Hi! My name is Josh, this me blog.
The dance of pleasing the social media algorithims of the world’s biggest companies, whilst being beat to death by strangers with their comments displeased me so now I’m here.
I wish I were the kind of person who could just live without broadcasting. But there’s an animal inside me — right down in the marrow — that keeps asking ‘can you see me?’ and silence has never once soothed it.
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I've upgraded my MacBook this week to a new MacBook Pro, and a friend asked me how it was.
I said it's unnoticeable, like a good marriage celebrant, or a good real estate agent should be. That good that you don't notice.
When your computer is slow you notice, and you moan about it. When your celebrant isn't confident and delivering a great ceremony, you notice it and joke about it at the reception, and when your real estate agent is a dodgy one, you really notice, and tell all your mates.
My hope is that I'm that good that you don't notice. That I'd be like my new MacBook, so fast, efficient, and plain old good, that you don't notice how good until you think about all the other computers you've used and you realise you've got a real powerhouse of a computer in front of you.
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"A signal is not a trend. A trend is not a future. A future is not THE future."
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The Algorithmic Trap by David Perrell:
"If you want to find emerging and under-rated ideas, stop using algorithms ... and improve the quality of what you consume."
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Luna got a camera for Christmas from Uncle Harley & Ainsley, so tonight she wanted to go and make photos of planes taking off.
You couldn’t understand how proud I am of her. Her little brain astounds me and impresses me every day!
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In 2022 I want to be a lot more deliberate about my inputs. Garbage in, garbage out. I'm continuing to craft my newsletters and subscriptions, detailed on my inputs page. Plus I'm now documenting books I want to read, books I am reading, and books I have read.
Small atomic changes should put make sure I'm walking down the right track.
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I’m not anti-tax, I’m just saying that we don’t know the long term effects of giving these politicians half our cash. How do we know they’re not going to make stupid decisions with it?
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Breaking news: Novak Djokovic wins the Australia Closed grand door slammed tournament.
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When Britt and I were dating we lived in different cities the whole time as I travelled for radio work (Port Macquarie, Mackay, Cairns, Sydney, Brisbane) so we spent heaps of time at night on the phone.
We’d go outside and ask each other if we could see the moon.
Ten years on we have a daughter named Luna.
And we named her sister Goldie so we could have our sun and our moon.
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Finished reading: Volcanic Winter by Mark Rutherford 📚
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Currently reading: Fortune-teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels In The Far East by Tiziano Terzani 📚
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"Your goals are meant to honour you, not fix you"
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"As soon as you decide to do without planes, you realise how they impose their limited way of looking at things on you. Oh, they diminish distances, which is handy enough, but they end up diminishing everything including your understanding of the world. You leave Rome at sunset, have dinner, sleep a while, and at dawn you are in India. But in reality each country has its own special character. We need time if we are to prepare ourselves for the encounter; we must make an effort if we are to enjoy the conquest. Everything has become so easy that we no longer take pleasure in anything. To understand is a joy but only if it comes with effort, and nowhere is this more than in the experience of other countries. Reading a guidebook while hopping from one airport to another is not the same as the slow, laborious absorption- as if by osmosis- of the humours of the earth to which ones remains bound when travelling by train.
Reached by plane, all places become alike- destinations separated from one another by nothing more than a few hours flight. Frontiers, created by nature and history and roots in the consciousness of the people who live within them, lose their meaning & cease to exist for those who travel to and from the air-conditioned bubbles of airports, where the border is a policeman in front of a computer screen where the first encounter with the new place is baggage carousel, where the emotion of leave taking is dissipated in the rush to get to the duty free shop- now the same everywhere"
— A Fortune Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani
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Proposal: Let’s drop the metaverse, and go all in on the meatverse. Less virtual reality meetings, more steak.
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Dear Me,
If, in future years, anyone asks you to give advice to your sixteen year old self… don’t.
Make your own unique messes, and then work your own way out of them.
See you,
Alan Rickman
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Molly White: blockchains are decentralised but not really, immutable but not really.
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I missed this New York Times piece on my hometown, Mackay in North Queensland, about how the mayor is almost single-handedly trying to turn the community around on climate change.
"Over the past year, Mr. Williamson, a fifth-generation Mackay local, has tried more outreach and education, meeting frequently with residents to discuss why the trees are needed, and whether a lighter mix of vegetation might be allowed for partial ocean views."
If Mackay was going to be in the New York Times I always thought it would be because they ship about 100 million tonnes of coal out of the region every year.
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Things we were very worried about in our youth that turned out to be non-issues:
- using algebra
- the Bermuda Triangle
- snakes on planes
- quicksand
- monsters under our bed
- remembering phone numbers
- what’s in Area 51
- becoming prime minister
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2021, the year in typography, if you're into that kinda nerdy thing like I am.
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Om Malik on the lethal and constant feeling of self-importance we walk around with:
"With all the conversation of breaking free from big social platforms, owning your own digital identity, and being independent, I have been asking myself: how can all of us who have slowly become online performance artists ever be post-social?"
Since March 2020 I've thought a lot about what it means for us to think we're so self-important and what that means for us living in a community with a virus like the spicy cough.
I'm sure it's not only me, but the moment a sense of self-importance enters my soul I start feeling sick. This photo of a chicken with a mullet often helps me get over myself.
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“I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy – and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
– Gus Speth
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My mate @scotty_mcdonald knows Brisbane better than you, and he's writing an email about it called Brisbane is Weird and you ought to subscribe.
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Where'd I get this rainbow fudge? The Country Non-Binary's Association stall at the markets this morning.
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The gestation period for new MacBooks is past the two month mark #joy
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15 years of iPhone
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Currently reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear 📚
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Your Animals With Attitude artists were so preoccupied with whether they could make a Super Mario Koala, they didn't stop to think if they should make a Super Mario Koala.
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Why don’t they make phone screens out of the same glass they make fridge shelves out of?
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I’m just saying, if you can’t trust people who spend billions of dollars to get fit good looking people to run around aggressively in arbitrary rectangular boxes, who can you trust?
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Isn’t it wild to imagine that if everyone on the whole planet just stayed at home until February there’d be no Covid.
No deliveries, no takeaway, no construction or maintenance, and in Feb it’s 2019 again.
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The government response to Covid this month seems akin to trying to stop a large boulder running out of control down a mountain.
I, for one, welcome our new geological overlord.
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'The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.'
— Steve Jobs
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W.L. George in The New York Herald in May 1992 didn't think that "the little girl who sells candles at Grand Central Station" would be too impressed with 2022:
"The year 2022 would have to produce something very startling to interest her ghost"
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I really thought that by this age I would’ve found Carmen Sandiego. Life is just a series of disappointments.
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I remember my friend Clifford showing me these photos and us waiting for them to render. Seeing a girl’s naked shoulders was a big deal back then.
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1 in 10 Brits will launch their own podcast in 2022 says Acast via @podnews
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"Cricket and ten-pin bowling ultimately derive from the same sport. It makes sense if you think of the wicket in cricket as analogous to the pins in bowling."
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Olivia Laing in 2015 on the future of loneliness:
"the cure for loneliness is not being looked at, but being seen and accepted as a whole person"
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The most disappointing element of modern society is the insistence that all stories (including the news, and celebrity or sport stories) must be completed as soon as possible so we can establish tribal battle lines and figure out if our tribe is winning or losing.
Most stories require hours, if not weeks, or years to bake in the story oven.
It’s highly likely that the stories you’re reading or hearing are actually half-baked and require a lot more time in the oven.
Reject half-baked stories. Reject the need for every story to have a tweet or post attached to it. Embrace slow stories where the storyteller has spent time researching, listening, asking, and they’re delivering a well baked story.
Not some bullshit your mate or a politician tweeted.
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In 1931 ceilings in movies was impressive.
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A group of enterprising and nostalgic nerds want to take Blockbuster back.
"Our mission is to liberate Blockbuster and form a DAO to collectively govern the brand as we turn Blockbuster into the first-ever DeFilm streaming platform."
