Let’s talk about the disconnect between mainstream media, social media chatter, and reality in Perth’s coffee scene.
When Starbucks opened their first WA store recently, both mainstream and social media were full of people insisting Perth would reject it in favour of local cafes.
Well, I just visited this morning… The reality? Over 100 people inside and a 40+ car drive-through queue. Before 9am on a Saturday.
Just a reminder that media opinions and online discussions don’t always reflect what’s actually happening on the ground. That Starbucks is absolutely thriving.
Being a friend
John Gruber tells the story of Bill Atkinson’s battle (that has not finished yet) with cancer:
“In addition to being a genius programmer, he’s by all accounts a kind and generous person. Everyone was (and remains to this day) in awe of his skills, but they remember him best for being a friend.”
As a human, a man, a husband, and a father, I often (let’s be honest, almost always) get tied up with the worry and fear about work and business, earning money, and making good financial decisions.
Keeping a good professional reputation in the desperate hope and prayer that another couple would find me and book me for their wedding.
Staying in the good graces of wedding venues, wedding planners, the different algorithms and industry blogs and publications.
But I swear if I get to the end of my days and you, Britt, and my children can’t remember me best for being a friend then it was all for nought.
I’m sorry if I’ve missed the mark on our friendship, it’s honestly all I really want from these few fragile moments we have together on this pale blue dot in the universe.
I asked ChatGPT “Based on what you know about me draw a picture of what you think my current life looks like”
Seeing the Rode Wireless Micro release today (another spectacular release from Rode) reminded me how Australian companies and people are driving the infrastructure level of the creator economy.
Rode Microphones, Blackmagic Design (cameras, accessories, switchers and DaVinci), Procreate, Envato, Canva, Linktree, and Fastmail are the big ones I can think about plus Pocketcasts, Whooshkaa, and Omny Studio in the podcast world. Also, Emojipedia!
Barack Obama:
We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.
"One day you’ll be the last person writing words on the web"
Ryan Broderick with the power quote of the century from his piece, Nostalgia will not fix this:
I’m sure plenty of Bluesky power users will read this and say, “Who cares. I’m happy with a tiny site that feels like a memory of how I used to use the internet.” Fair enough. But one day you’ll be the last person writing words on the web and wonder where everyone went.
You can easily replace Bluesky with Mastodon, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Medium, Blogger, Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok.
Straight outta JT
Still have found what I'm looking for 🌵 Joshua Tree
When we were living in Baja California Sur a real hippy-looking bloke told me that the reason we felt so calm and at home in Baja was because it was a blue zone.
Wikipedia says of the evidence-poor but good-vibes terminology:
A blue zone is a region in the world where people are claimed to have exceptionally long lives beyond the age of 80 due to a lifestyle combining physical activity, low stress, rich social interactions, a local whole-foods diet, and low disease incidence.
I feel the same way in Joshua Tree which is why we came back this weekend after taking Luna to Disneyland and before flying home to Australia.
You might even take away from the name of this blog that I don’t mind the album either.
How to know if it’s a legit cowboy hat, a guide
Testing iMessages via Satellite in Joshua Tree
So earlier today I was takin the family around Joshua Tree National Park. I took my phone out and realised I had no service but that little satellite icon was there and that this might be my chance to try Messages via satellite on my iPhone, a new feature in iOS18 available on iPhones 14 and later.
So you tap ‘Use Messages via Satellite’ after choosing Satellite from Control Centre list of modes you can enable and disable, the same list that wifi and bluetooth are on.
I neglected to time it but I’d estimate and say it took two-ish minutes to find a satellite and connect, whilst encouraging me to move around, move left and/or right, and perhaps find an area with more open skies.
The app gives you notification that you’re connected via satellite and you have four options:
- Messages
- Find My
- Roadside Assistance
- Emergency SOS
I’d not used any of the satellite features previously available so I tapped in to have a look out of curiosity.
But the new one was Messages so I sent the obligatory text message to my friend, Scott, and we had a semblance of success.
And although the connectivity isn’t good enough for photos, group chats, or even on-to-one chats in any large quantity, I feel confident that if I was out of range in a country supporting Messages via Satellite - currently only U.S. and Canada - that I could deliver emergency text messages, or if nothing else, ask someone to double check that I didn’t leave the iron on.
We don't have to live this way
I’m reading Kirsten Power’s Substack on how life in the USA is not normal, whilst visiting the USA, and I can not only agree, but say that many parts of the thesis apply also to Australia in a uniquely Australian way.
Kirsten:
I began to notice a learned helplessness in the United States, where people don’t revolt at the notion of a college education costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wondered why so many people treat it as completely normal that we have GoFundMe campaigns to help people pay for life-saving medical care that their health insurance won’t cover.
I watched as people on social media claimed it was “pro-labor” to tip a person for ringing up your order at a food or coffee chain rather than demanding the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) owner of that company pay their employees a living wage (as is the norm in Europe, where tipping is not expected and the owners of the restaurants and stores are typically not among the uber-wealthy).
I realized there are other places in the world (not just Italy) where life isn’t about conspicuous consumption and “crushing” and “killing” your life goals, where people aren’t drowning in debt just to pay for basic life necessities. There are places where people have free time and where that free time is used to do things they love — not to start a side hustle.
I started to have a dawning awareness that we don’t have to live this way.
Australia might have a semblance of public health care, and tipping was not the norm (how tf is tipping becoming normalized in Australia is beyond me), but Australian society automatically assumes that everyone wants to be in a race to the bottom where we’re overloaded with debt and ambition whilst setting our children up for a life of therapy.
We don’t have to live this way.
Lucy Schiller in the Columbia Journalism Review’s The Final Flight of the Airline Magazine:
The idea of the airline magazine reaching everyone possible. An in-flight magazine is “for you, it’s for your mother, and it’s for your daughter,” she said. “Everyone has to be able to read it. It crosses generations with its appeal. Most people are aware the audience is broad.” So: the opposite type of product, really, from the personalized digital content tooled and retooled by increasingly specific customer data. “It can’t be niche,” Carpenter continued. “It can’t make people feel separated from it. It’s not going to be political or religious. It’s going to be inspiring, positive. Airline magazines don’t write bad reviews. We don’t interview someone to make them feel dumb. It’s all about putting positivity out into the world.”
Thomas Hooven on Love:
“By the time I met my wife, I was a changed man and a real doctor. And our love developed differently from any I had experienced before. Less like a crystal vase, more like a basketball, our relationship is made for bouncing — for the good and sometimes rough play that modern professional lives generate. We do have fights (oh, yes, we do), but they do not threaten our foundation. They deepen it.”
Robert Pirsig the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in this interview in 1974:
If a plant only gets sunlight, it’s very harmful. It needs darkness too. In the darkness, it converts oxygen into carbon dioxide. We are like that too. We need periods of doing, and periods of non-doing.
Ezra Klein in Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You:
I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have stored everything and saved nothing.
Disneyland for Luna’s 6th birthday. What an amazing sensory overload. A work of art!
I don’t want to join an Illuminati that wants me as a member
The enshittification of Squarespace and why you should own your own website
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:
- Two of our business websites being on Squarespace
- The other one being on Wordpress (but not WP Engine)
- 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?
- Learn HTML.
- Learn Markdown.
- 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
