Well there goes my plans on starting an airline based around coitus once we reach cruising altitude.
“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
– Albert Camus
I uploaded 72GB of data for a project today and it only took a few hours.
I’m reflecting on that today as we berate the NBN, and government internet policy, the speed of computers, and how things are too slow, or too expensive.
The first MP3 I downloaded in 1997 went overnight.
My dad gifted my 1 year old a commemorative 50c coin for her birthday. I don’t know what this means. Is this a secret code, like when someone leaves a pineapple in your bedroom when you’re visiting?
Two years ago this week, we were all walking into the last normal week we’d see in a while. We were so innocent and unaware.
auDA is celebrating the 36th birthday of .au today, a few weeks away from the launch of .au direct.
One of my earliest memories of .au is how expensive Melbourne IT’s prices were compared to .com so my employer at the time decided a .au.com domain name was the better bet.
So many of you have been asking how much money I make. I make a Medium income.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the current disaster situation north and south of our home in flood devastated areas and how “the government” isn’t doing anything. I don’t think I want a government to do things. Governments have historically not achieved anything close to what regular people have.
I’d like you and I to do things, instead of putting our faith in a bureaucracy structured around a democratic election. The incentives are out of whack, and our want for “them” to do something doesn’t help the political process. It gives them easy wins by promising money but not delivering, and easy opportunities for a photo and a handshake whilst helping no-one.
I think it would be much more powerful for our communities to find their common unities, for those communities to band together with finances, services, love, care, hugs, cooking, whatever is needed. Not to wait for a old white guy in the capital city to help us, for us to help ourselves. Outsourcing care to those people gets us nowhere except for more taxes and less care with less help.
We’ve been outsourcing caring to government for too long. They don’t do it well.
We asked the government to look after our poor and we got Centrelink’s robodebt. We asked the government to look after our health and we got the last two years of whatever 2020-2021-2022 was. We asked the government to look after our financials and we got the GFC, current house prices, and ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). We asked the government to regulate the media and we got nightly news bulletins that somehow are the same length every night, and newspapers that hold power in government, not holding government to account. We asked the government to come and help in the floods and we got a PR and social media marketing campaign. We asked the government to lead and we got Scotty from marketing.
Let’s stop asking the government to do things, and ask ourselves to do things, ask each other to do things. It might be scary, but let’s be vulnerable, let’s ask for help. Let’s be real.
The government is good at building roads and collecting rubbish. The government isn’t good at care, love, or help.
James Greig in Stop making the Ukraine war about you:
“Social media isn’t necessarily the source of this tendency, but it has accelerated the impulse for people to be obsessed with their own subjectivity; unable to process global events outside of the prism of their own emotional reaction and the relatively minor ways they are affected.”
A solid amen to Arne Bahlo on his article: You’re using email wrong.
“If I look at my inbox, it’s a joy.”
I’m really good at sales
Just attended my eight court mediation hearing because of Covid cancelling someone’s wedding plans. If you ever want to feel sad come shout me a beer or eight and I’ll tell you the stories.
The Hustle via Kyle Westaway:
“Sixty percent of IKEA purchases are impulse buys. And IKEA’s own creative director has said that only 20% of the store’s purchases are based on actual logic and needs.
How does IKEA trick you into buying more stuff? (1) Store layout. Inside, customers are led through a preordained, one-way path that winds through 50-plus room settings. The average IKEA store is 300k sq. ft.—the equivalent of about five football fields—and their typical shopper ends up walking almost a mile. This forces wider product exposure, creates a false sense of scarcity and creates mystery. (2) Low prices. IKEA often follows a “price first, design later” philosophy: It starts with a price target—say $6.99 for a new stool—then reverse-engineers the design process to meet that goal. IKEA seems to adhere to a “survival of the fittest” pricing model: If a product’s price can’t be reduced over time, it tends to get discontinued. (3) The IKEA Effect. We have a cognitive bias wherein we place a higher value on items we build ourselves, regardless of the quality of the end result. (4) Cafeteria. A survey of 700 shoppers found that those who ate at the food court spent an average of more than two times more on home furnishings than those who didn’t.”
“There is perhaps no more colossal waste of human potential than Netflix. An algorithmic content feeding tube, designed by Silicon Valley engineers to deposit dopamine into our lizard brains at the exact point that we would churn, Netflix’s final form will be a pair of wires shoved directly into our eyeballs giving us personally crafted reality television. I love it.”
Every time I pick up an AFR lately and the front page headline isn’t “World is Fukt” I’m honestly surprised.
Lismore and the New South Wales Northern Rivers needs help.
Skilled labour, stood down unvaxxed workers re-employed and resourced, fresh water, perishables, probably a coffee break. Through Brisbane it’s the same.
Britt just dropped off a bunch of supplies to some friends in need, this is their house, there is so much work ahead for the whole community.
Could you imagine your house going under?
Please find real and generous ways to help.
Most advice is people’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.
“I think it’s important to live in a nice country rather than a powerful one. Power makes everybody crazy.”
Kurt Vonnegut in a letter to his daughter, Nanette. 20th November 1971.
Kevin is listening through every album of every band he loves:
“Even the great treasure of music can seem dull at times. I’ve found that giving over real considered time to an artist’s work has taught me so much–about art, about creative decisions and really just about how we all get up in the morning and have to make that day happen in a way that it mattered.”