It’s cute to see New South Wales and Victoria playing a game of State Of Origin. It’d just be sad to see NSW lose at the Covid football version tho.
With many of us grounded, has anyone had a play of PC Globe to try and scratch that travel itch? You might need to upgrade to a 486 to run it well.
“Dadda, not Josh” is Luna’s new way of introducing me to strangers. She’s a weird Hype Girl.
The book 1984, but instead of Big Brother, it’s Facebook.
Guilty as charged
This American itch—that we must “DO SOMETHING” and “DO GOOD,” as Banfield put it—also fosters a psychological-sociological trap, wherein Americans take the view that society “could solve all problems if it only tried hard enough; [and the fact] that a problem continues to exist is therefore proof positive of its guilt.”
The Perils of “Doing Something” in City Journal
“A prank attempt went terribly wrong for a 14-year old boy from Boise, as he was raped by a 700-lb grizzly bear while walking around in the woods in a sasquatch costume.”
A podcast I first heard a year ago today still sits with me a year later, and I’ve listened to it maybe five times over. Cooking As an Art, With Jerry Saltz and Dave Cheng. It has almost nothing to do with cooking, or art, but more to do with life.
The future of music journalism is on (wtf) TikTok (sad face)
“TikTok music blogs have thrived during quarantine, and they’re helping to blow up new acts”
Simon Owens on 'the Substack problem'
“2021 will be the year that publishers start to form strategies to deal with the Substack Problem. By that, I mean they’ll need to find ways to discourage their star writers from leaving to launch their own Substack newsletters. In the most likely scenario, they’ll make deals with writers to launch the newsletter under the banner of the media company. They might structure the deal so the writer gets to keep their current salary and then some percentage of the subscriber income they generate – similar to the advances and royalties that book publishers dole out. This will be enticing to the writers because they get to maintain job security while also benefiting directly from their success. They can also grow their audience much more quickly with the help of the media company. It’s a win win for both parties.”
Simon Owens, on his Substack, which I highly recommend subscribing to
My issue with Spotify and Amazon muscling in on podcasting and how Apple has failed as well
Life on the internet, and in podcasting, is a game of middlemen (middlepeople?). The middlepeople actually really benefit from being in the middle, more than we imagine, and it’s an easy position to hold, one that most of the middlepeople hold in secret. Spotify is muscling it’s way into becoming the middle person between you, your favourite podcast, and the 246 companies that receive that data. Meanwhile big-spending Amazon is muscling it’s way into our listening habits, and even my podcast app of choice, Overcast, is a middleperson by design in that the Overcast servers know what podcasts I listen to, and those servers are continually polling the different podcast servers.
Spotify and Amazon I take issue with because they want to put a toll booth, even if it’s a free toll booth, on an already open road. Overcast is operating a booth on the road, but it’s not taking a toll. Whilst all of that is going on, the original champions of the podcast space, Apple Podcasts is - more than possiblly unknowingly - oversharing to the nth degree about who is driving on the free road, and I feel like that sharing needs to be reduced.
Have you played the hottest new web game of 2021? School or Prison
Much applause to the people behind Pentax cameras for this seemingly crazy idea to not go mirrorless. The unpopular route is often not filled with riches of finance, but it is full with riches of art, joy, and soul.
This is a fascinating story about an Australia man with an illness discovering horology
Algorithms are destroying our communities and what can we, or I, do about it?
There needs to be a better way to Internet
Maybe it’s because 2020 gave me many opportunities to think through the implications of which technology companies I’m quite beholden too, or maybe it’s because 2020 brought to light so many of the unhealthy business practices so many technology companies are embroiled in, but I’ve been trying to make big changes in my lifestyle in response to either, or both - because I believe that tech company algorithms are destroying marriages, friendships, families, and communities. I believe our privacy is important.
Social Media
I find so much connection and joy in the social elements of the web today, be it Facebook or Instagram, Twitter or YouTube, but I’m increasingly aware that anything more than a passing view into any of these portals is unhealthy for my soul, and an increasingly unhealthy place to “spend my data.”
I feel less and less comfortable with having my friendships, interests, politics, faith, and philosophy influenced by algorithms.
There’s a real tension here because I enjoy publishing and broadcasting stories - my own, my family’s, my friend’s, and the stories in my greater circle of life - plus I love listening to and reading your stories.
There’s just an inherently unhealthy aspect to a non-human deciding what you should hear about from your community.
Podcasting
I have a 25 year love story with the audio storytelling medium. It was 1996 when Paul McDermott, Mikey Robbins, and the Sandman were on Triple J for Breakfast and I feel in love with the idea of telling stories and entertainment purely through audio - no pictures, no words, no video.
As we skipped into a new millennium Dave Winer invented really simple syndication, RSS, and Adam Curry and Cameron Reilly started making podcasts, I witnessed the democratisation of audio away from broadcast radio despite forming and then walking away from a career in the artform.
Today as I witness Spotify and Amazon work hard at putting podcasts behind data-collecting, algorithm-driven, firewalls I honestly feel sad for the loss of the open industry of podcasting. I’m not saying all podcasts should be free. I personally pay for a number of podcasts, I’m just saying we should be able to access them without sacrificing personal freedoms, liberties, and without sharing excesses of personal data like what podcasts I listen to, which ones I listen all the way through, and the ideas algorithms can derive from that data.
Our entertainment and our information should be democratically available and curated by people, not by algorithms.
News, information, and articles
If you search on Google today for “The first podcast” you’ll see Google News articles for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s first podcast episode.
Our news and information, our thought-pieces and studies, our stories and anecdotes deserve better than being submitted to an algorithmic in the hopes that the mathematics decide they’re worth being read.
Communication
I don’t like the idea of the algorithms feeding me news, information, funny videos, and podcasts, to also be reading my messages and communications between people I love.
Photos
I have so much love for the art of photography. I would love you to enjoy my photos, and even more so I’d love to enjoy your viewport to the world. Maybe some of mine can hang on your wall as art, and vice-versa.
But I don’t want Facebook, Google, and Amazon to degrade that experience, and worse, abuse it for their own data-gathering needs about where we all were, and what we did.
Hardware
I don’t use Google Android phones because I don’t trust Google to run an operating system I could trust, and I use Apple computers because of the opposite, I enjoy knowing that my data is mostly processed locally - not in a data-overlord’s cloud. It’s an expensive choice, but until I know any better, I’m using Apple computers and mobile phones.
Entertainment
So many TVs today are selling our viewing data to advertising companies, and purely because Amazon and Google’s names sre in the product title, the Chromecast and Fire sticks are products I don’t trust.
The fix?
I’m leaning back into the open web, reading blogs on people’s own websites like mine where you’re reading this to hear my friend’s and family’s stories, listening to open podcasts that are available to whoever would like to listen to them, articles and news organisations. I’m communicating via phone call, iMessage, and email - not via comment fields and discussion boards, or if I am commenting and replying to posts I want to do it on a social network whose business model is clear and open, like Micro.Blog. Instead of waiting for entertainment, information, news, and articles to be recommended by an algorithm, I would like to see it in my RSS reader, or even better, see you link to it from your blog, and if I want you to read it, I can link to it from mine. I’m taking my photos back from Google and Facebook and sinking them deep into Apple Photos because I feel like I can trust them to be stored safely and enjoyed beautifully there.
I’m not insisting that my choices are the only and best, but with what I know today, and with the resources I have, and what I’d like to do and enjoy, I think these are pretty good choices.
Why should we care?
I’m writing all this so I might encourage you to come with me. I love the idea of us not talking over Facebook Messenger, and finding out about your pregnancy via an Instagram Story. I relish the idea of you listening to a podcast and thinking I might enjoy it so you share it with me. I dream of a day where local news and information is broadcast and published without fear of it not performing well in the news feed or without generating enough advertising revenue.
I hope for a day where the internet and our relationships live harmoniously - not in fear of each other.
We might never get there, but we can try.
Thriller idea: As the year 2020 is escorted from the courthouse to a life sentence in prison, after a solid 365 days of wrecking havoc on the earth, a terrorist group hijacks the cavalcade and releases 2020 back into the world with a new hairstyle and a different colour jacket.
We’ll call it “2020 Vision.”
In my almost 40 years on the planet, and most of them in Queensland, I’ve never kissed a stranger on NYE, or any other time. Am I doing life wrong or is the Chief Health Officer saying that sexually abusing strangers is the norm on New Year’s Eve?
Don’t let anyone tell you today is December 31st, 2020.
If you thought everything else that happened this year was scary, 2020 is going out with a bang with delightfully terrifying dancing robots from Boston Dynamics
Don’t even talk to her before her morning oat milk froth.
