Withers Without You

The non-believer continues to be shunned. Fifteen years ago Charlie the Unicorn went to Candy Mountain, and now the Grand Finale is rolling out in parts, part one was released last year, part two just dropped, and part 3 is “coming soon”. What a time to be alive.

Proud to announce my campaign to run as President of Australia. My whole message is “that COVID lockdown was a bit much, right?”

I was never prepared to love her this much

Is there an iOS app that looks up telephone numbers through the CallKit Call Directory app extension in a CSV or spreadsheet or something super simple? I’d like to know the name of the caller if they’re in that list, but not enter them in my address book.

You’re going to need to secure your lightbulbs

She loves a book 📚📷

If you’re interested in 1) 2020; 2) financial things; 3) Hertz Car Rentals; and 4) how batshit crazy the world is today; then you’ll enjoy this read.

As a husband to a wife, let me give you some advice:

Don’t let your wife develop a rug dependency. It’s an expensive habit that eventually floors you.

Rugs, not even once.

Black mould is really fighting to win the war on fear against COVID-19

Super proud of Britt for launching The Modern Studio with our friend Harley. A fresh take on the photography studio concept.

A rare photo of a pilot and her aircraft preparing for travel In the COVID-19 era

Dun dun

If you’re missing the luxury of flying economy and inflight meals …

“It had become their daily ritual to check out the shelves of the store for life’s essentials.” – Stripped Bare, by Mark Rutherford

‪Business idea: what if we paid for people to follow politicians and leaders around and hold them to account for their words, and then the reports of these accounts were given to those of us paying for it, and we then made leadership decisions based on the reports?‬

Photo that I love, and Britt hates, from the new Photoshop Camera iOS app.

I can (not at all) guarantee all terrorism would be eradicated within a year if the punishment for terrorism was being forced to move house consistently for the rest of your life.

‪I could never in a million years have predicted CrossFit and JK Rowling being cancelled in the same week.‬

The Withers’ are moving to Palm Beach

When’s the right time to start talking to my toddler about body-shaming dachshund’s by pointing at them and calling them bubbas when we stroll past?

Isn’t it weird how we went grom learning how to cook sourdough bread to learning how to dismantle systemic racism so quickly.

I’ve got $10 that says Howard Stern signs with an Internet-based company by December 31.

And a bonus bet on that company being Spotify.

There’s a virtual wedding fair coming up soon, and I had to record a video for it. I feel like Luna’s really starting to pay her way with this debut.

Happy Queensland Day // June 6, 1863, is the day that Queensland separated from New South Wales. We’re celebrating today by not letting any Rona-Carryin’ New South Welshmen in.

Coolangatta in 30 seconds

Focus has left the building

Dear Jesus/Adobe, how much memory and cpu is enough for you to liberate my people?

Someone: Racism isn’t an issue. CNN: Get Big Bird on the phone.

Ok, so Russell Brand can travel to Erinsborough for a chat with Toadie but I can’t dine in at a restaurant without booking in six years in advance. Who thought Neighbours would be the TV show to drive Australia to riot in the streets.

This is devastating news for Brisbane and Perth alike

“Some things are out of our control — like a global pandemic — but some things are very much in our control, like the ability to say no to a story intended to divide people or stoke outrage, the ability to promote more diverse voices, and the ability to not give a platform to the voices that want to divide us.” … read on

‪Wow.‬

‪I’ve just walked out of my apartment and there’s a whole archive of personal data just leaked onto our letterboxes.‬

‪Who’s going to answer for this information breach?‬

It’d be really nice if the solution to hundreds of years of racism, and the dismantling of system that gives people like me boatloads of privilege, could be nicely packaged for me in some kind of online store, maybe even with some bonus frequent flyer points, please.

Walking away from the playground with a screaming baby I tell the other parents, “it’s my first kidnapping, how do you get them to stop crying” so look out for my photo on the news.

Well before John Goodman screamed “you are wasting your time with this garbage” to Macaulay Culkin, and ever since, humanity has been struggling with black or white. Maybe this week we can start ending that struggle.

I saw an old friend’s name in my address book and looked him up on Facebook. He shares an account with his now wife. Rest in peace old pal.

If you have ever wondered what the day’s most awkward phone call would sound like, imagine that you’re a wedding celebrant calling a wedding venue co-ordinator to thank them for referring couples to you recently because you’ve had two bookings there this in the last few days. And the wedding co-ordinator not only doesn’t recommend you, but doesn’t know who you are. I am the one who knocks … awkwardly.

Wouldn’t it be weird if Washington DC protestors drained the swamp.

Lots of talk about censorship from this week from people who must think that its ok for me to come to their house, write hateful and/or untrue things on their wall, and because of free speech they have to leave it there when I leave.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of distribution.

Particularly when the speech is a lie or hate.

Take note of the businesses that get through COVID-19 alive. In the years prior, they saved their money, they played the long game, minimised debt, employed assets and fired those that did not bring value. The businesses still alive and kicking in 2021 were charging what they were worth, and then some, in 2019. They know how to run a sustainable business, and they’re worthy of your trade.

America the brave

Photo from the Associated Press

Lu and I spent some quality time watching COVID-19 press conferences today over bowls of porridge.

Posting this because there’s too many cute photos of her, so this one balances them out.

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

And headline of the year goes to The Atlantic for “The Karen In Chief”

Post of the day

Is the closed borders thing kind of like a grown up version of The Floor Is Lava?

Asking for a friend.

Woah, ok, so sugar daddy means something completely different to what I thought.

Also, how do you get sugar out of your knit sweater?

One man’s rubbish is another man’s photograph

Big lights will inspire you, hear it for Gold Coast, Gold Coast, Gold Coast

The goldenest coast

I think it’s become abundantly clear that Bullock is holding up the general Sandra population.

Stacked it

FYI peppermint is different to pepper with mint.

🌅

Crutch-less nickers sported in Coolangatta

Cool story

Six years on, there are wedding industry peeps still saying they invented pop up weddings, and although everyone is welcome to the phrase (we missed out on the trademark) I wanted to honour Britt in staking our claim in thinking of it.

Who disrupted the wedding industry with pop up weddings? Britany Withers invented pop up weddings.

Britt, aka my wife, thought of the idea in late 2013, I went live with them in early 2014 flailing about trying to figure out how to make them work, and then Britt left her job and joined me full time.

We transitioned from the brand Pop Up Weddings to The Elopement Collective because the brand was so heavily copied and we’d missed the opportunity to trademark it. Plus, Britt didn’t like my graphic design. Businesses were popping up every day using the words “pop up wedding” and most meant something different to what we intended, plus all of them were cheap and tacky, lacking the class, simplicity, and beauty we brought to the space.

Everyone else that does pop up weddings today is welcome to them, but don’t claim to have thought of it and disrupted the wedding industry yourself.

Here’s a few news articles from the time: WAToday, The Daily Mail, Hitched, Intimate Weddings, or just scroll back to the very start of the @elopementcollective Instagram account, it used to be called @popupwed.

I also just did the old scrolly back through Instagram and here’s some highlights, December 6, 2014, when we started transitioning to what we now call The Elopement Collective. That time we took pop up weddings to Hawaii, visited the White Magazine offices, but most importantly, that February 1 first post on Instagram that told the story of the fabled first pop up wedding, where we actually made a loss and could only convince one couple, one lovely couple, to get married at a pop up wedding. The second event, set for Star Wars Day had zero bookings but it did get us on Seven’s Sunrise TV show.

I’m allowed to boast about my wife, it’s socially acceptable to cheer on your favourite human, so I wanted to end on this note. Most people only have the chance to revoloutinise an industry once, but Britt, she not only brought pop up weddings to the wedding industry, she then went on to specialise in elopements with The Elopement Collective. The EC is a market leader, she was first, and she’s the best in her field. Every major market now has someone packaging elopements and you can draw a line back to Britt from all of those innovators.

She’s a pretty amazing girl my wife.

Britty with the good camera

The great hypocrisy in our society today is that we have the privilege, freedom, and the technological ability to publicly condemn Bill Gates, 5G, and China, from our 4G internet connected personal computing devices from not-China.

Through this time where businesses have been shutdown or sent home, and so much connection and communication has been forced online, there has been a real misunderstanding of how to simply be valuable.

Hey I’ve got a passport with stamps on it plus I have a recent model iPhone and MacBook, so does that make me a Global Elite?

Asking for a friend.

You’re A Miracle (And A Pain In The Ass) by Mike McHargue is an important book for the humans of Planet Earth.

It’s not important for the ground breaking research or scientific findings it contains, they’re accurately credited to the many smart people that found them in years past.

This book is important because of the important narrative that Mike weaves through the understanding that we humans are beautifully fantastic miracles, yet in so many countless ways thanks to our brains, childhood trauma, and the hyper connected world we live in today, we are massive pains in the asses.

Reading this book has given me so much insight into my own behaviours and just plain old stupid stuff I do everyday.

Thank you for writing this book, Mike 🙏🏻

When reading a book by a podcaster I’ve spent a long time listening to, I’m pretty much listening to an audiobook recorded live inside my head.

My secret superpower is being able to spot someone who sells essential oils from 100m away.

Coolangatta colours tonight

I just realised that the poker night I’m going to tonight requires me to know how to play poker. If you want to know how to play poker, don’t read these three books, they’re useless.

Picked up an iPhone 11 for Britt today.

One of these photos is from my iPhone XS and one’s from her iPhone 11, both shot from our balcony just now, no processing.

I’ll let you guess which is which.

“For example, over 500 businesses with ‘1’ eligible employee reported a figure of ‘1,500’ (which is the amount of JobKeeper payment they would expect to receive for each fortnight for that employee).” www.ato.gov.au/Media-cen…

COVID-19 threatened to take our breath and even our life, but the greatest threat will be that it takes away our common unity, our social nature, our creativity, or simply, our humanity. I hope we can preserve that through the disdain for the other felt in public today.

What a beautiful time to be alive

I love how the internet walks around like the html tags <marquee> or <blank> and things like Under Construction gifs never existed.

“In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about what might come along to “save” the news business from the ravages of the internet. But I think that’s the wrong framing. It’s better to ask: How can we use the internet to reinvent the entire business?“ - Substack

Just went for a drive and listened to a Wiggles album but Luna wasn’t even in the car. Save me.

Today’s Google homework for everyone: Cottagecore.

An easy call to action would be to tell everyone to download the What3Words app, but ultimately, I’d like to see Apple, Microsoft, Google, and other mapping services integrate the service natively. This Tasmanian rescue story is a great example of its power.

It’s a popular theory that Facebook/Google/Apple is listening to our conversations. They’re not, they don’t need to. The data we share everywhere else, like on Untappd, tells a bigger story. Like where an Air Force drone pilot is working.

What does a financially viable media look like?

Most people seem to have a wide gamut of opinions on media, MSM, and how it’s failed, not worth paying for, or there’s too many ads, or al journalists are .

So when it comes to telling our stories, what’s the best business model?

A correct map of Australia, via Reddit

An incredible article on the severely broken economics of food delivery, á la Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grub Hub

Toddler joins in Zoom calls

Toddler threatens to flatten me

As 150+ Australian journalists have been let go today, it’s important to note exactly when the Lynch mob out against “mainstream media” won, and whether that date aligns with when “the bastards” ceased to be kept honest. Funny timing with the new ASIO surveillance bill IMHO.

The internet used to be lovely.

Call it nostalgia, but two of the “former generation” tools that I think made the internet so lovely was RSS and blogs.

Of course, both still exist today, but they’re most definitely not the primary means of sharing and storytelling. So this week when TTThis shared “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs” and Daniel Miessler wrote “It’s Time to Get Back Into RSS” I felt like I wasn’t alone in those nostaglic feelings.

Feelings that hark back to a time when the internet was inherently beautiful, with some ugly parts; whereas today it feels like it’s inherently ugly, with some beautiful parts.

As guilty as I stand here being the Facebooking, Tweeting, Newsfeeding, Redditing, boy that I am, I can’t help but feel like all those services are just adding to that vibe that WALL-E predicted, where we’re all just fat content absorbing sobs on hoverboards, instead of the intellectual humans we were born to be.

I think it’s really sad that most Australians can’t even recite the second verse of Fruit Salad #YummyYummy

Throwback to 2009 to the first viral wedding clip on YouTube most of us ever saw

The Rainbow Lorikeets are glad that they’re allowed to gather again

Luna’s loving these new blocks // from Raduga Grëz via Eve of Indigo (nothing I have is sponsored, just shouting out because they’re making beautiful work)

Busted

“The Great Awakening”

Wowowow. This has existed since June 2018 and only now do I get the chance to laugh at it.

Not many people know this but the 1997 All Saints hit Never Ever was actually written about a MacBook that wouldn’t connect to an iPhone’s wifi personal hotspot even though they’re on the same iCloud account.

Business idea: Screenshots of your greatest tweets on your gravestone. Cemeteries become a real world favstar.

Out of all of my issues with Q, of which Adrienne addresses thoroughly in this piece in The Atlantic, the main one is how Q is revered for dropping bombs about child abusers, but Q doesn’t just call the police or FBI on them.

Hey, I’ve just downloaded a random date generator app to my phone if any news agencies want to interview me about when everything’s going to be back to normal again.

I’m so proud to be her dad

Tomorrow is my 11th celebrant birthday, 11 years a celebrant, wow, and today I’ve been thinking about all the funny/stupid things the wedding industry bought into my world over the last 11 years.

Here’s a few that have been rattling around in my head.

• It’s hilarious how far photographers and videographers will go to make it look like no vendors, including the celebrant, were ever at the wedding. I see some wedding photo galleries and films, and there’s not even a slither of my arm in frame lol. What’s with the weird fantasy that no-one was working on a wedding?

• You’d be surprised how much time of my time is spent confirming which year a wedding enquiry is for, and where the wedding is going to be.

• There’s a heavy link between people who won’t pay a fee that allows me to maintain a sustainable business, that will still be operating when their wedding comes around, and people who are in Facebook groups after their wedding bitching about how terrible their wedding vendors were.

• Facebook Groups are the devil.

• The best wedding vendors have an inner drive to be better. They’re attending workshops, listening to podcasts, upgrading their gear, learning, teaching, mentoring, being mentored.

• Wedding vendors who aren’t doing those things are probably in a Facebook Group undercutting everyone on price then leaving the wedding industry in a year because “brides are expletive”

• I once had a groom’s dad threaten to beat me up before a ceremony. I’m always keeping one eye on the groom’s parents at a wedding, statistically speaking, they’re the crazy ones there.

• I think a lot about how in the context of planning a wedding, the words “traditional” and “formal” actually don’t mean anything. People say they want a completely non-traditional wedding then do all the traditional things, and people say they don’t want a formal wedding but state a dress code as black tie.

• At weddings, more than half the time I’m there I’m trying to patiently wait for things, without looking like I’m waiting. At these times I’m normally singing Wiggles songs inside my head.

• Finally, beware of anyone who says they “love weddings”. No sane person “loves weddings”. Sane people love that person A and person B are getting married, and that is being celebrated at a wedding, but across the board weddings can be some of the strangest, weirdest, and most wonderful things you could ever see. I’m surprised there aren’t more reality TV shows about weddings. In-fact, I’m surprised I haven’t paid a camera crew to follow me around, it’d be a rip-snorter of a TV show. Sane people don’t love weddings, but they love being a part of the creative process that makes a moment where two people can get married in a special and meaningful way.

• Facebook Groups are evil.

• Listen to my podcast, The Rebels' Guide To Getting Married, because honestly, someone has to listen to it otherwise it’s probably just going to get archived by the podcast host.

Beach babes @ Tugun

“Someone in the apartment block is cooking lamb” is the reason I’ll probably be locked up tonight for scaling the balconies of this apartment block trying to find some lamb chops.

🏄‍♂️

Very GC

I drove through a recently bushfire affected region last week. The ground was still blackened, but not as much as the tree trunks. The foliage and grass that would normally cover the bush floor was slowly achingly coming back to something that resembled life, and those trees that survived, still stood tall.

The stand out from the drive though were the two things flourishing today.

The weeds. The surviving trees.

I’m guessing the weeds were the first ones in after the fire trucks rolled out. They love abusing the voids in our society, the empty holes, the spare ground, the unused lots. There will always be weeds, in the bush, and in business. We can’t change the weeds, and history tells us that any concerted effort to introduce other species to eradicate weeds, is a plan fraught with danger and failure. The best way to get rid of weeds is to make the rest of the garden/forest/marketplace as healthy as possible because then there’s no room for weeds.

As for the surviving trees though, they were the most impressive displays.

Obviously their trunks were burnt, and their spirits were dampened, but they metaphorically held their breath long enough for the bushfire to burn through and today thanks to their deep roots, and their strong trunks, they had the leaves just inside them ready to spring out back to action when the fires calmed, the rains came, and the sun shone again.

Any efforts to regrow during the bushfire would have just resulted in more burns. But today those deep rooted, strong trunked, trees are alive with the deepest colours springing out of their leaves.

Be the surviving tree. Be a part of a healthy forest. This too shall pass.

The first and second world wars weren’t called that when they happened. 9/11 wasn’t called 9/11 on the 11th of September 2001.

What do you think this pandemic will be called in 20 years time?

The path less travelled

Our bookless future

Version one of May 10, 2020, was supposed to be flying business class as a family to Rome.

Version two sees us with a first class beach upgrade.

So much legroom, and the passengers up the front here are much friendlier.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” — Carl Sagan

The Blue Mountains on. a Wednesday sunset

For a guy who boldly asked “how many dudes you know roll like this” and " how many dudes you know flow like this" and then answered “not many, if any” you’d really think Scribe would have released at least a few popular albums.

Apple and Google will both ban location tracking in apps that use their contact tracing – Reuters

Sun, set

South by South West Rocks

Australian street gang approached me last night

For the first time in my memory, this weekend you could see South Stradbroke Island from Point Danger, 45 kilometres away.

I couldn’t get a good photo from Point Danger so this photo is from Currumbin Creek.

If you’re worried about the machines taking over, don’t be too worried, they won’t be able to win us over with their art.

This is AI created heavy metal.

Luna approaches an elderly lady on the beach, I look at them both smiling and say “say hi!” The lady looks my in the eyes and says hi.

So that’s how we got our second child who’s also an elderly lady.

Pizza Hut. Dine In Restsurant. Kirra, Queensland, Australia. 2020. Sad face.

Father of the year, photographs his daughter picking up some seaweed. Seaweed is actually a bluebottle jellyfish. When do I get my medal?

Snapper Rocks in April

In the first year of going full time with the business of being a celebrant each time someone booked me I’d elatedly call Britt with this overwhleming feeling of joy and emotion that someone would choose me, plus I’d be secretly crying.

After a few years it becomes a little bit normal, still special, but I generally didn’t cry when people booked me.

Just got a booking. Got emotional, told Britt, cried a wee bit. Feels good.

See you in December, Adelaide!

If COVID-19 doesn’t get me, rescheduling weddings and elopements probably will. Welcome to my TED Talk.

Breathing from a hole in my lung, I had no one. With faces in front of me racing through the void in my head to find traces of a good luck academy // Straight Lines

If you’ve ever thought that Facebook was listening, it is, just not through your phone’s microphone, but through your activity. Everything you do, everything you click, everything you like, gives away more than any app released by a government.

Just after the Coronavirus first hit the economy bad, I invested savings, a house deposit, into a managed fund. Today we withdrew that cash so we could buy a house (because we’re currently living in an Airbnb) and I made a 1.9% profit. The Milky Bars are on me.

Australia: Uses their child’s name with a capital first letter then a number at the end as a password, and also has strong feelings about the COVIDSafe contact tracing app’s privacy implications.

The range of hardware seemingly now known as iPhone SE is in some ways the last hurrah for a generation of iPhone.

The iPhone SE 2016 was the ultimate of the iPhone 4/5/5S line, and the iPhone SE 2020 is the ultimate 6/6S/7/8.

John Gruber says it well in his 2020 model review, “Like the iPhone 5-style 2016 iPhone SE before it, the new iPhone 6-style iPhone SE feels like the canonical ideal of the form factor it embodies.”

The iPhone SE of 2023 or 2024 will no doubt be the ultimate, best-of, version of the iPhone X/XS/11 range.

Today in old white male news, one old white man claims that his use of a smirking pose on a dark background with his name in an all caps serif font has been copied. Old white men nationwide are outraged.

New Wiggles > OG Wiggles

What do you think we should build? - Andreessen Horowitz

anyone murdered at all during self-isolation

Homocide Detective: Yeah, it was definitely the wife.

About 10yrs ago I had a burger at a small town in Western Australia whilst driving across the desert to Perth and I haven’t received an email from that burger artist yet to find out how they’re responding to COVID-19. This is super disappointing. It’s like they don’t even care.

I’ll know this virus has gotten really bad when the Qantas On-Hold Music Band start doing free concerts on Instagram Live.

Considering that all of the pubs and bars are closed, is now the time for all of them to agree on a national beer size standard?

I wouldn’t worry about even getting COVID-19 when COVID-20 is going to be released in a few months and it will support 5G.

Walked to Twin Towns for a Checkpoint Charlie (Queensland’s closed border) photo and all I got were these JPEGs.

Don’t forget to wind your clock back to 2021 when daylight savings ends this weekend. Maybe that will help end this?

Could I please ask you to import that fact into Photoshop and blur it a little. I only trust information I read in low-resolution images shared on social media.

I just found out that there’s a dog food called Applaws so everything’s going to be ok guys.

Coming to channel Seven soon: Border Security: Queensland Edition, taking the cool out of Coolangatta.

If everyone is working from home and social distancing, who’s in the Wiggle House? Who’s in the Wiggle House? Who’s in the Wiggle House today?

Who ever imagined that when the apocalypse arrived we’d all be fighting it by standing at the sink washing our hands thoroughly to the beat of I Will Survive?

95% of content on social media this week is pure Coronavirus-related speculation, I reckon.

iPadOS’ machine learning has finally figured out what I do for a living.

After hours mascot

OMG did you hear that everyone is stocking up on wedding celebrants because of the Coronavirus?!

(Just go along with this one guys, it’s a sales technique 🤫)

If I started fake coughing and sneezing on this full flight I’m on right now would that be a hilarious prank or would I be the worst person alive?

Trying to make a photo of a sweet sunset moon and in sneaks a Qantas Boeing 717.

Do you think we haven’t met aliens yet because one time someone didn’t invite them to a wedding and they’ve held a grudge ever since?

Spaghetti is pronounced bisgetti. Prove me wrong.

The ABC (Australia’s for my international friends) has done an outstanding job of documenting the Australian bushfires in this single article. I haven’t seen reporting like this from anyone.

The first bushfire mentioned is 30km/18 miles inland from our home, but we were fine.

Holden, found on rubbish dump.

Holden, found on rubbish dump.

We must abandon the language of the market to reclaim our humanity - Thomas Keneally’s 2020s vision

This podcast with Dave Cheng and Jerry Saltx changed me

When I open an airport hotel, my slogan will be “we don’t smell like an airport hotel plus we have those mattresses that come in boxes”

I’m sorry guys, apparently you can’t trust my glowing Star Wars review because, according to Britt, apparently I’m “too sunny about shit things”

Any other parents carefully curate playlists so it looks to your toddler like you wrote all the songs? Just me?

11:51pm, Wednesday night, Hoyts Sunnybank, current status:

Arguing with two strangers, at the cinema urinal, about the plausibility of jumping between spaceships.

Also, Rise of the Skywalker is an A+ Star Wars movie, and I will fight you over this.

Cr8zy if tru

Li Jin has beautifully named the current era of creative work: the passion economy

If you ever see me being arrested by the Police it’s probably because I tucked in the tag on someone’s top and they didn’t appreciate it:

I felt seen but not herd in today’s ceremony

How to prepare for the 29 Days Club content challenge

Considering getting a full body tattoo to save on clothes. Please discuss.

My idea of a luxury car is one that does not beep.

Luna: Can I ask you an equestrian?

I’ve heard a few people say that they run out of ideas on what to post on their business' social media accounts.

I’ve got a long history in daily content creation, I did it on breakfast radio for three hours a day every workday for a decade, and today I do it across all of our businesses.

My strategy is to be multi-discipline in my creation, to aim to reach people in many places in many different ways, whilst aiming to be at least inspiring, educational, entertaining, relevant, and demonstrable, if not all five.

If you’re one of those people looking for a kick up the content butt, commit to a 29 day challenge in February

$29 for 29 days of content creation challenges in the 29 Day Club. Sign up at 29days.substack.com and the first email goes out on February 1.

May your day be Australian, your onions be on top of the sausage, and your empathy for Australia’s First Nation people be full.

Imagine if there were no casinos today, and someone tried to introduce the first casino. They would be protested out of town for building a business on the backs of everyone’s financial insecurities.

The day you vote me in as your Primal Munster I will mandate that all toilets will always be available. Wait, you shalt not.

I’m not at liberty to disclose how I know this information, but the Airpods Pro case is remarkably waterproof and soap-proof for something that is clearly not waterproof.

When elected as your Primal Minister, I will standardise coffee cup sizes. No more fancy names. You’ll either get a small, medium, or large.

Honestly, I’m ok with the music industry just pumping out covers of Higher Love from here on out. Why would anyone try and make more or better songs?

If you choose me as your leader, in the first 100 days of my government, we will eliminate all middle seats on aircraft.

As your Prime Minister I vow to make turbulence illegal. We are helping Qantas and Virgin all of the time on so many other issues, and yet they refuse to fly smoothly. They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country, NOW! MAKE AUSTRALIA GREAT AGAIN.

This is a really well written and even more importantly, well researched, article on the ‘whole 5G thing’ and whether or not it (or wifi or 3G or 4G or radio) causes cancer

When you, the fine burghers of our town, Australia, elect me as your King, I promise that all coffee cup handles will be big enough for at least one, if not two, fingers to go in.

“One of the biggest challenges we face is staying kind with profound disagreement—and staying kind when a mechanism has been set up to make money and power out of hate.” — Penn Jillette

University of SoCal has a class on friendship. It has the longest waiting list for enrolments. This is the world in 2020

The beach at Broken Head, NSW, is blackened by the soot from the Australian bushfires

It’s all ok guys, everyone settle down. The massive spider I was going to burn down the house to kill, is just a gecho. Nothing to see here, move along.

Here’s a (hopefully) possible and good idea for Apple and the FBI. Instead of Apple building unhealthy encryption-breaking backdoors and the FBI generally complaining about iPhone security, what if iOS often looked for a wifi network that it could always backup to.

Maybe it’s called “Apple Backup” and if a phone has power and it sees that network, it knows the password because Apple has decided the password is something like P@ssw0rd, and when all those stars align the phone backs up to iCloud. Law enforcement agencies can then take the opportunity to take the regular route of making a request through a court to Apple for that data in iCloud.

It seems like a good time to tell you that Britt, Luna, and I are also taking a step back from our royal duties. Don’t @ me bro.

Imagine being the person that created a situation which required people to clarify exactly what kind of farewell they were issuing.

“Bye!”

“Which kind of bye?”

“Oh, sorry, a really good bye!”

Man, John Mulaney’s Sack Lunch Bunch is pure magic.

Great dietary advice

Taumarunui, New Zealand

New Zealand thus afternoon

Welcome to the Twenties, the decade where your Twenties themed wedding will take its inspiration from The Jetsons instead of The Great Gatsby.

Starting 2020 on the Gold Coast

Last sunset of 2019

Last sunset of 2019

Me at the end of 2019.

Me at the end of 2009.

Luna’s about three flights away from starting her travel tips blog.

‪The year is 2200, an elder has gathered children to tell them the story of how many generations ago we would light the sky with fire on the last night of the year, every year, but on one fateful New Year’s Eve we didn’t, and society fell apart and now we all live in caves.‬

A Sydney Morning Herald crime reporter is reporting on one of my family members

Just under three years ago I flew a drone for the first time, and started clicking the shutter button. I had no idea what I was doing, and luckily the original Mavic Pro camera operated at about the same level of tech as an iPhone camera.

I never knew what to do with the photos I made.

I shared them on social media, which was lovely. Some of them even got 10 likes!

I invested in an online gallery, well, a few online galleries, and I sold about three prints.

I submitted photos to stock photo libraries, but nothing really sold there. You can find me on Getty, iStock, Stocksy, all making about zero dollars a year.

So then there’s Unsplash, which feels like a melting pot of loser photographers like me, where the photos I made have earned me zero dollars, I know that over 40 million people have at least seen the photos. About 200,000 people have downloaded and used my photos. This particular one has been viewed over 4 million times in the past 4 days.

Money’s nice, and exposure doesn’t pay the bills, but there’s something about my nothing becoming something, something about being seen, that fills my heart up.

A really intelligent and moderated 15 minute report on the decade ahead in Australia regarding domestic issues, politics, and our position in the global ranks. Must listen.

Please send help, I think our village is being gentrified.

A failing cafe has reopened as a trendy bar with a meaningless name, and this afternoon trendy people wearing colourful bodysuits and fancy earrings are walking out streets.

What should I do?

Journalists are just grown up dibber dobbers. Discuss.

12 months ago we bought a house, today we have a home

Luna’s becoming less and less keen on this Santa bloke