It's been twenty years since Bill Gates expressed his frustration at his own operating system and the team behind it on how hard it was to install Windows Movie Maker and honestly, computers are only slightly more useable today.

Ok then, photorapture it is

In every intellectual relationship there’s the person who recommends podcast episodes, and there’s the other person who doesn’t even listen to the recommended episodes.

In my and Scott’s relationship, I’m the recommending party.

But as is the fashion of the other person the two episodes of the one podcast that Scott recommended I listen this week, this is a banger.

Hallelujah, an episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, is possibly one of the most thought provoking 30 minutes of my life.

The single idea that at the point of release, the moment of deliverance, the second you ship this creative work, that it’s more than likely not done yet, terrifies me.

We live a life today where I do a thing and it’s done and we move on.

Contemplating that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah took the journey documented in this podcast, I’m going to sit with this for so long.

Please listen to this, then message me and let me know what you thought.

The Home Owners Association is not going to be happy

🏡 at El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico

I’m not going to lie, I don’t have to hug everyone I marry when I first see them at the ceremony, but I want to.

Alani & Ethan #marriedbyjosh on the Gold Coast with the Elopement Collective

Luna asked me to play some fairy songs. So I search for such a thing in Apple Music.

Seth Godin in his post, The platform and the curator, on the difference between current platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and traditional platforms like radio, newspapers, and TV:

“Platform leaders understood that their decision to promote something instead of everything was a key part of their job.”

Friday afternoon at Pescadero

My friend Jay has made a really beautiful documentary about being a digital nomad, remote working around the Arctic Circle.

{{< youtube zt7BAKpTz14 >}}

Joe Mayall in There's No "Woke Capitalism." Only Capitalism:

"Profit: By any means necessary."

"Companies seek profit. Everything else is just a means to an end."

The spare tyre for our car sits up and under the body of the car, under the front seats. Myself and the tyre guy took quite a while to figure this all out.

Quick little shoutout for a new series of daily/weekly emails I've recently subscribed to and actually really like. The formatting in the email is really nice, as is the writing and content: Semafor.

Just between you and me most of the time when I’m alone and approach the car as the driver in the USA or Mexico I approach the passenger side accidentally so I still open the passenger door, pretend to look for something, then proceed to the driver’s side of the car.

Thirteen years ago I read this on Seth Godin’s blog and it’s sat with me every day since:

“One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room ... another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.”

All I want to in this life is make a difference. Nothing in me wants to make a noise.

My 2023 challenge is to get really good at modern search engine optimisation, which is pretty different to 2019's SEO. So I've got a new project using Superstash, and it's a celebrant directory. How original, Josh.

You look at this photo and think it's some kind of grand cathedral in Rome. It's a storage room in Ravello.

Every week, sometimes every day, Britt and my inbox is filled with couples worrying about what happens if it rains, or if it's too hot, or if something something. All valid worries, but they don't stress us out too much because we always find a way. We'll always find a storage room on the Amalfi Coast that also just happens to be an epic location for your ceremony.

That's what we do. We look for solutions, not problems.

Any chimp can find a problem. We find a storage room, move all the things being stored, and then walk you into a sacred place where you can exchange vows intimately, in private, with joy and peace.

This is Raimie and Kelly on the Amalfi Coast in Villa Cimbrone with the Elopement Collective and Joey & Jase.

16 years ago today the way I viewed the world changed completely. I can still remember seeing that little lump of plastic and metal in Steve Jobs's hand, watching a video stream, and thinking that everything changed. Today that remains ever so.

I believe that you can measure the meaning of something by imagining taking it away. What would life be like if we didn't have it? Like earlier today I mused to a friend that if a certain media property disappeared, no one would notice.

Imagine a world without the iPhone. You might point to Android phones, but 16 years ago today the team developing Android 'started over' and despite the common argument that iPhone copies Android's leadership, on that day, Android took iPhone's lead.

Even comparing the two, Android was just a software platform under development. iPhone was hardware and software. Not long after it became a software development platform and the world as we know it today changed completely. Services you take for granted were enabled that day.

16 years is nothing special, but every year when this date rolls around, and the subsequent anniversaries, I reflect how years later we've not experienced a tectonic shift like that since.

"Make something wonderful and put it out there." You sure did, Apple. You sure did.

When you elope in a far-away destination you’re choosing a very different vibe and moment than a domestic elopement. It firmly places your ceremony - the beginning of your marriage - in the middle of an adventure. Between customs, packing, flights, delays, transfers, language barriers, different foods and weather, it’s impossible to not revel in the moment as you take a deep breath of that fresh international air and exchange vows with me and the @elopementcollective in some epic location like Italy, Iceland, or anywhere in-between.

I’m up for a European wedding adventure any day of the week, but in June and July 2024 I’ll be there with The Elopement Collective plus House of Lucie and Jason Corroto.

More info available in my email my name at my last name dot co or withers.co/europe.

This is me with Stuart and Chelsea outside of some epic villa in Tuscany, Italy, with Jason Lucas a few years ago. Epic trip.

I have a long and beautiful history of catching up with friends in weird and wonderful places. I just had lunch with someone I’m pretty sure I met in the first month or so of my radio career, about 20 years ago, in a Mexican restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee.

The rubbish being pushed by Instagram Reels is astonishingly bad. Jacob Sweet unveils some of the nonsense in the New Yorker.

Currently reading: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker 📚

I’m only two pages into this book and already I’m sensing something important. Good parenting isn’t the theatre most think it is. It’s in the substance, not the theatre.

Elderly lady walking her dog with a Bluetooth speaker blaring Li’l Jon’s 2002 banger, Get Low. Stay cool, Nashville.

Dear the United States of America,

I would like to submit my application to become your house's Speaker. I'm of the understanding than you do not currently have a speaker, and you are in need of a speaker. It just so happens that speaking is one of the few things on this planet that I am really good at.

Attached is photographic evidence of me at to Kirsten and Todd's wedding speaking quite well, you will notice them as much as I speak really good, I also slide into the background of the story if the photographer uses the correct aperture.

For references, please see my Google and Facebook page reviews, where I maintain an almost five star rating, with the exception of a few random spam accounts that have left me one star reviews without any reason.

It is possible that me being an Australian currently residing in Mexico may be an issue, but for the next week, I am still in Tennessee. If you are willing to give me a green card, I am willing to speak at your house.

I am also available for weddings, parties, anything.

Yours sincerely, the next speaker of the United States of America, Josh "Married By Josh" Withers.

Tasted fine Kentucky Angel’s Envy bourbon with a Great Indiana Man™️

Roadtrip to meet an old friend for the first time

Naval in Don’t Rely on Credibility Stamps:

"It’s a priesthood. You’re only allowed to say what the priests have approved, and you can only say that if you are a priest, and the priests get to decide who’s a priest."

Better times

This nugget from Cory Muscara is sitting well with my soul today: "We often need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves."

🦇

🐸

This bloke was just chilling but when he saw I had a camera he came and stood next to his sign as if he was at an animal trade show manning a booth

Monkey business

Live footage of me trying to find a better deal on insurance by comparing deals available on the market

Breaking news: not all flamingos are pink

My favourite Apple Watch feature is New Year’s Day

I've assembled a top 10 list of top 10 lists I'm paying attention to this year:

1-10: .

Noah Smith in The internet wants to be fragmented:

"Perhaps someday the human race will be ready to become one collective consciousness. But the experiment of the 2010s shows that this day is not today. Let the internet once more be an escape — a place where you can find your people and be happy. Let us learn to speak a thousand different languages once again. Let the Tower of Babel fall."

Neighbourhood fireworks > City provided fireworks

Water damage and damage electrical damage to the house were housesitting thanks to frozen water pipes over Christmas means we’re bringing in New Year’s Eve with CNN via MacBook. Hilariously the internet just died.

Vale 2022

Being in Tennessee for New Year’s Eve this year has really revealed to me How annoying it must be to be an American with Australian friends. You wake up here to blurry fireworks photos from Oz then everyone goes to bed and it’s still half a day until NYE here.

Reflecting back over 2022 the one thing I can say for sure is that it’s been 21 years and I still haven’t forgotten about Dre

As lovely as it is, TikTok is candy from Chinese spies and really ought to be banned purely on national security reasons. More at daringfireball.net by John @Gruber.