← 2023 July 2023
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š·š®š¹ Siena, Tuscany
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For an interesting NASA and Apple-related fall down a rabbit hole, start with the origin of the name of "The Whole Earth Catalog" in 1966, skip forward to 1972 when a whole earth photo was made.
Then take a turn to one of Steve Jobs' favourite sayings "Stay hungry stay foolish" which he quoted in 2005 at Stanford in his famous commencement speech.
Ad then wrap back around to how the whole earth image as an iPhone wallpaper came to be.
Welcome to my brain, where I just think about this stuff.
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Tuscany for a week or so
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Look, all I want to do with my life is make enough money so I can afford to buy Yahoo! which owns AOL which owns Netscape so I can once more have a web browser that has an animated N in the top right again.
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Shane Parrish on fs.blog with, Hanlonās Razor: Not Everyone is Out to Get You, is such an encouraging read today. I was only thinking about how we more often than not think that everyone is looking at us as I was on a beach in Puglia yesterday considering very quickly stripping out of my swimmers into dry pants. I almost did until Britt suggested that everyone would see me. I still wonder whether they would have, and I think not. Most people don't notice me, don't see me, and don't know me. Even less read this blog.
What is Hanlon's Razor you may ask?
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect.
The fs.blog article stretches the razor out to some real world artefacts:
The media:
Modern media treats outrage as a profitable commodity. This often takes the form of articles which often attribute to malice that which could be easily be explained by incompetence or ignorance.
Not everyone is out to get you.
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Years from now the people of Puglia will still talk of the strange man who came from the land down under, where women glow and the men have takeaway American coffee with cold milk. I said, "Do you speak-a my language?" and they just smiled and gave me an espresso with a cold milk drink on the side.
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I reinstalled the Twitter app when X first appeared just so I could experience this firsthand, in the flesh
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11:27pm Italy time and I've been slogging away for hours at the stupidest CSS thing that changed in the most recent version of the Shopify code. Felt good to feel like it was 1999 and I was a web developer again.
Any how, sugargathered.com is now open for business on Shopify, I've just spent the last (far too many months) amount of time moving it from Squarespace and implementing lots of cool things for my friends who run it.
If you want some donuts delivered to, or at an event on, the Gold Coast, I can recommend a great website.
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A MacBook with a turntable instead of a keyboard? Shut up and take my money, DJ.
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ABC Radio National's Andrew West interviewing Ian Buruma on in The religious and spiritual ethics of wokeness:
It's when a movement to improve certain social conditions, whether it's about race, gender, or whatever else, turns from an active effort into a rigid ideology, then you have a problem.
Ian originally wrote about wokeness in Harpers Magazine:
Writing about āWokeā has at least two pitfalls. One is that any criticism of its excesses provokes accusations of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or white supremacy. The other problem is the word itself, which has been a term of abuse employed by the far right, a battle cry for the progressive left, and an embarrassment to many liberals.
Looking forward to a future where being woke is a clearer idea and status. I'm sick of wondering if I'm a sheeple or a wolk folk, and by who's definition.
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Update on the book writing: I wrote a lot and I thought it was ok, I ran it past some friends and it wasn't as good as I thought, and on further reflection it was worse.
Then I read this in Stephen King's On Writing:
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
So I'm currently reading a lot. I used to read a bit, now I'm reading a lot.
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A photographer at the water park we were just at asked a family to say "Mozzarella" because I guess formaggio doesn't make a smile?
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In Western Australia yesterday
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Amanda Holpuch in the New York Times in June 2023:
South Koreans became a year or two younger on Wednesday after a law standardizing the way the government counts age took effect. There are three common ways to count age in South Korea, but the government has changed its civil code to recognise one: starting from zero on a personās date of birth and adding a year at each birthday. This is the age-counting method used most often around the world, but it is a departure from the countryās most popular method, often called āKorean age.ā Under that system, a person is considered 1 year old at birth, and a year is added to their age each Jan. 1. This meant that an infant born on Dec. 31 was considered 2 years old the next day.
Every extra square metre I experience on this planet I find new and wild ways that humans have figured out how to exist. Korean Age isn't the weirdest, but it's up there.
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The deeper I traverse into life on Planet Earth, into fatherhood, business, weddings, photography, and friendship I am ever further interested in art, making art, and making great art.
So Matt Ruby's deviation from his normal comedic quick wit and observation Substack into this interesting read on George Michael, his coming out, connecting Freedom with Wham and his later Freedom '90, captured all of my attention today.
This whole read was just really interesting.
Sometimes the clothes, indeed, do not make the man
Michael couldnāt handle the combo of massive success and mockery. He did everything he could to make us love him, yet we still didnāt respect him. He wanted us to admire his mind, but we just wanted to stare at his butt. And that set the table for his cri de coeur: āFreedom ā90.ā
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Uluį¹u, that beautiful monolith that captures the very essence of Australia. It's my favourite place in Australia. This iconic natural wonder is far more than an awe-inspiring spectacle - it represents the rich tapestry of indigenous heritage and gathering for ceremony.
Uluį¹u is intrinsically linked with the indigenous Anangu people, serving as an embodiment of their Tjukurpa - a term that captures the moral laws, spirituality, and existence of these people. Uluį¹u's formation stems from a time of ancestral beings, the Dreamtime, whose stories are etched across its vast surface in the form of petroglyphs.
For countless generations, Uluį¹u has been a significant ceremonial site, bearing witness to rites of passage and important celebrations. This land, imprinted with the songs and dances of the Anangu, has been a part of their life's tapestry, from birth to death and every joy and hardship in between.
Now, imagine breathing your marriage into life here - a site resonating with tales of love, life, and dreams, where the deep-red soil has observed centuries of human connection. A marriage ceremony at Uluį¹u represents a union not only between two individuals but also a communion with our shared human legacy and the ancient rhythms of this remarkable landscape.
As a wedding celebrant, my commitment at Uluį¹u is to ensure that your ceremony encapsulates your story while honouring the deep-seated heritage there. In doing so, we pay tribute to the traditional custodians of this land.
Joining the long line of stories woven into this sacred land, adding our mark to the generations of human experiences that Uluį¹u has borne witness to.
Photo by Heart and Colour from Steph & Kieran's elopement with The Elopement Collective.
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Reed Albergotti in Semafor Technology:
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and the navigation company TomTom released a free mapping dataset in a bid to compete with Google Maps and Apple Maps. Developers can use the data, which includes 59 million places of interest, to create their own navigation products.
If a powerfully simple mapping system like What3Words can't gain traction in a decade, I don't think TomTom can get a foot up by giving it away.
I am curious where this leaves Bing Maps though.
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Keith Richards, April 1962:
Mick (Jagger) is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don't mean maybe.
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I've been having problems for years where my iPhone would have no space left, yet seemingly actually have space left. I've always felt like it was an iCloud photos library problem. So I finally downloaded originals to my Mac and I am now convinced Photos is the problem.
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š·š®š¹šš¼ Luna looking like she's not having fun in the water when she's truly having a ball.
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The English, said Sir John Fortescue (c. 1470), "drink no water, unless at certain times upon religious score, or by way of doing penance.", looking at reconstructions of beer consumption from the middle ages to the pre-industrial era this was only a slight exaggeration. When estimating consumption from the amount of beer provided to soldiers, convicts, and workers or reconstructing consumption from tax revenues on beer we see that the average person consumed about a liter of beer a day, this is around four times as much as consumption in modern beer-drinking countries.
Better times, ya know
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Do I get my eye scanned by Worldcoin when Iām in Paris in two weeks or do I just share my genitalia size here in public instead?
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The ATO is cool with scammers ripping off $557m in MyGov identity fraud. A whopping $557m has been stolen off the ATO and people entitled to a tax refund by scammers in the last two years.
If the Aussie Tax Office is ok losing half a billion dollars, I've just realised that I have spent about that on uniform laundry last year.
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Matt Mullenweg on Apple and 1.0 products back in 2010:
Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. Heās such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise! I like Apple for the opposite reason: theyāre not afraid of getting a rudimentary 1.0 out into the world.
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This has rocked my day. Re is its own word. Itās not short for regarding.
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Imagine being the butt of this line in a news report "The launch of the eye-scanning cryptocurrency project Worldcoin" and you're also the guy standing behind the main brand name related to a technology the world is shit scared of, and just thinking everything is fine.
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Matt Levine on "Leon Smuk", from X:
I guess my question is, what was he paying for? Musk didnāt want Twitter for its employees (whom he fired) or its code (which he trashes regularly) or its brand (which he abandoned) or its most dedicated users (whom he is working to drive away); he just wanted an entirely different Twitter-like service. Surely he could have built that for less than $44 billion? Mark Zuckerberg did!
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I'm looking for an erratic egotistical billionaire to trust my savings and family's future to, if you can recommend anyone, slip into my DMs
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š·š®š¹ Our last Monday in Puglia
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š After backing and reading Renai Le Mayās The Frustrated State it felt like Australian governments had completed, achieved the highest level of information technology incompetence. COVID proved me so very wrong, but then today Anthony Agius writes in The Sizzle:
Services Australia has cancelled a project to create a calculator for Centrelink entitlements, after spending $191m on it over 3 years. Incredible incompetency for such a basic thing the government needs.
How many millions of dollars can the Australian government flush until we actually get real upset?
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When people talk about how the 80s were better I want to remind them that there was a character on TV whose name was Gordon Shumway, called himself Gordon Shumway, but everyone called him ALF because audiences and cast stupidly needed the reminder that the alien looking dude was an alien life form.
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This is terrible branding, design, and UX. How am I going to remember where to go to be an insufferable prick now?
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Michael Bierut:
No one will remember that it was on time, everyone will remember that it was bad.
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Starting to feel a little bit alone over here in Italy. Trying to get some Aussie work done and it looks like Telstra cuts you off from WiFi calling after your SIM card hasn't been on an Australian Telstra tower for seven months. Google Fi was three months.
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A birds eye view of Martina Franca, in southern Puglia, where we've been hanging out this month.
In these photos, happening at the same time, is a funeral procession, a dance contest, and an opera, amongst whatever else the 49,000 residents are getting up to.
There's also two 360 photos of Martina Franca in this embed, a higher and lower shot, look for the hotspots when you're scrolling around.
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I've just finished reading Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P. W. Singer, recommended by my favourite Cybersecurity Guard, @qldnick š
It was a compelling and enjoyable read, and honestly, a refreshingly human conclusion that somewhat settles its disturbing and frightening chorus of a society a few years ahead of where we are today struggling with the effects of advancing technology.
Never go into battle with a bot you canāt trust and never trust a bot you donāt know how to snuff out.
The largest truth in this fictional read is that fear always takes the wheel, especially for those who have apparently been listening to the guy who said not to fear.
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This is Luna, pitching you her idea for her new TV show. If you are a TV producer, Luna would like to sit down and talk about you buying the rights to her show.
Please, no tyre-kickers.
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š·š®š¹š Fifteen of Monopoliās best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday
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š·š®š¹šļø Torre Canne, Puglia
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One day we'll have to explain to our grandkids that we all dressed daggy now because of Elon Musk.
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Big news crew, new gender droppin
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Doing the right thing is always the right thing
If you're interested in learning more about Tony Bennett's activism, take a look at this story from NBC, which covers his civil rights work. Bennett walked at Selma beside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., having been invited by the late, great Harry Belafonte.
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āŖļø I did it, I finally did it. I crucified the sun.
... and other photos from the sunset over Monopoli, Puglia, this afternoon š·šš®š¹
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This might be a silly question for an old nerd to ask, but for those that know the answer, why is the book he famously write in prison, 'The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick', not really listed as a book by him on his website etc? Also, the only eBook version I can find is on Kindle. Why?!
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Derek Sivers in The past is not true:
Aim a laser pointer at the moon, then move your hand the tiniest bit, and itāll move a thousand miles at the other end. The tiniest misunderstanding long ago, amplified through time, leads to piles of misunderstandings in the present. We think of the past like itās a physical fact - like itās real. But the past is what we call our memory and stories about it. Imperfect memories, and stories built on one interpretation of incomplete information. Thatās āthe pastā.
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No matter how hard they try, the modern web can't escape Wordpress.
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š·š®š¹šļø Family day at the beach at Cala Maka. The beach is apparently/allegedly called Torre Canne Nord Prima della Casa Grigia, which translated from Italian means, North Canne Tower Before the Gray House, which is the most romantic beach name I've ever read.
Good luck ever naming a beach better than that.
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I shared these words from Craig Mod a year ago today. But since then we made the choice to uproot our life in Australia, move to Mexico, then leave Mexico, travel around the USA and Europe for a while, and come home to Australia in a month's time.
I can guarantee I'm coming home changed, but like Craig, I'm also more confused than ever about why some people travel. I mean no judgement towards any of you, but I've been in Italy for a month now and it seems such a waste to leave in a few weeks. Even considering my feeling that I've barely seen or experienced anything, I still have a deeply resonating feeling that I'm selfishly taking in the culture here, and to do what with it? Just to give the girls a childhood photo album that was cooler than mine?
The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, ābetterā version of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. Iāve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, uncurious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind-controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion. An eminently photogenic set of torii in Kyoto.
Regardless of my, and Craig's, trepidations of travel being an unjustified expense or impact, I'm forever changed by 2020-2022's travel-related traumas and 2023's travel adventure.
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I think this would be an awesome idea: a mashup of a reddit-like voting system with events calendar and geotagging plus some Atlas Obscura.
Basically a ācool things near me and/or happening near me soonā web app.
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Will the 2026 Commonwealth Games, originally supposed to be in Victoria, Australia, be the first ones to test the "Vancouver should be the permanent Olympic Games city" that Jonathan Fischer reignited seven years ago in Slate, of course but for the Olympic's little sibling, the Comm' Games:
Thatās why the Olympics should relocate to a city that wonāt just relieve the rest of the world of hosting duties for the Summer Games but of the Winter Games, too. It would have to be a place with the right climate. It would have to be a place that could afford it. It should possess something of an international flavour. It should have a proven track record. It should be located in a democratic country but not a hegemonic one. It should be Vancouver.
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š·š®š¹ 40 degrees celsius today in Martina Franca, but the second you step into the shade the temperature drops about fifteen of those bad boy degrees.
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Thought I would check on the two-year-old before going to bed ...
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A Declaration of the Interdependence of Cyberspace:
Closed Fiefdoms of the platform world, you weary giants of stocks and small talk, I come from the Pluriverse, the new home of the Heart. On behalf of the future, I invite you to join us.
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Apparently, it's wise to let people know you have things available if you indeed do have things available ... which I have neglected to do about my piece "South o' Talle" being licensed to Priints in London. It looks great on walls if you have any, any walls that is.
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I really like the tiny awards
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Much gratitude to @Mtt for designing a really nice and extremely useful Micro.Blog theme in Tiny Theme. I woke up this morning with a blog refresh on my mind, and the theme is great + he's been so helpful! In addition, thanks to @vincent for Tinylytics bringing the stats and click-kudos to my blog.
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I feel like not a day goes by that I donāt witness an even more Italian thing than I had witnessed previously. Todayās most Italian thing Iāve ever witnessed is an Italian driver beeping at a parked Italian ambulance to get out of the way as the medics attend to someone.
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Itās always easy to differentiate Italians and tourists on the streets of Puglia. Italians are in the street yelling at each other, tourists are in the streets scrolling.
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š·š®š¹ Alberobello, Puglia
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Looks like Canon is doing five blades
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Aliens have come to Australia. When they ask for our leader, who do we call? Chuck, Albo, Sandilands, or Murdoch?
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š·š®š¹ Polignano a Mare, Puglia
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Wild times back in the forties
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Diver
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Swimming in the ocean and in ocean caves with your four year old is a workout right?
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This week ahead sees the Australian celebrancy movement celebrate its 50th anniversary.
50 years ago 0% of Australian weddings were lead by a civil celebrant, today over 80% are. And the entire movement has driven the Australian wedding industry forward to a point where we lead the worldās wedding industry in product, service, brand, professionalism, and creativity.
For a movement thatās grown from Canberra to the world, thank you Lionel Murphy, Lois DāArcy, and my celebrant colleagues for making a way for me to make a job that takes me aroundd the world.
Read my whole article on the Celebrant Institute website.
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I sure hope these peeps who make somewhere between $150,000 USD to multiple millions a year are going to be financially ok through this strike.
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If I can be really frank, does anyone else āhave parentsā but honestly really doesnāt have parents relationally/socially/spiritually and when you have a down moment in life you just feel super alone? Or is this just adulthood? Or do other relational orphans just develop thicker skin?
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Italian kids get way more realistic puzzles than Aussie kids
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The most terrifying thing Iāve seen in Italy so far was ten Italian youths aged around 12 years old loudly chanting āgay!ā and aggressively geaturing in a way that was a little bit too familiar for this Sarina High School alumni, taunting this young lad who was just laughing in their face!
Heās either gay and joyfully proud, or not gay and impervious to the bullying that brought earlier generations to their knees.
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My favourite/least-favourite thing to do when travelling Italy is go to these million year old classical Italian osterias (restaurants) run by the villageās most heralded humans, and ask for takeaway.
The first reaction from the staff is a blank look on their face, as if Iāve just asked them to murder the weakest member of the wait staff.
The second thing they do is ask permission from someone in a back room. I assume itās the pope.
The third is agree then go searching for takeaway boxes or dishes. Iāve seen them run across the road and get some.
Finally, after all this Iāll ask for a glass of vino āwhile I waitā and the same thing happens every time. The young wait staff member comes back and explains that they canāt do takeaway glasses of wine.
I just wish I could explain to them that weāre dispassionate about disciplining our two and four year olds in restaurants and the worldās just a nicer place if we takeaway.
But thanks to the magic of Apple Translate and hand gestures we get there in the end.
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Does anyone else have weird iPhone storage glitches? I've had this problem for the last maybe 4-5 years where my iPhone doesn't actually know how much storage it has. I've been on a 256GB iPhone for a while now, and Apple Store staff have asked me to backup and restore, I've even started on new installs recently.
The only thing that normally fixes it is doing a backup to my Mac.
My gut feeling tells me that there was a time maybe 4-5 years ago where I was loading in RAW images from my camera into iCloud Photo Library and editing with RAW Power and I reckon that they're stuck in the iCloud/phone storage jungle.
My Mac's Photos library also has this weird thing where it picks 1 or 2 photos that it allegedly cannot upload to the cloud, yet it actually originally got that photo from the cloud (it was uploaded on my phone), and the photo is still in the cloud.
I'm semi-tempted to burn this 20-year-old .mac/MobileMe/iCloud account to the ground, export everything, and start again. It feels like there's always something small that could be buggy happening ... or is that just how iCloud feels for everyone?
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The most fascinating, whilst also overwhelming, experience in travel, especially when you undertake it for more than a weekend is 'noticing'.
Almost every time I notice something I think about what Steve Jobs once said:
"When you are a stranger in a place, you notice things that you rapidly stop noticing when you become familiar."
I sincerely love being a stranger. I think that's a common thread in my life, that when I become too known I feel uncomfortable. I feel very comfortable being a stranger in a strange place and rather too uncomfortable being at home.
I hope I can give my kids the upbringing that would help them feel the complete opposite, but still curious about the world, still desiring to be strangers in a strange place, noticing.
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I think I just accidentally haggled with a vendor in an Italian street market. I thought the fruit cost less than five euros, I gave him five euro., he looked at me and giggled, winked, and points his finger at me and took the money and gave me no change. Is that what haggling is? Iām good at life.
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When I first went into self-employment over a decade ago now I set up templates for common or transactional emails and I was always aware that I didnāt want an email not from me, yet from me, to not sound like I had sat down and written the letter.
So I used to write the automated emails from our cat, Stevie.
Stevie is no longer with us, her liver went south, but she lives on as of this week. Iāve replaced all of our automated emails with ChatGPT-generated emails and yet messages written by Stevie AI. Seeing what ChatGPT/Stevie is writing is amazing and hilarious and really good.
Consider that my teaser to enquire with me for your wedding, that a cat will send you emails.
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You've heard the phrase "Content is King", coined by Sumner Redstone - the old rich white person behind CBS, Viacom, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central etc who passed in 2020 - but Bill Gates popularised the idea for the internet back in January of 1996. It's so beautiful and odd to read this essay 27 years on.
But to be successful online, a magazine canāt just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isnāt enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.
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15 years of the Apple App Store and my first purchases are realllll nerdy
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Iāve been featured in all the great newspapers around the world, the New York Times was one of the coolest. But none felt as good as having one of my photos printed six years ago in the newspaper I read as a young adult, the newspaper I got it earliest jobs from by reading the classifieds.
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Why the rush to 5G?
On a per user basis, a 5G network is cheaper to operate than a 4G one. The technology is easier to maintain and more reliable. Itās not sexy. Thatās something that is hard to sell to consumers, but makes a huge difference to telcos. Thereās much more to this. The additional capacity may not be a pressing matter in New Zealand right now, but in time there will be more connections and 5G gives carriers headroom to cope with future demand. There may be future apps that can use the speed.
Did you notice the 5G mobile revolution? billbennett.co.nz
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Jiddu Krishnamurti:
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
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āFor everything there is a place but that of wonders is just a little more hiddenā¦ā
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š·š®š¹ We went for a drive to the little village of Ostuni today and unknowingly stumbled upon a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show. We didnāt stick around to watch the beautiful people be beautiful, but we saw the rich people trying to get into the town we were leaving.
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š·š®š¹ Sunday frames from Martina Franca, Puglia, Italy
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Threads, compared to Mastodon and BlueSky, is the difference between an idea and a product.
When Steve Jobs saw the graphical user interface with a mouse at PARC, it was an idea. Apple made it a product.
Mastodon and Bluesky are powerful and beautiful ideologies. Threads is a good product.
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Apple Photos face detection software needs a "tell me the date and location of that photo" button when asking which of your daughters it is if the photo is of an infant.
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Programmed a Zapier zap to get ChatGPT to reply to my website wedding enquiries with an email and a text message in the form of our deceased cat reincarnated as AI. My AI assistant refers to me as "Joshy".
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Pretty much me
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Can I share a weird thing that has haunted me for over a decade now? Yoko Ono followed me on Twitter 10 years ago and I forgot to follow her back. Has it been too long?
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PJ Vogt's new podcast helps me feel better about my deep desire to drink coffee mid-flight. Do you drink airline coffee?
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One of my great loves in this world is the format and medium of audio storytelling. First radio, then podcasting, it's one of the most beautiful ways to tell a story.
So it's pretty cool to wish the modern medium of podcasting a 20th birthday this weekend. Thank you to @podnews for the writeup.
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The girls say theyāll catch us dinner tonight. Iām googling pizzerias.
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I think about the Malcolm Gladwell book āTalking to Strangersā every day
We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy.
Today Iām thinking about it in context to Threads by Instagram and how the hot takes are flying about how itās absolutely going to succeed or absolutely going to fail.
Make room for the nuanced, complex, enigmas.
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My day job is to stand in between people on their wedding day and make them smile then kiss. Itās not a bad gig tbh.
Yesterday in Puglia, Italy, with Casey and Rob.
Planned by The Elopement Collective and photographed by Pearce Brennan at Masseria Grieco in Ostuni.
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Cory Doctorow was on the ABC talking about enshittification and it was beautiful. Must listen audio/radio.
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Advice I read recently said "Social networks: choose two" and I can't drop the feeling that it's quite sage. In the overwhelm and the overbearing influx of social media content and the greater network of services there I've almost chosen zero instead of two, which isn't any better than the fifteen or so you can choose from today.
I feel like today I live in between the rock of exposure and engagement and the hard place of privacy. I've moved so far away from Google and Meta properties to avoid the leakage of private data and my contribution to their share price, and moved toward the open web, privacy-respecting social media, and I feel really good about it - but barely anyone else in my network cares. I'm still surprised when I see intelligent friends using Twitter as if it's the kind of bar people like us would show our faces.
Seeing the launch of Instagram/Meta's new Twitter doppelganger, Threads, is encouraging this week as the project lead, Adam Mosseri is seemingly committed to open-web philosophies:
āWeāre committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We werenāt able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but itās coming. If youāre wondering why this matters, hereās a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that.ā
Being open also enables you to "choose two."
Here's how I currently "social media" (Spoiler: this is more media and less social):
Anything I want to share with the world starts here on my micro.blog, which serves a few purposes.
- Firstly it shares my stories with my micro.blog community, and they're a great bunch of people. A good portion of them are people who - like me - backed Manton's Kickstarter for the whole idea, and the rest are people who went searching for a cool glass of water in the internet desert.
- Secondly, my micro blogs actually post to my own blog, which is hosted by micro.blog but if I ever took issue with the service, the fee, the community, the leadership, or whatever may happen - I can very easily take my content to my own hosting. I could in fact do that today and still remain part of the micro.blog community and use the micro.blog tools. This is the power and the beauty of the open web and decentralised internet services.
- Finally, micro.blog pushes my content out to a number of other social networks, with the number always growing. Linkedin, Twitter, Mastodon, Medium, and Bluesky, all social networks that I look active on because of micro.blog.
I've had broadcasting in my genes for twenty years so that model serves me well. I craft a story, tell the story, and it shares to a few places. Today I'll then get that story and also take it where micro.blog can't (because of lack of API), like Facebook, Instagram, and now Threads.
And on a regular day, that's where it stops. Opening those apps for anything other than broadcasting is such an overwhelming action. I've unfollowed thousands of people, but it's still too much.
But if I had to pick two today, I'd go where I get the most interaction, and that would be the Meta properties and micro.blog. Mastodon, Bluesky. T2, LinkedIn, and Twitter are all graveyards as far as community, for me at least.
I open all the apps on a daily basis and it's just so rare to feel seen or heard in there. I get more feedback and encouragement via emails from subscribers to my weekly blog email or text messages and conversations with people I love. You can actually publicly see how many people read my blog, and the odd post breaks out, but mostly it's a group of 10-15 people.
Maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be? Maybe we're not supposed to be on every single social network in existence? It's just a strange thing for me to come to terms with, the gradual decline from talking to thousands of people a day on the radio, and on stages, through to being on breakfast TV and reality TV, to just being a dad who gets 10 likes on his Facebook post and calls his wife to let her know he's going viral.
If you're interested in reading more about micro.blog and the wider open web movement, Manton Reece's book is great, or at least, will be great when he publishes it and takes it out of draft.
Long live Threads, maybe there's a chance for a second breath of Twitter-like-wind there.
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The shining light in the rubbish pile that is Twitter is the @HelpfulNotes service. There is so much misinformation out there, so many people so keen to share the metaphorical train crash that is the world that they don't even care if the train crash ever happened.
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Normalise back to work after a sabbatical photos
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First day back at work photos
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After being on sabbatical for almost seven months Iām creating a marriage ceremony today.
I donāt think Iāve ever had a break from my day job for this long, I might have fogrgotten what to do.
Any tips for a fresh wedding celebrant?
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šļø Tuesday at Spiaggia Lido Silvana, Puglia, Italy
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Happy America Day
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We've been in more Airbnb's this last year than most people, about 35 so far I think. Most hosts mention either in person, or in their review, how it's unique to travel with our kids (four and two) and how we don't ask much of them, like how this host mentioned out "autonomy".
Should we be more needy? Are we too Australian? Honestly, after driving three to five hours with kids the last thing we want to do is talk to an Airbnb host lol.
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Remember when we'd suffix names with 2000 to make them feel cool and modern?
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2023: when everything has to mean something.
Taylor Swift touring somewhere or not touring somewhere being a political move is wild. She's not playing Brisbane in Australia because it was too much on her schedule, work-wise, she's not a robot.
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If anyoneās forgotten their password recently I can pick you up a new one when this store opens later today
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Italian supermarkets: two aisles worth of pasta, but no rolled oats
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Sunday in Puglia
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Looking for fiction book recommendations. Give me the name and why you think I'll like it.
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Hey Siri, prepare an edit of the Richmond FC players singing So Long, Farewell to Elon Musk.
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New month, new locale. Hello, Martina Franca, Puglia.
