Archive
We keep learning that ‘against’ is insufficient (take the last US election as a clear example) .. we need to answer ‘for’ … not only do we continually fail to learn that lesson we also seem to constantly rediscover the knowledge.
John Gruber blogged about XCancel shutting down yet again, adding this in a parenthetical:
…let’s admit it at this point, there’s not just a lot posted on X, it’s resurgent in popularity
Stop your focus on record-keeping and command-and-control systems. They are history. They are and always were. The future is ‘Engagement’. BUT - where are those systems?
"Govinda" by Kula Shaker
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Apparently they are still going ... who knew? This had my ears at the time - as did [🖇️ the album](https://john.philpin.com/2026/08/08/k-by-kula-shaker.html) - and still does. I can't fail to listen to Govinda and not feel uplifted.
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Released in 1996 in the middle of ‘Brit Pop’ - yet curiously Oasis, Blur and Pulp all did NOT release and album that year. Not sure they fit into the BritPop category - but no less great for it.
I know - I know. But this is important. It might be too late - but I want to make sure we don’t lose the ‘community’ war - like we seem to have lost the one around ‘content’.
"Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush
Happy Birthday Kate. You didn't change everything - but you sure changed a lot.
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Photo by Marija Zaric on UnsplashBusinessEngaged is what we call our approach to systems we are building for organisations that are ready for The Age of Engagement. It is a fundamental shift in how businesses connect, operate, and grow.
At the heart of engagement is community.
And that’s where we have a problem.
Because community has been hijacked.
Not suddenly. Not by one bad actor. This is how language always gets killed - slowly, by overuse, by laziness, by marketing departments who needed a word that felt warm and human and didn’t cost anything to say.
Everyone has a ‘community’ and almost nobody does 🔵 and since community is core to everything we are building for the ‘Age of Engagement’ , it’s time we told you what we actually think. Spoiler alert: it’s not your Slack workspace, it’s not your mailing list and it’s certainly not your followers.
Privacy isn’t about hiding. It’s about choosing - not a quote - but that is absolutely the thread running through this Podcast - encryption, jurisdiction, age verification, AI. Bart keeps returning to ‘control’ as the definition of privacy, not secrecy.
Apple has run the same play for 25 years and still ‘nobody’ (barring. a few) ever sees it coming.
An American AI broke into a system - without being asked. A Chinese AI defended the victim from the attack. The defense failed - but somehow the Chinese AI is. the hero? Colour me confused - pick a side - any side. They’re all wrong.
Regular readers will recognise this theme. Reminding again as I read 🔗 Joan Westenberg this morning.
"Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) [The Ultimate Mix]" by John Lennon & Yoko Ono
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It’s going to get you. 🔗 Inspired by
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Too many people blame declining club/society membership on the ‘kids don’t want to join.’ That’s not the problem ….
Apologies for the interruption. Over the next couple of weeks there will be two new episodes. Subscribe here or follow along wherever you get your podcasts.
"Life Is a Long Song" by Jethro Tull
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I wrote something recently - a friend wrote back “your on song John” and my mind instantly jumped back in time 55 years and this has been ear worming me ever since. It’s not even about what he wrote.
🔗📼 If you youtube
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The people who shaped you probably have no idea they did - the people who shape you probably have no idea they do.
Artists sensed it decades before Einstein. Science proved it a century ago. Business is still pretending it never happened. Here’s why your ‘population’ theories collapse the moment a single person acts from conviction - and why what you are trying to do to fix it will never work.
"Prove It" by Television
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They did.
Reminded of Tom today when I read that his collection of 4.000 vinyls were being sold at auction.
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Organizations must shift their mindset from assuming predictability in their systems to embracing and designing for human unpredictability.
"America Is Waiting" by Brian Eno & David Byrne
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Two of the masters delivering a master
The video is well worth a watch aswell.
📼🔗 America Is Waiting
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🎵 Only the Good Die Young || Remembering ‘Om Malik’ - today he moved on to where or whatever the next realm is.
"Constant Craving" by k.d. lang
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I actually don't - but it is still an important song in my canon.
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Terry Godier is his name and he seems to be assuming the role of helping us all be purposeful as we seek to slow ourselves down in the the accelerating world of tech that we all live in. I am guilty of that speed. I LOVE slowing down. And it is entertaining at the same time as being informative. Thank you Terry.
"Dancing in the Street (2002 Remaster)" by David Bowie & Mick Jagger
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**So great. Such fun.**
I mean sure - you could pop over to your music player and have a listen - but there's also the video for twice the fun.
🔗📼 David and Mick
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"Vivaldi" by Curved Air
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Another one of those cross genre mind blowing tracks that just had me hooked - and never let me go. I wonder if two cellos would ever have happened without Darryl.
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"Phaedra (Steven Wilson 2018 Stereo Remix)" by Tangerine Dream
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But these were the guys that had my heart back in the day. Noting that I try to post links as close to the original as I can - this is the exception that proves the rule - a 2028 Remix by Steven Wilson.
Bonus points for the name of the river.
"Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding (2014 Remaster)" by Elton John
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IMO he never did enough instrumentals. And no - not a 'yellow' brick' 'road'.
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"God Speed The Plough" by Stackridge
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Part 2 of 2. Not The Korgis.
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"Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" by The Korgis
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Part 1 of 2 - Not Stackridge.
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"I Second That Emotion" by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
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Makes me happy. How about you?
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"Manifesto" by Roxy Music
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So many - you just have to choose one. DONE.
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"Pictured Within (Live)" by Jon Lord
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Jon Lord was always one of my favourites. My interest in Deep Purple emerged not from Taliesyn, Fireball or even 'In Rock', but rather their first live album 'In Concert'. He never managed to repeat that within Purple - but as a solo artist - that was Jon. I THINK I have them all - I certainly know them.
But first ask the question - so you aren’t disappointed in the results.
Satya Nadella seems to be arguing that Human Agency is important inside the organisation and that ‘done right’ AI allows for real ‘Human Agency’. My take is that he is only talking about how humans serve the organisation. What about if you are ‘just’ a human?
"Friday I'm In Love" by The Cure
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I like to try and not pick the obvious ones on the more famous bands - but how could you not pick this one when it comes to the Cure.
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"Boots on the Ground" by Massive Attack & Tom Waits
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Hell yes. Only released a couple of months ago - played on rotation for a while there. It was posted in Crucial a couple of days ago - so electing to use my 'double down' card today.
🖇️ Posted on AlbumWhale back in April
For the life of me can't find the crucial entry again.
"Cross Road Blues" by Robert Johnson
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Of course we all know the original - take a listen before listening to Mysty Mayhem's cover ...
🔗🎵 Mysty Covering Robert
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"Come Together" by Spiritualized
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The entire album takes me back to the exact point in time when Mark introduced me to Spiritualized. Thank you Mark.
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"Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath
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Black Sabbath on Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath.
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… one giant step for yours truly!
The transition might have been the undoing of Silicon Valley.
"Rhythm Of Life" by Sammy Davis, Jr.
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Not a 'musical/show' kinda guy, and this came out before I was old enough to 'get it' - but for whatever reason since I first heard it - have always absolutely loved it.
The image comes from 🔗 The Rhythm of Life
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"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" by The Walker Brothers
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Hard to choose which one of theirs to include in Crucial. Might have to add others in the future. Another 'liquid' voice.
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… How can you do - if you don’t understand?
"Perfect Day" by Lou Reed
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It is actually.
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My Substack is themed on the idea of ‘People First’.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on UnsplashI even used to call it that.
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It means;
People ahead of corporations
People ahead of technology
We don’t reject either, it’s just that people are the priority.
Sacha Baron Cohen and the rest of the cast is capable of so much more. I watched it all - sadly. Shining star? Richard E Grant.
🖇️ Review Ratings
"Everybody's Hustlin" by Heads, Hands and Feet
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The Third Lee - Albert.
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"I'd Love to Change the World (1971)" by Ten Years After
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Prompt: A song from college or early adulthood.
Today's offer happens to fit the prompt - so why not .. one of the other 'Lees'.
🔗 Another Alvin
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"Andmoreagain" by Love
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WEIRD - I wrote this most yesterday - and posted it - yet nowhere to be found. So here we go again.
Back in 'my day' there were three 'Lees' - Albert, Alvin and Arthur. This music is from Arthur, the image below is one of the others.
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Manton suggests that Apple rarely builds anything now … ‘except the most obvious products’. I disagree, because that statement depends on two things … what is meant by ‘obvious’ and what is meant by ‘product’.
"The End" by The Doors
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This just keeps playing in my ears.
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"Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith
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An integral part of Spencer Davis and Traffic before this side project with 'the world's first Supergroup' .. and Stevie was barely 21 when he wrote this 🤯
There are some great covers out there - but seriously - did you know that this even existed? And no - it is not a 'great' cover (in both senses of the word) .
"Everybody's Talkin' (1971 Mix)" by Harry Nilsson
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Interesting that his two biggest hits were other people's songs. #JustSayin
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This is a repost from August 2023. Life has moved on for the world - but for those caught up in it all it is their new reality. Just a reminder that whilst the news moves on at speed - reality takes time.
… but there for the grace of whatever power you hold true - do we all go. Sometime sooner. Sometimes very much later. But go we do. Few have the power to control ‘when’.
I’ve always taken the 5 levels to be more a series of ongoing processes .. not necessarily that you achieve them … more to reflect the focus at a moment in time .. also the triangle pinnacle is misleading in that the work going on in there is likely inversely proportional to the shape’s area … and finally you are almost constantly working on multiple levels at the same time.
The rebranding of WH Smith to TG Jones led to large and rapid declines in revenue - which means that the buyer of the brand did not actually undersatand what they were buying.
… maybe not. It’s all about the lens through which you view the story.
"Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (Live)" by Andy Williams
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Why Andy's version? Because 'mum' - who was not a particular fan of Andy - but we all liked it and it sticks in my mind - because of mum's reaction ....
Off of you? It's off you ... off you why can't they speak English.
There are a few parralels …
In a nutshell - if you havent seen it - watch it. If you have seen it - watch it again.
To save you the click through … yep … good watch.
"Five O'clock World (Remastered)" by The Vogues
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The song came into my world through a great cover, but the Vogues original is still most excellent.
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"Kayleigh" by Marillion
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Always enjoyed the song. Never a massive fan of the band - but definitely a fan - all the way back to the days when some were heralding him as the 'new' Peter Gabriel ... I got it - but really he was just plain old Derek William Dick doing his thing - and his thing was rather good.
... when you don't know
where you are going
how it will end
what it's about
how long it will be
I don't know - seems all arse about face to me.
But sure - lets see where this cart is heading.
It’s quirky and different. Wont be everyone’s cup of tea - but definitely worth a try out. I loved it.
"Parklife" by Blur
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I am pretty much 'in' on all things Blur - so hard to choose a specific. Settled on it because it is just a year earlier than yesterday's - but for me inexorably linked.
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"Common People (Full Length Version)" by Pulp
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Pulp. Jarvis. Classic. Only Shatner might have improved it.
I'll see what I can do.
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"Waterfall" by The Stone Roses
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Madchester!
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A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or maybe the emperor has bought new clothes.
"I'd Rather Be the Devil" by John Martyn
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A vastly under appreciated catalogue. This track? 🤯
As always - despite first appearances - there is always a connection to the image.
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"Season of the Witch (2002 Remix w/o Horns)" by Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield & Stephen Stills
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A song covered by so many - over so many years - but surely this is the definitive ... Bloomfield, Kooper and Stills for 11 minutes.
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A veritable conundrum - or maybe it can be explained.
"iFiesta Fatal! (Album Edit)" by B-Tribe
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I was on a work trip in Finland. My hosts decided to expose me to some Helsinki night life. I can still picture it all - but sadly no pictures to share. At one point we were in a bar/restaurant/nightclub - which it was dependant on the time of day - and this music like no other swept through the whole place and I just disappeared into it.
"Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode
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The live one in particular I think nails why I love Depeche Mode - 'electronica sensibility rocks out'.
Also adding this live cover by Depeche Mode of Depeche Mode - Berlin.
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I don’t really understand the concept of listening within a genre or making music within a set of stylistic limitations.
"Hurry On Sundown" by Hawkwind
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Came to mind this morning after reading 🔗 this. As a lad - Hawkwind definitely hit a nerve. Still does. Lemmy's successor - not so much. This is the first track on their first album - (a couple of albums before Lemmy became a full timer) .. because there are again too many to choose - but like other occasional references to tracks in this world - the first of the first started me on this particular journey.
Between the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Reformation, society underwent significant changes while quietly laying the foundations for the modern world. Or did it?
"Green Tambourine" by The Lemon Pipers
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Continuing yesterday's 'theme' .. another 'one hit wonder' - same kind of time - same kind of sound and definitely my jam - then and now. It's just that this one is from the other side of the Atlantic.
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Zingo had the idea six to ten years too early. Timing, infrastructure, incumbents and a government willing to let you operate matters more than being first. A lesson for us all.
Sartre warned us about procrastination. He was talking about the human condition - but it equally applies to how organizations move, how people engage, and why waiting for ‘perfect’ means you never move. And by then, your bite has gone.
"Kites (Stereo) [2004 Remastered Version]" by Simon Dupree & The Big Sound
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If you know Stackridge - you may know The Korgis.
I know both. Love Stackridge. Like The Korgis.
In case you don't know ...Stackridge made quirky, melodic English pop-rock that mixed progressive, folk, and vaudeville, whilst The Korgis made highly melodic British pop with thoughtful lyrics, strong vocal harmonies, and irresistibly catchy hooks.
"Flowers in the Rain (2007 Stereo Mix)" by The Move
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The last song you heard on the radio
Another prompt - but going to bend the rules on this one ...
Radio? What's that Daddy? So long ago that I can barely remember doing it - BUT - my choice would be a Crucial Track anyway - so let's call it a 'twofer'.
"Chicago" by Groove Armada
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And Another 'Prompt' Entry ...
Hit shuffle on your music library and post the first song played
I generally post an image in my 'Crucials' that is connected to the song - but in an odd way.
Bonus points today if anyone can tell me whatthat might be today.
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"The City: Grass and Concrete / Taxi To Brooklyn / Speak Easy It's a Whiskey Scene" by Mark-Almond
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One of those bands that are so far under the radar in 2026 that subterranean doesn't even start to describe it - and they have so many 'CRUCIALS' - that I ended up choosing this one because it is over 10 minutes of total bliss.
Brit here - and though Björk does not sit at the top of my favourite artists - she certainly is no where near the bottom and I do not recall that particular refrain ever being that common - which might explain her Wikipedia entry.
My Review - despite Giancarlo .. overall .. yeah - no.
"Oh Well (Live)" by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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Talking of superb covers … as I wrote 🖇️ here not even a month ago - a glorious cover of track by Fleetwood Mac. Before John and Stevie. Even before Christine.
Bonus Round ...
🔗🍎🎵 PartONE that Tom covered.
🔗🍎🎵 PartTWO that Tom did not cover - totally different and Peter Green's favourite part.
A Podcast and Transcript: Roger Lynch reveals that Condé Nast’s survival isn’t about scale or content volume, but about brand authority and direct audience relationships, he suggests that when Google search collapses and AI platforms commodify content, only publishers with deep trust and “taste” that machines can’t replicate will make it.
"I Write the Songs" by Barry Manilow
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Never a fan of Barry. Too saccharine, too schmaltzy. Not my style - but there is always an exception to the rule (still looking for Rush’s exception - but that remains another story.)
When I first heard this in 1976 - my instant reaction - was - ‘TYPICAL - BLOODY BARRY. ’I’ write the songs … seriously?
"Une Nuit a Paris, Pt. 1 / The Same Night In Paris, Pt. 2 / Later the Same Night In Paris, Pt. 3" by 10cc
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Thought I would follow a prompt for a change:
Share a song you call something other than its official title. What do you call it?
That's the way the croissant crumbles
Epic - from one of the most underplayed bands in the history of 'oldy goldys' - 10CC - and this offering will always be 'One Night in Paris' - I am English for heaven's sake.
"Perfect Day" by Lou Reed
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Whenever it doesn’t seem right … Lou sets me straight.
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Rabbiting on about ‘forgiveness’. When is it time? Should we?
Don’t click through if you are easily offended. Then again - if you are easily offended stop listening to POTUS
BUT
If you don’t know where you are going,
any road will do.Part two of a two part article. If you want to know what part one was all about, well - that’s why we have hyperlinks.
The World Is Sensing It.Over the past few days, a series of articles filtered to the top of my feeds, all talking about different aspects of this same structural gap that in turn coalesced around 4 questions.
The same can be said for Systems of Record.This is the first of a two part issue. If you already know our history and are more interested in where we are going - then the next newsletter is for you.
‘They’ have their CRM. Where’s my VRM?1Before you get too excited - sorry this is not about that - but - the question has been my North Star for a couple of decades.
"The New Math (What He Said)" by OSI
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I was sat on a plane reading an interview with Bowie who talked about this band he'd just heard. Made a note of it, and ordered it online. Their first album arrived and this was the first track and I was IN. How could you not be?
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Photo By geralt (pixabay.com)Towards the end of last year I had a few questions about my latest rant against org charts. I mean, we all hate them - but it would appear that some think I’ve ‘turned it up to 11’ (RIP Rob Reiner).
They aren’t wrong - because I think the problem requires to be turned up to eleven. It’s louder.
Why Most People Think Org Charts Are No GoodThey Don’t Match Reality
"Thank You for the Music" by ABBA
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Today’s post is a sister post to this one.
My memory … sitting alone tin a large Odeon(?) cinema - South London - Streatham. I really can’t recall the movie - except the closing credits - as Wiki says:
The song also plays over the closing titles as the camera pans out from the band performing in a hut on an island in the Stockholm archipelago to views of the archipelago itself.
Abba was never my bag, so why I went to see this in the Odeon (I think) cinema in Streatham, South London - I have no idea. It was fine - until it exploded into the closing credits. All this time later - I still remember the image and the music - a movie all by itself. Only two stars - but try to find the closing credits - sound up - on a big screen - dark room.
"When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease" by Roy Harper
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I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan of cricket .. but this one is nothing to do with cricket and everything to do with life. Been in the soundtrack of my life for 51 and counting years and hard to reach the end without life memories coming to the fore.
I have no idea why it took us until last night to finally get round to watching. But get round to watching we did. I now have even less understanding as to why the delay.
If you still haven’t seen it … rectify the situation ASAP.
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
"The Ocean" by Richard Hawley
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Hawley’s voice has me … every time. You can … I do .. just fall into his songs .. not just the ocean,
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… but is it? When someone asks me ‘where I am from’ … I try to understand the question that is really being asked, because the context reveals many different answers.
"Infected" by The The
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The first track of Matt’s second album left the speakers in my living room and arrived in my ears nearly forty years ago. I never looked back .. the power of this opening track hit me like a sledgehammer and does a stunning job of introducing the ‘tour de force’ that is the album.
"Fever (Adam Freeland Extended Remix) [Adam Freeland Master]" by Adam Freeland & Sarah Vaughan
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Cover? Mix? Do not know. First heard it 21 years ago .. been on the non existent mix tape of my life ever since. Give it a whirl.
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Finalist failed to stick first time around - but this time we have more time.
"Woke Up This Morning" by A3
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I watched the occasional Sopranos back in the day. But somehow it never stuck. Unlike the theme which has been in my Just Good Songs playlist since I discovered playlists. Such a powerful song. Never tire of it. Here’s to the next 29 years.
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I have no idea how I missed this - futzing with my sound set up last night and Siri suddenly started playing ‘Trafalgar Square’ that I had to Shazam to find out what it was. Then listened to the album once and here we are. Great album. Always nice to discover a ‘new’ artist.
"Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson
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I was listening to the new Joe Jackson album - really rather good - but for me - it still doesn’t meet the excellence of Joe’s crucial track.
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Leon reposted this 🔗 Disparaging Nouns | Forking Mad+ … with some commentary. Got a couple of comments back in turn - so I thought I would pop over to see what was being said in context - because personally I had never heard of ‘walloper’ … Brit here with a ‘lifetime’ in the USA and 6 years .. so far … across the Tasman.
But then he moved on.
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult
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Prompt Share a song you love that has parentheses (in the title).
A song that would have been in my ‘Just Good Songs’ playlist the day I heard it - it’s just that 🍎 hadn’t got round to inventing it - mainly because mere mortals didn’t have the internet.
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"Rockin' In The Free World (Glastonbury 2009)" by Neil Young
Live. Glastonbury. Well over ten minutes. Neil rockin' out.
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... with a title.
➡️ Originating at SourceFeed ... part of 'canonical john' ... for now.
"Hi Ren" by Ren Gill
Stunning. A friend shared this with me last year. If you want to listen to a totally original and highly talented artist - start here.
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"Permanating" by Steven Wilson
Listen on Apple Music
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In the Venn Diagram of music that jax and I both like - this one sits high ... so clearly needs to be pulled out first.
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This is a living post used to ensure consistency is applied on posts, conversations and replies across the site. All common/resuable css elements should be accounted for here.
Waiheke rersidents and visitors enjoy the ability to site along Oneroa beach thanks to one person’s initiative to create casual seating for beachgoers.
When I first saw this film … film, not movie - film … I logged it as one of my top, personal favourites of all time.
My opinion hasn’t changed.
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
Surprise? Not if you know Ren. One of the most extraordinary artists that have emerged in the past decade.
Massive Attack and Tom Waits … that’s the surprise. The result? As wonderful as you might expect.
Always liked Joe - and he has still got - 22 albums in. The tour starts soon.
Most organisations are optimised for a world that no longer exists - built for control and standardisation and competing in one that demands responsiveness and fluidity. You can’t patch engagement onto record; the invisible architecture has to shift, and that requires the same structured thinking that got you here, just pointed differently. I published 8 new pages about this over the weekend - but what follows is a more playful approach to the framework.
From an orginal idea of Andrew Mayfield . When he first mentioned it in a conversation, my mind took a turn. Finally I am at the first (of many I hope) iterations. Let me know your thoughts.
I watched it because it’s Jason .. sad that he keeps making the same movie .. even sadder is that I keep watching them.
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
Good action movie. GREAT Soundtrack.
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
One of these dark Nordic series. Love them. Loved it
🔗 Detective Hole
🖇️ Review Ratings
Originally Published: August 7th, 2024
Updated: April 3rd, 2026
In 2024 I originally wrote:
What’s not to love about Idris? Ok well not always, but this surprisingly worked.
Well - at least until the final episode.
Just finished the second series - and the fact it took us so many months to work through it speaks volumes. And when I say work … I mean work.
Not as good as Nobody - but then Nobody caught me out - where as Nobody 2 was - well ... Nobody 2. Colin Hanks looks so much like his Dad. Sharon Stone looked nothing like Sharon Stone - and yet was. The whole film was way better than any of Chevy's vacation movies - and the set up for the final action scene was lifted straight out of The A Team - and just as much fun.
Reflections on fractal communications - a very old idea - and its cropping up again as I am developing a very new idea - and even I hadn’t connected the dots.
This is a film - not a show and so lacked .. a lot. It also requires the watching of the magnificent series that preceded it to really get it. So yes … enjoyed, but if you haven’t seen the shows … don’t bother and if you have, you will be disappointed.
.. and very glad I missed it in the Theaters.
The star rating might seem harsh - it seemed that way - even to me - but this is a good example of how a normalised rating system can help you - dear reader - get better clarity on the 'why'.
Can’t recall why I started to watch it .. but glad I did .. very good .. and it was a while back (well last year) - despite it being from 2017 - and yet for all of that it took @mitchwagner to remind me - when he referenced it - I couldn’t even recall the name - don’t make the same mistake.
🔗 Godless on Reelgood
🖇️ Review Ratings
The post opens with a position on SaaS platforms moving towards context-as-a-service (CaaS) from Scott Brinker. I question marketing strategies for the ;age of experience’ - built on outdated systems from the ‘age of reason’. (Not to mention that Caas is to my mind up an entirely different pole.)
Significant progress made on my Structured Thought Wiki thanks to Claude - transforming it from numerous stubs into a more complete site with 193 pages, aided by Claude’s contributions in both content and design.
There’s a disclaimer you see everywhere in investment materials:
“Past performance is not an indication of future results.”
… It's a hedge (pun intended) against the assumption that ‘if it happened yesterday, it happens tomorrow’ because yesterday's consistency isn't tomorrow's guarantee.
Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash(SIDENOTE: Has NYPD always had a branch next door to The Nasdaq? Sure seems convenient - and possibly appropriate?)1
In tech we don’t have such a disclaimer.
No. Just NO.
A short (ish) reminder of the ongoing and necessary shift from old marketing principles that evolved when the vendor was in charge to new principles - which focus on engagement and experience - because the customer is now in charge.
As a regular reader of Scott’s newsletter, I opened this one in eager anticipation because he seemed to be making the same observations as I have been over the last couple of years … but I was wrong.
A security incident at Substack resulted in unauthorised access to users' email addresses and limited data, prompting an apology and assurance of improved protections. Before we get to that though - I have a couple of questions. Well one actually.
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In yesterday’s newsletter I wrote ‘coherence is the new moat’ and that you arrive at coherence through careful and repeated Structured Thought. But knowing that isn’t the same as building it. Today I want to talk about where you actually begin. Not with tools. Not with software. With thinking.
Detail from The Full Picture by Alina Grubnyak on UnsplashHere’s what nobody wants to hear: the moment you start to operationalise ‘coherence’, you discover how much of your understanding lives only in your head.
Climbing the ‘pace layers’ leads to fewer and more specialized sources of information.
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Photo by Andy Newton on UnsplashAnd then it happened Ooh, and then it happened
Ooh, and then it happened
Ooh, and then it happened
💬 Holland Dozier and Holland (‘H-D-H’ to their friends.)
If you have been following along (and if not - why not?) since the early days of People First, my work in Structured Thought and more recently, the consolidation into PHI⑊PIN then this is for you.
From the musical director of BJH in 1977. It might as well be classical - but it isn’t.
My thesis : In the late 80s, the slow adoption of computers and email outside of Oracle whilst annoying (at least to me) - also resulted in the fast adoption in the PC revolution - that Oracle was totally unprepared for and was left behind on.
Chris Lockhead posted 🔗 this on LinkedIN
It’s LinkedIn oatmeal.
Chris is right, so I replied:
Content is homogenous, undifferentiated and fully interchangeable with any other content - like any other ‘grain’ that sits in a silo.
Can you really tell one grain of wheat from another? Is your post/comment really interchangeable with every one else’s? If so - content it is. If not - guess what - it is not content.
Originally Published: Jun 6th, 2025
Updated: Jan 30th, 2026
Harlan can be great. This is good.
C3.AI, founded by tech industry veteran Thomas Siebel, is in talks to merge with privately held startup Automation Anywhere being reported by The Information.
Which got me to thinking - C3 is a dot ‘ai’? When did that happen?
A slow start that accelerate to 🤯 keeps up the pace and slows down at the end - and you are about to switch off and BOOM - Series 2 is in play.
Originally Published: Dec 17th, 2023
Updated: Jan 19th, 2026
We’re self-censoring into vanilla mediocrity, It’s destroying everything - and I do mean everything.
Guilty as charged. Going to try harder.
Cough - is it in fact ‘new’?
Anyway - installed and popped over to a local banking site here in New Zealand and asked Claude ‘what the strategic imperatives of the business at that page are … It built a plan and asked me to approve - I did - no modifications …
Yeah .. No. BC did a really good job - including the transformation - but so slow … And if you know me and historical dramas .. doubling down on the ‘yeah .. no’
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
🔗 The Redacted Smith Transcript
So I 🔗 asked Claude a simple question …
Please only consider this document and no other information. Bottom line - if you were the judge - would you find the defendant guilty or innocent. If guilty - on what counts. For each of those counts - What SHOULD the punishment be, what would the punishment be and what could the punishment be. Please keep succinct.
Still To Do
On the Blog
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Categories: Remove category ‘LongForm’ from Film Review Posts
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CSS: Simple Recent Posts - finish styling
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CSS: On a phone close up ‘spaces’ on home page
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CSS: Sort all home page blog styling
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CSS: Get the bullets back
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Functionality - Add the ‘Replies’ page back ❓
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Functionality - Second Archive Page to pull entire Archive
- going to need JSON/Micro.Blog Help
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Import My Instagram. It is time.
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Import The ‘Quotespace’ Blog. (Troubleshooting)
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Search - resolve PageFind, @sod search, categories, archive et al - way too confusin
Navigating the natural conflict between disruption and patience is essential. Responding to each at the right time is one of life’s greatest challenges.
5 Found Principles by Toa Heftiba on UnsplashLenny is Great - and with well over a million subscribers it seems that I might not be the only person that has come to that conclusion. The thing about him is his guests, their openness and their different way of thinking. Take ‘Elena’ on his latest Podcast.
Listen to it. This is why …
Elena is head of growth at Loveable, a company that in just one year since launch has a $200 million ARR and employs just 100 people.
Let me count the ways - but for now a short primer ….
Wrong - In What They Are A static snapshot in a dynamic system - Org charts freeze people in place, in a world that’s fluid, adaptive, and always in motion.
An illusion of control - They suggest neat lines of authority, when actual influence flows in networks, whispers, and Slack threads.
A power fantasy - Designed more to reassure executives than to reflect how things really work on the ground.
To understand how the fractalisation of work (doesn’t) work - consider ‘the taxi’, the definition of which is in the process of being redefined as a personalised vehicle that will take you for a to b.
That continues - BUT … it also used to be a place for …
Human conversation - spontaneously - about local gossip, life advice, or even silence. And all without algorithmsmonitoring sentiment.
Just a rewatch and LettrBoxd dropped a new post to the feed. Opinion not changed. 🖇️Original Post
There's that expectations thing again. I started-with high hopes - but no - mainly driven-by the fact that I didn't care about any of them - oh and I still have a hard time taking Adam Sander seriously - and I guess I'm not a giant fan of George to begin with - so no idea where those high hopes came from.
That said - Jax gave it 41/2 stars 'm 'would have been more if it wasn’t such a poor ending'.
Having just rewatched the first - would be churlish not to revisit the second. Same conclusion.
Was a rewatch - and not bad - just prefer the Reacher on Amazon Prime.
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I’ve been doing this every year since 2019 - which means that this is my 8th rodeo. (My previous words are here.)
After eight years of ‘three words’, you’d think I’d have this all figured out by now. BUT - Intentional | Inspired | Impactful ? To be honest - not as much as it could have been.
Protecting children’s online safety should be a top priority for everyone, as they are vulnerable to harmful influences from companies prioritizing profit over safeguarding. Sharing the ‘Words of Jax’,
I watched this 20 or more years ago - and was reminded of it whilst watching The Knight Before Christmas.
Yes - it is the same story - proving that the premise is not the problem.
Not my choice. Not by choice. But watch I did. It is movies like this that will ensure that AI Slop will take over part of the entertainment industry. Dreadful.
It has McConaughey in it - so how bad could it? Yeah. Probably his worst movie ever. Not helped by my opinion of 'fiction based on fact' dramas. But even then there are good ones. This is not one of them.
Totally loved. Tears - Joy and Laughter. A keeper.
If ‘the future’ is trust.
Who/what - do you trust?
I mean really really trust?
And why?
Linear sales funnels oversimplify reality and fail to account for the complexities of customer journeys and the importance of data in optimizing business processes - and more - IMHO.
🔗 Responding to Bill Bennet’s article.
The dependencies are clear - but if the EU, with 450 million people and deep talent pools, is only now waking up to the fact they can’t compete head-on in AI and cloud infrastructure, then NZ’s current posture makes even less sense.
The EU’s defaulted to regulation because that’s what they can actually do. But even that gets framed as geopolitical interference by Washington. They’re playing defence from a position of relative strength.
I watched this when it first came out - with great anticipation - being a fan of the books and all - and ... sadly disappointed. Nice enough. If there was a follow up - would watch that - but definitely fell flat.
I am a minority .. I did not like the original Knives Out … at all. So heaven only knows why I watched the second - which I liked even less - so what possessed me to watch the third? No idea - but so glad that I did. Finally the franchise delivered.
Drafts, an app by Agile Tortoise, has been recognized as App of the Year for 2025 thirteen years after its release, showcasing its continued relevance and utility in writing. Reposting @ameripie - adding small thoughts. ( Thankyou @agiletoroise )
Osborne’s appointment to OpenAI reflects a trend of organisations hiring political figures, despite their lousy records in public office - and Clegg didn’t even play a PM on TV - much less be one in real life.
When will any country with the leverage to do so finally call America’s bluff and recognize that a hollowed-out Amercia is trading its values for transactional brutalism and deserves to be abandoned by the allies it once took for granted and today arent even acknowledged.
Yes. Yes. Provided you like stories that circle around ‘other worlds’.
I watched the first and wasn’t really expecting a second … and I am CERTAINLY not expecting a third. PLEASE.
If you have nothing better to do .. in our house it’s one of those that fits in the Venn diagram overlap of ‘what movie shall we watch’ twixt the two of us.
Remarkably average .. I had Guy worked out during his second scene. Keira needed to think more.
Apologies for the gaps twixt newsletters. Want to know why?
Photo by Dynamic Wang on UnsplashTrust me the words haven’t stopped - it’s the transport layer that keeps changing, because this newsletter is but one of a number of communication vehicles I use and as I have been organising my thoughts and perusing my collection of unpublished Substack drafts, it struck me that you might not be aware of the range of PHI⑊PIN properties that run in parallel.
Ok - ‘where’s John - online’ - a quick summary of the network of words and sounds in the PHI⑊PIN domain.
Reconnecting with my Just Good Music cofounder and introducing you to an awesome video from ‘Ren’. Truly stunning - and if there is a god - he is going to go far.
After this, I asked for “the top 5 themes of the entire blog - and how those themes might be categorised.”
⸻
1. Systems vs People
Category: Human-Centric vs Mechanistic Worlds
This is the spine. You’re constantly examining how systems — corporate, political, digital, economic — drift away from the people they’re supposed to serve. The writing teases out the gap between stated purpose and lived reality. When you pull the thread, it usually reveals misaligned incentives, bureaucratic decay, or the slow capture of human agency by structures not built for complexity.
What is this blog about? Apparently it serves as a reflective exploration of complexity in various systems, highlighting the disconnect between theoretical frameworks and real-world behavior, while aiming to promote thoughtful navigation through that complexity. Who knew? Click through to read the why, the method and the overview.
The report reveals a decline in employee trust due to disconnection from leadership and stagnation in career progression, prompting a return to office spaces despite the ongoing buzz about AI disruption.
Despite numerous ideas and strategies for improving productivity in New Zealand, the decline continues and a significant gap remains in effective execution. Is it cultural?
A persistent mouse scrolling issue was successfully resolved in 10 minutes with the help of ChatGPT after exhausting other troubleshooting methods.
… needed.
I didn’t know what to expect .. I knew of the movie, director and of course Sean, Leo and Benicio .. but hell fire … did not expect this. Absolutely marvellous. Remember when UK PM Starmer said that the Netflix show ‘Adolesence’ should be played in all schools so that every school kid gets to see it?
Yeah - every American should watch this.
Oh - and definitely Leo wearing Arthur Dent’s dressing gown throughout was a lovely homage.
Just rewatched - had forgotten all about it - so good.
Wondering if Electron is the problem I am experiencing on MacOS 26 - still not totally sure.
Marvellous … so good.
Then again - the ‘conclusions’ aren’t always a lock.
GapingVoidSo, let’s explore together. Here’s what the past 24 hours have thrown my way…
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I was introduced to a team deeply immersed in AI. I won’t go into their work here, but one line stuck with me: “I just can’t help connecting the dots - it’s what I do.
Tracing the evolution from visual thinking frameworks like Group Partners’ 4D to Structured Visual Thinking (SVT) and beyond, this newsletter reveals how visuals became powerful tools for clarifying strategy, aligning teams, and driving execution and why rigid models and rare skills limited their impact. The article highlights why ‘Structured Thought’ is the next step: taking the clarity of visuals and coupling it with principles that make strategy adaptable, scalable, and actionable for any organisation.
Visual thinking has shaped strategy work for decades, from Arnheim’s 1960s theories to the whiteboard sketchers and infographic craze. But without structure, it too often drifts into decoration instead of decision. This piece traces that history and sets up why I developed Structured Thought - a way to turn visuals from creative flourishes into business advantage.
Read The Full Article
If you want to talk more - I certainly do.
Human By Design is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Photo by Rahul Sharma on UnsplashIn a prior newsletter, I referenced an upcoming third part of the two part series - this isn't it. This is part two of the second part. Confused? You won’t will be.
Paul Simon’s ’The Sound of Silence’ is not a hymn to peace, it’s a warning.
Photo by MARIOLA GROBELSKA on UnsplashHuman By Design is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
My last two newsletters consolidated a recurring theme running through my thinking and writing over the past couple of years. In case you missed them …
The Age of ReasonIs Over The Age of Experienceis Emerging
To which a few of you have commented ( I paraphrase) “Very good John - so what?
Sometimes you can be so far ahead of the curve that when the curve does peak - the world has forgotten you. Take ‘Lyris’ and ‘vibe’ for example.
My friend reflects on the enduring impact of the song by Little Steven, expressing a longing for integrity and compassion amid current political turmoil in America.
Surveillance - in the one hand it doesn’t work - on the other hand - everybody thinks it does - and on the third hand - compnaies keep on coming up with more cool aid to demonstrate it. And yes - its AI that’s bringing that third hand in.
What was I thinking? I knew it wasn’t my kind of movie. And still I watched and … yeah. No.
What was I thinking? I knew it wasn’t my kind of movie. And still I watched and … yeah. No.
The Age of Experience is rising even as the Age of Reason declines. Not to erase it, but to end its monopoly. Power is shifting from rigid logic and control to lived insight, emotional depth, and adaptive thinking, where success depends on how well you sense, respond, and connect. How then does Business adapt to survive?
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Emerging? Not quite … an ‘age’ doesn’t just ‘show up’, rather, it emerges and grows ‘in the gaps between the boxes’. In context and in real-time. It’s not designed. It’s noticed. It’s responded to. To paraphrase Arthur Marwick;
‘The ‘60s started in 1958, and ended in 1974.
Good grief, if we can’t even agree on when a ‘decade’ starts and ends - there is surely no hope for dating an ‘era’!
It was ok. Something to watch. Didn’t like ending.
It was ok. Something to watch. Didn’t like ending.
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Tim Mossholder on UnsplashMike Maples Talking About his book Pattern Breakers …
Strictly speaking, the quote isn’t from Mike’s book, it was a comment he made about his book. I can’t quite recall where. But it resonated.
Not only that, it sparked another instalment in the ‘Structured Thought’ series. It’s arguably a bit of a detour:- less motorway, more a winding B-road through the mountains with great views over the lakes and useful terrain to explore.
Really, Really, Really Good. Totally out of left field …..
It is worth it.
The Transformation from ‘The Age of Reason’ to ‘The Age of Experience’. Letting this sit, wondering if there is more.
A short chat last week sparked a familiar question:
“Is blog even the right word anymore? Do people still use them? Isn’t the whole thing outdated?”
Yes. Yes. And no.
I started Series 1 when it first came out - and yeah no. Recently at a lose end - and it got beeter - so moved into Series 2, The star count is right.
If you are a regular reader of this blog - you will know that I am no financial expert. I never even played one on TV - BUT - fascinated by it since the people in finance are (too?) often the one that dictate the funds available to do what I think businesses need to do. Today’s topic - PE. Which is NOT the same as VC. Not at all.
A bit of a ‘catch up’ post. Across various domains I often reference Venkatesh’s work. Once more today, which prompted this post - because I realised that for whatever reason - I hadn’t ever captured the essence of his ‘mediocrity’ series - and thought I should.
Guy Ritchie .. who’s going to say no. Good cast. Fun story .. in the class of National Treasure and all the rest.
It’s Vince Vaughan so of course I checked it out. Not his best, formulaic - think I’ve seen the story a few times before - but cute nonetheless.
It’s Vince Vaughan so of course I checked it out. Not his best, formulaic - think I’ve seen the story a few times before - but cute nonetheless.
Poking Wordland …
Reminder to self. This is routing to Philpin.com which is currently flagged as an AI experiment. This is not an AI experiment.
Photo by Pars Sahin on UnsplashBack in 2000, my friend and colleague John Caswell founded Group Partners. For a while in the early oughts I worked with him and while there the 4 stage business framework dubbed ‘4D’ was refined and iterated and refined and iterated and .... 4D was the set of frameworks that allowed us (well - John 😉) to take an organisation (any organisation) through a journey of ‘discovery, development, decision and deployment’.
Home alone and had heard good things. Just lovely. Just wonderful. And yes, I cried.
Home alone and had heard good things. Just lovely. Just wonderful. And yes, I cried.
Prompted by a William Gallagher post, A short take on Asimov, memory, and how storytelling evolves. “it’s not the colour of the pill, but the effect”. … A reflection on reading, writing, and what still holds up.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash...Stop calling it ContentStart calling it your article, book, photo, image, white paper, art, story newsletter blog, thought … just not content.
Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, replaceable, switchable kind of word. Which is why it has no value - because if the content they need is not available they will use some other content, because 'anything will do'.
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As long as 'we the creators' fall into the trap of using low cost, homogenous, non-descript words like 'content' to describe our work, our soul, our beliefs our passion, our effort, then our work will continue to be viewed as 'free--to--cheap--to--low--cost', homogenised, non-differentiated, interchangeable fodder and we will only have ourselves to blame as the payment for our art, our thinking, our ideas continues to race to the bottom.
Found the link via Daniel Savage - thank you - it has been a while - so did not see this one coming. As I type not fully released (June) … but Pulp ✅ Jarvis ✅ Richard Hawley ❌ .. as far as I can see is not on the record - but there seems to be one of his songs on it - we don’t know which one right now.
This album is currently featured on 4 public lists on AlbumWhale - all mine!
BUT - this not exactly a reshare - but an opportunity for you to click on this link and hear the Orchestral Version of The Overview.
Always loved The Cure. First studio in 16 years. My thanks to Patrick Rhone for highlighting this. As he writes
It’s fantastic. Both classic and modern at the same time.
For me - his voice is definitely not what it was - but that would be hard - he's still got it.
ALWAYS loved The Waterboys. This made me sit up - an entire album dedicated to Dennis Hopper - where the music itself moves through the years of Hopper’s life.
The Zombies were unto themselves. Colin Blunstone went on to great things - as did Rod Argent. This appeared at the end the Zombies run - but under THEIR creative control. Back in the mid to late 60s there was a sound that began to emerge combining Psychedelia, English Folk and Rock which in turn morphed into something I call ‘English Progressive’. This is not obviously a Prog record - but it has most of the characteristics of that genre.
Interesting quote from Ollie Henderson’s book popped up this morning - which reminded me of a Jason Fried quote and they both tie to some fascinating work I am doing right now. Bob said it 61 years ago - not prescient - simply a fact The Times They Are (ALWAYS) A-Changin' …
Om writes about the mediocrity of modern Google - for me most of what they do has always been mediocre because their UX sucks and the best (older) example would be why Google Sheets when you have Airtable? And the thing is with better UI Google was on pole positon to do Airtable before Airtable - and on acrsoo the entire product line.
.. like plain civility at international borders.
Back in the archives of People First I used to talk about ‘The People’s OS’. 🔗 Here for example. It sat together with something that I also called HumanIT. In many ways playful ideas on a tech first world that even then was apparent - much less today. (Hat tip to my friend Jeff Orgel who gave me ‘HumanIT’.) (And now you know why I started ‘People First’.)
Reading this today makes me think that this movement might just be an idea whose time has finally come … (another hat tip - this one to ‘Victor’.)
Restaurant? Or Art?
Back on Apple. Specifically the difficualty people who should know better continue to fail miserably at understanding the company - and if they don’t understand - how can they explain?
I have always been adamant. I am English. British at best. And that is why I remain on a US Green Card - which historically raised eyebrows. It hasn’t alwayss been easy - but right now feeling good about it.
This is a Markdown link
11:11 am Wordland. Once more. Exploring how it might fit my workflow.
[The Final Updated Post](https://philpin.com/2025-03-22) (in case you are reading this on my main blog.)
🔵 The Final Updated Post (in case you are reading this on my main blog.)
Long said that the whole work/life balance problem ‘solves the wrong problem really well’. For example - 🖇️ me, nearly six years ago
I conclude …
Does John Mayall feel fulfilled? Well, needless to say, I can’t speak for him - but I think he does. Is he the richest musician on the planet? Not by a long way. Is he the most well known? Not at all. But I’d wager he is one of the most fulfilled people out there. And not a work-life balance equation to be seen.
Just read this in Gaping Void
Checking out updated Wordland.
🔵 The Final Updated Post (in case you are reading this on my main blog.)
[@Dave](https://micro.blog/Dave) asked the question about Wordland as to whether I was surprised that having posted something … the screen didn’t clear. I get it and understand why the decision was made .. but it still caught me out.
[@om](https://micro.blog/om) is using Wordland to create a new kind of Daily post.
🔵 The Original Updated Post
Finally got around to it and … Marvelous .. and I’m not even a fan of ‘musicals’. So good that it needs ro be rereleased.
Finally got around to it and … Marvelous .. and I’m not even a fan of ‘musicals’. So good that it needs to be rereleased.
I started ‘a process’ this past weekend and then Mark Manson sent ‘me’ an email this morning …
TWO THINGS FOR YOU TO ASK YOURSELF
What do you want to be great at?
What can you do today so you’re a little better tomorrow?
Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week.
ONE THING FOR YOU TO TRY THIS WEEK
Get a little better at that one thing you want to excel at this week.
Hello From Wordland on a MAC
… and another hello from Wordland, this time from my phone AND it updates.
Side Note - I have discovered that I have 14 sites connected to WordPress.com – some long dead.
Some cleanup is in my future.
This all on top of David Merfield announcing Blot running on iCloud. #WorkCutOut
🔵 The Final Updated Post (in case you are reading this on my main blog.
Just a great one, that I saw in the theaters when it came out and logging it now .. 5 years later. Has it stood the test of time? No idea, have a watch and you decide.
I think describing who I am, what I want and need and everything else besides based on my age is baloney and claptrap. Hell - I’d put more money on being defined by astrology. But still this bunk persists.
It’s getting weirder.
Good cast, gritty and wrestles with that eternal question that the world still faces today … even more so … how do you fix the problem of really bad guys by being good guys that don’t break the law.
Good cast, gritty and wrestles with that eternal question that the world still faces today … even more so … how do you fix the problem of really bad guys by being good guys that don’t break the law.
You don't often actually see a nuclear bomb go off in these kinds of movies - aren't they meant to be stopped with 2 seconds to go? It's a Reacher story with plenty of time during in to try to count how many different actors have played Jack over the years ... sorry not a big fan of Ben in these roles (no reason - he just always seems to fall short).
You don't often actually see a nuclear bomb go off in these kinds of movies - aren't they meant to be stopped with 2 seconds to go? It's a Reacher story with plenty of time during in to try to count how many different actors have played Jack over the years ... sorry not a big fan of Ben in these roles (no reason - he just always seems to fall short).
I know I’ve watched the first two at some point - but for the life of me - gonna have to revisit (maybe). Good story - and it’s Denzel … a solid action movie.
I know I’ve watched the first two at some point - but for the life of me - gonna have to revisit (maybe). Good story - and it’s Denzel … a solid action movie.
The reduction of the bloated explosions continues in the Marvel Universe - and from my perspective - that is good.
Plus Ryan and Hugh.
Plus ‘Wick like’ choreography and it’s not that they are breaking the 4th wall - it’s more ‘what wall’?
Oh - and it’s Deadpool.
Big Fan.
The reduction of the bloated explosions continues in the Marvel Universe - and from my perspective - that is good.
Plus Ryan and Hugh.
Plus ‘Wick like’ choreography and it’s not that they are breaking the 4th wall - it’s more ‘what wall’?
Oh - and it’s Deadpool.
Big Fan.
Manton writing today : 🔗 about something that @devilgate wrote : 🔗 Maybe You Can Post Your Way Through Fascism
💯 .. we’ve sort of been down this track before .. not so much Martin’s pov .. as the larger picture .. don’t be cowed .. about anything .. by anyone. And yes it can be scary .. but if nobody reads it .. then you got it out of your system .. if everybody reads it .. you will find that you are not alone.
… it’s what you TRY to do when you are running micro.blog and then out of the blue suddenly fire up a new WordPress instance.
What you thinking about?
When and why you use one or the other.
‘Pretending to Think’ – courtesy one of those generator thingies.
That’s Philpin, Gruber and Jonny. This really resonated - and if you read some of the stuff I read - it will ring bells, because it is like life.
Om nailed it in that second quote: “Especially for immigrants, calling home used to cost a fortune. Skype made it free.” (I was one of those immigrants.)
At one point in 🖇️ Zero Day, De Niro talks about Freedom and Liberty.
Perplexity…
The terms freedom and liberty are often used interchangeably, but they have nuanced differences:
Freedom generally refers to the ability to act without external constraints or interference. It is the absence of restrictions, allowing individuals to pursue their desires and actions without hindrance.
Liberty, on the other hand, emphasizes freedom within a framework of responsibility and law.
When I first heard about Anora I looked it up and put it in the category of ‘no’ .. not even ‘yeah .. no’ .. just definitely .. NO. Despite this, I found myself watching it last night as part of a group where we are attempting to watch all the ‘Best Picture’ nominations before our Oscar party on Sunday. Left to my own devices .. I would have switched it off, or walked out, by around the 20th minute.
When I first heard about Anora I looked it up and put it in the category of ‘no’ .. not even ‘yeah .. no’ .. just definitely .. NO. Despite this, I found myself watching it last night as part of a group where we are attempting to watch all the ‘Best Picture’ nominations before our Oscar party on Sunday. Left to my own devices .. I would have switched it off, or walked out, by around the 20th minute.
Final
Peter Thiel - remember him? The guy with the bunker in the South Island of New Zealand. Yeah, he’s outta here - and good riddance. Except there are lessons that the Kiwi Govt should learn from as they prepare to attract more billionaires, still believing that trickle down economics works.
It’s marinated since I saw it last week. I had heard that it was a ‘back to basics’ take .. ie a movie sans gratuitous explosions - planets being destroyed and using portals to jump through to parallel universes. And indeed delivered - though for my taste - that shield is just a bit too clever - but heh - I know it is me.
When Marvel (and Star Wars) did their 6 to 8 episode TV shows - I liked them - and again - it was the story - without all that ‘extra’ stuff up there.
It’s marinated since I saw it last week. I had heard that it was a ‘back to basics’ take .. ie a movie sans gratuitous explosions - planets being destroyed and using portals to jump through to parallel universes. And indeed delivered - though for my taste - that shield is just a bit too clever - but heh - I know it is me.
When Marvel (and Star Wars) did their 6 to 8 episode TV shows - I liked them - and again - it was the story - without all that ‘extra’ stuff up there.
I just spotted that Giancarlo Esposito was in this - and I decided that I should add a review - because it was ... is ... so good.
I just spotted that Giancarlo Esposito was in this - and I decided that I should add a review - because it was ... is ... so good.
It started well … it went on fine .. until the last 15 minutes. Queued up for a sequel .. but I don’t think so.
It started well … it went on fine .. until the last 15 minutes. Queued up for a sequel .. but I don’t think so.
Soho House is in crisis. I think it was predictable.
A little over a week ago - I threw out 🖇️ this little billy do onto my blog and thought nothing of it. To save you the click through I was just pointing out some internet speeds I was experiencing - and asked what my response should be. Here on MicroBlog I got 4 comments over the next 24 hours. I dunno - par for the course? Now - through the power of Micro.Blog - these posts are also syndicated to BlueSky, Mastodon and Threads.
When I read Scott Brinker (ChiefMartec) I generally feel that our thinking is aligned, but his images often seem to be designed to create fear and creating a speech bubble above my head that reads something like “my god - how the hell can I keep up”. They don’t, IMHO give clarity. Well, maybe back in 2011 .. maybe - but I recall back then it still seem overwhelming ..
It’d another test - so don’t click through
No need to click in - it’s just a pile of ‘lorem ipsum’ - with a quote … BUT - this excerpt courtesy of @danielpunkass and Mars Edit.
Collections are a new way on micro.blog to group images together. Cool add-on - but I wanted to feature collections in related posts which gave me problems. This post explains the problem and my fix. #ProudOfMyself!
Exploring Options and Testing Assumptions
A post that points out that all is not what it seems.
I went because some friends recommended it. What a pile of drivel.
I went because some friends recommended it. What a pile of drivel.
I appreciate Bob - not a fan - but I do go see these biopics as they come out, because music. Definitely one of the best of that particular genre. Of course Timothy did a great job - but so did Edward Norton - and then some. I only hope people didn't watch it as a documentary. I mean they will - and history will be rewritten accordingly. A shame really - but do try to watch it.
I appreciate Bob - not a fan - but I do go see these biopics as they come out, because music. Definitely one of the best of that particular genre. Of course Timothy did a great job - but so did Edward Norton - and then some. I only hope people didn't watch it as a documentary. I mean they will - and history will be rewritten accordingly. A shame really - but do try to watch it.
Outside of Layer Cake - one of the best Daniel Craig movies outside of his Bond work that I have seen. I hadn't registered that it was a William Burroughs story when I first saw it and so my initial - leaving the theatre thought was .. not clear. Mainly because it wasn't what I expected. Once I joined the dots. YUP - pieces fell into place. BUT - holy mackerel - Jason Schwartzman - another one of those side roles that might just slip you by.
Outside of Layer Cake - one of the best Daniel Craig movies outside of his Bond work that I have seen. I hadn't registered that it was a William Burroughs story when I first saw it and so my initial - leaving the theatre thought was .. not clear. Mainly because it wasn't what I expected. Once I joined the dots. YUP - pieces fell into place. BUT - holy mackerel - Jason Schwartzman - another one of those side roles that might just slip you by.
One of those lovely little movies that you come across and get into and when it all ends you are sad.
One of those lovely little movies that you come across and get into and when it all ends you are sad.
How could you ever NOT love Wallace and Grommit - so good.
How could you ever NOT love Wallace and Grommit - so good.
I watched the series and then I watched the first movie and then I watched this second movie .. and I dunno - I keep watching them - but they don't get better. But somehow I am drawn in. No explanation.
I watched the series and then I watched [🖇️ the first movie](https://john.philpin.com/2025/02/11/ferry.html) and then I watched this second movie .. and I dunno - I keep watching them - but they don't get better. But somehow I am drawn in. No explanation.
Watched it a while back - so logging it here. Not bad - but maybe watch the series first to garner some context.
Watched it a while back - so logging it here. Not bad - but maybe watch the series first to garner some context.
I am unsure if they are connected - so parking this here while we think.
There is also something going on with the Argentinian playbook - which I am planning to publish in a newsletter.
I am no expert - but my spidey senses are up … Bitcoin, Argentina, El Salvador .. OR, it’s all summarized thus ….
Bitcoin El Salvador introduced bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 and then - as now - one Tim Draper has oft’ spoken breathlessly of how cool it is that a sovereign nation has adopted it.
A short apology to an unknown cashier in a store that I thought had taken advantage - or made a mistake. Turns out - it was all me. Turns out that thirty bucks short is because I didn’t spot that a ‘twenty’ was actually a ‘fifty’. BAD JOHN.
I don’t think the Beatles were the greatest band that ever lived. There I said it. I know there will be people that disagree with me.
That said, even with two views of ‘truth’ it is still possible to have a deep, interesting, meaningful conversation that might open my mind and who knows … ‘theirs’ as well. In other words in this case true connection is possible even if the participants have different ‘realities’.
I published 🔗 this post back in July last year … after months of delay and noodling and questioning, I finally released it - and as with so many of my posts that I often wonder why I bother .. crickets.
From that piece - if you’ll forgive me for quoting myself …
Sadly the Internet has been weaponized and far from creating a place to be educated about the differences of people and countries and life - we are being forced into submission.
Specifically, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and The United States
🔗 Kevin Drum linking to the cheapest and most expensive places to live.
🔗 Worlddata
In New Zealand there is a lot of handwringing that translates to countless LinkedIN posts talking about ‘jump starting’ the economy and what do they have to do to grow their GDP which inevitably leads to attracting the ‘brightest and the best’. I’ve even weighed into a few of the debates myself …
I have on occasions referenced ‘The Business Equation’ within this ‘Personal Journal’. I shared it last week in a pack of mental models I use as part of my processes that businesses find helpful when building their company. In the sharing, it occurred to me that while pictures are worth 1,000 words - sometimes you might need 10,000.
For example, The Business Equation includes my take on concepts like;
The Virtual Corporation
… because it’s getting worse.
A strategic thinker wouldn’t call it content.
Sorry - no idea who wrote that - not me - but definitely on pace with my thinking - which you will know that 🖇️🔍 I have written about this many times over the years.
To save the click through - in a nutshell …
As long as ‘we the creators’ fall into the trap of using low cost, homogenous, non-descript words like ‘content’ to describe our work, our soul, our passion, our beliefs then our work will continue to be viewed as ‘free - to - cheap - to - low - cost’, as ‘homogenized, non differentiated, interchangeable fodder’.
I like both actors - so despite the warnings of ‘the new diehard’ I ploughed ahead. it was a fine movie - but both actors have substantially better performances and films/shows on their cv.
I like both actors - so despite the warnings of ‘the new diehard’ I ploughed ahead. it was a fine movie - but both actors have substantially better performances and films/shows on their cv.
I’ve been doing this every year since 2019. My 7th will be out in a few days time.
The History 2024 - substack.philpin.com/p/here-we…
Transform | Transition | Transcend (sic)
2023 - substack.philpin.com/p/its-tha…
Focus | Flexible | Fabulous
2022 - substack.philpin.com/p/take-th…
Clear | Closer | Choice
2021 - john.philpin.com/2021/01/0…
Transform | Transition | Transcend
2020 - substack.philpin.com/p/take-th…
Believe | Move | Ascend
2019 - substack.philpin.com/p/here-we…
Uncertain | Less | Different
Caveat | The source of this post is a separate blog where I am experimenting with a new AI app we are building. In other words, for now, no guarantees of the veracity of the contents.
seeking to understand how this blog is being treated over at John.Philpin.Com
Note .. this is not the usual fayer to be expected.
My first ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ in a looong time.
Stunning
Marvelous
Bravo
Encore
My first ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ in a looong time.
Stunning
Marvelous
Bravo
Encore
It’s up there as one of his better ones - and like a lot of his better ones .. quiet, tight, personal.
It’s up there as one of his better ones - and like a lot of his better ones .. quiet, tight, personal.
Lovely
Lovely
Against my better judgement .. decided to go see it. I’m sure it’s a fine movie - just not my cup of tea - but so many people I know kept telling me how great it was. Yeah no. At least for this bear.
Don’t hate me. Don’t tell me that missed something. I didn’t.
Against my better judgement .. decided to go see it. I’m sure it’s a fine movie - just not my cup of tea - but so many people I know kept telling me how great it was. Yeah no. At least for this bear.
Don’t hate me. Don’t tell me that missed something. I didn’t.
In my health fight over the past four years, my oncologist 🔗Pepe Sasso had five rules that he laid on me at the very beginning and kept pushing me every time I saw him - including just a couple of weeks ago. One of two things that I maintain is ‘my secret’. 🔗 This is the other.
Exercise
Diet/Nutrition to Maintain a Healthy Weight
Positive Mental Attitude (the sail of opportunity is always open)
I particularly want to say ‘thank you Jax’. I know how much you did .. do .. for me. No doubt in my mind that without you, I wouldn’t be here, not just your support, but my ears, my voice, your questions, your knowledge - without you - I wouldn’t know half of this village to begin with so I couldn’t have even done what I did without you.
Two other big shout outs to Pepe Sasso, my Radiation Oncologist and Rowan Jones, his lead nurse at the hospital I was at.
An older movie that I hadn’t heard of with an awesome cast… I was nervous .. but decided if it was going to be bad, we could always switch it off. We got to the end .. Owen plays Owen, Ed plays Steve Carrell and the rest did a good job … stellar .. no .. but waaaay better than I expected which prolly explains the 4 stars.
An older movie that I hadn’t heard of with an awesome cast… I was nervous .. but decided if it was going to be bad, we could always switch it off. We got to the end .. Owen plays Owen, Ed plays Steve Carrell and the rest did a good job … stellar .. no .. but waaaay better than I expected which prolly explains the 4 stars.
Testing - Just Testing. Now Sorting - Just Sorting.
A few of today’s reads all came together this morning …
First up (which I am not even going to bother linking to) lead with something like … “how corporations can create emotional connections to their customers at ‘scale’.”
What the fucking what - do not even get me started. Do these people even think about what their words mean when they spew them out?
Anyway - onwards - and as so often happens Hugh over at Gaping Void says it the best …
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
Not sure why?
Not sure why?
‘Storm in a teacup ‘or fallout not yet settled?
At the very least the story reflects poorly on Intuit’s head of communications who clearly doesn’t understand how communication works in 2024.
And yes I have listened to the whole podcast. The guy clearly doesn’t even understand journalism!
🔗📼 What we’ve got here is failure to communicate
🔗 Intuit’s PR Team Has Seemingly Never Heard of the Streisand Effect
Good post from John @Gruber today - and not wrong.
Not mine, but it was so lovely I wanted to drop it in here, so that as ‘link rot’ continues - I will at least have it here. Who knows, you might already know it, it seems to have been circulating the socials - so of course - I did a little bit of triangulation. It looks legit.
🔗 More Here
The Story At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll.
Not my words - but I do like them (one of my business connections down here in Aotearoa dropped them on LinkedIN this morning.)
The first mile is owed, the second is bestowed. The first is mandatory, the second is voluntary. The first mile belongs to others. The extra mile belongs to you and you alone. It is therefore always in the second mile where character, nobility and greatness lie.
🔗 Nice to see ‘Disrupt’ ‘growing’
… not by size - it has been a big show for a long time - but in terms of thinking.
To my mind the revolution that drives tech startups is disruption - yet too often the result is destruction. Sometimes directly, sometimes an unintended consequence. (I Need to Write That Post.)
Beyond that, the historical challenge is that disruption and destruction seem to get conflated - even at times used interchangeably.
I dunno - I thought it might be fun - it was for a short while - another failure to communicate. Sorry - and no idea how it ended.
I dunno - I thought it might be fun - it was for a short while - another failure to communicate. Sorry - and no idea how it ended.
Liam doing what Liam does. I couldn’t be bothered to get to the end, so two stars is generous.
Liam doing what Liam does. I couldn’t be bothered to get to the end, so two stars is generous.
Stumbled across this a week or so ago and it got me to thinking - remember the 🖇️ Vision Pro?
Still don’t have one - no plan to - no personal use case (desire is apparently not a use case … who knew?)
That said, there are bundles and bundles of Business Use cases.
Anyway, turns out that 🔗 Sightful are coming out with a solution to a specific use case early 2025.
Back a few years ago - I raised the idea that 🖇️ ATS systems should just be banned.. Nothing changed.
Then I found this clip from The Monkees TV show that aired in the late 60s … 🖇️ The Monkees Predicting ATS software THIRTY YEARS before it appeared. Yes - 30 years is right - that’s when these things started to appear.
Of course in the intermediate time - they have just got better worse.
Not bad to begin with.. but kind of fell off into cliches .. and isn’t Aaron a bit old to be brawling and fighting in the field?
Not bad to begin with.. but kind of fell off into cliches .. and isn’t Aaron a bit old to be brawling and fighting in the field?
I dunno .. Marky, Halle AND J.K. .. great cast .. so you expect a bit more than average? Don’t you? That said the choreography of chasing the case down the side of a building was well done. But if that’s the peak .. you wonder why I gave it 3 stars. Don’t you?
I dunno .. Marky, Halle AND J.K. .. great cast .. so you expect a bit more than average? Don’t you? That said the choreography of chasing the case down the side of a building was well done. But if that’s the peak .. you wonder why I gave it 3 stars. Don’t you?
Three and a half stars … rounding up to 4 .. just for the audacity to remake Rambo and not give Sky any credit. Seriously .. not bad at all.
Three and a half stars … rounding up to 4 .. just for the audacity to remake Rambo and not give Sky any credit. Seriously .. not bad at all.
Watched on Saturday October 5, 2024.
Watched on Saturday October 5, 2024.
Cute. A good watch on a lazy sunny afternoon.
Cute. A good watch on a lazy sunny afternoon.
A Posterity Post
I had cause to add a comment on a post that featured this image.
It is funny - but I think it is funny for all the reasons that the commenters were not seeing ….
A university is to educate .. not train. If you are wondering about the difference, ask yourself if you prefer your children to attend sex education classes or sex training classes.
Average score for an average movie. Casey? Never been overly bothered, but Matt is capable of so much more.
Average score for an average movie. Casey? Never been overly bothered, but Matt is capable of so much more.
🔄🖇️ Review Ratings
This review may contain spoilers.
Wolfs … not Wolves. Not sure why. Need to look it up. Other than that .. all good. They have a good relationship IRL … it comes through in the movie.
Wolfs … not Wolves. Not sure why. Need to look it up. Other than that .. all good. They have a good relationship IRL … it comes through in the movie.
🖇️ Talking about knowing what you’re talking about - nobody who knows what they are talking about would confuse me with a real programmer.
That said, I just read 🔗 Going the Extra Mile — Beyond CSS, most of which is well above my technical pay grade - but still I was fascinated by the attention to detail around ‘crafting Craft’.
Consider - a whole post (well 75%) devoted to the process behind getting a check box ‘just right’ and the remaining 25% explaining ‘push away’, which I knew had to be coded in some way - but who knew there is a phrase for it?
🔗 Lex raises $2.75M for its AI writing tool that helps writers get past blocks.
The AI stuff is cool, but there was one thing about this app that made me want to keep using it: It has no historical baggage. I find it odd that many modern word processors like Google Docs and Word retain a bias toward pagination — the UX is intended for printing documents onto letter-sized paper.
🔗 Raw data: Book and newspaper consumption - Kevin Drum
There is a mantra in the world that people ‘don’t read’ (anymore?).
And on top of that - if they do - (very) short form - definitely not books.
I have long thought this to be wrong.
They certainly might not read your stuff. Or my stuff, but they do read - BUT - they read what interests them , what engages them and definitely not limited to stuff that appears at the top of lists.
Prompt: Write a 5 paragraph article on the topic ‘word’
Response: The Power of the Word: A Catalyst for Change Words are more than mere strings of letters; they are the building blocks of communication, carrying the weight of meaning and emotion. From ancient oral traditions to modern digital communication, words have shaped human history and culture. They have the power to inspire, educate, and connect people across distances and generations.
This review may contain spoilers.
It is what it is. Of a kind. Set up for a sequel that prolly won’t be made. Netflix calls it something different. Don’t know why.
It is what it is. Of a kind. Set up for a sequel that prolly won’t be made. Netflix calls it something different. Don’t know why.
The only reasons it’s not 5 stars is that I find it hard to give 5 stars because 5 stars means it can’t be improved. Now .. how could this be improved .. I have no idea, just wonderful. Quite wonderful. The original book coming from one of ‘my Johns’ (LeCarre), provided a solid foundation. Cast GREAT. PSH .. magnificent. Cannot be,I eve it’s taken me 10 years to get to it.
🔗 It’s time to ask once again why it costs so much to die in Aotearoa.
I for one did not know this and come to think of it - I don’t know what the ‘cost of dying’ is in other countries either.
In New Plymouth, for example, it could cost over $7,200 for a burial … represent(ing) the burial plot itself.
Umm - burial?
Once you’ve covered the expense of the burial, there are a number of additional costs that can make the actual cost of dying far greater – the figure often cited in the media for an average funeral is $10,000.
It’s 18 months old - but 🔗 this post from TimUrban resurfaced this morning, where he talks about how long it took to write his book, reminding me of a post I have had parked for a while now. Time to unleash it.
The title of this post was originally ‘Are We Being Forced To Conform?’ I changed it because as I read it before publishing, I think I answered my own question.
I know the ‘series’ ended - but that doesn’t mean I don’t still take the pictures.
It All Started Here 15 Minutes After That and 30 Minutes After That
There are many deep questions in life that have been answered (case in point … sandwiches), but some remain.
This is my contribution to one such remnant.
This Way Or This Way Solved /end
It’s Saturday - so just sorting out things that I saved and never did anything with - but these 5 - I dunno - good reminders.
In case anyone is confused …
… or stupid.
A solid reminder that I need from time to time.
The idea behind this one often resurfaces in my mind (not the precise words mind), but I find the essence to be a good reminder of the importance of stepping away.
Nothing to do - it was Jackie - you know what to expect.
Cute - ish … without Harry, wouldn’t have bothered. Been a while since I’d seen him … anywhere. Hallmark anyone?
I thought I would ask ChatGPT 4o
A “High-performing System” refers to a well-organized and efficient framework or setup that consistently delivers optimal results. This concept can apply to various contexts, such as organizations, technology infrastructures, or even processes. Key characteristics of a high-performing system include:
Efficiency: Resources, including time, energy, and materials, are used effectively, minimizing waste and maximizing output. Integration: Components or subsystems work together seamlessly, ensuring smooth operations and coordination.
An older one. Couple o’ great action stars .. one of them a great actor .. but somehow the movie wasn’t great. Not bad, but not great.
Spoiler alert - I am talking about the book by Category Pirates, not Apple’s OSX.
I don’t recommend many business books .. in fact I don’t really recommend any, rather I recommend the authors, based on what I know, read and see them talking about. Christopher Lockhead is one such person and last week I recommended him again.
Email received this morning …
I tried buying Snow Leopard on Apple but only the audiobook is available.
Twenty Two Years Ago - give or take - my friend Bob told me to take a listen to an album he has just found called ‘In Abstentia’. Still at the top of my memory banks sees me sitting beside him at the back of some grey boring conference room in Sunnyvale listening to somebody droning on as he silently passed me his wired ear buds connected to his new iPod and watched me have my mind blown as I listened to …
If you have run out of movies from the ‘Spy Kids’ franchise, well now you have one not from the franchise .. but that is pretty much the only reason to watch it .. with your kids/grandkids .. oh … and get ready for the question … If mom was a baddy and all her old gang are not in prison .. how did she swing being in Witness Protection?
On the whole, when I eventually get to them (7 years in this case) I do enjoy Jackie Chan movies. This was no exception. If you aren’t into Jackie Chan movies, this won’t change your mind.
A friend on LinkedIN recently made a comment and referenced a video clip in support of his argument, which truth be told, I can’t recall - but it definitely wasn’t about ‘ATS’.
🔗 📼 This is the video clip .. it’s a scene from the Monkees TV show - this particular one directed by Bob Rafelson, written by David Panich - who I had never heard of - but given the subject matter of the clip, was intrigued enough to look him up .
Better than expected.
Netflix doesn’t do the best movies .. but it they do seem to have a knack of pushing out better than average. Like this one.
I read this today
in 🔗 Austin Kleon’s Newsletter.
Now let me be clear - I am not so old that I ever used one, BUT
I do know what it is and where it was used … and sadly I am old enough to have had a boss who did have such a thing on his desk.
I just looked up Austin on Wikipedia - we aren’t that many years apart … FTW.
Not too bad actually. I started with low expectations .. but not bad at all.
Over in a more ‘private’ group there was a side discussion on Music … specifically .. ‘Country’ and someone had brought up Beyonce .. and well, time to throw in a comment …
Beyoncé does ‘Country’ and not one word about ‘cultural appropriation’ 🤪 no comment from this section of the Peanut Gallery … even Tay Tay had to break out of that genre. I will look up Garth’s contribution to the Muppets Multiverse.
Not totally bad .. but confused .. and definitely below expectations. Vincent was great. The rest .. meh.
Trying to tie it all together for the occasional visitor.
It all started with Guestbooks. ( 🖇️ I have one ) and yesterday I caught up on reciprocating and getting ahead of the curve. ✅
I then created a new page that is connected to and referenced from my guest book page - so that there is a quick check for those I have visited. 🖇️ You can find that here.
Somehow missed this in 2012 .. good cast, good director, good film .. and what a YOUNG Ryan’s Reynolds … it was only 12 years ago.
Worth a watch - though a relatively predictable story arc.
I know he died ‘young’ at ’42’ (now THERE’s a reference), somehow I forget really just how young he was, given his impact on culture. That said, for me, never a great fan. Appreciate who he was, what he did .. but maybe just too young to be a real fan and maybe my musical interests are different.
This all to explain why it might have taken me this long to get round to watching the Elvis biopic (another being ’Tom’ - on this occasion playing ’Tom’ - someone else I don’t go out go my way to watch - but when I do, generally pleasantly surprised).
A Musical Box - no, not 🔗 🎵 that one - though in itself well worth a watch - Gabriel at his theatrical finest in 1974.
I happened to drift around some music videos on YouTube last night - and well - some of them just needed to be shared …
Starting with a couple from Robert Plant with the Shape Shifters 🔗 🎵 1 - Robert Plant at Austin City Limits
Not bad, not bad at all. Knew nothing about it going in, but all added up to a nice delivery beyond my expectations.
There should be a rating between Like and Dislike. In the end I went for like .. because in all honesty I couldn’t really ‘dislike’ … but no .. NOT a recommendation. I wonder if they were trying to go for that Ted Lasso feel good thing? No idea .. but whatever that Ted Lasso feel good thing is … it was not this.
LATER:
Get despite that initial review of the first couple of series … here I am again on the third.
Gawd .. slit my wrists now.
I have touched on this before but after reading a Lefsetz post over the weekend, decided to expand a little and log the thinking for posterity.
🔗 Lefsetz Letter - Company At The Sphere - that’s the link to where 🖇️ this quote came from that I published this weekend. I said I’d be back…
Around 2016 - ‘the term ‘spatial’ was being coined’. - though I personally think Apple’s ‘spatial’ is a light year or two ahead of where Mr.
My reply to @ridwan got a little long, so I thought I might not reply and start a new thread.
🔗 This is Ridwan’s original post
This is my reply to his comment under that post …
We are in for a Labour government, which is a done deal. However, Is Keir Starmer’s the PM after 14 years of Tory squander? I see him as just another politician who will say anything to get elected and turn his back on the people who voted Labour.
I love listening to knowledgeable 🎵 people steeped in ‘the lore’, ‘the history’ .. I can swim in it forever. An inevitable question appears somewhere in the conversation .. “did you know it was going to be a hit?”
no clue mate
… is the usual and correct response.
Same with newsletters. You just can’t tell. I keep reading over and over different writers that are surprised when their ‘magnum opus’ falls flat and a ‘throwaway’ goes viral.
It’s 🔗 Towel Day ( thank you @odd ) - but today also happens to be my 25th Anniversary
Yup - 25 years. Truth be told it had been going on a lot longer - but it was 25 years ago that we actually tied the knot .. and I have had my ‘personal space’ on the internet ever since May 25th, 1999 (Creation Date: 1999-05-25T20:14:36Z).
Now of course, we had known each other a lot longer than that - long before the web in fact, but you know when you first connect you don’t really note the dates do you?
If you have been keeping track - you have haven’t you? … You will know that I am around about a year into a ‘category culling’ on my site. I’m there. Except I am not.
As of 5 minutes ago - the last category died - number 5 below.
The objective was always to reduce the number to something more manageable. Believe it or not - this lot is around a 1/3 to 1/2 of what it used to be.
I am well aware that despite my years long campaign to stop people from describing their words, articles, photographs, thinking … beliefs, soul … Intellectual Property even … ‘content’ … they continue to… unabated.
🔎 🖇️ It drives me nuts.
But I am not giving up …
That said - there are people that ‘get it’. (Though I will freely admit that we are also in the minority there!)
Meanwhile the ‘bot farms that have been delivering the real content (sic) to our uncurated feeds and inboxes have been gearing up for the AI revolution - and indeed as reported in many places are already shaping our ‘thinking’.
I opened Chat4o and my first words (audio input) after ‘hello’ were something like write me a quick post about Markdown. What is it. Why should I use it.
Response back - as written. No formatting. No editing.
Introduction In the world of technology and software development, it is crucial to have proper documentation to ensure that information is organized and easily accessible. Markdown is lightweight markup language with plain-text formatting syntax, designed to be easily converted into HTML and other formats.
Cathedrals are places designed to show their creator’s opulence and power, but they’re also designed to alter our senses, to throw us into alternate worlds, so that they can open us our minds to change. If that’s the case, what will these places be in the 21st century?
Good question that was running through my mind when I stumble across this quote …
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism.
Responsive Video /* Style to set a fixed size for the video */ .video-container { width: 600px; /* Set your desired width */ max-width: 100%; /* Allow the video to shrink to fit the screen */ margin: 0 auto; /* Center the video horizontally */ } .video-container video { width: 100%; height: auto; /* Maintain the aspect ratio */ } /* Media query for smaller screens */ @media screen and (max-width: 600px) { .
German Language Podcast. In 🍎 Podcasts - you can see the German language transcription. BUT - you can’t copy the whole thing.
Looks like you can.
But you can’t.
I use software to record meetings.
Ooh I thought.
Play the podcast - and record - at end of podcast one german transcription. Run that through a translator and voila … or so I thought.
I did an experiment - thankfully.
I have deleted what should have been this post since it wasn’t doing what it should. No time to debug now .. will come back and flag when I have fixed or got a workaround.
Yes, or is it no … not sure. I wanted to love it. But I couldn’t. Except sometimes. You can see that I’m a bit undecided. That’s not going to change.
Oh - and Idris.
To catch you up, you might have missed 🔗 📼 this video .. you can see it at the bottom of the page.
When I first saw it, I liked the visual effect - but really - not the message. As I wrote over on 🔗 John’s blog
I saw that vid .. kinda like it .. BUT .. I dunno … destroy everything physical, crush it to nothing ?
Just dropping this here – the home of a new service from John …
AnalAIze | RuminAIte | SpeculAIte
Hang on to your hats.
I liked Chevy's all those years ago and Mr Hamm did a good job and to the spirit. Put it in the queue - it might appeal one day.
I love Bill Nighy - so I couldn’t give it 3 1/2 (except I could). Not a bad movie by any means - although Bill does seem to have one character that appears in many disparate movies. It’s 13 years old - no idea how I missed it when it came out - except maybe because it is missable? Only for the ardent Nighy fan.
Rafah’s fate hung in the balance on Monday after Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire-for-hostage deal but Israel responded skeptically and carried out night airstrikes on Gaza’s southernmost city.
… whatever happens now - whatever is said - why on earth would Hamas believe anything being said.
My mum used to tell me that what you say is not important - it is how you act.
Cards Played.
Not for the light hearted. Not for everyone - but loved it.
No - 🎵🔗 not this
We knew Ms. Redstone wanted out. Looks like it’s going to happen.
And Ellison’s Skydance seems to be in the frame for the preferred acquirer which I definitely do not get - but sure why not?
I look forward to opinions from people like Rob Long and Peter Kafka, if I were to predict - I am guessing that Long in particular might be thinking like me.
Consider this that was just sent to me (reproduced in full so you don’t have to sully yourself).
• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
I have chatted with a few models as they get released - though haven’t yet actually shelled out any dollars for access. Still. I was intrigued enough when @Agiletortoise released Claude integration to Drafts - so of course I installed. This is that conversation. Not earth shattering - more focussed on ease of set up (10/10) and ease of use (10/10). Quality of conversation .. (1/10)(?). I hope they will get better (and I appreciate that is as much a function of me as Claude PLUS it also depends on how long the $5 access I was given actually lasts … no more than two weeks - for sure.
As my Category culling is drawing to a close continues with no end in sight, I just discovered a new project.
Not only do I have this space - but over on Blot I have a different - yet related space.
I used to have 🔗 https://words.philpin.com - for ‘words’ and 🔗 https://pictures.philpin.com which eventually became 🔗 https://images.philpin.com for, well … ‘images’.
And then I moved everything into 🔗 https://archive.philpin.com - it’s so easy in Blot - and everything is was great - were it not for rather a large number of links on Micro Blog that point to those three old blogs.
🔗Over on Substack this morning, somebody had taken it upon themselves to ‘correct’ a writer’s English.
Tip: realized not “realised”. I’ll surprised that you got that passed spell check! 😊
The irony of her own typos in her post correcting someone that didn’t need correcting aside …
The click through takes you to the thread where Tom replied, but to save you that - this is what he wrote …
In case you hadn’t realized - I have been doing some backlog clearing over the weekend, this is one of those catchups. Links from the wild - collected and - not quite curated.
Still there might be something here for you?
🔗 Validating Factual Personal Information | February 2024 | Communications of the ACM - it’s as if Vint isn’t plugged in to the possibilities? What am I missing?
🔗 A Fascinating dive into the history of Poland
Solid Idris - which somehow I missed at the time.
I watched it because of Matthew McConaughey - and he played his part.
/END
PS (Not a loser at all - but 3 1/2 from me for McConaughey is not a good score.
It's fashionable to knock it, but I won't. Solid. A splendid cast and really what's not to love? .. other than it is a bit n 'Lala Land' - but heh - it’s a Christmas movie.
People should know something about you before they ‘have a go’.
I have a fundamental objection to Uber. (You might have heard.)
Which is why down here in New Zealand, when one of those kind of pickups is needed I use Ola.
Make that ‘used to use’
They pulled out! Gone. No longer here. Removed themselves …
Chatting to a ‘Corporate Cabs Taxi Driver - who was doing the usual complaining about ‘Ride Share Companies’ (to be fair - I did prompt him) and I pointed out that IF there was an app I could go to and call up a real cab like I could a Lyft, Ola or MAYBE an Uber - it would make it a darn sight more convenient … and he very kindly referred me to an app called 🔗 Your Ride.
It is lost in the mists of time but I seem to recall a post by @brentsimmons from years ago - maybe even last century? The advice was to reply to emails as a post, so that when a second email comes, you can modify the material on your blog and send the link. (I more than likely have over simplified, taken it out of context, changed the essence if not meaning / idea - but that’s what we do right?
There are so many of these things popping up (AIs that is), you need an AI to track the AIs.
Pi is one that caught my eye a while back, and I have had some noodles and doodles with it - when time allows. Clearly 🔗 David had a bit more time than me - because he sat down and interviewed them (?) .. or is it still an ‘it’?
Apparently, Murdock and Musk were on pace to receive the RBG Award? Nobody thought .. hang on a minute?
It gets worse. Below the fold …
Two other ‘awardees’ were 🔗 Michael Milliken
.. and 🔗Martha Stewart
… and yes I do understand second chances and all that - but still .. am I the only one out here on the edge - again?
IMHO .. Sly was the only one who deserved to be on a short list to begin with.
🔗 Sydney to Melbourne. Really?
Nobody else will even notice - much less care - about my achievement today, but gosh darn - it needs to be recognized. So this is …
A Public Announcement Today I fixed the CSS on my MicroBlog so that the video container when looked at on a phone is now fixed and no longer runs off the screen.
AND no Google or ChatGPT in the loop …
AND I have had this in the back of my mind since March 27th, and was ignoring it in the hope it would just go away …
Watching the spin off show recently reminded me that I hadn't reviewed this - which I watched only this past Christmas. I like most of Ritchie's movies - this was no exception. I like most McConaughey work - this was no exception. And - DEFINITELY better than the spin off series.
One of those 'little' movies that just hits the spot and then there is 'Bill' - so really, what is not to love.
Turns out there is a soccer competition for Homeless people around the world - and this release sees to be synched with the first annual competiton since before COVID. (If I read right.)
I watched a lovely little movie last night - fresh out on Netflix with Bill Nighy in the lead role.
On Netflix
Great movie? Not at all. Just one of those lovely little movies that I happen to enjoy - and seemingly that Bill happens to enjoy making.
Anyway - it got me to wondering. Is there really a soccer World Cup for homeless people? Turns out yes - yes there is …
🖇️ After this .. another one from May last year. This one wasn’t as ‘finished, so tweaked a bit for clarity.
Separate question - what was going on in my life in May last year?
Just off a loooong web session with 50 or 60 very wise people talking about AI and ESG. Specifically ‘The Future of Sustainable Decisions in the Boardroom.’ Great session, and they are regular sessions, so ping me if you would like to join the next one.
Tucked away in Obsidian I came across some files that had found their way to the repository. This on in particular caught my eye. It is dated May last year. (which would put me in Palm Desert, if that provides any context?)
Posting it now - as rediscovered.
Sorry … no photo. I hope you understand and no judgement.
Male, not a big man, but neither petite … sporting blue lipstick.
I used NordVPN for around 5 years. My subscription was up for renewal. Their charges seemed to be on the high side, so I had a look around and landed at Proton at the recommendation of a microblogger (sorry - can’t recall who) - signed up and very happy.
Since Nord lost my business, they keep sending me emails and almost every time the price goes down again.
This price is less than I was paying before and definitely less than I am paying Proton - BUT - had they given me a loyal customer - this price from the beginning I would never have looked around.
A truly excellent letter - read by Stephen Fry, written by Nick Cave.
📼 🔗 Just in case you think AI is going to take / has taken over the world.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit.
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🚧
’Prompt' By 'Leonardo' Gah!
That moment you realize that you should have paid more attention to that message about your phone account needing ‘topping up’.
The exact moment?
When your Internet service breaks.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life.
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’Lost Hat' By 'Me' Someone is going to be unhappy this morning. 🥺
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit. I came to realise that part of the problem was the complexity of the structure for each post - so that went away.
Caveat ‘Navigation is 🚧’
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’Football’ By 'Me' I don’t know which I am more amazed by.
That I was half way up a hill looking down on this beach over the weekend and mesmerized by these 4 guys kicking a ball between themselves for close to a couple of hours in pretty intense sun. It was truly amazing - just gentle self control of moving a ball between them - you gotta know that i am no football fan - but they had me.
I think 41 marks the point where I have to accept that the 366 format is too hard and intensive to manage. So this is where we are headed … wherever ‘this’ is. As I type this into the 41st entry it is actually day 80! I have had too much going on - so have been just dropping markers. I needed to make it easier. I have made it easier.
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The Palais Garnier In The 9th Arrondissement _(By Me)_ … it’s also February 9th .
Stretching?
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit. I came to realise that part of the problem was the complexity of the structure for each post - so that went away.
Life can move slowly. But then it doesn’t. Case in point …. or is it?
🔗 Me on LinkedIN 12th December 2023
Resignation 14 December 2023
🔗 Business Desk Reporting 19th December 2023
Good result?
It’s a start.
Then we learn that the new chair is Jenifer Kerr - wait, she’s the chair of NZTE.
Indeed she is.
We now have one person chairing NZTE and Callaghan - thought the profiles are slightly different.
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A Vintage Machine - Photographed By Me Back in the day a technological marvel such as this would cost you hundred and hundreds of dollars. (No joking kids). Of course the number of people you could communicate using such a device - back in the day - could be counted in the millions. So $10 does sound like a bargain, except.
Back in the Day - the cost to connection ratio was very, very small.
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’A Stack of Subs’ By 'Leonardo' .. no, not exactly. Not a submarine - a sub .. like a subway?
’A Stack of Subs’ By 'Leonardo' A Train Station?
🤦♂️
Oh no. Not a ‘Subway’ … A ‘Subway sandwich’.
In fact make it a stack.
That’s right …A ‘stack of subs’.
’A Stack of Subs’ By 'Leonardo' At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series.
’Serendipity’ By 'Leonardo' Is it catching❓Or is it just plain old serendipity❓
It was January 1st when I had the idea for the 366 series. It wasn’t fully formed, but I had to start. And, as the posts started to happen over the next few days, there were different ideas and formats running around in my head and being tried out. With the layouts, every time I locked down on a new one - I went back to the older 366 posts and adjusted.
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’36 Repeated By 'Leonardo' I mean you could see this as a filler - but it couldn’t be a filler tomorrow. Could it?
And yes .. a very early post .. time is that short today.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life.
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’Cube’ By 'Leonardo' This is published - but let me emphasize, most definitely a WIP. Hoping to get feedback from a few select people, not to say that I too am noodling more. I will return. 🚧
Out in the wild - and really - these days what else would you call ‘LinkedIN’, I 🔗 read a post by 🔗 Tim Parsons that had garnered a few comments.
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’Time is running out’ By 'Leonardo' Not much of it today. Sorry.
Except to say - that when you hear all the complaints from creatives how the AI engines are ‘stealing their soul’, if not ‘the bread from their children’s mouths’, you see this and understand it.
Today’s prompt had no tweaking.
This was the first image generated.
But “no … no .
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’And The Winner Is' By 'Leonardo' This 366 project is officially one month in, so I thought I’d take a look at how we are doing on the ‘view’ front .. I won’t use ‘read’ (no assumptions here 😀).. so, without further ado, and for your delectation, coming in at Number 5 …
5 : 🖇️ 013/366 ⌨️ Typewriters .. and more.
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’The future of watching a movie using a headset' By 'Leonardo' So it is out in wild and the reviews are in … and this is not another ‘one of those’.
‘My man’ Om 🔗 also posted about Vision Pro - he himself also highlighting that his post was not one of those. A big difference between us (as if there were just a few - there are not - there are many) is that he has actually tried one out!
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’A photographic image of 'cars moving in stereo' By 'Leonardo' A lot going on today - net net, 🎵 📼 this came to mind.
When all is said and done and after it’s all come together I’ll come back and explain in the comments.
If you can’t wait - there’s a clue in both audio and visual.
Until then. Enjoy …
LATER
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’A lot of links on a page' By 'Leonardo' Still battling with my ‘in process’ (I am being generous) archive that 🖇️ I referenced here. Tucked away I had literally hundreds of links - some of which I have no clue why I saved them to drafts - rather than 🔗 Raindrop (a far more logical place). This is a random election from said list.
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’You Can’t Handle The Truth' By .. well, who do you think it is? Don’t worry - this isn’t what you think it is.
If you are married or single, a writer or manager, paid for what you do or just for the love, delivered or received feedback, good or bad this is worth every minute of the 11 minutes and 44 seconds it will take you to listen to it.
Another old note, that deserves to see the light of day. I have 🖇️ written before on my position (a fan - not a fanboy), still …
The Masses:
“Apple hasn’t produced anything new since the iPhone.”
But surely: …
Apple TV AirPods revenue roughly equivalent to Netflix Apple Watch A whole new range of Apple Silicon Apple Services … The Masses:
“Yeah yeah yeah … but nothing like the iPhone.
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'Just A Picture' By 'Leonardo' Because somedays 🖇️ Ain’t Nobody Got Time For ‘Dis’. Sorry.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit. I came to realise that part of the problem was the complexity of the structure for each post - so that went away.
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'Ain't Nobody Got Time For That' By 'Leonardo' I remember a segment in Trevor Noah’s Daily Show that was called ‘Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That’
Today I learned that there was a whole video and thing from years before. Is that where he got it from?
📼 The YouTube video
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series.
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'The Identity Entity' By 'Leonardo' BTW - If you want to cut to the chase - Identity 2.5 is a great Substack to get your teeth into. Identity continues to be core thinking in the work I do with people. In particular with a company down here in Aotearoa.
The Founder is a deep thinker - as are his communications. One of my jobs is to take those thoughts and write words that ordinary people might understand.
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'Do Not Put ‘Product’ In Charge' By 'Leonardo' Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of time and respect for 🖇️ Dana Blankenhorn - as you can see … so this one caught my attention
There’s a single rule I’ve learned studying technology this last half century. Product must be in charge.
.. and 🔗then he goes on
I totally disagree, so had to comment and did.
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'Tim’s Job Is Safe' By 'Leonardo' 🖇️ This fine piece of writing dates back to June 2016. What? 7 1/2 years ago?
It popped up yesterday when I was searching my site for something else. A few things dawned on me, not least of which … whatever happened to Scoble? Not that I care.
Don’t get me wrong. I am sure he is bouncing around somewhere - I just don’t track him.
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A different theme for today’s 366 … nine links to yesterday’s news - complete with pithy comment - courtesy of this author
1️⃣ 🖇️ Remember my post from a couple of weeks ago?
Well, it turns out that though he might have been expecting .. hoping for that … it might not be a slam dunk.
🔗 Tories hire coordinator to get expat supporters to vote in general election.
Yeah. No … unless you have nothing better to do.
Massive fan of Guy Ritchie. This is not your usual Guy Ritchie. Do not miss it. Wonderful.
I’m not a massive fan of the FandF franchise, I am definitely not a ‘hater’. This one though .. X … OH MY .. and totally made my Jason Momoa. Played the ‘baddie’ brilliantly, highly recommend just to see him do his thing. This ain’t Aquaman.
Love and Hate Mr Cage … and his movies. This one is definetlu love. Over the top as only he can do, without it being bad. I’m not a Dracula dude. This was great.
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… is a picture I took this morning while I sat with a cup of coffee.
If you have been following along with these posts recently, you will have noticed that a lot of images I use in the 366 series are generated by an AI. (More often than not Leonardo.ai) I do not spend a lot of time on creating the perfect prompt.
🔗 Fascism is everywhere on the march. And it’s Trump who sets the pace | Simon Tisdall | The Guardian
The comforting conceit that Donald Trump is an unpleasant yet passing American aberration, often heard during his 2017-21 presidency, is harder to believe than ever after his Iowa caucus landslide victory last week.
Simon .. it wasn’t a landslide. Even the article you linked to doesn’t say ‘landslide’. You of all people should know this .
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I was listening to 🎙️this podcast and of course duly reminded of Kim Cameron’s 7 Laws of Identity, so replaying here for posterity. You can 🔗 read a quick summary here.
Law 1: User control and consent Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent Law 2: Minimum disclosure for a constrained use The solution which discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution Law 3: Justifiable Parties Digital identity systems must be designed so the disclosure of identifying information is limited to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship Law 4: Directed Identity A universal identity system must support both “omni-directional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for use by private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles Law 5: Pluralism of Operators and Technologies A universal identity system must channel and enable the inter-working of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers Law 6: Human Integration The universal identity metasystem must define the human user to be a component of the distributed system integrated through unambiguous human-machine communication mechanisms offering protection against identity attacks Law 7: Consistent Experience Across Contexts The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies
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Over the holidays, down in Wellington, I somehow constantly found myself in conversations about ‘local politics’ … council, city, region … and dare I even say national? (On a global scale ’national thinking’ for a small country like New Zealand is still ‘local’.) No need to talk about the topics discussed - the usual, but my recurring observation that was never rejected is that long term planning anywhere for housing, climate change, infrastructure, EV cars, bike lanes … you name it .
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You might think today’s choice of ’image’ is a little odd. I mean, is a black rectangle even an image? And what does it mean anyway? But for me it speaks volumes.
It is a similar theme to yesterday’s post … The Future … and yet, I’m talking about a totally different future. A more personal one, not a societal one.
That all said, not yet ready to talk more publicly about what is going on.
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A short one today because the 🔗 📼 Biden video speaks for itself.
For me? One of the best, passionate most comprehensive campaign speeches I have ever heard. In fact, the qualifier ‘campaign’ is probably unnecessary.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life.
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No. Not the song.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t been keeping up with ‘SubstackGate’. I have .. so you don’t have to … you are welcome.
Bottom line .. Fascism, Nazis, Support, Deplatform … you get the picture.
🔗 Why the Kākā Is Staying on Substack 🔗Why Platformer is Leaving Substack My Thoughts?
I am on Substack and read some bit of it each and every day.
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Somebody else’s grass is greener. Always.
Just finished a conversation with a Turkish gentleman who has now lived in New Zealand for 10 years. Came here to learn English. He has. Now moving to Perth …
You can earn twice the money and buy twice the house for half the money. What can go wrong?
Indeed, what can go wrong? So much, but then doing nothing solves nothing and it still can go wrong.
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“We are all going to be saved by King Harry.”
Don’t’ you mean King Charles?
“No no no. He is the evil one. Like his son William. The dynasty is evil. Harry has seen the light. He will come back and save us - together with the son of the Shah. Palestine will once again be reunited with Persia and the descendants of the devils that destroyed us will be no more.
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An excellent show from the mighty John Oliver taking on McKinsey in this one. You know … the company that advised Purdue on how to sell more Oxy. Spin through to 15:50 … to hear this one.
Mr. Sternfels they didn’t have experience - they were the identical humans working for both at the same time.
💬 Katie Porter
🔗 📼 McKinsey
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A quite lovely story which I have chosen to share through my Readwise account, so you can speed through my highlights if you so wish.
Alternatively, 🔗 this is the original New Yorker article, written by Ann Patchett.
It’s from 2021, it’s mainly about removing clutter from your life, but sharing it here because of the ending which focuses on the typewriters in her life, and thought this was quite beautiful.
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It’s true. My ‘under the rock’ habitat continues into 2024.
I asked a six year old yesterday if he liked music … yes … so what’s your favorite song?
🔗🎵 📼 This one
I hadn’t heard of DNCE - but liked this one enough to poke around … wait … it’s Joe Jonas?
Personally, never a big fan of the Jonas brothers - but adding this to my list of (two so far) singers that switched me.
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A couple of click throughs in this morning’s review triggered this post.
It started here … 🔗 Substack Barely Does The Bare Minimum
which linked to here … 🔗 gilest.org: Make the indie web easier
which then linked to here … 🔗 gilest.org: More on the easier indie web
TL;DR A few links to interesting places that are about the indie web - but with an undercurrent of something that I have been banging on about forEVER …
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🔗 Interesting piece from Om today.
I think he’s right about that up there. What I am not so sure about is this down here.
Why?
Because it will bring all those ‘EEJITS’ out of the woodwork, who maintain that ’Steve’ did everything and Tim has done nothing, isn’t innovative, riding the coat tails etc …
(Count me in the camp of the people that believe that had Tim NOT done what Tim did when he did it, that there wouldn’t even be a significant enough Apple to do what he is doing now.
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… at least I think it will.
The furor as to the how and why ’The Facebook' are ’allowed’ to do this will continue unabated as people continue to post these questions on Facebook … and Instagram … and WhatsApp … and Threads.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day.
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Today’s Sketchplanations resonated, even though I had never heard of the ‘problem’ being ‘🔗 The XY Problem
Back at Group Partners we would help people ‘avoid solving the wrong problem really well’
Others talk about ‘peeling back the onion to get to the root cause’ (think a doctor treating your hip to solve your back pain), etc etc.
Whatever it is known as, this is what anyone should do to solve a problem.
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A couple of days ago I wrote a little (very little) about Stewart Brand’s 🖇️ Pace layer. It’s worth clicking through - not just to my short piece, but in turn the links in that post.
Still - to the point.
Andy Hamilton dropped a post on LinkedIN a couple of days ago referencing an Australian report called ‘Barriers to collaboartion and commercialization’ asking if there were lessons that can be learned fro New Zealand.
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Today marks the completion of the first set of 6 days. There will be exactly 61 such collections over the next year. I (at least) find this interesting because this year there are only roughly 52 collections of 7 days and roughly 73 collections of 5 days.
As long as I can remember, my mind has always played such number games, so I am not surprised to find myself thinking this way.
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Continuing on from yesterday’s post (4/366), Martinborough is actually a planned town, originally laid out by
Its center square and the roads running into it were laid out to represent a Union Jack.
Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life
💬 Oscar Wilde
The names of the roads through ‘old Martinborough’ are named after towns in Europe that Mr. Martin travelled to on a world tour before he laid out his new town.
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Over the break, I had the fortune (not committing to whether that’s good or bad, since that is a whole different story) to visit Martinborough in the Wairarapa - one of New Zealand’s wine regions. It’s a cute little town that includes a single ‘supermarket’.
On one visit I noticed two photographs on the wall - the building from the early part of the last century, photographed in 1906 ….
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Interesting to read 🔗 this from Om. I definitely did not feel that all of last year, but definitely in the past couple of months, something in me has been coming together. It’s as if bits of Lego have been suddenly snapping together, around writing, my work programmes and the connected thinking.
It’s not just the new year. There’s a fundamental shift I am feeling.
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In one of my work programmes there is an ongoing debate around planning and strategy .. one of the team going as far as to suggest that ‘strategic planning’ is an oxymoron (my words). This seems to nicely channel an aspect of that thinking.
This particular quote
is taken from 🔗 this article, which in turn arrived with me from discussions over at the UNdaunted.
002/366
There’s a 🔗 Stonehenge in New Zealand.
Spent a lovely afternoon there today.
If you have interest its 🔗 three words are ‘enable.improves.preperations’.
At the beginning of the year I had grand plans for this series. A daily long-form post about something that was rattling my brain that day. And then life. For a while, I was even just dropping markers - to revisit. I came to realise that part of the problem was the complexity of the structure for each post - so that went away.
Xfinity Data Security Incident
Notice of Data Security Incident
We are notifying you of a recent data security incident involving your personal information. This notice explains the incident, steps Xfinity has taken to address it, and guidance on what you can do to protect your personal information.
What Happened? On October 10, 2023, one of Xfinity’s software providers, Citrix, announced a vulnerability in one of its products used by Xfinity and thousands of other companies worldwide.
Sorry - but this is going to be a ‘MicroBlog Storm’. Is that a thing I hear you ask? Why yes - yes it is. If IKEA can have 🖇️ ‘Vintage IKEA’ - then hell has clearly frozen over - and a ‘MicroBlog Storm’ is definitely a thing.
🖇️ ONWARD
I was meant to be picking up a car from 🔗 Europcar this afternoon - for a one month reservation.
I just tried to change that reservation and pick it up early tomorrow.
Lady on the call center said no problem - and was about to hit the confirmation button … but as she was talking I hear that the new price was DOUBLE the old price.
DOUBLE!!! When I booked car, the agent said that there would be no problem and no charge to change the booking if I need to.
Generally like a nice Wahlberg movie .. no exception .. in fact one of his better ones. It’s a formula .. sure .. aren’t they all? But overall .. YES.
It was alright. I try out Gal Godot outings from me to time because I clearly am missing something. Whatever it is I continue to miss it!
Lovely. One for the ’keeper’ department.
Watched on Saturday December 9, 2023.
No. Just no. I watched it all the way through .. Just for you. NO!
Yes it’s Wes Anderson, so you kinda know what you are going to get … except you don’t. To me seemed a lot more intricate than his precious outings.
Not sure I can add anything more to reviews than you already know, other than I didn’t see it in IMAX, I wish I had.
Not as long as I thought
I had low expectations after reading reviews - so much better than I thought
Joaquin was as good as ever
I barely recognised Rupert Everett
In all honesty, I went to see it in the theatre because there is a new cinema in the area - one of those fancy 30 seats per screen afffairs - and I wanted to try out that experience. I didn’t really care about the 'is it true to history ' commentaries because I didn’t care and had no idea .
Lovely .. and one of those ‘little’ films … and Bill Nye … c’mon .. why are you still here?
I know most of the story, but like to cross check that knowledge with what the film delivers, new stuff, look into … blah blah blah ..ok I generally like these kinds of movies … royal epics aside .. it didn’t disappoint. It is what it is. The Tetris story I knew a lot less about … enjoyed it more … because I didn’t know the story(?) or just a better story and movie(?
Average … seen it before .. predictable
Another ‘little” movie .. and to prove I don’t automatically like them … this was alright, but .. yeah .. no. It was a while back when I watched it.
… and I didn’t even hear the dialogue! Watched it on a plane, the audio system was so crapped out and dodgy … thankyou Quantas … that I mainly watched stuff on the iPad. Accidentally discovered this scrolling through … subtitles .. so I just watched and read the subtitles. Glorious. Another one of those ‘little’ films. Need to find it again and listen this time.
He - ‘somebody’ loves The Smiths. I don’t … but it didn’t stop me enjoying the film, because Fassbender is that good.
Lovely. The story broke in a couple of places ... but I didn't care. Lovely. One of those ‘little movies’ that I LOVE.
There’s an old joke about ‘Henry’ getting lost in the narrow lanes of Devon, England and needing to return to London. He spotted a farmer on the side of the road and pulled over, admitting to the farmer that he was lost and was looking for directions to get him back to London.
“London!” … replied the farmer … “… well if I was going to London … I wouldn’t be startin’ here.
Back in the day, there used to be a ‘Mail on Mac’ problem where the flag count was NOT the same as the actual message count. The fix was to delete the plist - and it would magically reset.
‘Back in the day’ suggests the problem might be a thing of the past. Sorry - it isn’t.
It’s the ‘deleting the plist’ that is a thing of the past … at least for this bear - who has not been able to find it.
Just wonderful.
Great story.
Perfect Wes Anderson.
Been a busy year.
I am just this week completing the final trip to close the loop.
January : New Zealand / Honolulu stopover/ LA
February : LA
March : LA
April : LA / Palm Desert
May : LA / Palm Desert
June : Palm Desert
July : Palm Desert
August : Palm Desert
September : Palm Desert / LA / UK / Poland
October : UK / Paris / Portugal November UK / LA / Palm Desert / Sydney, Oz stopover/ New Zealand
“Truly disappointed that you have chosen to block Busy Contacts from accessing my email. It used to work and you blocked it in Sonoma.
MY EMAIL
MY CONTACTS
MY COMPUTER
but YOU chose to block it … surely the choice should be mine?
Truly galling that you continue to allow access to calendars, which has about 1% of the use.”
Whilst I don’t believe that naming a child ‘Sofía Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ángela de la Cruz Micaela del Santísimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santos’ is in any way a good idea .. I also don’t believe that any government should be allowed to force the parents into shortening it.
That said …
First name … Sofía Middle Names … Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ángela de la Cruz Micaela del Santísimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santos
Spitballing here … but I think blowing up a plane with ‘lots of liquid’ … ( I assume that’s why we can’t carry bottles of water on to the plane unless the water is bought ‘plane side’ of security? ) … is old school thinking. It’s one plane and you’re done.
Thinking bigger - I would get a bomb with all that liquid onto the London - Paris Eurostar. Here. it is clear that the authorities are not worried because unlike Airports you might typically travel through .
This post was originally published on September 26th 2003. Penned by John Parker - one of the founders of the original Just Good Music Blog. The source was found thanks to The Internet Archive Wayback Machine. These days it sits in my online archives, but just last month it was 20 years old and I wanted to resurface it, because I always liked it and for me, still holds true. What do you think?
Whilst true .. it’s easy to blame 10 people holding the place hostage .. personally I blame every single ‘moderate’ ‘center’ Republican member of the house for not having the spine to cross the aisle .. and side with the democrats .. they don’t have to put Hakeem in if that’s too far .. but while they don’t act they are complicit 💯 for allowing it to happen.
I feel for Israel - I really do. And the Palestinians - truly.
BUT … since the news seems only capable of one story at a time - I guess I am thankful that it isn’t about yet another celeb breakup.
Still - it does mean that Ukraine is soon going to be forgotten … so before that happens … a reminder
I think at core this explains so much of the Israel / Palestine ‘conflict’ - don’t you just love thse weasly words?
Another post that didn’t quite make it - written on a phone as I was listening to professionals on stage talking about ‘fake news’. That wasn’t how the panel phrased it - but still, it was what they were talking about … and not very well - far too politically correct …. I made these notes and have not spent a great deal of time ‘cleaning them up’.
Some of the keynotes I jotted down on the day …
This didn’t make it to my blog until now - because only now am I moving through my ‘Drafts’ …. enjoy.
Early morning flight. Alarms set … up and awake well before the time … so grab a cab earlier than planned.
After arriving earlier at airport … we are first in line at check in desk … which hasn’t yet opened.
After check in … we are first in line at security desk … which hasn’t yet opened.
Interesting thread over on LinkedIN from my friend 🔗 Dave Wilt - who started on the track of ‘vs’.
🔗 Corporate Identity Politics. (It was kind of about Sales and Marketing alignment - a problem which was a problem long before I started out in business. You would have though by now we might have fixed it? But no.)
Anyway - about half way through I managed to pivot the thread to 🎵 Music … mainly because the core topic just gets talked about - and IT IS NEVER FIXED - so … ‘BORING’.
The bag and its contents (not always the same - but pretty darn similar) has flown ‘in cabin’ all over America, to and from Mexico, down to New Zealand, around New Zealand across to Oz and back, then returning to America through Hawaii and onwards across to London … not a single problem.
Terminal 5, Heathrow … 45 minutes stood at security analyzing and rescanning that very same bag three times.
He was (is) a lovely man. I had to lean in to hear what he was saying. So I did. Our conversation continued and he apologized for his speech. No apology necessary, but he had identified that it was hard for me to hear (loud place aside), he was also a little ‘croakey’.
He explained that he had had cancer.
Cancer of the throat.
Three times.
He was diagnosed in 2017.
Context Over on LinkedIN, a friend of mine shared a post by Phil Morle 🔗 on whether institutions / corporates can be founders. I wrote a long reply which caused LinkedIN to barf and reject my reply, which in turn caused me to publish two separate pieces; 🖇️ Don’t Trust The Silos. and 🖇️ Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking., neither of which are pertinent to understanding the flow of this ‘reply’, but I wanted to highlight why this isn’t a reply on the post.
I was very happy to be going out to eat my first Indian in over 3 years (long story). In fact I was so happy that I took pictures. I took a few actually - but sharing this one in particular because of the Tardis and Dalek.
My First Indian In Three Years - Right Beside The Tardis
It seemed odd at the time, but I didn’t investigate it until just now - turns out it is famous!
🖇️ I wrote a related piece yesterday.
This one takes the thought a step further, because it’s not just original posts … but also replies.
As so often happens to me these days .. I start to reply to a message somewhere in one of the interweb’s silos … you know where they are in control - not you … even down to how long your message should be … because … you know ‘they’ know best.
To those paying attention, this is old news … but recording it now because I think it is an excellent lesson as to why you should never … ever … trust a Silo. It’s theirs. The stuff you put there is theirs. Even our’ handle is actually ‘theirs’.
Case in point …. in 2011 Jeremy Vaughn created @music over on the ‘site formerly known as Twitter’
Fast forward to 2023 and the child king who now own said site took @music for himself … and as far as I can see kept all Jeremy’s followers.
I agree with Matt on this one - and then go on to explain why I disagree. Trust me … it will make sense.
[🔗 Birchtree](birchtree.me/blog/chat got-still-hasnt-taken-all-those-jobs/)
I continue to think that these generative tools are good for augmenting certain workflows, but replacing whole people is going to be very unusual. We’ll see, though.
💬 Matt Birchler
I would agree - but that isn’t what is going to happen.
I expected more from William Gallagher. And myself for that matter.
Please Read Comments Before Spending Time Reading This.
I could have deleted it - but leaving it as a reminder to be more careful.
It’s been in hiatus for a while now - but getting ready to start again. AND YET - despite being in hiatus - turns out it has a ‘global ranking’ in the top 3%. Really? What the hell are the other 97% doing? And who are ‘ListenNotes’?
As an example comparison - Core Intuition is in the top 1%. (Now THAT makes sense.)
All this to say that if you used to follow my podcast - know that it is now in a different place - so do please subscribe.
Blot Delivers. Again.
🖇️ Back in 2020 I wrote this. Then just a few days ago 🔗 I asked again … this time I also pinged David.
The nub?
How it would be really useful when on a public page on a blot site - e.g. this one - to be able to have a single click that takes you to the file in dropbox - which you could then edit and save, so updating the site.
I wouldn’t call Avi Ronen a ‘friend’, we met a few times on Maui, he being one of those musicians that call Maui their home. This is his post on Facebook.
—
Our house is gone All the beautiful memories All my guitars over a hundred All gone lines of truss rods standing Like sad soldiers my amps pedals
All the custom guitars I’ve build and kept All the acoustic guitars that KP made for me all gone I’m so devastated beyond words We’re safe my girls are great stronger than me I’m so sad Our town looks insane it’s so horrible Everything gone The only thing that’s left in lahaina town is my shop still standing I don’t even know what to do next I’m so devastated So many lives lost in our town The damage is absolutely insane Looks like an atomic bomb blew up in lahaina It’s so sad heartbreaking Sorry I had to share this I want to wish peace and love to everyone we are so heart broken over our sweet town My house all the memories And all my guitars so heart breaking
Idris Elba Says He Was Held at Gunpoint After Trying to Intervene on Man Threatening Woman
True story. So was I. A little over 30 years ago … South of Market in San Francisco. (Just in that one sentence you have more information about my story than the linked article tells you about the Idris story)
AND I wasn’t even intervening on an argument - I was just ‘hanging’ with my friend.
Not a big fan of Tom - but for whatever reason I do eventually watch all the Mission Impossibles - but this is the first I had seen in a theater for years ... The story is what you might expect - but not always expected. Glad I managed it on the Big Screen before it disappears into 'Streaming Land'.
and then there is this ….
… she’s talking about Sam Altman
🔗 You can read the whole piece by Molly here, which includes substantial thinking on the challenges of decentralized identity.
The cryptocurrency industry is rife with projects that embrace the idea of “progressive decentralization”: beginning out as a highly centralized project run by a small group, but promising to eventually turn over control of the project to a DAO.
It is clear that the key to enjoying a movie is to start with the lowest possible expectations, I didn’t even want to watch this … but then I did. Not a great rating from yours truly .. but 2 1/2 stars is 2 1/2 stars more than it was going to get. Special shout out to Sophia Anne Caruso who I thought was excellent.
Liam gonna do what Liam does.
I have used Transmit to connect to my servers for years. N’er a problem until a couple of weeks ago.
I didn’t think I had changed anything - but did my usual checks ….
what have I done wrong … nothing I could find. what has changed - a couple of things - uninstalled apps switched off Firewall. Still no connection.
I pinged my hosting provider - Siteground.
Stunning. 🤯 … if you’ll pardon the pun. Wanted to see it - and couldn’t fit the IMAX experience in to the schedule, so will go again next week. Not for me to review this movie - far more qualified and interesting people than me to read on that front - BUT - it is as good as you have been told.
Two thoughts beyond what yours truly has so far read.
… and actually a hell of a lot more. Now, with the calm of the morning, and many days behind me, I have had time to reflect on this 🖇️ ’Journal Storm’ and understand a little more about what was going on.
I think it could have been done in 30 minutes rather than ‘90’ … interesting, but if the findings are as revolutionary as they intimate, not sure why it isn’t more widely talked about? Or am I … once again … hanging out under a rock?
It's hard not to like a Wes Anderson - no exception, but to me, different to his usual films. No point in rehashing what you can read about elsewhere - but let me add one nugget - because I sat right through to the end - through the title and everything ... that last song mesmerizing. But why?
Well of course - the titles revealed or ... one of two songs that were a collaboration of two old friends and at times band mates - Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley.
It’s over 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day here. At the moment it’s only 85 F, but then, it is 2:30am .. so of course, what else are you going to do? Start researching ice rinks.
If you know me, you won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve only just discovered that there’s a brand new Ice Rink just up the road, providing the new home for the Firebirds Ice Hockey team.
Noting that Apple just passed the THREE TRILLION Market Cap this past week - I remember all the hoopla when It passed the ONE TRILLION Market Cap threshold - but I hadn’t realised that it was as recent as 2018 - just slightly less than 5 years ago. Seems like just ‘yesterday’.
Tripling Market cap in three years is impressive enough. Doing that when you are the largest Market Cap in the world …
Nothing wrong with a good Marvel … and this was a good Marvel … not a great one mind, good. The continuing Marvel arc of the ‘multiverse of multiverses’ ( I wonder if they got their inspiration from the first episode of the latest Black Mirror?) sets the reset expectation and of course no sets needed … a few shots in San Francisco and the rest CGI? (Caveat .. I am no expert).
If ever you need a reminder that there is more than one way of looking at a problem. I often talk about the over surveillance of and in society. (A long time critic of London surveillance for example.)
My message … Less Cameras. Less Surveillance.
And then you read this from a group I belong to ….
In Somalia to address the violence, like there was a killing of all the medical school graduates a couple years ago (my friend) feels that if they had cameras everywhere and could identify the perpetrators we could reduce the violence.
Watched it a while back - and reminded of it last night as I surfed Netflix for a good watching experience. In the end I elected not to rewatch - but it really is so very good. Sean doing his thing, along with Javier, Idris and even Ray = what a cast!
It was alright. I am just not a fan of badly dubbed movies.
Seeing iTunes promoting it as ‘available to rent’ … reminds me that I saw it at the time and the best thing about it is that Liam is NOT using his ‘particular set of skills’ … other than that … nice enough.
Currently, the official Micro.Blog app has a permanent menu that sits at the bottom of the screen, like this.
There is a second menu that can be found by clicking on your user image, top left, that looks like this.
Suggestion … add the 4 choices in the first example to the second menu.
Why? So I have only one place to go to for all possible operations.
Bonus thought. In settings, allow me to hide that bottom menu in user settings.
🖇️ See Extraction 2!
If you enjoyed the first - you'll enjoy this one. It is what you might expect. Just wondering if Hemsworth is trying to compete with Keanu on most 'kills per minute' in a movie.
Talk about ‘phoning it in .. not my choice to watch and would not recommend, particularly if you know the Mamma Mia stories … both of which I have not seen, but I think the two sentence summary of the first would be identical to this one.
In various places I play in - including professional ‘anti-tracking and privacy’ groups - I am constantly stunned by the link sharing that goes on. Stunned because people that should do know better always seems to share links ‘complete with’ the tracking crud that can so easily be removed.
It is so bad that when someone pastes the crud URL, I will post the crud free URL.
Nobody comments. Nobody does the same.
.
That ain’t workin', that’s the way you do it Money for nothin' and your chicks for free
watch
The best things in life are free But you can keep them for the birds and bees Now give me money, (That’s what I want) That’s what I want
watch
Money Get away You get a good job with more pay and you’re okay Money It’s a gas Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
For the longest time I have had the wonderful plugin 🔗 ’Search Space’ by @sod running on my site. It is truly fantastic - use it all the time to find post I know I have written in the past - that I want to link to - like here .. imagine how long that would have taken to build without a powerful search.
I also use Hitchens by @pimoore for my site, and Pete rather conveniently included ‘Search’ as part of his template.
Just trying out a little something after reading a thread in help that @MitchW started - let’s see ….
Of course - for it to really work, I do need some extra text - so in the spirit of exploration - tip-o-the-hat to lorem ipsum …
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus.
This is a TEST - IGNORE ME
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link%3A https%3A//john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
This is one of 8 Tests - so you can safely ignore them - unless you are helping me understand how much of an idiot I might be …
Test Link: john.
It's got Robert DeNiro in the main role ... slam dunk - right? Sadly - no.
Three stars is generous, because I didn't get through it. Just spotted it on AppleTV as a promo - so thought I would try it out, since I never saw it the first time round. (I know I know). Maybe it just hit me wrong?
I watched it in the theater when it came out. Love Tucci and this did not disappoint. (Just thought it was time to post a positive review - because I have been sharing some clangers recently.)
I used to love the Asterix comic books. But have never really enjoyed the films. So not sure why I thought this time it would be different.
Yeah … no .. despite it including two of my favorite actors.
Not to be confused with other films called Mother’s Day … I’ve not seen all of them, but none can be as bad as this one.
It all started somewhere - and eventually @Jean did one - and then added a list of other ‘Where’s Waldo’ pages here. So I thought hell, why not … and then it got complicated, because like others, to me - passing through isn’t sufficient, so I added a few caveats. —
Passing through does NOT do it. To be on the list, I have to have spent at least two nights in that place (so removing those pesky ’en route’ stop overs’.
A few links with no ‘search or surf’ needed. All you need to do is click.
You are welcome.
🔗 Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes turns herself in for 11-year prison term. - I didn’t get the popcorn because my guess is that she will be out for ‘good behavior’ before I could finish the box.
🔗 Lawyer ‘Greatly Regrets’ Using ChatGPT in Briefing That Included Fake Citations. … and on a related note 🔗 I cannot believe the shit that morons are getting up to with ChatGPT - because in 2023 it is obligatory for all lists (even micro lists like this) to have at least one link be about ChatGPT, so I went for two - and related as well!
🔗 Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock at 40: the album that foretold today’s anything-goes pop.
For all of his total lack of skill as a musician / singer .. his ability to constantly break new ground and open listeners ears to new possibilities was quite extraordinary.
Duck Rock never made it to ‘personal favorite’ status, but still extraordinary.
My most favorite McLaren is surely ’Fans’ - 40 years old NEXT year
I have now listened to the new Yes album maybe 4 times. It is definitely not their greatest album - by any stretch - but it is also far from the worst.
Peak Yes years for me were those leading up to Topographic … and to compete with that era is hard … but this does (though it does lose 😎).
Trivia thought.
I wonder why the ‘title track’ off Mirror To The Sky is called ‘Mirror to the Sky’?
🔗 Scripting News: YouTube and inbound RSS
Interesting link from @dave
Also interesting is the YouTube outbound RSS that he wants.
Google don’t make it easy - BUT - every YouTube channel does have an RSS feed - I just added my channel to feed into MicroBlog, to make sure it still works. There are three videos in there - that have a total viewership of something less than 3 :-) So don’t get excited.
When you read that ‘blah blah’ who’s ‘made a name for themselves’ as an actor, writer, singer, chef, musician … whatever .. has now just turned to interior design (I bought my 15,000 share foot house in Malibu and just had ‘this vision’) … or fashion design … or whatever …. what are your thoughts?
I ask because I just spotted that 🔗 Dua Lipa has just designed her first collection for Versace.
Anyone else worried that this is even a question? Or that it needs to be asked?
Anyway, I don’t have an answer about lemon origins except to say that they are at least as real as babies, and if they aren’t real then what the fuck did I just eat?
💬 The Bloggess
To be clear, this is not a Bloggess origin story … but rather a debate that seems to have emerged on the inter-webs somewhere about ‘Intelligence versus Artificial Intelligence’ - with people pointing out that Lemons ‘do not occur naturally’ … so are artificial … so not ‘real’ … at least in ‘that’ sense of the word.
Like a lot of us I guess - I have been reading and listening a lot to the AI chatter. This is a list of not everything I have read and listened to - and not quite sure why these ended up on a list and others didn’t - but still you might find an interesting nougat in here?
For the longest time I have used a drafts action to post to MicroBlog. There are also two others I use, but there was one particularly I used for my Daily Stoic post.
After updating MicroBlog to version 3, the action gave an error, essentially overwriting part of the URL with ‘code characters’ so then I had to edit what was fine in drafts so it worked in MicroBlog. Annoying.
It’s JLo, so it wasn’t going to be bad … and it wasn’t … though predictable … like the bad guy who never dies. Interesting that director and writers all women.
Om writing about Substack Spam
Anyone can add my email address to their newsletter list without my permission. Whether I want it or not, I get a pitch for their newsletter, and I have to go to their website and unsubscribe to opt out of the service.
I did not know that. Is he right?
“Opt out” is a growth hacking tactic that has become commonplace online and a time stealer, penalizing all Internet users.
Maybe it should be 4 stars? Great little bit of history ... But I don’t know the real story well enough to know how much poetic license was employed. I liked the graphic reminders (and associated pixel resolutions) spread throughout the film, that were so mind blowing to everyone at the time. I also had no idea that Maxwell was so involved in the story.
Does the fact the we started watching it - had to stop half way through and still haven't yet felt inspired to go back and finish it tell you anything?
I’m not a big Hanks fan .. often skipping over his movies … ‘because’. So glad I didn’t jump this one. Just lovely. And yes I shed a tear or three. Maybe there is something about having low expectations before watching a movie?
The usual fodder … even ‘names’ can’t change some movies.
Cute. Predictable and scenes lifted directly from John Wick, The Fast and Furious franchise, Tarantino’s catalogue .. and more … all of them failing to better the originals. Then again, I didn’t pay anything to see it (except my time).
I think Ryan Reynolds has decided to make a new business out of quick cameos.
Also delighted to see 10 seconds of John Cho (Cowboy Bebop)
The particular comment I was responding to was in a private group hosted in New Zealand - hence the opening paragraph. BUT - I think it pertains to any country. In that post, this link was provided — I think New Zealand has more businesses (and hence ‘small’ businesses) per capita than pretty much any New Zealand just doesn’t have the people to support it. BUT - when you leave New Zealand … there has been something happening for a while now.
The Newsletter.
1. Stay informed: Keep up-to-date on the latest developments and trends in AI and automation, and how they are affecting your industry and job market.
2. Develop new skills: Continuously learn new skills to stay relevant in the job market, such as programming, data analysis, or other skills related to AI.
3. Pursue higher education: Consider obtaining a degree or certification in a field related to AI, such as computer science or data science, to prepare for the jobs of the future.
The Newsletter.
Invest in upskilling and reskilling: Provide opportunities for employees to learn new skills and develop expertise in areas related to AI, such as data analysis, programming, or robotics. Foster a culture of innovation: Encourage employees to experiment with new technologies and processes, and provide the resources and support necessary to implement new ideas. Promote collaboration: Encourage cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing, to bring together employees from different departments with diverse skill sets and expertise.
🔗 Just finished listening to the latest Core Intuition.
At one point in the conversation @manton and @danielpunkass were talking about community guidelines, social norms et al. Hate speech on Bluesky was specifically brought up. Apparently they have a way to add tags to posts so that posts can be marked as ‘hatespeech’, ‘not safe for work’, etc.
Sounded a pretty neat solution to me - but apparently someone over on @mastodon suggested that this meant BlueSky was allowing hate speech.
Quotes from Galloway talking about NEOM.
The gasman had an appointment this morning … he was on time and we spent some quality time together. End result? The next step would be to call a plumber (not a carpenter) … see the first verse below.
My mind went to Flanders and Swann’s rendition of their wonderful song … The Gas Man Cometh. The audio is well worth a listen if you don’t know it - and really - these days - who honestly does remember the duo.
Turns out that ChatGPT can be pretty useful. Who knew?
In case you aren’t keeping up - I have been playing around with embedding video on 🔗 john.philpin.com. I cracked it a while back - but the process of creating the clip had a lot of friction because of the app I was using.
Fixed that - thanks to learning that the podcast app I use every day (Overcast) has had audio clipping since 2019.
Which reminds me that I need to find that quote that reminds us that all life is just ‘replication at scale’
Of course the human invention of copyright law then results in things like the court case between Ed Sheeran and the estate of Marvin Gaye - which in turn conjurs up memories of Zeppelin and Spirit, Harrison and … who was it now … the list is endless.
Meanwhile - The New Yorker’s cover is … well - see for yourself …
I have had three actions in ‘Things’ now for weeks. They were there to remind me to post a snippet from three podcasts that I wanted to share. The actual snipping and posting is not that hard - so why did I need to set a reminder?
BECAUSE
I use Overcast to listen to Podcasts and I had no intention of moving my listening experience over to Snipd. Earlier in the year I had been playing with Snipd.
🎵 This Is Not America was always a 🎵musical favorite in my world - as indeed was The Falcon and The Snowman, which featured the song … and then the movie came to mind this morning as I was catching up on my ‘piece of glass’.
To some, the meaning of the lyrics …
A little piece of you,
the little piece in me,
will die
(this is not a miracle)
Long time since I watched this - but I have watched it more than once - which is rare for me ... Came to mind this morning as I was reading the news and my mind revisiting the theme song and then thinking about Schlesinger - and then Timothy Hutton and of course the amazing Sean Penn. Well worth a **focused** watch.
Ever wondered why we used call it ‘Global Warming’ - and now we call it ‘Climate Change’?
Said it before - say it again - Language is important. More than important - it shapes how society thinks.
Frank Luntz understood that …
Memo exposes Bush’s new green strategy. is a 20 year old article describing how Frank Luntz first introduced the idea of ‘changing the dialogue’.
Doesn’t ‘climate change’ sound so much nicer than ‘global warming’?
Slowly building up my glossary links ( thankyou @AndySylvester ) … 4 active so far … more in the background - and none of the embedded terms are yet implemented (except that one at the bottom of this post). None of the click throughs are final text yet - but that is kind of the beauty of the 🔗 glossary.
"Learn more about People First.
https://www.craft.do/s/raZmxmS3JlMvZm"An experiment as I think about moving peoplefirst.
Cable News (1980-2023) by Dana F. Blankenhorn has a very relevant 🎵 track that opens the post.. You can find the 🔗 lyrics here.
Who “wins,” i.e., who is the last one standing? Probably NBC. Comcast has cash flow. NBC has learned how to segment the market with MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Now, NBC News and Local Now. That’s five bites at the remaining cable apple, five channels they can sell to the “skinny bundle” boys like YouTube Plus.
Cage on 60 Minutes
As @drewcastillo and I recently riffed - he really is very good. Sure he’s got some duds - don’t we all? Off the top of my head - some of my favorites (alphabetical - to avoid ‘ranking’) …
Adaptation Conair Face/Off Leaving Las Vegas Pig Raising Arizona Wild at Heart … and a few more that I have forgotten.
(and no - Unbearable Weight is not forgotten - just haven’t seen it yet.
I spotted this car parked near a Farmers Market - I walked on, wondering about the owner and what their story was.
Returning a few hours later, I saw a couple of cars stopped at a junction. They weren’t moving and as I got closer saw an elderly man using his feet to propel him and his wheelchair backwards across this small, pot hole riven junction … up a small incline.
Criticising is the easy part is a blog post that has been sat in my drafts folder for too long ….
I wouldn’t disagree with @manuelmoreale - you only have to highlight ‘the issue d’jour’ and
the story is getting more complicated the public is defaulting to less and less attention to absorb the necessary information and less and less time to weigh in on the issues and increasingly the (popular) tools where such discourse can be had are focussed on shorter and shorter time spans.
🔗 Where does the Tennessee House Speaker actually live? - people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
🔗 I showed Bruce Springsteen my Bruce Springsteen tattoo. He said he didn’t like it. - I look forward to this new series.
I am a cult author, asked in the street maybe five times a year: “Are you Emma Forrest?” And I am Emma Forrest. But it’s a surname invented by my grandfather to combat anti-semitism, so there are other more legitimate Emma Forrests, some with their own internet fame, like the Scottish judo star or the woman, also Scottish, who consumes 3,000 calories of fizzy drinks a day.
If you read my review of Murder Mystery ... You might be surprised to learn that I also watched this. BUT as I said in the review ... the film’s saving grace (at best) was the Maharajah ... and spotting him featured heavily in the promo, I though maybe they would give him more screen time ....
Spoiler alert ... and I can't say this with absolute certainty ... But I'm going to say he had LESS screen time.
With Netflix holding back on the 6th series of Better Call Saul ... What's a boy to do? Murder Mystery 2 was floating around and I had never seen the first ... so decision made. It would be unfair to say it was a total disaster, though I am definitely NOT a Sandler fan .. I do kinda like Aniston .. So who knows I thought ... Maybe she could lift him up?
Sorry about all the posts and deletes. This one is staying!
‘From Obsidian’ is a new category on this ‘public journal’. Not sure yet how it will pan out - but my thinking is kinda as follows …
1] don’t want to pay $120 a year to synch your obsidian with a web site (quite apart from what a second web site will cost you).
2] don’t have the technical chops to deal with github (which is a recognized and free solution that solves that first problem)
This is a new identity newsletter from my Kiwi friend Alan Mayo - it’s the start of a journey he is embarking on talking about Identity 2.5. …. wait what? … 2.5?
Don’t fret - I’m not going to steal Alan’s thunder and get into what ‘2.5’ is - but Alan and I have had enough conversations for me to know that if you have an interest in identity - this short series is going to be well worth your time and his 2.
A little foraging around the hood yesterday afternoon … some observations.
Going by car makes … Teslas had the most unfriendly, aggressive drivers on the road.
To provide context, on one occasion I was mildly surprised when one car jumped the red lights .. red now, not amber … red, only to see a second one accelerate across right on the first car’s tail causing me to swear in shock. After a brief gap, I guess people ‘with the green’ figured it was ok to move … and they all did … only to slam on their breaks as a third car barreled through.
🔗New Zealand loses appeal to rich foreigners as investor visa numbers plunge..
Maybe they have been reading Rushkoff’s book - and don’t want to be put in the same bag as Peter Thiel?
It was bizarre. I do get called out a lot to do these talks for businesspeople about the digital future. So, it was one of those where they paid me a bunch of money to convince me to spend some jet fuel and leave my home and pontificate, but then instead of taking me out onto the stage, they brought these five guys into the green room and sat around this table and started asking me all these very binary questions about where they should place their bets for the digital future: Bitcoin or Ethereum; VR or AR; and finally, New Zealand or Alaska—where should they invest in land to put their bunker for “the event”?
Micro Blog categories are badly displayed - there I said it.
In MicroBlog and the New Drafts Plugin - it is unclear - but I think it is oldest to newest created? (In fairness the plugin probably pulls the raw list from the back end somewhere and uses the default.)
The same behavious in the iOS app.
BUT, in the Mac app, categories appear in three columns - and they read left to right on the first line and then the second line etc - NOT down column 1, then column2 etc … who knows which is the right way?
Back when I posted about how great Breaking Bad was … let me paraphrase @pratik … “if you though that was good - wait till you try Better Call Saul”.
Then @GramrgednAngel@zirk.us talked about The Atlantic who …
published a series examining it through a Shakespearean tragedy lens and making the argument that the ultimate main character wasn’t Walter, or Jesse, but Skyler.
I just started series 3 of ‘Saul’.
Using just one album as an example of the mess that is Apple Music Meta Data ….
“I think the relationship of a warm-blooded creature versus an object that is still and silent—which is essentially what I think sculpture is—for me is the sort of fundamentals. Sculpture is in our everyday lives the whole time. Crossing the road with a lorry coming towards you is, in my opinion, a sculptural experience, where you as a flesh-and-blood object [are] up against the thing that isn’t. And one’s emotional and psychological assessment of that all happens in a flash.
The story continues and gets weirder, but it’s Idris .. right? And it all ends with an interesting set up for the next story.
The Theme Music for the Madam Blanc mysteries has firmly embedded itself into my brain and I love it. Still do. But who is the artist?
Turns out, a ‘duo’ called ‘Hague and White’. But the White might not be who you think.
I thought ‘the white’ was one ‘Steve White’. You might know him as the drummer for The Style Council and pretty much all the subsequent solo albums of Paul Weller.
Updated - constantly strong show.
I’m not big into biopics … but for this I will make an exception and all because of Rami Malik. Quite brilliant in this role.
Loved the first one. Loved this one. Love the books. In my mind, Paddington can’t go wrong.
Maybe it should-be 5 stars ... but that would mean it couldn’t be improved ... and everything can be improved .. can’t it? How? No idea.
Watched on Friday March 3, 2023.
One of his best. Maybe even his best?
3 stars from me, 4 stars from Jax. I likeChristian Bale’s work, I thought the ‘Poe’ character was excellent … but in the end, I didn’t really care, even with ‘twist’ at the end.
I wanted to like it … nay .. love it. I really did. But it was not to be. Definitely extraordinary scenes of ‘spectacularity’ within, but they weren’t enough to create a 3 hour movie and even at under 2 hours would have still been a push. Sorry.
A solid Marvel movie. Perhaps overlong?
This is in Stoop.
I click on the ‘Read On’ link and see this.
BUT - if I save to ‘Read Later' in ‘Readwise’ and then open Readwise, I see this
🔗 The public Readwise link
🔗 The original page (sans the 5 lines of tracking crud)
Here’s what I am wondering.
When I visit the public Readwise link it includes this tracking crud;
[hs.liminal.co/e3t/Ctc/L...](https://hs.liminal.co/e3t/Ctc/LV+113/cpsS404/VWVcLl90PJXLW92sp) Lq3N1C9nW3fCDQw4XjBLvN22w1013q3nJV1-WJV7CgFfDW671KZv 7dHHlcW4tkCM06fBlBpN7zfWcFFRBhvW96Kz) QQ2Kmdr1W2Cwz8n1jKmPNW1kwWkW7yWKh4N1MVd8pVQCfNW6 N90fS6LjBwNW7NhW_q34pWDvW3QzqKL3rjJrGW23FBdk9kQ46N W2sjCd-6t00gbN8C5ycNXfs_LN9hcJ1J7k6-tW5thTQD5XGRFkW6N xxbm60PM_gW96NX_j38bGGFW9c-k6C7XK3rFW2Zl02144zDTlW8 BxVDp89SzfLW3pGtXy3Wl6LdMvwGZ wq5jczW30lgc-76MhyJW4xS3r15JmP723jMr1) which to this untrained bear, seems to be very different tracking crud to Liminals, so there is some rewriting going on?
I wrote an email this morning, responding to something that had been sent to me, announcing - and I paraphrase - that despite the longevity of the work that he had been personally driving for decades, he has decided that this was indeed - ‘the end’.
I guess it is one of those days, where every where you look, every page you turn emotion takes over and (at least for me), music takes hold.
If the UK and/or the USA could find more leaders that demonstrate the qualities of Jacinda Arden, wouldn’t both surely be better off for it?
Sadly, she’s had her run, the voters are not going her way hence her resignation. ‘Hitch’ is being allowed to reset the agenda and so far at least, seems to be turning the ‘anti-Labour’ tide. Make no mistake though, yes, she took some wrong turns but the problems being laid at her feet won’t go away with new leaders.
A claim made by Mike Pesca on his ‘occasional’ 🔗 Substack. But maybe that isn’t the point? Maybe that is also not right? He asked for comments. This post is is my response. What do you think?
I had it at 4 Stars in my head when I first watched the film. I checked it out again recently. It’s dated … and not as great as I remembered. Because I’m older? Or just more considered.
I still like the idea of never quite putting your finger on when it suddenly went the character’s tipping point occured.
… but mainly about lists - and AlbumWhale.
I popped in a couple of posts recently that are part of what I am naming the ‘New Zealand Jigsaw’. This post is one of my ‘living posts’ that will serve as the gateway to the full set, once they are all published - and assuming that I can publish faster than I can think of more topics.
Introduction
A MicroBlog Storm
Ardern Resigns - Hashtag
After Ardern - Bernard Hickey
Wherever you go in the world, New Zealand, Scotland, Austin Texas, Raleigh North Carolina, Hyderabad, Shenzhen …. pretty much anywhere, you will find there are tech centers. Tech centers that often adopt ’Silicon’ or ‘Valley’ or variations on such in their names, but there are many more. The local government will often declare they are investing and building a tech center of excellence to ‘rival’ Silicon Valley. Except they aren’t. Let me explain.
This post emerged from @oddevan who posted this;
Another post that started life as a reply - and then got longer - and then seemed to have added general applicability. So …
Shel Israel writes : 🔗 How ChatGPT Will Change the World, Lower My Fees and Raise My Revenue
I get what he is saying - except I don’t.
His argument centers on his unit price dropping - but he will write more.
Back of an envelope calculations. Let’s say he increases his output ten fold and reduces his price by EIGHTY PERCENT.
This would double his revenue. All good nay … all great!
Sometimes you need to tell a story just to get it out there. Because otherwise you really would think that you were actually living in a Kafka novel.
If you know Charley’s, this is not new news.
If you don’t know Charley’s - then why should you care?
This just in from my good friend Randall Rospond … number 25 in the image below, right beside another friend Tom Conway.
Randall’s friend and Maui artist John Woodruff is the artist, the painting features many Maui Musician Regulars on stage with many of the Charley’s staff and regular patrons.
It’s interesting how small things mess you up. I am putting some time into trying to make it easier to find stuff on my blog and recently discovered filters where you can “automatically set categories when text in new posts matches a filter”.
For new posts it seems to work flawlessly. The cool thing is that you can ‘Run Filter’ - which essentially means that it will go off and apply that rule to your archive.
That’s how bad it is getting .. and not just in New Zealand.
Bernard Hickey reporting that New Zealand has declared a 🔗 National emergency for Gabrielle. The massive storm and floods two weeks ago where 4 people died did NOT have the same focus. In fact, it’s only been enabled twice before. Though in fairness, the Hawke’s Bay earthquake in 1931 would have resulted in it being declared a National Emergency had there been such an organization and in later years, with other earthquakes, it was the Department of Civil Defence that was called into action.
🎵 Despite my initial resistance to the 500 song podcast narrated by 🔗 Andrew Hickey .. I am now moving into my third … first ‘The Monkees’, then ‘Love’, now ‘The Move’. The depth of information flying through the speakers is really quite incredible - thoroughly researched, packed with information - some of which I know - a lot I don’t.
A particular speciality of his is identifying groups that todays’ mega stars played with in the very early days.
I wonder why this link is not actually on the MS site any more?
I mean, it seems like it would be important for people to know? Part of the URL reads ' host-clayton-morris-leaves-country-amid-fraud-allegations-lawsuits ‘- so you can guess what it is about if you don’t want to click through
Yahoo and many others still have similar links reporting the story.
I came across him today when a friend mentioned the YouTube channel - and after what I was being told, I felt it all seemed … shall we say odd?
The first side of Da Capo is excellent - not Side two. This one is more complete, more beautiful. more listenable - and Da Capo’s side 1 is NOT unlistenable
Watched on Wednesday February 8, 2023.
“Cole needed a letter of recommendation recently so he turned to an old family friend who, in turn, used ChatGPT to generate the letter, which he thought was remarkably good.”
🔗 … which in turn prompted Bob Cringely to write this article.. It has all the usual caveats we see in article after article, although this time talking about how ChatGPT was used to generate that letter of recommendation.
I was never a fan of Russell Brand, so hard to say my opinion of him has ‘fallen’.
That was from the start, but his very misplaced prank with Ross on Andrew Sachs sealed it for me.
I also don’t spend much time thinking about Jonathan Ross - but at least he has a tiny spec of talent.
Which is why I enjoyed this short video of 🔗📼 Helen Lewis talking Russell Brand decent into conspiracies and a good analysis of how he - and others of his ilk - ‘do it’.
As a kid, shall we say my musical taste did not jibe with my dad’s. Nor with my mum’s for that matter - although she did understand what I was listening to - and why. Probably because of that there are artists that she introduced me to that are still part of my listening cycle - like Dave Brubeck.
She passed a while ago, but would have loved Deep Purple’s Jon Lord covering ‘UnSquare Dance’.
.
Just a great, wacky, fun movie.
The Series that is. The film at the end - to bring ‘closure’? Yeah - not so much
Om asking the question as he weighs in on Ben Werdmuller’s post asking whether the ‘stream’ needs to give way to a new way of organizing?
I think no - but I understand the challenge, which is why I have been going back over my old posts and trying to get rigorous with
Categories and Search
.. so that I can find stuff (and I recognize that it is really only me that looks to navigate the 7,000 plus posts (I know - I know)).
.
Written before Hipkins won the leadership.
“My current view is this cements the likelihood of a National-ACT victory on October 14, with no fundamental change in tax, Government spending or social policies, other than the reversal of Labour’s interest deductibility and bright-line measures, along with the truncation of Three Waters, the removal of the clean car rebate scheme and no follow-through on a levy on farm emissions.”
“From a purely political and financial view, it’s more likely to lower interest rates, increase residential land prices, increase net migration, increase nominal GDP, lower the Budget deficit, lower net debt-to-GDP, further restrict productivity growth, slow real wage growth and increase the emigration of young New Zealanders who come from renting families.
The meaning and tragedy of Jacinda Ardern’s time as PM
“In the end, she deserves our utmost respect and thanks. She was instinctively extraordinary with her responses and leadership after the Christchurch attacks and the arrival of Covid.”
💬 Bernard Hickey
I can only agree.
Other parts of the New Zealand ‘MicroBlog Storm’
There are a number of threads in my head around New Zealand that I need to publish. Other than ‘New Zealand’ there isn’t anything particularly that connects them, so it isn’t a single post. Nor should it be a new category, because once they are out - that will be it. So - I will write a series of separate posts that I will link together once they are published. Think ‘MicroBlog Storm’.
.
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.
While wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.
Wealth distribution is a recurring topic - this is a clean summary of why it’s a problem.
That is the only thing I can think of that created the news that caused me to write this post!
This is nothing like a PiL track. It is also nothing like a John Lydon track. That said,
“Public Image Ltd. (PiL) have been selected for the 67th annual Eurovision Song Contest airing on February 3. The band will represent Ireland with their new single ‘Hawaii.’.”
The NME and American Songwriter are both ‘kind of saying’ that;
Imagine if you could export all your posts on Micro Blog with associated meta data down to a csv.
Imagine that you could then
sort, filter the posts add / subtract categories edit entries normalize information merge and purge posts find THE post that has the largest number of comments in the thread find any posts with an image included, 2 images included, 3 … find the posts that contain (say) ‘🎶’ so you can replace it with ‘🎵’ - in line with all your other music posts … you know - any and all of the stuff that you might want to do with all those posts to better manage them.
I love Wes Anderson … so of course … but even if you don’t, you need to try this one out.
I watched this for the second time … inspired by how great ‘The Banshees’ was. Just as good as I remembered it. Excellent … and on Netflix at the moment.
There has been a lot of traffic on Micro Blog about ‘like’ buttons - as in should there be one? Some of those conversations have been repackaged and moved into other places - like this one from Dave Winer.
The challenge is that writers tend to see the like as a ‘nod’ of agreement with what they have written .. or at least as some kind of feedback …
“In real life there’s all kinds of non-verbal communication.
Find the RSS feed for ⭐️ posts Add that feed to Feedbin —-
Star any post .. it appears in the ⭐️ posts
The new RSS feed now displays that ⭐️ post
That ‘new’ ⭐️ post now appears in ⭐️ posts
The new RSS feed now displays that ⭐️ post
🔄🔄🔄🔄🔄🔄🔄
—-
🤦♂️ Have now deleted the RSS feed!
Seen them all and bit by bit will review and rate properly.
The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix Reloaded Inglourious Basterds Fantastic Mr. Fox The Usual Suspects Reservoir Dogs Dead Poets Society The Princess Bride One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb .
Seen them all and bit by bit will review and rate properly.
In Bruges The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix Reloaded The Royal Tenenbaums Inglourious Basterds Fantastic Mr. Fox The Usual Suspects Reservoir Dogs Dead Poets Society The Princess Bride ...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
You know what I’m talking about.
The Hundred-Foot Journey Calendar Girls The Full Monty Brassed Off Kes Yesterday The Lady in the Van
You know what I’m talking about.
The Hundred-Foot Journey Calendar Girls
It was all right.
One of those very different, really excellent movies. Don’t miss it.
Movies that seem to be popular … but something doesn’t sit right … for me at least.
Triangle of Sadness Avatar Avatar: The Way of Water Top Gun: Maverick Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy The Marksman
It’s a long way from Ace Ventura! Great movies.
Accidentally found this movie on TV … q super way to spend an hour and ten minutes … a documentary revealing humor and humanity.
Another one of those ‘little’ movies. Highly recommend.
Wes Anderson Hasn’t Changed With ‘The French Dispatch.’ And That’s Perfectly Fine.It was on my ‘to watch’ list even before I read this;
> “But the most endearing thing about Wes Anderson is that he’s a hopelessly romantic filmmaker, and these worlds he creates clearly mean a lot to him. His latest film, The French Dispatch, is a love letter certainly—to journalism, to writers, to art in general and filmmaking specifically—and rather than change or adapt in the way some want to see, he gloriously doubles down on his style, making for his most maximalist, hyper-imaginative film yet.
If you are thinking about watching the sequel - watch this one instead.
Slow and gentle and worth curling up with if you in the right frame of mind.
Lovely - just lovely - with occasional cringeworthy self help one liners.
If you saw Colin and Brendan in their last outing .. which btw was very good … then this might catch you by surprise. Personally I love ‘little movies “ like this - the Brits and the Irish do so very well … this is no exception. Great dialogue. Beautiful scenery. Stonking cast and acting. If you … like me … saw a couple of trailers, you will likely be inspired to watch.
Yes it is a yarn and the book is badly written (though I still turned the pages VERY quickly), this is the movie - and was a good one.
I posted this doozy on June 2nd - noting that I would come back to it at the year end because it smelt of horse shit. (If you don’t want to click through - in a nutshell JPMorgan predicting that 2022 was going to be just fine).
Here I am back ….
2022 was the worst year for the S&P 500 since the 2008 financial crisis. While the markets usually finish up, down years can happen.
It’s Bond. It’s Daniel Craig. The story continues.
IF you use Drafts and Pinboard and you want to get your links out of Pinboard - well - the mighty @Agiletortoise has thought of that and just published a new action …. here.
Works beautifully.
Now I have 13,259 drafts in my archive folder (don’t judge). Next step is to work out how to bulk export those drafts to a folder on the hard drive, so that I can create a new Obsidian vault.
Been on my list since it came out and was not what I expected. Took 15 to 20 minutes to recalibrate. But I did. Really good. If I closed my eyes, the audio and dialogue reminded me of a Wes Anderson project (close your eyes .. the visuals are nothing like Wes. Bale was great .. at time channeling Peter Falk’s ‘Columbo’ … or is that just me?
It just popped up as a ‘why not watch’ kind of alert … I had. Very good.
I resisted watching this for a while … asked on the trailers … It was all right … but the cheesy trailers are a clue.
It was better than the first in the series! Maybe I’m just not the target audience.
Totally unexpected delight.
Watched on Wednesday December 21, 2022.
4 stars .. and I’m not even a big fan of the man!
It’s a perennial that is regularly revisited.
Wes Anderson has such a distinctive style it’s amazing how they are so different. Love them all.
Music was my first love and it will be my last. Music of the future and music of the past. To live without my music would be impossible to do. In this world of troubles, my music pulls me through.
💬 John Miles
🎶🎵Interesting to see the albums that appear roughly daily in Matt Birchtree’s feed where he celebrates a different album each day. So far, I am personally not inspired - but that is the beauty of music.
To be fair, the ‘other viewer’ gave it 3 stars - but whichever way you look at it - dud.
Count me in the camps of
- ‘definitely not a Will Ferrell fan’
- ‘definitely a massive Ryan Reynolds fan’
I didn’t know the director, so looked up his prior work. Now I understand.
It was alright, but 3 stars is not a recommendation.
If you don’t live in New Zealand, you might not know the name Bernard Hickey. Hell - I live here - and didn’t know him until I stumbled over his writing in Substack. But when I speak to ‘locals in the know’ - he is definitely known.
We had some elections in New Zealand recently, and one winner was a gentleman called Wayne Brown - he is the new mayor of Auckland.
Probably a script that Liam rejected? It was ok - but we know how these movies pan out don't we? The clue is definitely in the title.
**GREAT** movie. French Farce on a fast moving train, channeling Quentin Tarantino (with more humor and not quite as much violence) and Guy Ritchie ... directed by David Leitch - who according to IMDB is a producer, director, actor, stunt performer AND coordinator ... with John Wick, Hobbs and Shaw and Deadpool2 (which MIGHT explain a 2 second cameo by Ryan Reynolds) in his 'canon'.
Not my choice to watch - but watch I did. Yeah ... no.
“We’re excited to announce the release of the newest addition to the GPT-3 model family: text-davinci-003. This model builds on top of our previous InstructGPT models, and improves on a number of behaviors that we’ve heard are important to you as developers.”
💬 Open AI
So of course I had to go try ….
The Prompt Please write 4 paragraphs about Stop Child Traffic Foundation which is a non for profit organization that responds to refugee crisis, and uses technology and innovation to prevent harm to vulnerable populations like refugees and women and children.
Alright. Not great.
I know that there are only 7 stories in the world. My question is why is this the one that keeps getting told - and then badly. In fairness, I got to the end, so it wasn't a total dud, but if you want to watch this story sometime, choose a different movie.
Directly. No Gatekeeper.
A lot of AIs seem to be focussed on how to create. new things, the interesting thing that Readwise is up to is that they are focussed on using AI to better understand what is already there ….. I think that is an interesting problem to solve.
Sly, Liam, Bruce, Gerard, Dwayne et al … meet Bob. Loved it.
Probably one of those times where the film could never live up to the expectations … and yes it’s taken me 15 years to watch it! It was ok .. but for me the best part was the dance on the station platform at the end!
Totally unexpected delightful movie.
Some context to this post, because it really isn’t just about memory (that’s the back story). It is really setting the scene for what I think will be a series of posts that I will link to from here that is exploring whether Geoffrey Moore’s chasm thinking can be applied to a country. Still not sure it can - but we will see as the journey unfolds.
I got a voice mail from my agent this evening. She opened with her usual apologies for being out of touch but she wanted to talk to me about four contracts that were coming to a head. Details needed to be nailed down.
Four contracts? I knew about the transformation contract, but as for the other three … I had no idea what she was talking about. What else had she found?
I like that micro blog can be used as an rss reader and a mastodon reader and a microblog time line reader and ….
BUT
I wonder what code change would be needed to allow me (the reader) to filter my timeline on (say)
mastodon only blog site rss only Microblog only etc etc Currently I am unfollowing every Mastodon account in Micro Blog that I have historically followed - and picking them up in Mastodon.
Interesting that it isn’t just Mastodon that seems to be in sudden growth mode. The Mastodon questions relating to ‘how to get started’ and ‘who to follow’ are just as applicable to Podcasts - even though they are much more established. That said, it is clear that even for the long time listener, checking in and making sure that once you have found the best stuff to listen (often by asking around) that you have the best stuff to listen to it on!
Yeah ... No.
Appalling sound quality just the start.
So so so very good.
No names - no pack drill to protect the innocent, but prompted to write this because while it is sad, I don’t like history to be rewritten.
The official statement reads that it has declared bankruptcy because of “poor economic conditions since Covid and increased costs and delays associated with expansion plans.”
Sure - and - it was clear when I talked to them that the company had a difficult route even before Covid.
It is what it is - it was what it was - a 'free' movie on Netflix
Quite simply one of my favorite movies of all time.
I'm a sucker for Batman. Not the best and so DARK ... not the storyline, the cinematography. At times just watching a black screen. Probably more a commentary on the TV than the movie, but still... I guess if they are trying to get us back to the movie houses... It makes sense?
Having watched ‘round 1’ … I knew what to expect and I wasn’t disappointed.
Fun. What you’d expect.
He was the bestselling poet in American history. What happened?
Was never a fan - and hadn’t thought of him for decades - but there is no doubt that at the time he was big.
Just one paragraph that opened my eyes …
In the mid-1960s McKuen discovered the Belgian singer Jacques Brel and his fellow chansonniers, performers in the story-song tradition who were popular in the cabarets of Europe but hadn’t yet made inroads in the U.
This post was getting too long and confusing in draft mode. So - instead I am writing a short post and will then append with comments to cover off each point I want to make. A living post if you will!
The genesis of the post is that @dave commented on one of my posts about Feedland suggesting that I publish a post about Feedland here.
First off, I am a big fan of the functionality of Feedland and in awe of how @dave - much like @manton - just keeps delivering enhancements and extensions to his world without the teams of hundreds - if not thousands - that VC backed startups seems to ‘need’.
I wrote a long email to Substack last week with a combination of personal comments together with some comments received from readers.
I opened the email with;
“No questions - but definitely a lot of input. Most of which I have written to you about in the past and generally received a ‘thanks we will let the dev team know’ kind of response … and then nothing.”
Precisely one week later a template response …
“To get deals over the line in today’s high-pressure sales environment, sellers must undertake new, challenging activities outside their comfort zones. The ongoing need for agility is taking its toll: In a recent Gartner survey of more than 900 B2B sellers, 89% report feeling burned out and 54% report actively job seeking.”
“nearly six in 10 sellers describe the leadership of their sales organization as not understanding what “really” motivates sellers.
A slightly edited version of a post originally published on February 14th 2016 @ Beyond Bridges, now archived here
A friend and reader of this blog just sent me this link, which is a third party version of the LinkedIN map below. It seems to be limited due to LinkedIN's API constraints, so it can't map more than 499 of your connections. That said, there does seem to be a lot more information and analysis that surrounds the graph.
It is what you might expect from a movie with Jason and Jet - and nothing wrong with that.
"This time he was here to help us understand some truths about how we really run the business, make decisions, and value what's worth doing. When I say value, I don't mean a list of generalized "values", or the bullshit phrase of "adding value", but how we attribute value when evaluating our options and making tradeoffs."
💬 Jason Fried
Read The Whole Post
Verifiable credentials are coming as a service; it's a proven business model | Constellation Research Inc.
The Stripe co-founders were candid about their failure to predict where the economy was heading. They also said they overspent on things like “coordination costs.” That’s not a term I’ve heard before, but I suspect it is a reflection of getting too big and too inefficient.
💬 Jessica Lessin
It's a new term to me aswell - BUT recently on LinkedIN there was a meme running around - which used this graphic.
‘The Information’ reports this morning (my bold)
Uber said its mobility division (the ride-hailing business most people know the company for) brought in $3.8 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter, growing 73%. But baked into that number is $1.1 billion flowing from a change earlier this year that prompted Uber to start recording all the fares it gets in the U.K. as revenue, instead of just the take rates remaining after the company pays its drivers.
In many ways the 1619 Project is focused on unpacking actual history from the American narrative of history.
Meanwhile, I continue to be bowled over by the story/stories that are emerging in Rachel Maddow’s new podcast. I am so often amazed that I jump onto the internet to cross-check what I am hearing but the fact is that though the Ultra Podcast is telling a different story - it is again focused on unpacking history from the American narrative of history.
An old adage - but is ‘top of mind’ recently.
If the IRS want ‘a little chat with you’ …. would you ‘do some research’ and then take the case on, or go find a tax accountant?
If you needed medical attention would you have a friend ‘check out the symptoms and then diagnose you - or would you go to a doctor?
If you were sued for malpractice … get a lawyer - or ‘bone up’ on what youneed to know
Well. at least for real-world construction. As we build out the internet, I feel it is the other way round. Why is that? I wrote this just yesterday …
Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Morgan, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Gaudi, Le Corbusier … are legion in the world of architecture … yet few people know the names of the people or companies that built the buildings they designed.
What absolute crap and drivel …
“ Britain’s current dumpster fire (i.e. the British Pound reached its lowest level against the US Dollar in its entire history last week) began a long time before Truss came on board. She inherited the mess; she didn’t create it.
Driving Off the Glass Cliff.
I am fully aware of the Glass Cliff problem - this is not an example.
Yes - she inherited a mess.
One of those multiverse movies that isn’t your usual. Well worth a watch. No disappointment.
Let’s watch The Gray Man I suggested. We did, both of us looking at the arch other throughout .. the story seemed familiar. And then it didn’t. And then it did. We watched to the end. It was familiar because we’d watched it already. Just didn’t remember. And now … the following morning. Here we are again. Still not knowing what it was about.
Well named.
Josh Bershin writes that we are becoming a power skills economy.
In other words, automation did not eliminate work at all – it created new jobs, better jobs, and an acceleration of our workforce into what we now call the “service economy.” We are essentially shifting to the right in this model.
💬 Josh Bershin
BTW, in case you are wondering, ‘Power Skills’ is the 'new' name for ‘Soft Skills’.
I was delighted to be joined on the People First podcast by Ramsey Avery who is the Production Designer for the Amazon series - Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power.
Wonderful conversation that I know you will enjoy.
Maybe because I have recently been watching some below average / average movies recently - that this one stands out. On another day. I might rate it at 3 1/2 stars - but leaving at 4 for now.
Here’s the question … coincidence … or action from the grave?
It’s a documentary - so move on if you don’t like them. Personally - big as the issue was - I totally missed the story when it was in the news. BUT very good. I would like to have seen more delving into the Libyan connections - rather than a ‘simple’ fraud - maybe there will be a part two?
Mindless. Watched as part of a binge-watch when I was feeling sorry for myself. Not too hard to keep up. Definitely don’t bother if you are sitting down to ‘watch a movie’.
I have watched all the Thor’s and this one is VERY different - probably because Taika Waititi isn’t just the director (Thor - Ragnarok) but also the writer. Not sure what the ‘Marvel Heads’ will say / are saying … but for me it worked.
Just like the character in the movie … I really can’t remember much. The script is out of some script hopper and this is the latest version of it,
I have a streaming cold … so in that respect perfect, too hard to switch off, and not much to track.
Watched on Friday October 14, 2022.
30 years ago. Seriously? It feels just like yesterday. Of course … it could have been. The script is timeless.
The Fog of Global War, Dana Blankenhorn
“This is also no normal midterm election. This is an existential battle between democracy and fascism. Major media try to both sides it, but that’s increasingly impossible. Every possible -ism is rising against democratic compromise and common sense – sexism, racism, fascism, Christianism. All the evils bedeviling the rest of the world have come here to roost because Vladimir Putin invited them in.
It was on Netflix … and just wanted ‘something’. Turns out it was just what I needed. The storyline is recognizable .. with wine and barbecue this time. For all of that - well done.
Trust me, I don’t need to spend time reviewing a bad film … so I don’t.
It took me forever to get around to watching this film and when I finally did … oh my. Tears (mine) at the end - which to me is always a good guide to the quality.
I’m a sucker for the Batman franchise interpretation anyway…but they don’t always work. This ‘side story’ is a stunning film.
Watched on Wednesday January 15, 2020.
This is not a list designed to be ALL great movies - just those great movies that you might have missed as you journey through life.
Pig Big Fish
Watched on Friday September 30, 2022.
This is not a list designed to be ALL great movies - just those great movies that you might have missed as you journey through life.
Pig Big Fish Glengarry Glen Ross
At the White House, Ornato, who as deputy chief of staff had oversight over Secret Service decisions, told Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, that the vice-president was going to be moved to the Maryland military facility Joint Base Andrews. Had he been evacuated, Pence would no longer have been able to certify Biden’s electoral victory, and Trump’s goal of postponing his defeat would have been fulfilled.
When Ornato said that the Secret Service would move Pence, Kellogg was adamant, Rucker and Leonnig reported.
Books, Siddhartha Mukherjee says, just tumble out of him, like fluffy towels and clean socks cascade out of a dryer at the end of the cycle. And it’s a good thing, because it’s not as if the man has a lot of idle time to spare.
Mukherjee, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, an oncologist and a researcher of cancer treatments, is one of those people who appears to have found a glitch to exploit in the space-time continuum.
… or not. Yeah - definitely not.
Thiel-backed conservative video platform Rumble is up 37% after going public via SPAC merger at a $2.1B valuation, raising $400M.
.. and you all thought SPACs were dead!
Definitely an interesting mix of ‘purveyors’ on the platform, noting that Russell Brand had decided that he needs to not only join the likes of QANON, Alex Jones, Greenwald, Lindell and Truth Social - but be there exclusively!
It’s funny how 'xx is the new oil' keeps cropping up … this one is kind of related - but focussed not specifically on data - but rather, The ‘Attention Economy’ ….
"For the better part of the past century, the most important commodity has been oil. Wars have been fought over it — Pearl Harbor was a preemptive strike to secure Japanese access to Indonesian oil — and it elevated desert tribes to the ranks of the wealthiest cohorts in history.
Given that I have been reading about the ‘impending’ arrest of Gaetz for human trafficking since March 2021, I don’t expect a move against the people involved in the Abbott and DeSantis shenanigans any time soon … if ever.
If the US continues to not react, isn’t it condoning trafficking and/or admitting that its laws are toothless?
Were I a trafficker in US custody, I would definitely use this inaction as part of my defense.
Earlier this week a friend introduced me to Slavoj Žižek - and specifically, he referenced The Perverts Guide To Cinema. I started watching and suddenly realized that it was over 2 1/2 hours long. I saved to ‘watch later’! Seriously - watch the first 5 to 10 minutes - you can’t just stop and never return … BUT … life does have a limited duration!
I commented on this to my friend … he responded …
I am sad for the loss of the Queen, but ….
There cannot be life without death, it is inescapable.
💬 Keisei Tagami
That said, most of what I am reading and seeing leave me cold. Nobody knows the private story of the woman. Nobody.
This is brought home when reading the 4 articles on the click throughs … four different links that tell the story in very different ways and are not the usual fodder.
Harder Than It Looks, Not As Fun as It Seems is a short neat article on this very topic.
Reminds me of what my mum used to say to me …
“If you only judge your friends by their photo album of course it will look like they have a great life.”
💬 My Mum
or as Morgan has it ….
“It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.
“There ought to be a law. If I can subscribe without talking to someone, I should be able to cancel that way too. I was interested in subscribing to the NYT crossword, for $20 a year, but their policy for cancelling required me to converse with someone at the NYT. I know why, they want to try to convince me to stay. My time is worth something, though they don’t think so.
Long Time Castro user - but it was time to explore the alternatives again. (Same exercise as the RSS reader project a few weeks ago). So of course my first stop was back to Apple Podcasts .. because I keep thinking that of all companies Apple should be able to deliver the best experience …. right?
The app managed to annoy me in less than a couple of days. But it did trigger me to look at synching … enter Overcast - my new friend.
The title is not representative of the piece which is actually about ‘Google Maps’ and ‘personal memory’ but is pulled from the quote.
𝗩𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 - a person takes money, hands you an object; liquor store clerks, cashiers, bank tellers, etc.
𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 - taxis, aeroplanes, trucks, etc.
𝗕𝗮𝗯𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 - people that watch things. But this extends to people that tweak small things (on par with wiping a baby’s arse) like pool repair, HVAC repair, etc. They take the diaper off, they wipe it down, they put the diaper back on; janitors, gardeners, farmers, painters, security guards, testing, stockers, etc.
Ooohhh …
Now you can seamlessly sync all of your Raindrop.io highlights directly with Readwise.
Readwise makes it easy to revisit and learn from your highlights. When highlights were introduced to Raindrop.io, many users requested an official integration with Readwise.
Connect your Raindrop.io account to get started. Highlights will be synced periodically throughout the day.
“As one lawyer recounted to the Post, Trump’s legal team once urged the then president “against tweeting about the Mueller probe, only to find he’d tweeted about it before they got to the end of the West Wing driveway.” Others said he was “nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.”
Bad News is Good News.
“I started talking about the Machine Internet nearly 20 years ago, before it was even called “the Internet of Things.” Sensors and motes, tied to an analysis by wireless networks. Anything whose performance can be adjusted can now be monitored and controlled by a central intelligence. You can monitor the condition of parts and schedule maintenance before things break. This matters if the part is your heart, and its breaking could kill you.
Zuckerberg’s New No. 2 Faces an Old Dilemma: Distrust of Facebook
Seriously? That’s the problem?
The new ‘number 2’ is Nick Clegg
Wikipedia During the party’s time in coalition, the Liberal Democrats saw a significant drop in support and the 2015 general election left the party with just 8 seats, which resulted in Clegg’s ousting as Deputy Prime Minister and his resignation as party leader. In 2016, following a referendum in which a majority supported leaving the European Union, Clegg returned to the Liberal Democrat frontbench, concurrently serving as Spokesperson for Exiting the European Union and for International Trade from July 2016 to June 2017.
The promo on some podcast this morning (my bold)
While Tim Cook (Mr. Excitement) has been the CEO of Apple for over 10 years, he’s now getting closer to mid-60s and is probably looking past where he’ll be running things. His legacy is pretty firmly set and there’s not much more at this point he could do, so who will be next in line to run Apple? We’ll look at some of the likely candidates in the second section.
I recently had a good email exchange with Nick Milo (LYT) after a newsletter he wrote that depended a lot on Running Up That Hill.
As a private exchange, I am not going to reveal the conversation, but rather make the observation that Kate Bush’s Running Up The Hill not only gained renewed momentum in the UK/US Music charts …. It also seems to have pushed Kate back into the limelight.
“The Content Marketing category is almost $700 billion. Almost every company is working on content and increasing their content marketing investments. And yet, when was the last time you got a piece of content marketing and you said that was legendary? Let’s dig into how the marketing world got duped into content free marketing, aka saying nothing everywhere, and why this is one of the largest opportunities hiding in plain sight.
“The 9/11 attacks could have been dealt with as a crime. This would have been sane and consistent with precedent. When lawbreaking occurs, we seek the perpetrators, rather than starting wars with unrelated parties. When the IRA set off bombs in London, nobody called for air strikes on West Belfast (or on Boston, where a great deal of IRA funding came from). When the Oklahoma City bombing was found to have been perpetrated by a white supremacist associated with ultra-right militias, there was no call to obliterate Idaho or Montana.
Questions about Apple and its TV+ marketing
“Marketing during the era of peak TV is hard, but as someone who lives dead center in Apple’s ecosystem, I hadn’t even heard about “Black Bird” until last week, when Tim Cook mentioned it on the analyst call and I saw an extended trailer for it on last week’s “Friday Night Baseball.”
💬 Jason Snell
Odd. Any time I switch to 🍎📺 - Blackbird is front and center.
Two examples - In one email.
False Online Reviews
“Bounty, a startup that pays users for posting reviews to select products on TikTok, raised $4.7 million in seed funding from consumer venture capital firm M13.”
💬 Mahira Dayal - The Information
and
In case you need another reason to get off Twitter ….
“Twitter donated $25,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which is raising funds for the anti-abortion movement, newsletters Popular Information and Platformer together reported.
No - not the 🎶 pop group - they were 'NSYNC' ... just an acknowledgement of how nice it is to find like minded travelers on the journey.
The quote below found here
“We need to resist the narratives that are frequently served to us by corporations that sell these technologies, that these models of the future are dependent upon the particular technologies that they’re selling, that it’s always some future that is just around the corner that we have to buy into, when in fact the future is already here.
But I don’t always take good advice …
Keep your feed under control. Don’t subscribe to too many feeds and periodically go through the list and remove the ones that don’t provide value to your life. Avoid feeds that are too busy. Don’t subscribe to feeds that push content out on a daily basis. Disable all notifications from your RSS reader. Unread messages counter, email notifications, push notifications—turn everything off.
There are a group of companies springing up that are doing for the written word what Dall-E, MidJourney and Craiyon are doing for images, which is to say - enter some core text and let an AI generate the output. My mind explodes when I see the 'image' results. I think ‘meh’ - so far - when I see the 'written' results. I am pretty sure that the engines are as sophisticated as each other, so I wonder if my reaction is more to do with my own abilities - as in I have NO artistic ability when it come to creating images, but I can - and do write - so my bar is higher?
Come gather 'round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin' Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'
💬 Bob Dylan
With the financial problems ricocheting around the world - I see occasional headlines from 50 years ago.
I am sitting in New Zealand writing this. It started as an idea in my head and was typed into a local file on my computer. I copied it to Wordpress (my blog hosting software of choice) and saved a draft to my People First server.
The words were then sitting on a server in Iowa, USA.
From this point on, as I edit the draft, I am in New Zealand, the words I am editing are in Iowa - where am I working?
Why none of my books are available on Audible is a 'spoken essay' from Cory which will eventually be the only entry he has in the Audible library. Take a listen to find out why.
The link takes you to a page on his Craphound site, or go directly to 🎙️the podcast
Thinking Allowed
This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program.
MacStories : 🔗 Generating Markdown Links to Mail Messages with Shortcuts and AppleScript
Dr. Drang : 🔗 Mail links and percentages
I used to use hook - but not enough to pay for it - so stopped.
Spark has an easy way to generate deep links to emails - BUT - if you move the message to a different folder - the lnk breaks for me.
So question.
Does the MacMail linking also break when you move messages, or is the ID absolute?
In 2013, Mark Cameron wrote
‘Data is not the new oil, it is the new soil.’
He concludes;
"Generating business value from consumer data isn’t about technology at all. It’s about how you use data to create a fantastic experience for your customers. If you can help your customer get value from their own information they will reward you for that effort. If you continue to use data to spam your customers or provide value to your company, you may find yourself wondering where everybody went.
Good question.
Putting aside Molly White’s tweet from a few weeks ago, though she does raise a very good point ...
I did want to share a podcast I just listened to It's Mike Brock of Block (seriously, filed in the 'can't make this up' bucket) - and no I don’t think he is Dave Brock's son talking with Tech Dirt's Michael Masnick.
"Web5 is a new evolution of the Web that enables decentralized apps and protocols.
Just thinking aloud …
—-
June 2016 … Brexit - Driven by BoJo
November 2016 … US Election - Trump wins.
July 2022 BoJo stands down as his party FINALLY rejects him
Does this suggest that
December 2022 will be when the Rethuglicans finally reject Trump?
Interestingly, that date is just after the mid-terms, which everybody is convinced will be yet another Democrat shellacking, but what if it isn’t?
Will It Happen?
One of a series of posts that came from one of my many blogs that I am slowly consolidating into this canonical reference. The old blog was with specific regard to ‘all things Uber’.
In case you aren't subscribed ...
Would You Keep Your Most Valuable Possessions In The Vault Of A Company That Might One Day Just Close Their Doors And Block You From Getting All Your Stuff Back?
A few years ago … let’s call at it the ‘advent of social’, common wisdom suggested
‘Email is dead … long live Social’. If you know me, you will not be surprised to learn that I disagreed with ‘common wisdom’.
I have been tracking Nick Milo and his wonderful work around Obsidian for a while. Recently he announced LYT Kit v5 and 🔗 this is his overview.
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
After my unscheduled hiatus, I have been thinking about the podcast. It is going to be different. I mean everything is going to be different. Isn’t it? Why would the podcast not be different?
I recorded the first one earlier this week (don’t worry - you didn’t miss it - I haven’t dropped it yet). If you know me, you’ll know that I definitely err on the side of ten words where one will do … I’m working on it!
You can read the article here.
It’s not really a question as to whether New Zealand is being left behind. I think there are many countries facing this challenge … but the question is what is the challenge?
I ask because I believe that there is a massive conflation of this as people make their arguments..
Does a 4 day week mean
Working 40 hours in 4 days OR are we really talking about reducing the number of hours of a standard week to 32 hours?
A New Prediction Market Lets Investors Bet Big on Almost Anything - I see it is behind a paywall - but you can read it all on Apple News
The article is about a ‘new’ prediction market : Kalshi - which initially had problems with getting approval …
“But their concerns were overruled by the agency’s politically appointed commissioners, one of whom has since joined Kalshi’s board.”
The concerns are clear - but for all of that - I can’t help wondering if this still might be a good idea.
How Remote-First Crypto Players Could End the Company HQ
We will see.
BUT
The real news buried inside the post is how many of these scams companies are based in Malta, The Caymans, The Bahamas … very … what’s the word … ‘levelling’?
As for crap like this …
““Fellow crypto exchange Kraken followed suit in doing away with its HQ in April, and while CEO Jesse Powell said the closure was specifically a response to incidents of crime impacting its employees on the way into the San Francisco office, he added Kraken has “no plans to establish a new, formal global HQ.
As long as Spotify continues to generate headlines like Joe Rogan: We Have a ‘Mental Health Problem Disguised as a Gun Problem
I am good with Netflix generating headlines like Netflix CEO defends Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais
Though I take issue with Netflix falling back onto the ‘Free Speech’ defence. I would rather they used the ‘change the channel’ argument.