Dane Winer:

"Twitter inherited the blogosphere, in a sense, and the chaos of the company hid the fact that it was owned, all that we put into it, we owned none of it. It could all be sold."

Sharing God's Law from Letters of Note, as seen multiple times around the internet and on The West Wing, now in it's original form, by Kent Ashcraft:

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend homosexuality, for example, I will simply remind him or her that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other laws in Leviticus and Exodus and how to best follow them.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Leviticus 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as stated in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Leviticus 15:19-24). The problem is, how can I tell?

I have tried asking, but most women take offense. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine says that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

Leviticus 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s Word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

Are you a parent of a toddler or an assistant to a male CEO of a tech startup?

Why Mastodon is "big" in Japan

I think about this email that Steve Jobs wrote to himself a lot

Gosh I needed to enjoy this: "You Can't Handle The Truth," but it's the Toy Story Song

Touché Google Translate

Watching Seinfeld and the episode ‘The Limo’ starts. Opening scene is at a NY airport and a Trump airline Boeing 727.

Of course the only Trump cameo in an episode of Seinfeld is one from 1992, about the neo nazi.

Rancho Pescadero, the new old kid on the block, just re-opened. Keen as mustard to start making weddings there!

❤️ El Pescadero, Baja California Sur

Britt & I toured around this new resort, Rancho Pescadero, last week to talk about making weddings there. Those oceanview rooms are actually built into dunes & the cactus were geotagged then replanted back into the same exact locations. Only $3k a night on the beach there!

This is Noah Sushi in Pescadero. The best sushi I have ever tasted, and I've had good sushi, even in Japan. It's on a dirt road, with no signage, and no fancy tables inside. People come from hundreds of kilometres around to enjoy it.

Baja is wild.

Street names in Baja are wild, in that they barely exist. To prove my residence/address I need to show an electrical bill. So this street a few blocks from our house is hilariously named.

It's named after a gardener who still lives in that street, and drinks multiple litres of alcohol a day. His nick name is "Litre" or in Spanish "Litro". So a gringo who loves him had a street sign made, attached to the pole at the start of the street, now everyone calls it Litro Street.

In the future we won’t share our most intimate stories with, and through, the world’s biggest tech companies. Mastodon and blogs might not be the complete indieweb story, but it’s at least in the first or second chapter.

I’ll never forget today. The day that my 20 month old daughter, whilst holding a banana, screamed for another banana, but when she had two, realised she only wanted one.

The classic B1 and B2 dilemma.

Siri, one of the foremost artificial Intelligences, thinks I should call in to the Airbnb to check out. Thanks mate.

Apparently I don’t share my photography enough (sorry, Zac) so it’s mostly on Unsplash.

There you go ya filthy tech-news-lovin animals.

Gosh it irritates me when ‘down south’ writes the national news stories as if no-one from ‘up north’ reads it // @crikey_news @emmaels

My favourite thing about Mastodon actually has nothing to do with Mastodon. It’s the experience of embracing a completely new network with a handful of existing connections but then start following new people creating a whole new social graph whilst screaming “HELLO NEW FRIENDS!”

James Hennessy in The Terminal:

“His primary motivator at this point is the absolutely daunting mathematics of the deal he signed … saddled it with $13 billion in debt and about a billion dollars a year in interest payments alone.”

A few thoughts on Mastodon at the end of day one:

The network brand name is stupid and not sticky, as is “toot”.

Running your own instance is not the best, but it’s not like there’s a perfect instance to join.

Following people is too hard.

It’s a nice system and I like it.

Fish tacos, margaritas, a mariachi band, all on the beach. A perfect night on the Sea of Cortez.

Balandra

I could imagine this hanging on a wall somewhere, I’m really proud of it. On the left there you’ve got what the Mexicans say is there best beach, nationwide.

Playa Balandra (Balandra Beach).

Fifty shades of blue

I decided I was being a grumpy old man by not even trying Mastodon - I think it has a stupid name for a modern product, great for an extinct elephant - but I've signed up ... @josh@withers.online is me. Who should I follow?

One of us, and I won’t say who, just fell off the bed and landed face first on the tiled floor

On the Sea of Cortez, near La Paz, today

I can handle my parents being disappointed in me, my wife, children and friends. All of your disappointments will come and go.

But man, letting Duolingo down, this cuts deep.

Notes for my gravestone

"This is not a verification status; it's an Important Blue Internet Checkmark, which in 2022 is just as legit. Also the Important Blue Internet Checkmark may turn into a bunch of crabs at any time 🦀"

Finally, the BeReal competitor I’ve been waiting for: TweetReal.

Day 30 in Mexico: Still haven’t joined a drug cartel. Fish tacos are amazing. Send coffee.

Trung Phan on the "massive" podcast opportunity he's identified, and something I've thought about a lot:

"Whatever your niche, a single person on a mic in their home can create the definitive long-form audio content for whatever is their “most valuable audience”. It’s a very simple idea …but not easy."

So apparently the Commonwealth marriage celebrants portal and database was hacked ... just a program run by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's department ...

It’s weird to see so much talk about Mastodon and people walk right past micro.blog. I’ve been a user since @manton launched it on Kickstarter, and I think I heard about it on @gruber’s Talk Show - I love it.

Missed the eclipse, but caught sunrise this morning

We’re heading back to Hawaii in mid-January and it got me thinking about the last time I was there and I created a marriage ceremony across the bay from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler house.

I’ll never know if Steve witnessed me in my element on Maui, but they’ve never officially said what I Don't Want to Miss a Thing was about …

Anyway, this is just your regular reminder that I make epic marriage ceremonies from Ipswich to Iceland and everywhere between.

Martha Gellhorn in a letter to Victoria Glendinning on 30th September 1987:

"Anyway, I intend to spend the rest of my life wasting time."

There are two kinds of people in the world, people who confidently pronounce “pho” and the people who anxiously listen to those people say it because they’re sure they’re not saying it right.

I can't believe that so much valuable conversation is {you should give me all your money} interspersed with ads and unrelated content {gamble your money away!} these days as if it's a natural way to read and write {you're so stupid and fat} lol.

Apple executives discussing iMessage for Android is beautifully shortsighted.

We put these people on pedestals but they’re just lucky enough to be considered winners.

Idea: The most important part of Twitter is the feeling of sending the tweet.

No-one sees your tweets anyway, so what if we made a new Twitter where all your followers and replies were just GPT-3 nodes.

An AI social network where computers affirm you and your thoughts.

I'm wondering whether "stay in your medium lane" is good advice for Elon Musk and Twitter today?

I think about Instagram starting as a still photo medium and how I like it less as it has changed lanes. Facebook started as a "friend-to-friend connection" medium, and I like it less as Adam Mosseri has obsessed over Reels and videos.

Twitter started as, and mostly still is, a text medium.

The human brain likes to catalogue and silo things. Twitter is a textual medium, and all of us on it love that about it.

If Twitter wants to evolve to take on YouTube and Facebook and leave text behind, that will be its death knell. Not headwinds in the marketplace, but the fact that those of us that like to read and write text, want to connect and share in a place that champions reading and writing text.

That's why Imoved my writing and sharing to Micro.blog when it launched. Micro.blog champions text and text sharing, whilst also encouraging you to own your content/text.

If anything was going to take Twitter's place today, in my humble opinion, it would be Micro.blog, because it has a business plan, it has a network, by design it's healthy and good for the soul, but it champions the reading and writing of text.