Joe Mayall in There’s No “Woke Capitalism.” Only Capitalism:
“Profit: By any means necessary.”
“Companies seek profit. Everything else is just a means to an end.”
The spare tyre for our car sits up and under the body of the car, under the front seats. Myself and the tyre guy took quite a while to figure this all out.
Quick little shoutout for a new series of daily/weekly emails I’ve recently subscribed to and actually really like. The formatting in the email is really nice, as is the writing and content: Semafor.
Just between you and me most of the time when I’m alone and approach the car as the driver in the USA or Mexico I approach the passenger side accidentally so I still open the passenger door, pretend to look for something, then proceed to the driver’s side of the car.
Dataism, the newest religion on the block
Meghan O’Gieblyn in The Believer posits that AI is a new god, the god of Dataism.
“Science was supposed to have banished God, but he keeps turning up in our latest technologies. He is the ghost lurking in our data sets, the cockroach hiding beneath the particle accelerator.”
Going on to this banger:
“Just as according to Christianity we humans cannot understand God and His plan, so Dataism declares that the human brain cannot fathom the new master algorithms.”
Thirteen years ago I read this on Seth Godin’s blog and it’s sat with me every day since:
“One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you’re in the room … another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you’re not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.”
All I want to in this life is make a difference. Nothing in me wants to make a noise.
My 2023 challenge is to get really good at modern search engine optimisation, which is pretty different to 2019’s SEO. So I’ve got a new project using Superstash, and it’s a celebrant directory. How original, Josh.
You look at this photo and think it’s some kind of grand cathedral in Rome. It’s a storage room in Ravello.
Every week, sometimes every day, Britt and my inbox is filled with couples worrying about what happens if it rains, or if it’s too hot, or if something something. All valid worries, but they don’t stress us out too much because we always find a way. We’ll always find a storage room on the Amalfi Coast that also just happens to be an epic location for your ceremony.
That’s what we do. We look for solutions, not problems.
Any chimp can find a problem. We find a storage room, move all the things being stored, and then walk you into a sacred place where you can exchange vows intimately, in private, with joy and peace.
This is Raimie and Kelly on the Amalfi Coast in Villa Cimbrone with the Elopement Collective and Joey & Jase.
16 years ago today the way I viewed the world changed completely. I can still remember seeing that little lump of plastic and metal in Steve Jobs’s hand, watching a video stream, and thinking that everything changed. Today that remains ever so.
I believe that you can measure the meaning of something by imagining taking it away. What would life be like if we didn’t have it? Like earlier today I mused to a friend that if a certain media property disappeared, no one would notice.
Imagine a world without the iPhone. You might point to Android phones, but 16 years ago today the team developing Android ‘started over’ and despite the common argument that iPhone copies Android’s leadership, on that day, Android took iPhone’s lead.
Even comparing the two, Android was just a software platform under development. iPhone was hardware and software. Not long after it became a software development platform and the world as we know it today changed completely. Services you take for granted were enabled that day.
16 years is nothing special, but every year when this date rolls around, and the subsequent anniversaries, I reflect how years later we’ve not experienced a tectonic shift like that since.
“Make something wonderful and put it out there.” You sure did, Apple. You sure did.
When you elope in a far-away destination you’re choosing a very different vibe and moment than a domestic elopement. It firmly places your ceremony - the beginning of your marriage - in the middle of an adventure. Between customs, packing, flights, delays, transfers, language barriers, different foods and weather, it’s impossible to not revel in the moment as you take a deep breath of that fresh international air and exchange vows with me and the @elopementcollective in some epic location like Italy, Iceland, or anywhere in-between.
I’m up for a European wedding adventure any day of the week, but in June and July 2024 I’ll be there with The Elopement Collective plus House of Lucie and Jason Corroto.
More info available in my email my name at my last name dot co or withers.co/europe.
This is me with Stuart and Chelsea outside of some epic villa in Tuscany, Italy, with Jason Lucas a few years ago. Epic trip.
I chose a Kindle Scribe
A few days ago I ordered a latest generation Kindle Oasis and a new Kindle Scribe with the intention of only keeping one to replace my six year old Kindle Oasis who’s battery barely lasted a day.
Today a UPS driver picks one up to take it back home to Bezos, and I’m keeping the Kindle Scribe.
Why?
Kindle Scribe Pros:
- Nice and big
- USB-C charging
- notepad and pencil input for note taking and signing paperwork
- so big
- all the Remarkable 2 you want with the benefit of all the Kindle you want
- new fancy product
Kindle Scribe Cons:
- so very big
- no buttons
- too big
- a little heavy
- Kindle OS is still crappy and salesy
- new product, 1.0 version sadness
I have a long and beautiful history of catching up with friends in weird and wonderful places. I just had lunch with someone I’m pretty sure I met in the first month or so of my radio career, about 20 years ago, in a Mexican restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee.
The rubbish being pushed by Instagram Reels is astonishingly bad. Jacob Sweet unveils some of the nonsense in the New Yorker.
Currently reading: Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker 📚
I’m only two pages into this book and already I’m sensing something important. Good parenting isn’t the theatre most think it is. It’s in the substance, not the theatre.
Steve Jobs: The thinker and the doer
Steve Jobs in 1990:
“My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it? Of course not. Leonardo was the artist, but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy. And combining all of those skills together, the art and the science, the thinking and the doing, was what resulted in the exceptional result. And there is no difference in our industry. The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers.”
Elderly lady walking her dog with a Bluetooth speaker blaring Li’l Jon’s 2002 banger, Get Low. Stay cool, Nashville.
Dear the United States of America,
I would like to submit my application to become your house’s Speaker. I’m of the understanding than you do not currently have a speaker, and you are in need of a speaker. It just so happens that speaking is one of the few things on this planet that I am really good at.
Attached is photographic evidence of me at to Kirsten and Todd’s wedding speaking quite well, you will notice them as much as I speak really good, I also slide into the background of the story if the photographer uses the correct aperture.
For references, please see my Google and Facebook page reviews, where I maintain an almost five star rating, with the exception of a few random spam accounts that have left me one star reviews without any reason.
It is possible that me being an Australian currently residing in Mexico may be an issue, but for the next week, I am still in Tennessee. If you are willing to give me a green card, I am willing to speak at your house.
I am also available for weddings, parties, anything.
Yours sincerely, the next speaker of the United States of America, Josh “Married By Josh” Withers.
Tasted fine Kentucky Angel’s Envy bourbon with a Great Indiana Man™️
Roadtrip to meet an old friend for the first time
