she was yesterday. Typing out what we “stand for” is easy. But loving well isn’t. I am not down on typing out our opinions—clearly. I’m only down on thinking that typing in and of itself constitutes an ethical life. May we stop thinking that becoming the kind of person we want to be is as easy as typing “me too” at those we agree with and “stupid people” at those we don’t. That’s a distraction from the real work of being human. And I’m ready to work."

  • The duo behind Instagram - who sold for good coin and then left Instagram/Facebook in 2018 - have a new thing and it's right in my ballpark. Think TikTok's algorithmic feed but for text: artifact.news.

  • The many branches of the Fediverse by Per Axbom.

  • Do you know the most disappointing thing about the United States of America?

    That the entire narrative of and about the country is defined by a small handful of topics recycled so quickly that outsiders often don't even know which Police Officer killing, which mass shooting, which disappointing President, or which sexually abusive old white male you're all angry about this week. It's hard to keep up, and you need new stories. Not new fake stories so the rest of the world thinks you're cool again. You need new truths so the new stories just kinda flow pretty easily.

    Or be like Iceland. No-one ever hears about Iceland unless it's a photo of some cool landscape.

  • Luna just asked Britt, “will you ever kill me, mummy?” And honestly, at the age of four it’s impressive that she’s already assembling friends and enemies lists, and that I got an auto-invite to the friends list but her mother required some investigation first.

  • One Million Downloads on Unsplash

  • It might be 8yrs late, but you're finally getting my book: The Rebel's Guide To Getting Married is coming in 2023. It's a book about planning a wedding with intention and purpose, written by yours truly, Oz's most hated celebrant & I'm writing live on my wedding blog.

  • Every time Buzz Aldrin comes up in the news or conversation I think of this Rhys Darby standup piece from 15-odd years ago. Starts 2:30 in.

  • Current status: forgot to put coffee in the percolator.

  • Throwback to that time ten years ago when I had awesome not-grey hair

  • Judging by the many different recordings I'm hearing and also seeing pop up on the web of Rick Rubin doing the circuit to promote his new 📚 book, The Creative Act, he's much better in conversation than the written word. I'm reading the book and I'm struggling to stay tuned in.

  • 📚 The Art of Growing Up by John Marsden:

    "A friend of mine told the story of driving along a country road one day with her little son, when he remarked: ‘Look at the beautiful tree, Mummy.’ She replied: ‘Yes, it’s a manna gum.’ There was a long silence from the back seat, broken at last by her child asking: ‘So is there a name for everything, then?’"

  • Current status: horizontal at El Pescadero

  • E.B. White in Here Is New York:

    “New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.”

  • If you’re wondering how Starlink is going, at my local Todos Santos (Baja California Sur, Mexico) post office today there 16 new Starlink packages and they say that every day there’s “lots.”

  • Why is no-one talking about how most movies are just made up in people's brains?!

  • Sad. The person typing this has finally given up on the dream of eternal youth and is scaling back his dream of More Space to Default.

  • Bill Bishop on living in DC.

  • Popped up to say hi then went back down again

  • Hola

  • I’ve lived around the ocean my whole life and I’ve never seen the ocean as angry and ferocious as I have at Todos santos, Baja California Sur, this week.

  • In so many ways existing on earth has never been better with threat of war or famine never being lower for so many of us. But for 339 million people in 2023 things aren't so rosy. The New Humanitarian writes: Why these 10 humanitarian crises demand your attention now.

  • Currently reading: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin 📚

  • Rick Rubin is the guest on episode 649 of the Tim Ferris show and this is one of those podcasts you really want to listen to.

    "Look for what you notice that no-one else sees."

    Robert Henri's quote is quoted and man, this is sitting with me all day every day:

    "The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state that makes art inevitable"

    This is a good listen.

  • Somehow both our girls have learned to pose like this and I have no idea how, or why, or where it’s from.

  • Craig Hockenberry, of Icon Factory and Twitterific fame, unloads on Space Karen.

  • In 1978, neurologist Dr. James Austin proposed that there are 4 types of luck:

    (1) Blind Luck (2) Luck from Motion (3) Luck from Awareness (4) Luck from Uniqueness

    Sahil details them in this tweet thread.

  • Passport Photos is a very fun and cool photo series by Max Siedentopf.

  • Steve Jobs on how asking for help is a superpower:

    "I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett (founder of HP) when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act."

  • Polina Pompliano with 15 People on the Most Important Question They've Ever Been Asked.

    “Would you do this if you weren't being paid?”

  • I've never felt more inadequate and stupid as a person whilst reading this essay and list of recommendations for writing good English prose by David Bentley Hart.

  • My favourite fiction/not-really-not-fiction book of 2022 was Russian Sleeper Cell by Nathan Monk 📚

  • Reading Publishers Weekly top twenty-five bestseller list is something I'm finding depressing, not because of the content of the list, but the numbers. So few books are being read. Props to Colleen Hoover, someone I'd never heard of before now, for having eight books on that list, it sounds like romance still sells.

  • It's been twenty years since Bill Gates expressed his frustration at his own operating system and the team behind it on how hard it was to install Windows Movie Maker and honestly, computers are only slightly more useable today.

  • Ok then, photorapture it is

  • In every intellectual relationship there’s the person who recommends podcast episodes, and there’s the other person who doesn’t even listen to the recommended episodes.

    In my and Scott’s relationship, I’m the recommending party.

    But as is the fashion of the other person the two episodes of the one podcast that Scott recommended I listen this week, this is a banger.

    Hallelujah, an episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, is possibly one of the most thought provoking 30 minutes of my life.

    The single idea that at the point of release, the moment of deliverance, the second you ship this creative work, that it’s more than likely not done yet, terrifies me.

    We live a life today where I do a thing and it’s done and we move on.

    Contemplating that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah took the journey documented in this podcast, I’m going to sit with this for so long.

    Please listen to this, then message me and let me know what you thought.

  • The Home Owners Association is not going to be happy

  • 🏡 at El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico

  • I’m not going to lie, I don’t have to hug everyone I marry when I first see them at the ceremony, but I want to.

    Alani & Ethan #marriedbyjosh on the Gold Coast with the Elopement Collective

  • Luna asked me to play some fairy songs. So I search for such a thing in Apple Music.

  • Seth Godin in his post, The platform and the curator, on the difference between current platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and traditional platforms like radio, newspapers, and TV:

    “Platform leaders understood that their decision to promote something instead of everything was a key part of their job.”

  • Friday afternoon at Pescadero

  • My friend Jay has made a really beautiful documentary about being a digital nomad, remote working around the Arctic Circle.

    {{< youtube zt7BAKpTz14 >}}

  • Joe Mayall in There's No "Woke Capitalism." Only Capitalism:

    "Profit: By any means necessary."

    "Companies seek profit. Everything else is just a means to an end."

  • The spare tyre for our car sits up and under the body of the car, under the front seats. Myself and the tyre guy took quite a while to figure this all out.

  • Quick little shoutout for a new series of daily/weekly emails I've recently subscribed to and actually really like. The formatting in the email is really nice, as is the writing and content: Semafor.

  • Just between you and me most of the time when I’m alone and approach the car as the driver in the USA or Mexico I approach the passenger side accidentally so I still open the passenger door, pretend to look for something, then proceed to the driver’s side of the car.

  • Dataism, the newest religion on the block

  • Thirteen years ago I read this on Seth Godin’s blog and it’s sat with me every day since:

    “One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room ... another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.”

    All I want to in this life is make a difference. Nothing in me wants to make a noise.

  • My 2023 challenge is to get really good at modern search engine optimisation, which is pretty different to 2019's SEO. So I've got a new project using Superstash, and it's a celebrant directory. How original, Josh.

  • You look at this photo and think it's some kind of grand cathedral in Rome. It's a storage room in Ravello.

    Every week, sometimes every day, Britt and my inbox is filled with couples worrying about what happens if it rains, or if it's too hot, or if something something. All valid worries, but they don't stress us out too much because we always find a way. We'll always find a storage room on the Amalfi Coast that also just happens to be an epic location for your ceremony.

    That's what we do. We look for solutions, not problems.

    Any chimp can find a problem. We find a storage room, move all the things being stored, and then walk you into a sacred place where you can exchange vows intimately, in private, with joy and peace.

    This is Raimie and Kelly on the Amalfi Coast in Villa Cimbrone with the Elopement Collective and Joey & Jase.

  • 16 years ago today the way I viewed the world changed completely. I can still remember seeing that little lump of plastic and metal in Steve Jobs's hand, watching a video stream, and thinking that everything changed. Today that remains ever so.

    I believe that you can measure the meaning of something by imagining taking it away. What would life be like if we didn't have it? Like earlier today I mused to a friend that if a certain media property disappeared, no one would notice.

    Imagine a world without the iPhone. You might point to Android phones, but 16 years ago today the team developing Android 'started over' and despite the common argument that iPhone copies Android's leadership, on that day, Android took iPhone's lead.

    Even comparing the two, Android was just a software platform under development. iPhone was hardware and software. Not long after it became a software development platform and the world as we know it today changed completely. Services you take for granted were enabled that day.

    16 years is nothing special, but every year when this date rolls around, and the subsequent anniversaries, I reflect how years later we've not experienced a tectonic shift like that since.

    "Make something wonderful and put it out there." You sure did, Apple. You sure did.

  • When you elope in a far-away destination you’re choosing a very different vibe and moment than a domestic elopement. It firmly places your ceremony - the beginning of your marriage - in the middle of an adventure. Between customs, packing, flights, delays, transfers, language barriers, different foods and weather, it’s impossible to not revel in the moment as you take a deep breath of that fresh international air and exchange vows with me and the @elopementcollective in some epic location like Italy, Iceland, or anywhere in-between.

    I’m up for a European wedding adventure any day of the week, but in June and July 2024 I’ll be there with The Elopement Collective plus House of Lucie and Jason Corroto.

    More info available in my email my name at my last name dot co or withers.co/europe.

    This is me with Stuart and Chelsea outside of some epic villa in Tuscany, Italy, with Jason Lucas a few years ago. Epic trip.

  • I chose a Kindle Scribe

  • I have a long and beautiful history of catching up with friends in weird and wonderful places. I just had lunch with someone I’m pretty sure I met in the first month or so of my radio career, about 20 years ago, in a Mexican restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee.

  • The rubbish being pushed by Instagram Reels is astonishingly bad. Jacob Sweet unveils some of the nonsense in the New Yorker.

  • Currently reading: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker 📚

    I’m only two pages into this book and already I’m sensing something important. Good parenting isn’t the theatre most think it is. It’s in the substance, not the theatre.

  • Steve Jobs: The thinker and the doer

  • Elderly lady walking her dog with a Bluetooth speaker blaring Li’l Jon’s 2002 banger, Get Low. Stay cool, Nashville.

  • Dear the United States of America,

    I would like to submit my application to become your house's Speaker. I'm of the understanding than you do not currently have a speaker, and you are in need of a speaker. It just so happens that speaking is one of the few things on this planet that I am really good at.

    Attached is photographic evidence of me at to Kirsten and Todd's wedding speaking quite well, you will notice them as much as I speak really good, I also slide into the background of the story if the photographer uses the correct aperture.

    For references, please see my Google and Facebook page reviews, where I maintain an almost five star rating, with the exception of a few random spam accounts that have left me one star reviews without any reason.

    It is possible that me being an Australian currently residing in Mexico may be an issue, but for the next week, I am still in Tennessee. If you are willing to give me a green card, I am willing to speak at your house.

    I am also available for weddings, parties, anything.

    Yours sincerely, the next speaker of the United States of America, Josh "Married By Josh" Withers.

  • Tasted fine Kentucky Angel’s Envy bourbon with a Great Indiana Man™️

  • Roadtrip to meet an old friend for the first time

  • Naval in Don’t Rely on Credibility Stamps:

    "It’s a priesthood. You’re only allowed to say what the priests have approved, and you can only say that if you are a priest, and the priests get to decide who’s a priest."

  • My new favourite parable: "sleep late, catch a few fish"

  • Better times

  • This nugget from Cory Muscara is sitting well with my soul today: "We often need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves."

  • Kindle Oasis or a Kindle Scribe - which will be my new normal?

  • 🦇

  • 🐸

  • This bloke was just chilling but when he saw I had a camera he came and stood next to his sign as if he was at an animal trade show manning a booth

  • Monkey business

  • Live footage of me trying to find a better deal on insurance by comparing deals available on the market

  • Breaking news: not all flamingos are pink

  • My favourite Apple Watch feature is New Year’s Day

  • I've assembled a top 10 list of top 10 lists I'm paying attention to this year:

    1-10: .

  • Noah Smith in The internet wants to be fragmented:

    "Perhaps someday the human race will be ready to become one collective consciousness. But the experiment of the 2010s shows that this day is not today. Let the internet once more be an escape — a place where you can find your people and be happy. Let us learn to speak a thousand different languages once again. Let the Tower of Babel fall."

  • Neighbourhood fireworks > City provided fireworks

  • Water damage and damage electrical damage to the house were housesitting thanks to frozen water pipes over Christmas means we’re bringing in New Year’s Eve with CNN via MacBook. Hilariously the internet just died.

  • Vale 2022