← 2023 February 2023

  • Stephen King in On Writing:

    If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.

  • Debt by David Graeber:

    If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.

  • Hey, don’t be alarmed or anything but the President of Mexico, the head honcho, the big guy in charge, has tweeted that one of his engineers has taken a photo of an elf. Just another day south o’ the border.

  • I’ve just had my peak Mexican moment. I delivered a dad joke in Spanish and it was perfect.

    I’m at our local sushi restaurant ordering takeaway dinner and whilst waiting at the bar they offer me a margarita, and you don’t say no to a margarita in Baja.

    I finish it, and he gestured towards my empty glass to which I reply “esta roto” which means “it’s broken” whilst inspecting the bottom of my glass, implying that the drink must have fallen out of the bottom.

    He laughs, I laugh, I’m now a Mexican dad and can never leave.

  • If you want surf and snow in the same trip, I can definitely recommend Los Angeles today.

  • Drove past this park today and noticed something interesting on Google Maps at (33.6621623, -117.8775484).

    I wonder how many aircraft the Google Maps aerial photographers have captured?

  • Now I’ve just got to hope the people writing memos or sending emails regarding Bel’s Guide don’t stop me.

  • Do you think Carls Sr. is proud of his son?

  • This is good content, we should podcast about it.

  • Visited the Japanese mothership (aka Canon campus) in Los Angeles and asked them to clean my cameras and lenses.

  • Steve Jobs in 1984 spotting a Macintosh in the wild for the first time.

    I couldn’t begin to imagine the what he was feeling seeing a product he knew so intimately, that his team had worked on endlessly, to see from the street it just being used by someone in an office.

  • I tried but it turns out you can’t go Out before you go In

  • It’s so special to be in LA to watch the city fall to pieces with my own eyes.

  • ‘dat light + reflection

  • Los Angeles bound for a few days, thankfully it’s raining so we won’t stay long enough for it to make us soft.

  • Goldie, taking full advantage of the Shatner Seat

  • What a time to be alive

  • Pure second child energy.

    I’m going to start sneaking in to her room while she sleeps and bottling some of that excess second child energy and selling it to soldiers and personal trainers who need to get hyped up.

  • Hey everyone, make sure you update your … checks notes … Apple power cord …

  • Mexican Marines

  • Sunday // Playa Cerritos, BCS

  • Mark Twain's use of a typewriter. I wonder if AI-writing is today's typewriter?

  • Steven Pressfield on going deep:

    Everyone wants to succeed immediately and without pain or effort. Or they love to write books about how to write books, rather than actually writing a book that might actually be about something. Bad advice is everywhere. Build a following. Establish a platform. Learn how to scam the system. In other words, do all the surface stuff and none of the real work it takes to actually produce something of value. The disease of our times is that we live on the surface. We're like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep. Real work and real satisfaction come from the opposite of what the web provides. They come from going deep into something - the book you're writing, the album, the movie -and staying there for a long, long time.

  • What's the go with Mayor Humdinger? Is Foggy Bottom even a real township? Why does the Paw Patrol continue to rescue this evil man?

  • Tres es compañía (three frames of three humpback whales shot a few minutes ago in El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico)

  • Watched the sun set over the Pacific tonight as humpback whales came right up close to the shore so they could scratch their backs on the sand bars. What a time to be alive!

  • Wednesday frames

  • Whale watching in Baja

  • El Pescadero seafood stall

  • I heard you were into Jesus, so I got you some Jesus

  • For Britt’s 33rd birthday we went to CDMX, Mexico City, and painted the town pink.

    Pro Tip: if you’re ever asked what the largest city in North America is, it’s not in the USA. It’s Mexico City.

  • To celebrate Britt’s birthday we took a walking food tour of Coyoacán in Mexico City with Sabores Mexico Food Tours. 10 points to our guide, Enya, for an excellent tour and secretly arranging a little birthday treat for Britt.

  • Zoológico de Chapultepec // Mexico City’s free zoo

  • Freddie deBoer on SubStack:

    "The 90s were better. They just were. I’m sorry, but it’s science."

  • In a world consumed by the idea of creating content, Burt Bacharach created the most evergreen content we've seen in recent times: "what the world needs now is love, sweet love."

  • The Rebel's Guide to Getting Married

  • I'm unsure how many more Om Malik blog posts I can read before I trade in my Canon EOS R5 for a Leica. Please stop taunting me, @Onmyom@mstdn.social :)

  • Every day I experience another “Mexico moment” and I am hesitant to share them publicly because I don’t want to ruin things here, nor be a stupid gringo. But today was great.

    We bought a car back in October but it hasn’t been registered to me yet because to register a car you need a drivers license and to get a drivers license you need residency plus proof of address and a blood test.

    Proof of residence is hard because addresses aren’t really a thing in regional Mexico so you use electricity bills and most electricity bills are in the name of a corporation because individuals can’t own properties.

    So I find out last week I can get a letter of residence instead of using an electricity bill.

    It takes me like four different government offices to find the right person in a back office of an office that is full of young people talking and laughing and this lady agrees to help. We’re talking the back office of the back office of a building without a sign near the building I thought I had to go to.

    I need this important letter and she drafts it up, spells my name wrong, we correct it, and then the big boss of the department needs to sign it. By big boss I mean “President of the Municipality”.

    He’s busy talking to important people.

    She sits there for like three minutes clearly thinking it all through and then she just forges his signature, smiles at me, and hands me the letter.

    I get a blood test from a local doctor and I’m now a licensed Mexican driver.

    Policy and procedure means everything and nothing over here.

  • Wednesday in Todos Santos

  • Wednesday in El Pescadero

  • If Marie Kondo can give up on having a tidy house you can give up on a whole range of crap. Celebrate quitting, cancelling and giving up. Not everything or everyone needs to be driven to the edge of sanity.

  • This is on the menu as Fresh Water or Agua Fresco.

    Sometime before now Mexicans weren’t taking to actual water that was fresh and without watermelon straws, so smart boffins in Mexico City mixed in some fruit and sweetener, and hey presto, fresh waters and an obesity problem!

  • Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.:

    "We aren’t aware that the majority of what we think we see is actually our brain filling in the gaps."

  • Nick Cave:

    “Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being, you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have the potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You are anything but impotent, you are, in fact, exquisitely and frighteningly dynamic, as are we all, and with all respect, you have an obligation to stand up and take responsibility for that potential. It is your most ordinary and urgent duty.”

  • A smart Australian government would’ve sorted their colonising the indigenous population problems out before the Internet.

  • UnClobber by Colby Martin 📚

    “In the essentials, unity; in the nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

  • From Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull 📚

    “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

  • D.H. Lawrence:

    “the world fears a new experience more than anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences.”

  • Anthony shared this signed cover art in today's edition of The Sizzle and very few images can conjure up so much nostalgia. I still remember visiting the shareware kiosk (computer in a box) at Video Ezy and downloading the shareware version of Doom onto two 3.5" floppy disks.

  • In You're a Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass) by Mike McHargue 📚:

    "You are a miracle because 86 billion neurons in your brain form into thousands of structures and networks, built from a map created over billions of years to understand the world you live in. But sometimes, you are a pain in your ass because all these networks are running a playbook that’s been around a lot longer than you have. The cells in your body have survived through the eons by eating every delicious calorie they come across, allowing fear to make them run, and using anger to make them fight for their lives."

  • Spotting a scam email

  • The most Mexican thing I've seen yet is a guy who has a table to sell so he's just carried it around the neighbourhood singing out if anyone wants to buy a table. Take that, Zuckerberg, and your stupid Marketplace.