Withers Without You

I don’t want to join an Illuminati that wants me as a member

Private equity completes another stroll through the web-hosting world (after WP Engine), and thus today begins (or perhaps continues) the enshittification of Squarespace.

As my friend Ori said:

“Nothing like PE to ruin something.”

Private equity seriously is ruining so many beautiful things on the internet (see Bending Spoons) because founders and creators often struggle make a living online, they seek growth and revenue and find it hard, so they sell to PE because PE can make money online: gut the product, layoff staff, raise prices.

Welcome to capitalism, you and I with our little savings can’t stand in the way of it, but in the light of Squarespace going to PE, I’m reminded:

1. Two of our business websites being on Squarespace
2. The other one being on Wordpress (but not WP Engine)
3. And finally, of my own personal philosophy to POSSE and build things yourself.

Jason Kottke shared this a few days ago from Molly White:

“The short-term solution to these problems is a little-known acronym called POSSE. Short for Post (on) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere, it’s not a protocol or even a piece of software, but rather a philosophy.”

There’s never been a better time to build your own house on the internet—your own website and blog—and never have to worry about Squarespace, Meta, Google, or Apple anymore. You’ll no longer need to worry about being cancelled or banned. Prices going up, or products being gutted. You get to choose your destiny. Your home is your home.

How to?

1. Learn HTML.
2. Learn Markdown.
3. Learn to host and build your own website and blog, your own home on the Internet.

For HTML, check out the beautifully made HTML For People:

“HTML isn’t only for people working in the tech field. It’s for anybody, the way documents are for anybody. HTML is just another type of document. A very special one—the one the web is built on.”

And for Markdown, it’s just plain boring text with a few additions. The best place to start IMHO is with the document that started it all in 2004:

“The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.”

Search online for other Markdown tutorials, there’ll be millions, but just start learning to write and format in an open language, one that isn’t owned by Microsoft (.docx) or others.

From there, start investigating building and hosting your own website, like the one you’re reading this on. Hosted on Micro.Blog, built using Hugo, and Tiny Theme.

In 20 years, you’ll be thankful that you started building your own house online today.

Lightroom’s Generative AI-powered remove feature is wildly good

The pilots of QF15 invited Luna to the flight deck for her 6th birthday

Cabel Sasser’s XOXO talk is required watching for all inhabitants of earth.

Put the 19 minutes aside and watch this.

Seth Godin in Amplifying the fringes:

It’s no wonder people feel ill at ease. Instead of the ship adding ballast to ensure a smooth journey, the crew is working hard to make the journey as rocky as possible.

Aurora Australis over the Huon River in Franklin, Tasmania.

Aurora you glad you stayed up?

Dave Winer’s 2004 definition of podcasting is what I think podcasting is:

Think how a desktop aggregator works. You subscribe to a set of feeds, and then can easily view the new stuff from all of the feeds together, or each feed separately. Podcasting works the same way, with one exception. Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on an iPod or iPod-like device. Think of your iPod as having a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates. Today there are a limited number of programs available this way. The format used is RSS 2.0 with enclosures. In the future, radio shows like All Things Considered and Rush Limbaugh will be available in this manner, and perhaps other syndication formats will support enclosures.

But I feel like mainstream culture imagines a podcast is a group of people sitting in a room with headphones on and it’s watched via TikTok or Reels.

Which, I’m not going to lie, is quite confronting for a nerd like me who really enjoys his traditional podcasting.

Our decision to homeschool our children is often a hot topic of conversation among friends and colleagues. There are the usual jokes, and many people bring up something about socialisation. Britt’s favourite response when asked why we homeschool is, “Why do you send your kids to school?” Honestly, I love her cheeky nature.

I wanted to distill my thoughts on the subject into a blog post so I could share it with people when they ask. So, why do we homeschool? Let’s start with why we’re not that keen on traditional schooling.

Very few of us speak about our schooling in Australia positively. From bullying to anxiety, peer pressure to abuse, the system has been rife with issues. If my house had such problems, you’d never visit, let alone drop your kids off five days a week, every week.

Then there’s the stress the schooling system puts on our household. From rushing out the door in the morning to rushing back for pick-up, and then from school to extracurricular activities – it’s all a whole lot of rushing, stress, and expense that we don’t need to sign up for.

For something most of us hated as children, and also bemoan as adults, it’s kind of strange that we force our delicate and still-forming children into it.

I’ve also been deeply influenced by Seth Godin and his views on school. Reading his “What is school for? in 2009 changed me. With insights like “school pushes hard for wide, not deep” and “education is not the same thing as learning,” Godin has changed my perspective on how the world works and what school is for. I don’t believe the schooling offered by local providers will take my kids where I want them to go, I don’t believe that what I think school is for is what the education departments of Australia think school is for. I don’t need a babysitter or a childcare worker, I want my girls to learn from the best educators and that can (and does) happen outside of school.

I believe our society is in the depths of a parenting pandemic. We’ve outsourced parenting to the government instead of relying on our families, villages, and communities. We depend on underpaid teachers to raise our children, school principals to discipline and lead them, and government bodies to decide what they should learn and how much they should know.

We look to the government to tell our youth how long they should spend on social media or devices, then complain, “My kid spends too much time on their phone,” forgetting that we are the parents, we are in charge, and if the child isn’t listening or taking our lead, that’s still our problem.

I believe my home is my responsibility, so we’ll raise our kids, we’ll lead them, and we’ll teach them how to be awesome adults. Because when we brought them into the world, we didn’t have kids just to have kids; we had kids to bring spectacular adults into the future.

Our goal is that in 30 years, the world will be enamoured by the generosity, kindness, and intelligence of Luna, Goldie, and whoever else may come along.

We’re also those awkward people who actually like our kids and enjoy spending time with them. We want to do that more, so we’re building a life, a business, a home, and a family that allows us to spend as much time together as possible before they want to leave the nest and go and be adults. Someone smart once said we get eighteen summers with our kids. I’m trying to get eighteen winters, springs, and autumns too.

My brother and I visited our grandmother last weekend, but she was too busy for us. Yet she complains we never visit. I have this vision in my head of my old age, decades from now. In my final days, I picture all our children, grandchildren, and perhaps even great-grandchildren being with us at home. That sixty years from now, we would all joyfully and willingly spend our days together, enjoying each other’s company and missing each other when apart. Reverse-engineering that vision requires hard work today.

If I want a strong family in sixty years, I need to build one now, and for me, that starts with homeschooling. As for you and your family, that’s your call – so make the best choice for yourselves.

Our girls have always come along with us in business and travel. I think Luna’s first outing was to the post office. Both she and Goldie are Qantas Silver Frequent Flyers and they are better at airport security than you are. When we go to the shops or work around the house, they’re not just with us – they’re involved and helping. We aim to spend time in nature with them, learning, investigating, looking, and asking questions. Museums, animal parks, libraries, and exhibits are always on our to-do list. Plus, we spend time writing letters to our friends around the world, painting and making art, and reading about the world around us while also engaging with beautiful literature.

Don’t worry that our kids will miss out on academics or socialisation.

In a world moving towards artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, our hope is that our kids will shine in humanity and real intelligence.

While their peers may be enslaved by iPads, social networks, and devices, we want our children to be empowered to love, communicate, enjoy, and help. When they’re adults I want to be so proud of them, and for that to happen I need to start today.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” – Frank Herbert, Dune

In case anyone was interested, it costs $1600 to fly Qantas then Jetstar from Hobart to the Gold Coast today if Virgin wasn’t able to rebook you on other flights today and yours was getting in to Sydney too late and you’d miss your connection. Just a lazy $1600 and there goes this week’s profit margin.

My high school internet username results in a Googlewhack today. I’ve never been so proud.

Britt Shoo sketched me at work at a wedding in Maleny today, how cool is it!

All the guests recieved portraits like this.

Jenny Saville:

When I paint, I don’t search for beauty, but for the power of life’s force: when you fall in love with someone, it’s life’s force. When you see amazing food or you listen to music that goes right inside your body, that’s life’s force. That moment is not an intellectual space, it’s something beyond – you can’t articulate it. It’s about the moments that help you breathe deeper.

My favourite thing about taking a car to the dealer for a warranty issue and they make you feel like you’re a woman in the fifties reporting sexual abuse. Looking at you like you’re imagining the problem, suggesting “maybe it’s your fault?”

tap, tap is this thing on?

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my wedding celebrant story, my passions, my heart, and to also talk videographers and audio from an audio tech point of view on the Wed Co podcast today.