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.

“Chinese restaurant”

Evan Amrmstrong at Every on How Elon Wins:

“Twitter is a perfect case study of the shifting power dynamics of the ad market and how to make money in this era of the internet.”

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye.

I met Charles Wooley when I was in line to be his producer on what’s now called the Triple M regional radio network.

Smart guy, good interviewer, wasn’t going to leave Tasmania for a big radio job, so they built out the Hobart studios to accomodate him.

I never took the gig, but I was impressed that someone could love where they live so much to the chagrin of a radio job.

In the Sunday Tasmanian today:

“But here I am, after a lifetime travelling the world and interviewing prime ministers, presidents and dictators, now about to engage as deputy mayor of Sorell in what is so often considered the lowly third tier of Tasmanian government.”

In the Gold Coast Bulletin today @AnnWasonMoore nails it making the biggest losses/mistakes the Gold Coast has experienced. But I’ll add one more: the Indy 300. It was so much more interesting than Supercars, and Aussie driver Will Powers still dominates!

Put a bag of cookies in the break room and it might sit for days.

Open the bag and leave it out, and within an hour, all the cookies will be gone.

We are happy to take a tiny slice off the thing that's being shared, but we hesitate to open the bag.

The same is true with all of the initiatives in our culture. Design, movements and ideas are all trapped, waiting to be opened, and then the rest of us will happily pile on.

Open the bag.

By an unknown author, from the Startupy newsletter

I think a lot about the guy whose car I ran into on the first day of owning a car in Mexico. I didnt put the car in park or put the handbrake on, classic idiotic move on the first day of driving on the wrong side of the road in a new car.

Scratched his back bumper, lots of talking, making phone calls to family, googling costs to fix, he comes back ready to finish me financially, and asks for $500 pesos. $39.60 AUD.

“Good day” in Spanish is “Buenos días”, phonetically (in Josh Spanish) “beh-wan-ass dee-ass” and I now understand how Australian English must be hard for people learning English because Baja Mexicans basically say an abbreviated “bun dee”, which I guess is “G’Day”.

Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.

John Ruskin in a letter to C. E. Norton, 4th Nov 1860:

“I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous, one can't be angry when one looks at a Penguin.”

TomTom: I came here to sell satnavs and kick ass, and I’m all outta satnavs.

Business idea: a coffee translator.

All I want in Mexico is to just order my coffee.

In Australia I order a long black with cream (pouring cream), or if they don't have cream, with cold milk. I call it a poor man's latte. All of the coffee, less milk.

A big cup of black coffee, and I take the temperature and black-coffee-ness out of it with a dash of dairy.

In Baja an Americano is basically a long black, but often filter coffee which would be fine if it was lukewarm. An espresso is an espresso shot. A long black doesn't exist. I got close today, but once I asked for "like an Americano but hot", they also brought out hot milk, and you don't want hot milk in this drink.

My fortune for help on how to order a "long black with cream/milk" in Spanish, or in a way that local baristas will understand.

I’m reflecting on the recent Optus hack today as I wonder what to do with my phone number I’ve had for 20 odd years.

So much of modern society needs a phone number to work and to identify us.

New services register with a phone number and text message verification code, trusting that only you would have your phone number or SIM card.

When I turn off my Australian SIM card in Mexico iMessage warns me the clock has started.

It’s kind of ridiculous that something as fragile as a phone number is the backbone of identity.

I think do Dave Winer’s ten year old blog post proposing DNS as a form of ID, but I feel like that would exclude so many normies.

Funnily enough, in many parts of Mexico the police will take your number plate or drivers license back to the police station as that’s the closest the national identity systems don’t really exist here.

How are we supposed to verify who we are? Maybe a blue tick will help?

Reason no. 72 to read James Hennessy’s email:

“I decided to dig into this, because the prospect of an intersection of forgotten Australian pulp lit and Cold War tech development is, regrettably, extremely my shit”

@jrhennessy

Just going on the record before November 2022 hits to say that I had a blue tick before it wasn’t cool.

That’s right, mum. I was verified before @tealou.

Nieman Labs reckons that newspaper political endorsements might not matter anymore. I think that's for the better?