I think I just accidentally haggled with a vendor in an Italian street market. I thought the fruit cost less than five euros, I gave him five euro., he looked at me and giggled, winked, and points his finger at me and took the money and gave me no change. Is that what haggling is? I’m good at life.
When I first went into self-employment over a decade ago now I set up templates for common or transactional emails and I was always aware that I didn’t want an email not from me, yet from me, to not sound like I had sat down and written the letter.
So I used to write the automated emails from our cat, Stevie.
Stevie is no longer with us, her liver went south, but she lives on as of this week. I’ve replaced all of our automated emails with ChatGPT-generated emails and yet messages written by Stevie AI. Seeing what ChatGPT/Stevie is writing is amazing and hilarious and really good.
Consider that my teaser to enquire with me for your wedding, that a cat will send you emails.
You’ve heard the phrase “Content is King”, coined by Sumner Redstone - the old rich white person behind CBS, Viacom, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central etc who passed in 2020 - but Bill Gates popularised the idea for the internet back in January of 1996. It’s so beautiful and odd to read this essay 27 years on.
But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.
15 years of the Apple App Store and my first purchases are realllll nerdy
I’ve been featured in all the great newspapers around the world, the New York Times was one of the coolest. But none felt as good as having one of my photos printed six years ago in the newspaper I read as a young adult, the newspaper I got it earliest jobs from by reading the classifieds.
Why the rush to 5G?
On a per user basis, a 5G network is cheaper to operate than a 4G one. The technology is easier to maintain and more reliable. It’s not sexy. That’s something that is hard to sell to consumers, but makes a huge difference to telcos. There’s much more to this. The additional capacity may not be a pressing matter in New Zealand right now, but in time there will be more connections and 5G gives carriers headroom to cope with future demand. There may be future apps that can use the speed.
Did you notice the 5G mobile revolution? billbennett.co.nz
Jiddu Krishnamurti:
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
“For everything there is a place but that of wonders is just a little more hidden…”
📷🇮🇹 We went for a drive to the little village of Ostuni today and unknowingly stumbled upon a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show. We didn’t stick around to watch the beautiful people be beautiful, but we saw the rich people trying to get into the town we were leaving.
📷🇮🇹 Sunday frames from Martina Franca, Puglia, Italy
Threads, compared to Mastodon and BlueSky, is the difference between an idea and a product.
When Steve Jobs saw the graphical user interface with a mouse at PARC, it was an idea. Apple made it a product.
Mastodon and Bluesky are powerful and beautiful ideologies. Threads is a good product.
Apple Photos face detection software needs a “tell me the date and location of that photo” button when asking which of your daughters it is if the photo is of an infant.
Programmed a Zapier zap to get ChatGPT to reply to my website wedding enquiries with an email and a text message in the form of our deceased cat reincarnated as AI. My AI assistant refers to me as “Joshy”.
Pretty much me
Can I share a weird thing that has haunted me for over a decade now? Yoko Ono followed me on Twitter 10 years ago and I forgot to follow her back. Has it been too long?
PJ Vogt’s new podcast helps me feel better about my deep desire to drink coffee mid-flight. Do you drink airline coffee?
One of my great loves in this world is the format and medium of audio storytelling. First radio, then podcasting, it’s one of the most beautiful ways to tell a story.
So it’s pretty cool to wish the modern medium of podcasting a 20th birthday this weekend. Thank you to @podnews for the writeup.
The girls say they’ll catch us dinner tonight. I’m googling pizzerias.
I think about the Malcolm Gladwell book ‘Talking to Strangers’ every day
We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy.
Today I’m thinking about it in context to Threads by Instagram and how the hot takes are flying about how it’s absolutely going to succeed or absolutely going to fail.
Make room for the nuanced, complex, enigmas.
My day job is to stand in between people on their wedding day and make them smile then kiss. It’s not a bad gig tbh.
Yesterday in Puglia, Italy, with Casey and Rob.
Planned by The Elopement Collective and photographed by Pearce Brennan at Masseria Grieco in Ostuni.
