Withers Without You

The Australian states in 2020/2021.

“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you”

Are you average?

Off to court today for the third couple who had booked us for an international ceremony wedding but would now prefer a refund over a reschedule.

This pandemic is a daily nightmare for us, but hey, we’re all this together, we can do it Queensland, so things will be ok eventually.

The fun thing is trying to convince future couples that our expenses have gone up so our prices have gone up.

Fuck covid.

“For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.”

– Physician, Dr. Larry Eisenberg

I just want you all to know that I did intermittent fasting four days this week and I’m still not skinny, so it clearly doesn’t work.

thank u, next.

“Various policies lumped together as “lockdowns” probably significantly decreased R (Josh: spread). Full-blown stay-at home orders were less important than targeted policies like school closures and banning large gatherings.”

Astral Codex Ten

“Many dismiss conspiracy theorists as a bunch of crazy people, or a bunch of stupid people, or a bunch of crazy stupid people. Yet in many ways the belief in a conspiracy theory is as American as apple pie, and like apple pie it comes in all kinds of varieties, and all kinds of normal people like to consume it.”

‘We are all conspiracy theorists’ on Big Think

The six causes of burnout are:

• Lack of control.
• Lack of reward.
• Absence of fairness.
• Lack of community.
• Conflict in values.
• Work overload.

I’m burned out reading that list of things that feel like I’m reading my gravestone.

”The core idea behind the Metaverse proposition is to create an immersive digital place that duplicates reality without physical constraints.”

Micaela Mantegna on the metaverse.

Steve Jobs in Japan

After the pandemic I’d like to start a comedy band called Pearlmite where we sing Australian parodies of Pearl Jam songs.

Our first song: Elderly Man Behind The Wheel Of A Landcruiser In The Right Hand Lane.

Billy Joel on his farewell tour

“I’ll have created a bond between me and the audience where I know they will never pay another nickel to see me again.”

– Vulture

Take me to Iceland … or if you can’t, let’s just look at Andre’s photos

“Coping by conspiracy”

It’s nice how things are precedented now. Remember back in 2020 when it was this whirlwind of unprecedented stuff, nowadays we hear that a state premier is warming up a new announcement and we put our cloth masks back in the washing machine ready to don again.

“Starting from zero can be a gift. If you don’t have much to begin with, you don’t have much to lose. You can be bold when you aren’t trying to protect something.”

• James Clear

Good news, Australia has twice as many cults as Arizona!

If Google was serious about organising the world’s information, the Lano and Woodley episode “Mother” would be on Youtube, but here I am describing the skit to a friend instead of sharing a link.

Honestly, is there anything more Australian than dropping in to see family while you’re on a work trip and claiming it as a travel expense?

I’ve decided to follow my dreams and become a nonfluencer. Please don’t follow me.

Good news: AirTag works Bad news: my bag is in a different airport to me

TF when you accidentally get the Covid-09 vaccine and only get 4G.

Remember when everyone’s method to cope with Covid was Tiger King, sourdough, and the Hamilton soundtrack?

Better times.

We, the people of Australia, have spent $6.7 million dollarydoos detaining the Murugappan family, instead of spending zero dollars and letting them earn a wage and pay tax.

We, Australians, decided this. That family, these 2 little girls, are there because we decided it was ok.

Conspiracy theory: The spicy cough was invented by Tourism Australia to stop Aussies from holidaying abroad.

We are a nation of believers. If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realising instead that life is elsewhere. But this would come at a cost—because to believe in politics also means believing we can, and probably should, be better.

– Shadi Hamid in The Atlantic

The hotel quarantine system is obviously not working, I say we move to a motel quarantine system where we lock people in highway motels in the Australian Outback for two weeks. Nothing like Free Foxtel and packets of two biscuits with instant coffee to ward off Covid.

Parenting hack: Let your kid join other families at the playground and eat their food. It’s money in your pocket.

“Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of grey. You realise that nothing is as clear and simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralysing.” - Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, via Bill Watterson.

flicks through his bible furiously trying to find the verse about content delivery networks (CDNs) going down meaning that this is the beginning of the end times

“(A recent) audience survey showed that the word podcast is becoming linked to the word interview. So here we are.”

I can’t say who said this, or which Oz network they work for, but for the love of God an interview is not a podcast.

Can words just mean something please?

As a geriatric millennial, I feel seen

All these years on I’m still no wiser as to what it is that the fox say.

Mare of Easttown spoiler: it was the adult female horse of Easttown.

Is this the year for editable iMessages?

It just occurred to me that I could personally profit off the Victorian lockdown, so here goes.

Please buy our beachside Gold Coast apartment at a good price, if it helps, we’ll call it CelebrantKeeper, now that JobKeeper is over but the lockdowns and travel restrictions aren’t.

Instead of calling it “the jab” what if they called it a “dad joke”? That way everyone would get it?

Police are now targeting people who lose all sense of time whilst ordering at a cafe and feel the need to share long stories with the uninterested barista.

If you’re curious how commissions and incentives shape the technology retail sector, JB HiFi at Robina doesn’t stock Apple TV units on the shelves, they’re “out the back”, because Apple’s sales incentives are less than all the other boxes which I guess make coin on tracking?

”Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing someone to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome."

– James Clear

Strangers really underestimate how much I want to receive a phone call.

Life is so busy, complex, and tiring right now, that the US government has confirmed that UFOs are a thing and everyone that finds out just shrugs and moves on.

Three fun wedding facts you probably didn’t know:

1. I’m a pretty awesome wedding celebrant
2. I could be your wedding celebrant
3. why are you still reading this instead of emailing [email protected]

My top three favourite songs about meeting your newborn child:

3. With Arms Wide Open - Creed
4. Closing Time - Semisonic
5. Think About Things - Daði Freyr

I just watched a retail worker wash her plastic gloved hands with hand sanitiser. Curve flattened!

For the first time in many years I took what I thought was common advice and wisdom and I’ve started using Mail.app on MacOS (Big Sur on Apple Silicon MBA). Three email accounts, one with 170,000 odd emails, another with 40,000 odd, and another with about 1000 emails. Mail.app is barely useable, so slow and it takes minutes to refresh when I change mailbox. Is this just Mail.app now or am I doing it wrong? Googling isn’t helping as there are so many bland articles on speeding up Mail.app. I’ve rebuilt the mailboxes, and I’ve even done the deleting index thing. Any ideas?

Your stripper name is the first 16 digits of your credit card number, then the month the card expires, and then the year, and then the three digits on the back lol.

We decided to sell our Covid-escape-beach-unit in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. If you’re currently looking to escape to a beachside apartment, I highly recommend it.

Why is it called a wedding tax when wedding vendors decide to not undercut each other, and instead focus on being profitable and sustainable?

Why are people in small businesses so afraid of making an profit, having a day off or even a holiday? Why is sustainability and profit demonised in our society?

Wedding planning pro tip: Choose a wedding vendor team, then a date, instead of spending your whole life trying to find a team available on your date.

If you inserted a MYST CD-ROM into your computer sometime in the early 90’s and found yourself entrenched in the wonder that was MYST, then this Soundcloud is going to do something to your nostalgia.

John Mulaney getting getting divorced is the kind of celebrity news that makes me want to take the week off and empty some ice cream tubs whilst crying.

“The big money is made not by exposing the truth but by papering it over or concealing it.”

– NewRepublic

Don’t forget that we’re all competing in a game where if we hit the right keys on the keyboard in the right order at the right time we win money and get donuts.

If you’ve ever wondered how weird you are, if you don’t eat the deceased at their own funeral, you’re not that weird.

“In many villages, when a person died, they would be cooked and consumed. It was an act of love and grief.”

via NPR.

Who would’ve ever imagined that the BBQ-lovin Covid guy was actually trying to buy the whole chain of Barbecue’s Galore stores!?

• Apollo Global MD contracts COVID-19 in Sydney

Just say that after the traumatic 14 months behind us, we were considering selling everything and travelling Australia in a caravan with a toddler and newborn and you had prescient advice, what exactly would that advice be?

An old friend of mine from like 20 years ago has released an album and I found out because someone had a typo in their email address which landed the newsletter intended for Paul Withers' into my old Hotmail. Serendipity 2.0?

Photos from inside my house identify as photos taken at houses down the street, from a GPS angle I understand this, but my iPhone knows my home address, and the wifi SSID I’m connected to overnight every night, surely we could bring that data together and say “if he’s on this wifi SSID, and GPS is weak or non-existent, maybe the actual photo and AirTag location is ‘home’”?

I am going to move my personal/non-wedding email account away from Hey. I don’t want to go back to GMail for privacy reasons, no to Outlook because of UX, and I don’t want to go back to Fastmail because it feels like the 90s over there. Any recommendations?

The one where Pete Townshend from The Who recorded an anti-smoking song while smoking cigarettes.

I’m sitting opposite a person in the Qantas Lounge who is eating so violently. Like she’s abusing her mouth with her fork of food. I can’t help but watch and I wish you could all experience this passive aggressive treatment of a cake hole.

You probably don’t know this about me, but the main reason I’m a happily married man and wedding celebrant, and not a professional footballer is so I don’t have to explain consensual threesomes to judges

App Tracking Transparency, ATT.

“I’m studying to become a lawyer for my friend’s upcoming court case” said no-one ever.

So apart from “because Joey from Friends did it” why are people spending thousands of dollars and more than a year of their life becoming a celebrant instead of hiring a professional?

Hey, guys who decide how comfortable Uber Comfort is, it’s not a Toyota Camry

Sarah and Michael’s awkward start to their wedding ceremony included a promo for the Gold 104.3 Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show

“This is lockdown’s near forbidden secret and terrible truth — that at the heart of grief, and midst mayhem, carnage and deep sadness, people do beautiful things.”

– Nick Cave

When I grow up I’m going to run a cafe and an AirBnb, both of which have functional and high speed wifi.

“I’m only posting about @ARationalFear so @DanIlic sends me a prize pack”

“Today we pay with both money and attention according to the direction of artists”

Non-Fungible Taylor Swift, on Stratechery

If you want to hate the world and Twitter at the same time paste “lang:en” in a Twitter search bar will give you live and direct access to the firehose of tweets that is the entirety of English speaking Twitter’s consciousness. I need to have a shower.

A link between childhood “screen time” and attention problems has failed to replicate in this study.

We evaluated 848 models, including logistic regression as per the original paper, plus linear regression and two forms of propensity score analysis. Only 166 models (19.6%) yielded a statistically significant relationship between early TV exposure and later attention problems, with most of these employing problematic analytic choices.

The funny thing is that I know that Luna’s mood changes when she has spent time in front of the TV, she’s less co-operative and less joyful, despite really enjoying TV, and strongly desiring it at various times.

So maybe TV as a child doesn’t affect their attention, but it does affect their sensibilities, in my humble opinion as a father of two.

‘Everyone can have their own reality’

Quitting QAnon: why it is so difficult to abandon a conspiracy theory

Very very few stories are worth telling in their infancy. Most require research, understanding, context, empathy, and nuance.

For example, what if a story about girls twerking on a navy ship in front of the Governor General was held onto for a a day and some research was done?

But we as a society have decided not to invest in that research. We complain if a news website needs us to pay a subscription, and we scream about defunding the ABC if they don’t say what we want.

So we end up with an angry story that’s not entirely true, based on the premise that girls shouldn’t dance on boats.

If you think about it, aren’t we all twerking seamen on the navy ship of our lives? Thanks for getting to the end of this, I really just wanted you to consider yourself as a twerking sailor.

Just imagine if somehow, if there was some way, we all had the power to not laugh at Australian indigenous girls dancing on a navy ship.

The problem isn’t with twerking, especially considering how misleading the ABC was with the story, the problem is with our insistence on finding problems with things that really aren’t problems.

We’re so angry.

Luna’s first phone/block of wood

Google “where does vanilla flavouring come from”

In 2014 the Prime Minister’s Office published this report noting that the statistical value of a human life was $4.2M in 2014 terms - which is more like $4.6M today.

I wonder how this factors into the equations around covid-19 reduction measures?

Whether the measures enacted over the last year are “within the budget” or if they “over spent”?

This is a 13,000 word essay most Australians won’t read, or even if they click through to it, they’ll find it “a bit long”, but it’s actually important, and will deeply affect you.

Defending The Indefensible: There’s No Case For Keeping A Justice System That Fails Half The Population

“A new generation of Gen Z investors are willing to take risks to counter a deck that may be stacked against them”

The death of HODL and the rise of the moon

Top three songs to listen to on your headphones whilst walking off an airplane through an airport:

3. Mr Brightside
4. Lose Yourself
5. Party in the USA

This list is final.

“The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them, but we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.”

— Jim Coudal

An author’s view of the next 25 years on earth, published in January 1997

Accidentally tested the water proof capabilities of the iPhone 12 Pro today. It survived a 10 minute pool swim without a hiccup.

This is a powerful read: How doctors die

Wearing your mask hanging off one ear is the 2021 version of kids riding their bike with their helmet hanging on the handlebar.

“I promise you that no-one is coming for your son’s head. The data is clear, the number of false accusations that stick is negligible. If your son does not cross the line, if he doesn’t teeter on the “edge of consent”, if he doesn’t misuse his power to control or belittle others, he will be just fine. But it’s not bad behaviour we should be getting out in front of, extinguishing potential fires. We should expect more of our boys. We should be expecting good behaviour, because when it comes down to it, we all want our men to grow up feeling powerful and strong, but in their values of equality, respect and dignity.”

– Zac Siedler, on the ABC

Nothing says you’re staying at a fancy hotel like naming it after Australia’s shiftiest bird then putting the word budget afterward.

Person next to me in the bottle shop finally chooses a carton of cider and I say “so that’s decider” and got nothing. So now I’m telling you.

When the time comes, I will 100% support mandatory vacations, those who don’t should be forced.

You think that after the last year I’d be able to spell qarantein without using spellcheck.

Really surprised the humble salute didn’t make a comeback in 2020. It’s better than an elbow bump, and far more socially distanced, in fact the mere gesture implies that you should take a step back.

“If cancel culture were real, Daryl Somers, who built a career and life on the back of a show where he did and said a lot of questionable things, would not feel comfortable publicly complaining about cancel culture. If cancel culture were real, Somers would not be giving an interview in a newspaper while doing press for his new job hosting a popular show on national television.” - The Age

Turns out that the Queensland Government just thought having five people together in a house at the same time was what they image a really awesome and fun and large party would be like if they ever got invited, just saying.

In a way, aren’t we all boats stuck in a Suez Canal called life?

1yr ago today Queensland closed its border to other states with Police manning that border. That day was the beginning of a year from hell for our family and talking to a friend yesterday I realised I haven’t even mourned the last year yet. That’ll be something nice for future Josh to deal with.

Have you been overseas in the past 14 days? Have you been in a Covid hotspot or been in contact with someone who has Covid? Do you have a fever, runny nose, or a cough? Have you felt like visiting a Bunnings, K-Mart, or a Thai restaurant recently? You may have Covid.

“I’m working in Epping, Epping is barely Melbourne, and I’m working with a group of engineers that don’t smoke!?” is literally a sentence spoken by a Collingwood supporter walking to the MCG through Richmond and I think that’ll be the most Melbourne thing I experience this trip.

If you’re wondering if airports have spent the downtime they’ve been gifted over the last year to make their coffee better, they haven’t.

If you’ve ever been disappointed, know that you’ve not been truly disappointed unless you have prepared food for a toddler to not eat despite telling you that they wanted that exact thing you just made, and you made it really well, am I raising a psychopath?!