Damn Qantas gamifying being green so I feel incentivised to achieve an arbitrary goal.

The Good Friday commute

Pretty good Friday

VA534

Game night at the Gabba

Tonga’s triple disaster - Expsoure:

“We felt very vulnerable because our island, Lifuka, is so low. We just ran for the highest point, the hospital. Later we were warned not to drink the rainwater as sulphate from the ash had contaminated everything.”

I still have a bit of a traumatic reaction crossing this border to go to work.

Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

A list of principles for a class taught by artist and educator Sister Corita Kent in 1967-1968:

Nothing is a mistake.

If I’m making photographs for fun - aka not for money - I’m often shooting with a 41 year old lens that was passed on to me from my aunty, a Minolta MD 50mm f2 strapped onto the front of my Canon EOS R5.

There’s nothing technically special about the lens, but I love that it’s seen so much of the world. Plus I like the images it makes

But because it's a manual focus only lens, it's a nice trick if any images are in focus.

Recently started playing with Topaz Sharpen AI and that software really helps me where my manually focusing fingers fail me.

“We’re the Aristocrats!”

RIP Gilbert Gottfried.

This weekend I’m in Gundagai for a wedding, and I’ve got a little bit of Saturday and Sunday morning exploration time. Where should I go exploring in this area this weekend?

"How to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations."

I don't know how to say this without sounding a bit up my self, but I just spelled 'poignantly' correctly on the first go.

My fuel and drink at BP just came to $100.01, so I asked the girl behind the counter if I have a one cent discount so I could get a really nice number in my accounting software. She looked at me as if I was a crazy man.

Twitter’s asking a lot of questions about longer form writing today

Can we, or more to the point, will we innovate our way out of gestures at everything?

"So long as we keep choosing to create. If we keep doing what it is we do as people. We are explainers and constructors. We are creators. We are resource makers."

– Brett Hall

I hope for a future where our thoughts, our conversations, our relationships, and our transactions are not handled by a handful of the largest companies on the globe.

I just think it's a nicer world that way.

So I blog at micro.blog and that shares to some places, and I manually share to Facebook and/or Instagram sometimes, but ultimately I'd love to become acquainted with you outside of a corporate algorithm.

One way to achieve that is email. Apart from Google's every attempt to ruin the experience for us, you subscribe to an email list and it appears in your inbox. You can reply to me, I can reply to you. It's good.

If you like what I share, and you'd like to get it in an automatic weekly digest, chuck your email address in here joshwithers.blog/subscribe.

Mark Fisher, in k-punk, on naming things like music genres:

"Naming is not a neutral act of referring. Naming produces surplus value, something that wasn't already there in the first place."

One of my favourite aspects of the world wide web and the internet, is the process upon which we find people who think the same as we do. People whose minds vibrate on a similar frequency to ours.

So I present to you: Jameson Orvis's 'the essence of place'

"The more I think about this label placement the more it pisses me off. Perhaps I could forgive the label for being so far from the geographic center of Brooklyn if the intersection of Brooklyn Ave and Atlantic Ave were at all remarkable. But no it’s just a random intersection along the A/C line with a 7/11 that the Google Maps label for Brooklyn just so happens to be positioned directly on top of. Why not just put it in the actual center of the borough? What purpose does this serve? Who or what algorithm is responsible? I descended a rabbit hole."

Police in San Francisco pull over a driverless car

Seems to have worked out ok for them tho

Kim Beazely - former Deputy PM of Australia, Ambassador to the USA, and current Governor of WA - on the general operational capacity of the United States of America:

“I think it’s brilliant the US actually works.”

Fun podcast listen at Hemispheric Views.

One of those weeks where I was on FaceTime a lot

You guys need anything while I’m here?

The difference 80km and a Ukrainian/Russian border makes in what you see on TikTok.

Ned Kelly’s legacy in tatters.

I booked a two night stay at this motel hoping for stay based on Ned Kelly’s principles of stealing livestock, denouncing the British Empire, and shooting Victorian police.

Not comfortability and cleanliness.

1 star.

Just in: the new rankings for reading a book:

1. Acquire the book and read it with your eyes.
2. Acquire the book and intend to read it.
3. Listen to a podcast with the author about the book.
4. Acquire the book without intent to read.
5. Listen to the audiobook.

we're all looking for someting, not knowing exactly what it is. then one day you’re driving toward the sunset with your window down, and wind running through your hair, as you think, “this is it, this is everything." and all you had to do, is open the window and let it in.

• jose chaves

I've got a hunch that this week will be the last one where Australia has a bloke named Scott Morrison as its Prime Minister. That election looms and the coalition wants someone else at the top.

And that makes the team at 6 News' interview with ScoMo even more important. Consider it an exit interview.

The view from Kirribilli last night

This week is one of those weeks where I’m reminded that I’m actually quite good at being a wedding celebrant and I really enjoy it despite a pandemic tearing out my soul. Just completed wedding 3 of 5 for the week and it’s only Wednesday.

It wet.

Pilot just explained that he and the other pilot were flying up from Melbourne for this flight and baggage loading staff were low at Melbourne because people in baggage were off work with Covid so the delays just multiplied from there.

2.5hrs late so far.

Layers

Now that vaccinated segregation is coming to an end in Queensland why should we give up on classism now?

I propose we start separating people based on race.

Like, I don’t want to eat at the same cafe as a really fast runner, or F1 driver.

Bedtime views

Feels good to be back in Sydney/the Blue Mountains today. Feels like I’m back in the office like the good ol’ days.

Life with a three year old and a one year old feels like a blur

FINANCIAL LOSSES CAUSED BY DIVORCE

Souht of 'Talle sunday afternoons

Australia

Why the original iMac had a handle

Arrived home from work late tonight to a vomiting toddler. She managed to soil two compete bed settings, a bunch of Britt and my clothes, two pyjamas, and some fluffy animals.

In other news, laundromats have really upped their price.

Eight hospitality trends/opportunities that could emerge from Covid:

• Towns for remote workers
• Home swapping
• City getaways and glamping
• Coliving in lifestyle locations
• Staycations
• Neighbourhood coworkings
• Campervans
• Hosting company offsites

… Peter Fabor

2022: Mac Studio 2023: iPad Studio 2024: AirPods Sussudio 2025: iPhone Studio

Cows with a beef

Turns out I’m very much not ready to see photos of my kids growing up. Luna’s 3.5 and I’ve got happy tears looking at photos of her from 2 years ago.

Charlie Munger:

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

Steve Albini to Kurt, Dave and Chris, aka Nirvana:

"I like to leave room for accidents or chaos. Making a seamless record, where every note and syllable is in place and every bass drum is identical, is no trick. Any idiot with the patience and the budget to allow such foolishness can do it."