Withers Without You

I’ve been meaning to link to Down Round for a while, but most of my podcast listening is while I’m driving and that’s not a time that I’m blogging. Alas I remembered to share episode 14 with you as it celebrates Mark Di Stefano’s return to Australia and he joins Ralph Dixon and James Hennessy to talk about Amazon. Really good episode, A++ would listen again.

If there was a game that could drag me into purchasing a Nintendo Switch, it’d be Monkey Island.

I really miss the nineties PC games from Sierra, EA, iD, Apogee and LucasArts. Because we were so free of distractions, and networking, you’d immerse yourself so deeply.

Ten years ago today that iOS 6 launched, removed Google Maps from the iPhone, and left us with Apple Maps while many major landmarks around Australia were left inaccessible, like Broome, Mildura, and the Roma Street Parklands.

Rose Eveleth on interrupting people:

“So here are my tips for anybody who might find themselves in a situation like Hubeny, where someone simply isn’t letting you get a word in, as learned from many, many hours of talk radio.”

Robin Rendle on blogging:

Someone asked me for advice about their career a while ago and even though I absolutely do not feel qualified enough to give advice to anyone about this, here goes nothin’:

Blog!

‘Gifs are cringe’: Giphy.

“They have fallen out of fashion as a content form, with younger users in particular describing gifs as ‘for boomers’ and ‘cringe’.”

Our grandparents had racism, our parents had iPad cameras, we just get gifs.

Mary Oliver:

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Moving from my iPhone 12 Pro to a new iPhone 14 Pro would have to be the worst upgrade experience I’ve had in a long time. Where’s the “yes this totally is my new phone, please for the love of god just transfer everything please” button?

Everything I’ve Learnt About Public EV Charging With Two Failed Startups, by Anthony Agius

“The point of this post isn’t to analyse why I’m not an EV charging mogul with dozens of stations making mad profits around the country.”

Kevin Kelly:

“The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.”

Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company to Fight Climate Change, writes David Gelles in The New York Times:

“In some ways, the forfeiture of Patagonia is not terribly surprising coming from Mr. Chouinard. As a pioneering rock climber in California’s Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, Mr. Chouinard lived out of his car and ate damaged cans of cat food that he bought for five cents apiece. Even today, he wears raggedy old clothes, drives a beat up Subaru and splits his time between modest homes in Ventura and Jackson, Wyo. Mr. Chouinard does not own a computer or a cellphone.”

All of your life’s work, efforts, learnings, skills and talents, has been for this next season, you’re now slave and superhero at the same time. You’ve brought your newest friend and your greatest die into the world.

Strap in. Shit’s about to get weird (and amazing!).

Welcome to the dad club. You’re going to rock it.

“All we can do is build trust, that’s the only asset a newsroom has.” - @reckless, or, Nilay Patel, Editor-in-chief of The Verge on Stratechery

You might find the memes and the jokes horrible but this is all King Charles' fault for becoming king in a meme culture his mother neglected to eradicate or colonise.

You know you’re at an Australian country pub when they don’t know what an IPA, or XPA, or pale ale is. I asked for a beer from a brand that’s less than a decade old so she gave me a local apple cider …

Has anyone tried letting their toddler just leave and run into the wild? Maybe us parents are the only things holding them back from glory? Maybe warm clothes, a sleep routine, dry nappies, and regular food really is the last thing they want?

Sent from Steve Jobs' iPad:

From: Steve Jobs To: Steve Jobs Date: Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:08PM

I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

I do not make any of my own clothing.

I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

I did not discover the mathematics I use.

I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

I am moved by music I did not create myself.

When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

Sent from my iPad

Otto English in Politico:

“The world’s papers will be full of obituaries of the queen today. This is the life of Elizabeth Windsor.”

What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns.

Restrictions on social contact stemmed disease spread, but weighing up the ultimate costs and benefits of lockdown measures is a challenge.

Richard Branson:

“All businesses are an idea or service that make somebody else’s life better. If you make other people’s life better, you’ll capture that value in return.”

I don’t want normal, I want magic.

A delightful Batman story

Louis L’Amour​:

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”

Proud to announce that I’ve been appointed as a noted person to dispose of any currencies with former heads of state on them. Please mail all currencies to my PO Box and I will dispose of the currency ethically and properly.

I miss old-school Steve Jobs era Apple product launches. Steve would say that they designed some cool tech, we’d all agree and cheer. Tim Cook’s Apple pads it out with marketing BS “products that are essential to our daily lives and that work seamlessly together”.

How boring and sad for AFL, to keep up the boring old broadcast model for another 7 years.

Why international standard paper size ISO 216, the standard you might know as A1/A2/A3/A4/A5/A6 is one of the greatest innovations of the 18th century, and the simple maths behind it.

Epictetus:

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

The real conspiracy I’d like Qanon to tell me about is why Australians are denied eggnog. How does Big Nog continue to ruin the lives of everyday Australians?

Darryl Campbell in The Verge:

“There’s no evidence two decades of pat-downs and shoe removal have made travellers any safer — so why does the theatre of airport security persist?”

This Ars Technica article - Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot - - reminds me of how I got shareware games before the internet. The local Video Ezy had a for-money shareware kiosk you could bring floppy disks to and get fresh ‘warez.

Three year-old firstborn looks at me as I’m putting her to bed tonight and says “when you were a little boy I made you a daddy!”

It’s like she’s listening in on my therapy sessions.

11 weddings to go before Mexico!

Things people have said to me tonight as I DJ a wedding I wasn’t even supposed to DJ:

Young female guest: Do you know who is playing right now? (Naughty By Nature and I instantly age 20 years)

Young male guest: What Spotify playlist is this?!? (I chose songs individually because it’s just more fun that way)

Middle aged female guest during a Missy Elliot song and just after September by Earth, Wind, and Fire have played: can you play more songs for us oldies, we don’t like this music and no-one’s dancing (I’m looking at a full dance floor).

A tip if you’re attending a wedding, save your requests for your drive home.

Someone on Hacker News found an unbelievable Wikipedia article about the Athletics at the 1904 Summer Olympics – men’s marathon

“While Fred Lorz was greeted as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified as he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race. The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race, a side effect of being administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine by his trainers. The fourth-place finisher, Andarín Carvajal, took a nap during the race after eating spoiled apples.”

Steve Jobs:

“When you’re young, you look at TV and think “there’s a conspiracy.” The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realise that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

That’s a far more depressing thought.”

“Hey honey comma oh this is a voice message sorry babe anyway” is how I start every voice message to my wife on my iPhone.

Still waiting for Big Audio Dynamite III

Hey, you know, you can just do stuff, like you don’t need anyone’s permission or anything

Sunrise on a Sunday morning from Cabarita Beach, New South Wales

Someone was up at 4:30am and nothing would settle her.

Hint: it wasn’t Britt.

25 lessons learned from working at Clubhouse

Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, a summary:

1. Share your thoughts and your process and your work, online, for free.
2. You don’t need to be an expert to share your work - beginners can easily help other beginners.
3. By sharing your work online, you’ll attract an audience of people who care about the same stuff you do - this can change your life.

David Perell on the news:

“The paradox of news: By telling us to care about everything, the news leads to apathy instead of action.”

I’m so unsubscribed from the news at the moment, it’s so liberating.

If something important happens, please text me.

Rob Hardy on non-coercive marketing:

“The key ingredient in non-coercive marketing is the golden rule. We should market to others the way we’d want to be marketed to ourselves. Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn’t seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that’s already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what’s behind those doors, then surrenders the outcome, trusting that the right people will step through when they’re ready.”

Patrick Collison has assemblers a fascinating list of questions, like:

Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present?

The end of social media and the rise of algorithmic media

The rising cost of living is actually encouraging us to spend more

The people behind Refind are doing something really interesting with the “here’s a list of really interesting articles in an email” concept. If you like the idea of getting an email full of contextually interesting links, you’ll really like Refind.

Thanks for the referral @qldnick.

Amelia Earhart​:

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward.”

The guy who goes out of his way to hilariously grimace and loudly say ”good practice for your next marriage” at every wedding must be elated when he gets an invite.

Forever amazed at what people wear to weddings. It must be so beautiful to do that last gaze in a mirror at home before you leave for the ceremony and think ”damn I’m hot!”

Evan Armstrong supposes that if Steve Jobs knew how to speak finance (bs) he might have stayed CEO of Apple back in the 80s:

“If he had known to say to the board some version of “Q2 deliverables were only at 10% of forecast, but because of our LTV:CAC ratio and percentage of pipeline in mid-market, we should see full quota attainment by Q4,” maybe his problems wouldn’t have been so serious.”

Letters of Note:

“In June of 1460, news reached Pope Pius II of an orgy which had recently taken place in the gardens of Giovanni di Bichis’s palace in Tuscany. To his dismay, it had been attended, and to some extent organised, by the vice-chancellor of the Roman Church, Cardinal Rodrigo de Borja.”

I can’t believe no-one has been celebrating Digital Radio’s (DAB) 13th anniversary in Australia.

It’s like DAB doesn’t mean anything to anyone.

Matt Damon very simply and succinctly explains why we don’t get the movies like we used to - and it’s all to do with the death of the DVD.

Wow, I didn’t know this but you can use your $50 Qantas voucher like a power-up mid-flight so the flight attendant doesn’t smash into your elbows with the drinks cart, or to be allowed to push the seat in front of you back up when the passenger puts it down.

Seeing the #SolidarityWithSanna posts reminds me of something that happened 10 years ago next week: Alan Jones and Barnaby Joyce on the radio proclaiming that “women are destroying the joint” 1:29 into this audio. Some people struggle with female leadership.

As a person born in 1981, the greatest dilemma I face is whether I identify as Gen X or Gen Y.

I don’t like Gen Whiners, they don’t seem like my kind of people, but then I hear really old people identify as Gen X and I’m sure I’m not that old.

I get itchy when I sit with a photo I’ve made for more than 24 hours, I couldn’t imagine dedicating 50 years to a work of art.

Henry Luce, founder of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines:

“To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.”

Eve Peyser in Intelligencer on Mensa:

“Many of its members think of themselves as outsiders and feel like Mensa is a place where they can be themselves and connect with people who understand and appreciate them.”

B.D. McClay in The Hedgehog Review:

“The other great crime of whataboutism is that it solidifies the online sense that the appearance of paying attention is paramount—not actually paying attention.”

View the world through a series of incentives and you’ll find we’re doomed in every direction. Health departments want people to drink less. Tax departments want people to drink more.

NPR:

Japan launches a contest to urge young people to drink more alcohol

When this real estate agent announces a successful deal on Instagram, she doesn’t put SOLD or PURCHASED on the listing — she puts MANIFESTED!

How sunrise at Currumbin Rock looked this morning

My favourite kind of internet communication is when you write a joke then people comment with real advice.

The only correct way today can go in #auspol is if the Prime Minister does a press conference where he takes off an Albo mask and is Scott Morrison underneath.

It’s weird when I hear about people watching the same TV show at the same time as other people because the antennas on a nearby mountain determined it so.

Its kinda quaint, like calling someone on the phone, or catching a bus cross-country.

Running your own business is the most powerful vessel for learning. Theory actualises itself into practical, meanwhile, you’ve placed a bet, you’ve made a sacrifice, on the learning.

An ever-changing and growing list of the top 50 life hacks at 50hacks.co

How many fools you know that have specific global and Australian marriage law, rituals, traditions, and customs knowledge like this? Not many. If any?

Tavi Gevinson in NY Mag’s The Cut:

“There are plenty of well-documented reasons to distrust Instagram — the platform where one is never not branding, never not making Facebook money, never not giving Facebook one’s data — but most unnerving are the ways in which it has led me to distrust myself. After countless adventures through the black hole, my propensity to share, perform, and entertain has melded with a desire far more cynical: to be liked, quantifiably, for an idealized version of myself, at a rate not possible even ten years ago. I think I am a writer and an actor and an artist. But I haven’t believed the purity of my own intentions ever since I became my own salesperson, too.”

As an old nerd I find it fundamentally offensive when tech podcasts publish a 404th episode instead of skipping it, or maybe publishing a no-audio audio file.

Why is it ok for William Joel to be professionally called Billy Joel but it’s not ok for Joshua Withers to be professionally called Joshy Withers?

Science says we can all just stay at home and the Titans will still lose despite a home ground advantage.

Jerry Saltz is a gift to this generation, and his Vulture article: How to Be an Artist should be required reading for humans on planet earth:

“33 rules to take you from clueless amateur to generational talent (or at least help you live life a little more creatively).”

Matt Ruby (plus every wedding photographer I know):

Your grandparents have photos in a shoebox, but we’ll have nothing. Reminder: Just like every hard drive fails eventually, every business goes under eventually. Get a hard copy of anything you want to actually own and keep forever.

A fascinating element of modern web design is that developing/producing for the open web has actually gotten harder, not easier.

I remember the promise of Microsoft FrontPage, Apple’s iWeb, Macromedia Dreamweaver, that normal people could just make websites then upload the boring old HTML, CSS, and images to a directory on a web-facing file server and bam you’re online.

But today you’ve either got Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress.com or installing Wordpress on your own server - but then shit gets weird. Like someone I know was all excited for Astro and I look at the website and in the hero image area is the instruction to “npm create astro@latest” and I have no idea what that means?

Where’s the cool and hip web content creator of today?

Never forget that time the two largest mobile phone software companies partnered together and the Australian federal government said, yeah nah, and instead blew $21 million on an app that found two cases and is being deleted today.

Can confirm this is true. Please refrain from messing with me:

“I don’t mess around with anyone over 42, they built different, their families had them formally trained in something by the time they were 2, they had keys to the house by age 5, could cook full meals at 7 and were pretty much self-sufficient at 9.

They left their house at dawn every Summer morning and didn’t come back til nightfall and survived all day on water from garden hoses, they might get a sandwich on the off chance somebody’s parents had went shopping, they spent three quarters of their lives by themselves with a parent maybe checking on them twice a month, most of them have evaded at least one kidnapping attempt, and, they know 15 different ways to remove blood stains from clothing. They the real fuck around and find out people.

My favourite weekly email newsletter - Dense Discovery - just clocked over 200 editions. Give it a read and subscribe.

You know what the most disappointing element of the Trump presidency has been is finally finding out that Area 51, aliens, werewolves etc, they don’t know. If they knew, then he’d know, and he would’ve blabbed by now.

Who knew that Trump would confirm that we’re all alone.

Finally it’s happened! Millennials are old too!!!

Jideofor Onwugbenu on his Leverage Thoughts Substack wonders if doing a lot really does much:

In our world where the current zeitgeist is of being productive(hustle culture), where our calendars and hours are filled with events in the aim of succeeding, and where productivity channels have grown on mediums such as youtube, have we truly become productive?

John Dickerson in Slate:

“My children are vampires. I don’t mean that they are going to dress as vampires for Halloween. I mean that, like vampires, they cannot be captured on film.”

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TikTok Moderators Are Being Trained Using Graphic Images Of Child Sexual Abuse, in Forbes:

“Nasser expected to be confronted with some disturbing material during his training to become a content moderator for TikTok. But he was shocked when he and others in his class were shown uncensored, sexually explicit images of children.”

Port Dougie this afternoon.

Port Douglas, Far North Queensland.

Spain says no to nice aircon temps:

“A decree published on Tuesday morning in the official state gazette and scheduled to go into effect next week mandates that air conditioning in public places be set at or above 27 degrees Celsius (about 80 degrees Fahrenheit) and that doors of those buildings remain closed to save energy.”

Free business idea: Instagram, but for photos.

Many think that “the elites” or “the media” are pushing an agenda. They’re not, it’s actually worse. They’re just giving us what we want so they can sell it to us and become wealthier.

Heck, if I was them, I’d do it.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies:

Many have viewed American journalism as controlled by rich people or corporations with the goal of influencing the masses, perhaps to push people toward their political views. Gentzkow and Shapiro’s paper suggests, however, that this is not the predominant motivation of owners. The owners of the American press, instead, are primarily giving the masses what they want so that owners can become even richer.

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”

– Miles Davis

More Aussies - 18% - are going to be investing in crypto in the next 2yrs than real estate - 17% - so it’s going to be a pretty good 2yrs for A Current Affair. In fact, I might invest in ACA, they’re going to have some great li’l ozzy battler ripped-off stories.

As I write this I’m standing in what used to be a seed, or maybe rice, playpen at a local indoor play centre.

Used to be, because this last week they’ve removed the seed/rice and left the floor in this playpen bare like the other areas in the centre. Apparently the upkeep of that one playpen resulted in a whole extra staff member, so the seed pen just wasn’t good for business. They’re now saving a wage, and the business plan

It was good for play, though. My three year old was very worried about its absence, and honestly, it was the main drawcard for this play centre. I’ve never seen it empty, and every toddler in the room desperately wanted to run their fingers through the hundreds of kilograms of other-kid-germ-infected seed. The seeded play pen was good for so many things, just apparently not for business.

This, seemingly, is the art of business. What can I add to my vehicle driving toward our North Star that makes the product or service more valuable, more desirable, more wanted. What can I take away that would not detract from those same elements.

How can we be driving towards our North Star with the least amount of baggage, and the most amount of joy and soul intact?

I wonder if letting that staff member go and removing the rice increased joy, soul, satisfaction in the play centre?

Which makes me think of this line from Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook/the metaverse this week:

“Our north star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business that is as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think that’s a really exciting thing. I think a big part of how you do that is by pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do.”

What a soulless and boring North Star. Get back to me when your metaverse has a germ-ridden rice pen, Zuck.

Another dose of inspiration for my family’s 2023:

Seneca:

“Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed hoping I by a man who is preoccupied with many things.”

Warren Buffett:

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

My 2023 goal in Mexico is to no longer know to do.

Wendell Berry:

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Scott Rosenberg in Axios:

“Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook’s rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign.”

Taylor Lorenz on why you don’t want the old Instagram back:

“It’s tempting to think that if Instagram simply reverted to a previous design or reinstated a chronological feed, that would somehow bring us closer to the people we care about. But we don’t forge personal connections by sharing or commenting on highly personal public-facing photos that are permanently displayed on a grid anymore. These days, intimacy is fostered through features like DMs, group chats, or ephemeral posts to Close Friends.”

Where is trust growing?

It’s often remarked upon that trust is dropping. Trust in government, science, corporations, media, journalists etc.

But where is it growing?

One of the key elements to parenting is knowing whether to say “wow” or “no, don’t do that” when your kid screams “Hey, dad!”

The co-founder of podcast host Anchor has written about his perceived issue with podcasting in the Standards Innovation Paradox, and James Cridland has responded that it hasn’t remained stagnant in its 19/21 years.

The most prominent issue I see in podcast standards today would be in forming a distinction between a serial show, an episodic show, or a one-off show, like a feature story or a documentary. Serials and episodic shows are covered already in the RSS, but I could see a type of audio story that is a single “episode” of either fiction like a feature film, or a single story like a documentary.

They’re showing off Wisk’s flying cars at King George Square in Brisbane today.

Craig Mod (devastatingly) on travel:

“The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, ‘better’ version of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, un-curious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind-controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion. An eminently photogenic set of torii in Kyoto.”