🖇️ HUB on John PHI⑊PIN

🎥 On The Waterfront ★★★★

Sun, 31 May 2026 12:08:45 +1200

I watched 🎥🔗 On the Waterfront last night as 🖇️ I said I would. Of course it was good. How could it not be? It is 72 years old, so to a passing observer it might not have stood the test of time od story telling - arguably a little naive at the end - but we all want a good ending … don’t we? I am no film scholar - nor even a buff - I leave all that to @bitdepth - but if you haven’t - or even if you have - give it (another) whirl - on Netflix right now - alongside a lot of other ‘Oscar Winners’. (I might rewatch The Sting tonight.)

🔄🖇️ Review Ratings

📺 Dark Matter ★★★

Sun, 31 May 2026 11:57:46 +1200

I watched: 📺🔗 Dark Matter Season 1 a while back.

Had forgotten all about it until last night. Just recently hit dud after dud in my search for a good show - dud as in maybe give it even three episodes - and still ‘yeah - nah’ - some I even get to the end and still ‘why did I bother’ - so search on for a good solid ‘settle in’ one that isn’t a rewrite of the thing you did earlier in the year.

Looked good to me last night - so I started watching and in about 5 minutes - yeah - good show - I remember this one. Looked up my blog - nope mention - so putting thatto righ today.

That said - not going to rewatch it - I know too much about where it is headed. That said - I see a second season is on its way.

🔄🖇️ Review Ratings

📺 Resident Alien ★★★

Sat, 30 May 2026 13:13:35 +1200

I watched 🔗📺 Resident Alien a while back now. So good. So funny … a modern day Third Rock? (Another great show.) Netflix has only got Seasons 1 and 2 - so that is probably all I watched - and no - not signing up for Peacock - but when S3 and S4 arrive - count me in.

Side note - really annoying for streaming services to only drop a sub set of a series.

🖇️ Brokenwood is another one they have done that with.

🔄🖇️ Review Ratings

Fri, 29 May 2026 12:39:27 +1200

A paywalled Atlantic piece - but not paywalled on the Wayback machine: 🔗 The Lure of a Fully Randomized Life

When I first learned about Max’s experiment, I thought he had found a convenient way to dodge taking responsibility for his decisions. Sorry, the computer made me do it. But I came to see that no matter where the algorithm sent him, Max had cultivated an admirable equanimity about where he ended up. He’d traded the security of knowing exactly where he was going for the serenity of being present wherever he arrived.

💬 Simone Stolzoff

The whole piece reminded me of 🖇️ The Diceman

Fri, 29 May 2026 12:19:53 +1200

Meanwhile as we 🖇️ seek to spend trillions in getting to Mars - we barely understand our own backyard.

🔗📸 In a Single Year, Ocean Census Scientists Discovered More than 1,100 New Marine Species.

Wed, 27 May 2026 07:50:54 +1200

👁️ Turns out when I wrote - “🖇️ We are back” - we weren’t quite. Just learned another little thing about Micro.Blog that I had never completely absorbed. Thank you @sod - we are now back .. at least functionally - css and layout remains a WIP.

Crucial Track 🎵 May 24, 2026

Sun, 24 May 2026 11:23:31 +1200

"iFiesta Fatal! (Album Edit)" by B-Tribe

Listen on Apple Music

Your browser does not support the audio element.

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.

This was the track. Got back to the UK - bought the album - and it turns also out their second - clearly wasn't in the vanguard on this one. I also bought 3, 4 and 5 as they came out - they never failied to suck me in.

There is a sixth - do not own it - but of course in my online library - though a little different to its predecessors.

And all of this came to mind yesterday as I was wrestling with 🖇️ my blog issues - to pick one random post that didnt arrive until today.

BUT - iFiesta Fatal! kept me sane.

View John Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile

Listen to my Apple Music playlist

Sun, 24 May 2026 11:02:40 +1200

👁️ And we are back - normal service has been resumed.

Special shout outs to @sod and @AndySylvester who were on the end of email helping me bottom out my problems (I have many) and unknowingly @danielpunkass who I was not in contact with - but is the brains behind Mars Edit - without which some of what Sven and Andy asked of me in problem solving would not have been possible.

And when I say ‘normal’ - that is with respect to the MB feed.

Life is not so normal on the 🖇️ website which is

using sumo - not my theme
only two plugins - not 11
a confused mashup of CSS -

But all fixable. Right?

Good to be home.

Wed, 20 May 2026 10:31:02 +1200

🔗 Perfect or better?

I guess this is the philosophy behind the rework of my 🖇️ Hub, 🖇️ Blog and 🖇️ Wiki … all three are definitely better and definitely not perfect.

Crucial Track 🎵 May 16, 2026

Sat, 16 May 2026 09:58:58 +1200

"Oh Well (Live)" by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Listen on Apple Music

Your browser does not support the audio element.

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.

both performed by Fleetwood Mac.

View John Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile

Listen to my Apple Music playlist

Forgive or not to forgive. That is the question.

Tue, 12 May 2026 17:35:55 +1200

🖇️ Kind of related to this … Galloway and Swisher recently debating Tucker.

All for it - but not for ~F~Tucker.

He knew what he was doing. Hell - I knew - as my Tяump posts from ten years ago remind us.

But ‘he' didn’t know?

Fuck Off.

Tue, 12 May 2026 09:34:26 +1200

👁️ ‘Nuff Said.

🔗 The Inspiration

Sat, 09 May 2026 11:06:24 +1200

🔗 The Boring Internet

The protocols belong to no one. They can’t be acquired. They can’t be taken public.

💬 Terry Godier

Reminds me of an old adage of mine - that these days sits in my 🖇️ Johnsim Library.

Fri, 08 May 2026 14:13:34 +1200

🏢 Moss just wrote: 🔗 The biggest leadership oversight in modern organisations

in many organisations, the “people piece” has been relegated to the HR function.

💬 Moss Burmester

‘relegated’ - not ‘delegated’ is an interesting choice of words and highlights a more general problem - more on that in the comments.

HR systems are built around compliance, process, and record-keeping.
….
Why does engagement matter? Because performance is produced when people are deeply engaged and aligned in the business strategy

💬 Moss Burmester

Sounds to me they should be building ‘Systems of Engagement’

Fri, 08 May 2026 09:23:33 +1200

There’s those 🖇️ Pace Layers creeping in again - and I definitely like using ‘category’ as a distinguishing mark. Years ago I wrote piece that asked if 🖇️ New Zealand had ‘Crossed The Chasm’

🔗 The war between fast and legitimate is here

If you’re running a startup, you’re in the speed game, and pretending you’re running a regulatory agency is a category error. If you’re running a regulatory agency, you’re in the legitimacy game, and it’s something of a vapid conceit to pretend to be running a startup. Most of the dysfunction in contemporary institutions comes from this same category confusion

💬 Joan Westenberg

Wed, 06 May 2026 07:48:37 +1200

🔗 2026 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic: Peak Martech Achieved! (Maybe) – chiefmartec

🖇️ This has been getting silly for years - it would be so much more interesting if rather than an increasingly difficult image to read it was a dynamic data base that is actually useful.

Mon, 04 May 2026 10:39:19 +1200

'🖇️ Getting There' I asked yesterday.

'Slowly' I answer today.

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:58:28 +1200

🔗 A quote from Matthew Yglesias

Five months in, I think I’ve decided that I don’t want to vibecode – I want professionally managed software companies to use AI coding assistance to make more/better/cheaper software products that they sell to me for money.

💬 Matthew Yglesias

🖇️ It all connects to sandwiches.

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:20:11 +1200

After reading 🔗 this from Colossal - it got me to thinking if these ….

Might be used 🖇️ here:

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:41:39 +1200

🔗 Chance Miller: ‘Netflix Ruined Its Apple TV App by Switching to a Custom Video Player’

.. and again (because this is the 🖇️second rant of this ilk today) - I don’t think about this kind of stuff - I just get annoyed because I see it - and complain about it to the long suffering Jax - but I did not even know this was a conscious decision.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:25:58 +1200

🏢 I will fold this into a large piece soon - but the threads within reminded me of my thinking around ‘the gaps between the boxes’ - which I touched on in 🖇️ this newsletter but starting to think that it needs its own post.

🔗 One Consultative Decision Maker Per Lane

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:13:06 +1200

📸 Tonight’s sunset is very different to 🖇️ last night’s - probably a lot to do with the cyclone hitting tomorrow.

Software As A Sandwich

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:50:55 +1200

Unless you have been asleep at the wheel, living under a rock or only born yesterday - you know this graphic.

You might not know this one

Then again it would not surprise me at all if I have it backwards - and it is I that resides under said rock ( 🖇️ it happens a lot ) … by not recognising the ‘cube matrix’.

This all came to mind when I was chatting with Andrew Mayfield a couple of weeks ago who at one point in the conversation compared software to sandwiches - in someways redefining SAAS❓

Software As A Sandwich

.. he said 🔗 and then wrote about in a post. It’s a good post .. and very true - but my next job was to merge these two ideas - because as we all know 🖇️ Life Is A Remix.

First Job - define the three by three grid and decide on the axes.

Where I am so far …

And of course were I to classify what kind of ‘sandwich’ drove the development of this particular graphic - I would say ‘The Garden’.

It is clearly not right - but neither is it wrong. I will continue to noodle and welcome any and all insights and contributions.

BTW - it was writing this post that brought up 🖇️ this joke - because I have this thought that ‘the demo’ industry will benefit enormously from vibe coding.

The software and products we are building definitely utilises AI - but the AI is being managed by real developers. Unlike say my web site at 🖇️ Philpin.com - which is all me vibing with Claude and is way better than I have ever achieved in the past using Wordpress - but even before being finished it is on its third iteration as I learn and unpack what Claude is actually doing when left to its own devices.

Bottom line - it clearly believes that more lines of code than less is the metric!

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:49:56 +1200

I had been meaning to write up a longer piece about Simon Willison’s appearance with Lenny 🖇️other than this one - and now no need - Simon did it himself.

🔗 Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny’s Podcast

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:16:38 +1200

🔗 Rebuilding My Micro Blog - a little over 4 Years ago apparently.

Maybe it is time to do it again❓

Then again - pretty much in the mode of finally fixing 🖇️ PHI⑊PIN - and one thing at a time … except …

ONE. THING. AT. TIME.

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:34:42 +1200

Inspired by @derekpeden I recently started to rate movies, shows and books on a consistent scale - with real rules and bit by bit visiting the archives and updating accordingly. Posted my 🎬🖇️ Peaky Blinders review this morning and even I was shocked how low it came out - in the old days it would have hit 3 1/2 for sure.

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:25:07 +1200

📸 What Victoria Market was before it was Victoria Market - where that 🖇️ Indian Restaurant is.

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:14:36 +1200

🖇️ When I wrote this earlier today - i hadn’t received my daily Readwise … that somehow seems to connect ….

Similar Thinking. Different Thoughts.

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 11:30:17 +1200

🔗 Just in from Scott Brinker

I’ve been hypothesizing that the next iteration of great SaaS platforms could evolve toward context-as-a-service (CaaS)

Whilst I find that we seem to be on a similar journey with thought … on this we differ

Meanwhile - one of my ‘graphics under development’ .. this one talking about ‘forgetting’ the 4Ps and start thinking 4Es - that I most recently talked about 🖇️ here.

Bottom line - we keep talking about change - radical change - and yet for some reason - our thinking is not radical - witness that we keep building ‘systems of experience’ on ‘systems of record’ infrastructure.

… and we wonder why it’s not working?

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:22:53 +1200

🔗 Nicholas Carr: What is it … | Alan Jacobs

What fills the pattern at any given instant –what we call content– is fungible and disposable. It’s not important. It’s the pattern, the form the content fits and replicates, that’s important.

“fungible and disposable” - 🖇️ been writing about this for years - eventually the term will disappear - once all the juice has been extracted.

🎥 Texas Rangers, 2001 ★

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 20:08:01 +1200

Why did I bother? Not sure. I even got to the end. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it - just amazed that someone thought to make it at all.

Reel

🔄🖇️ Review Ratings

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:32:43 +1200

You might have noticed that ‘the daily surprise’ has just been updated to the ‘when I remember it - and have time surprise’.

🖇️🔎 Surprise - surprise - surprise

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:28:54 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ The Services Industry is prostitution minus …

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 16:00:14 +1200

🔗 Goldman Sachs Boosts Apple Inc. with Positive App Store Trends

NB: No meaningful (or perhaps even measurable) impact from off-Appstore payments alternatives. Turns out adding friction to a frictionless business is not an attractive option for the customer.

💬 Horace Dediu

‘Ease’ replaces ‘Price’ in my 🖇️ 4 E Model for the Age of Engagement.

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:17:55 +1200

Adam Tinworth … 🔗 Journalism isn’t dying

Less than a week after massive layoffs at the Washington Post which have sent shockwaves through the media world, this seems like a strange thing to say, but journalism is not dying. In fact, it’s in no danger of dying. It’s being reborn all around us, right now.

Me back in 2018 : 🖇️ Musicians Only Made 12% of the Music Industry’s Revenue

I think it’s a related argument - add in the argument about ‘saving the planet - we are killing it’. Yes we are - but that os not the problem.

In all three cases we are looking at the wrong thing.

It was the music industry that was dying - not music - as that headline in 2018 highlights and as we see today. Not saying it isn’t hard. It is - but it is very much around.

As for Climate Change - sure - it might wipe out humanity - but the planet will be just fine. Its a bugger what we are doing to it - but in all honesty if we werent around - the planet would recover.

So too journalism.

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 14:22:29 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ is itself a surprise from history.

Meta❗️

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 11:53:56 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ The Dems and Thugs agreed on something. Once.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

I Agree With ‘The Call’. I Totally Disagree With What That Means

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 11:03:30 +1200

TL;DR

Context as a product feature that SaaS vendors can package and sell is wrong thinking. It’s actually the foundational infrastructure layer that makes any system intelligently operational. Context is the operational intelligence that knows who, where, what, and how people interact across and with organisations and each other. In short - it is the essential layer that transforms disconnected capabilities into coherent, situationally-aware engagement.

Scott Brinker writes: 🔗 The SaaS Moats Are Crumbling, but the Opportunity Is Bigger - and I agree - but not for the reasons he lays out.

I mean he even highlights things I talk about, like

Context.

Not just in passing either, the article’s subtitle is

Context-as-a-Service (CaaS)

I’ll just let that sit while you think about that for a moment - and return later.

Business are apparently moving on from being

systems of record

… with much more ‘relevant’ thinking …

systems of truth or single source of truth.

Cough - the ‘single source of truth’? New? A branding upgrade? We used to talk about the 🔗 single source of truth when I was part of Oracle - and 🖇️ as I pointed out recently - in my early days at Oracle - I had email - and could not use it to communicate with anybody outside of Oracle that I worked with … so we know that was a looooong time ago.

And systems of truth? Whose truth?

If my cell company believes that my primary email is mickeymouse@philpin.com - because when they asked me for my primary email I gave them mickeymouse@philpin.com - that may well be their ‘truth’ - but it is certainly not mine.

But back to ‘context’ …

Context is different. Context is personal and situational. It’s knowing not just what the data says, but what it means for this marketer making this decision, or for this customer in this moment.

So why is it a new service? Spoiler Alert. It isn’t - unless you are going to add it to a list such as this;

Buzzword-as-a-Service (BaaS) - The self-aware parody of vendor speak.
Synergy-as-a-Service (SaaS) - Corporate nonsense on demand.
Disruption-as-a-Service (DaaS) - Generates any pitch deck you will ever need.
Oxygen-as-a-Service (OaaS) - Because anything that can be ‘monetised’ - will be ‘monetised’.
Innovation-as-a-Service (IaaS) - Outsourcing the very thing you can’t outsource - but now you can.

Context is where domain expertise meets operational reality.

… amongst many other things.

Truth implies something universal and static — the same for everyone, in every situation.

It does. That’s why even 15 years ago - my mantra was

and as for ‘context’ being new thinking?

Another one from the archives

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:02:04 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ We are unfinished products up until the end.

.. on reflection - I am not sure I agree. The implication being that at the end we are suddenly ‘complete'❓ On the other hand - as far as the body is concerned - finished is definitely the conclusion.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:07:05 +1200

🔗 Anthropic Just Sent Shockwaves Through the Entire Stock Market by Releasing a New AI Tool

🖇️ Me - just yesterday

Engagement platforms amplify whatever thinking you’ve put into them. If the thinking is clear and explicit, they amplify coherence. If it’s fuzzy and fragmented, they amplify fragmentation - but at scale. Everyone having AI tools doesn’t create coherence. It accelerates fragmentation.

Be careful out there. It’s not easy.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:05:04 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Road Trip

.. and it was a good - if short one - across the high desert - North of Palm Desert - other side of Joshua Tree - and beyond.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Pace Layers - Redux

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:08:34 +1200

🔗 Robin Sloan - Pace layers

As you climb the pace layers, your sources of information get fewer and farther between.

The Full Quote

As you climb the pace layers, your sources of information get fewer and farther between. Everyone has something to say about nature. But to remain relevant in the higher and more turbulent layers you must update rapidly, and be correct more often than not. Few people are worth listening to about commerce or fashion. Most people’s ideas are simply out of date. At a certain point you reach the edge of what is known or talked about at all, and there are only a few people left. I will find you there, among the researchers, the reporters, the shamans and the spies.

💬 ‘Deepfates’

I was referencing 🖇️🔎Pace Layers a few times through 2024 - and it very much ties to some of my recent thinking. More to come as I fold it all together.

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:35:56 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ 10 years ago I was trying to celebrate independent thinking.

Still trying ☹️

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:37:23 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ 6 years ago it looks like I discovered my test blog.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:43:03 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ And Bibi’s been wagging it ever since

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:48:04 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ It was a great blog in 2022. Still is.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:49:12 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Apparently my language pedantry is not new.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Back On To Content Again.

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:19:55 +1200

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. So don’t call it content.

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word and so - like a grain of wheat - any individual piece of ‘content’ has no value. The value is in the total silo.

It is also important to know that it is in the best interests of the ‘buyers’ (I use the term loosely) of our sweat, labour, thought and time to create our IP - to keep their costs down. So, content is what THEY will continue to call it. Don’t fall into that trap.

Our costs are not kept down. Our net earnings do suffer. They are suffering badly.

Oh - and a quick reminder - been saying this for years. As have others - like 🖇️ Will Arnett talking to Dana Gould

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:47:01 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Reich calling it Oct 31, 2018

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:14:54 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ ‘Waving Canes’ back in 2019 - maybe time to formalise @bradenslen / @mitchwagner ❓

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:23:07 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Remember Clubhouse❓ Me .. back in ‘21

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:56:44 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ When They Got There - The Cupboard Was Bare.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:21:11 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Truth From Ted - not that one.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 16:22:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ June 2022 - it all seemed so innocent

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:24:32 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ A 3 year old enhancement request that IMHO remains a good idea but has. not been implented.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:29:59 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ 2019 - a silouette

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:31:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Hell remains frozen - but it was only a couple of months ago.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:25:20 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ My 2021 Three Words

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:27:13 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ NASA and Shovels

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:02:55 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ in 2020 - proud of my ‘Drafts Inbox; having only 6 entries. - compare and contrast to 259 as of this morning.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 13:43:38 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Biggest surprise here is that it is still marked 🚧 - so I guess I need to finish it off!

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

The Tyranny of the Town Square

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 12:30:58 +1200

The internet was supposed to celebrate differences. Instead, it’s weaponised conformity. We’ve narrowed acceptable discourse to a narrow band. A band where ±1 standard deviation seems to be too wide and anything outside the ‘consensus’ gets you piled on. (Consensus with a very loud and increasingly violent minority.) The phrase vive la différence is nearly extinct in modern English, and it shows. We are not ignorant of diversity - we’re terrified of it. So we hide the messy, interesting parts of ourselves and perform an acceptable vanilla version for the town square.

The result? A society suffocating under its own self-censorship. The crowd isn’t forcing us to conform - we’re doing it preemptively, trading authenticity for safety. We’ve accepted the bargain that you’re either with us or against us, and nobody wants to find out what happens if you dare explore the edges.

The road less taken isn’t less travelled anymore; it’s invisible.

This prompted on reading Om this morning: Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World, but it isn’t a new theme of mine … or indeed others …

🖇️🔎 Here’s a few from the archives.

And when they don't, we judge competence, take it personally, make assumptions, or shut down.

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 10:19:40 +1200

🖇️ What’s strange is how little of that generosity we extend to each other

Quoting the quote:

I’ve been thinking about how quickly we’ve adapted to working with AI. We all understand the deal. If the output is bad, it’s probably on us. The prompt was vague. The context was missing. We didn’t give it enough constraints. So we revise. We clarify. We try again. No frustration. No judgment. Just iteration.

I know right? … and then the clincher

What’s strange is how little of that generosity we extend to each other. Somewhere along the way, we learned to treat machines as systems that need better inputs–but we still treat humans as if they should just know. And when they don’t, we judge competence, take it personally, make assumptions, or shut down.

Guilty. NO argument. Going to try harder.

The link above also references:

🔗 Wikipedia

But better to read 🔗 UXtopian

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:33:02 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Bit by bit we are being divided and ‘taken out’. That was 2022.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:31:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ 2019 - national gun awareness day.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 04:36:34 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ This was two years ago … nothing has changed

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:39:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Reflecting on the pillow guy back in 2022 - and thinking also how easily it all went away.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 09:29:23 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Retro.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:54:52 +1200

🔗 Keeping the Light On - Doc Searls - do read.

🖇️ Used this quote before.

There cannot be life without death, it is inescapable.

💬 Keisei Tagami

.. and as I have said myself

death defines life.

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:54:01 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Filling in some Burbank history.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 08:46:33 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Back in 2018 I wrote a series of ‘true life’ stories about people I randomly met - this is Benjamin’s

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 08:24:31 +1200

Just pulling some history to day after reading 🔗 Room temperature from Seth.

Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system. The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture. Sooner or later, unless you push back, you’ll end up at room temperature.

🖇️ Me - July 2024 - We Are Being Forced To Conform

[🖇️ Me - March 2025 - A post responding to @manton / @devilgate](https://john.philpin.com/2025/03/05/the-butterfly-effect-is-real.html)

🖇️ Manton’s Original Post

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 08:33:06 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ From 8 years ago - you say complacent - I say complicit

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ The Simple Life

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:34:18 +1200

🔗 Is Trump Going to Start a World War? Or, the Price Americans Will Pay For One

—

It’s one thing to say: America can’t be depended on anymore to be a friend and ally. It’s another to say: America can’t be trusted not to invade, conquer, or control you. These are different levels of breakdown in relationships. The first is a lack of trust. But the second is a breach and betrayal.

—

Even with all its guns and bombs, can America conquer the entire world? Of course not. In the end, the world will win this foolish game, and America must lose. That is where this road begins. Where it ends is with the world demanding that America, in the end, make good for the harm it is doing now, and will continue to do. And the world has the power to enforce that, too, because of course, it owns America’s debt. In this way, too, impoverishment beckons for Americans.

🖇️ I have remarked on this before.

Here are less obvious ones. The EU retaliates not militarily, but financially. It goes nuclear, and dumps its US assets, from stocks to bonds. Bang. There go America’s 401Ks. China joins it, and things go from bad to worse. And of course, because they don’t want to be left holding assets worth pennies on the dollar, Japan and the Arab states race in, too. The stakes now are stark and severe. I don’t think that Americans, at least many of them, fully grasp where they are.

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:29:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ I should do more Snickelcasts

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:40:49 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Don’t Trust The Silos

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:14:32 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Calling BS on ‘Great Thinking’ nearly three years ago.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Its Decision Time

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 14:11:41 +1200

My three words for 2026 are 🖇️ Engage - Enable - Excite. But there’s a catch. Underpinning all of that is a requirement to both stop and start. Stop what’s bad for you, what isn’t working, what’s draining you. And start what’s good for you, change things up, do something different when something clearly isn’t landing.

That’s where the tension lives. One voice says when things aren’t working, change the game. Do something different. Move it up. Stagnation demands disruption. You’ve got agency, the ability to reframe, introduce new variables, step outside the rules you’ve been playing by. This voice won’t accept circumstance as fixed.

The other voice says if things aren’t working, they’ll persist anyway. Be patient. All will be well. Not wishful thinking, but confidence in process. The recognition that what’s broken right now is already being worked on by time and circumstances you can’t control yet. Patience here isn’t inaction. It’s understanding that some shifts simply require waiting.

Both are right. And so - by definition - both are wrong and the decision is made by applying the real skill of ‘sensing’. Very useful!

When does the system actually need you to disrupt it, and when is your job to hold steady whilst deeper shifts take hold? Get that distinction wrong and you either exhaust yourself with constant pivoting or you surrender to inertia. Sometimes both.

For me this is not theoretical. It’s the fork in the road. It’s not about the new year - it’s about life that continues to get harder and harder.

This all came to mind this afternoon when this popped up on my phone.

Song For The Post

🔗📼 The Clash

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:37:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Syria - 2019 - Subject - Oil

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

🎥 Chief of Station, 2024 - ★★★

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 19:15:54 +1200

Just a rewatch and LettrBoxd dropped a new post to the feed. Opinion not changed. 🖇️Original Post

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 13:38:57 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Brexit Explained … 😂

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:36:58 +1200

🔗 Dave on Scripting News

On Bluesky: I can’t tell you how tired I am of copying and pasting the same text into five different silos. When will this ridiculous system that claims to be the web, get its shit together and start acting like the web (ie interop). #

This is one reason I use 🔗 Micro.Blog for 🖇️John.Philpin.com

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:35:16 +1200

🔗 Derek Peden

Straight from the presidential playbook : When in trouble, distract the voters away from your own performance by an act of war. This time it’s the people of Venezuela who are paying the price.

🖇️🔎 Wag The Dog

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 13:06:01 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ DIKW - 8 years ago

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:35:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ A Misnomer? This is no surprise - even 6 years later.

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:58:36 +1200

I like Ben’s approach to ‘Resolutions’ : 🔗 A 2026 checklist - not least because 🔗 the usual approach is more often than not going to fail.

Might try it along side of my 🖇️ 3Words approach.

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:28:00 +1200

Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Fonts are not just a 2025/6 thing

🖇️🔎 Other Surprises

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 07:20:56 +1200

🔗 Building blocks of marketing

That 🖇️ trust thing keeps popping up.

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:36:58 +1200

It all started as a fun and different challenge.

🔗🔎We got there - although some days were pretty difficult - but only 🖇️ one turned out to be a real stretch.

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:33:35 +1200

🔗 Russell Brand charged with new rape and sexual-assault crimes. - this link is 🍎 News - just sharing because Brand is - and always has been a total douche.

🖇️🔎 Me in a series of posts in 2023

But most importantly 🔗 the BBC earlier this year

The BBC has apologised to staff who felt they could not speak up with concerns about Russell Brand’s behaviour because he was seen as “too influential” and they felt he “would always get his way and therefore they stayed silent”.

But Robin Ince? Fire🔗 the fucker.

All this comes to mind as I watch the emerging BBC/Trump case.

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 09:32:26 +1200

🖇️ And we are BACK …

… or maybe not - adding this comment 16 minutes later in my editor - though not seeing it on my blog.

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 08:53:30 +1200

🔗 Random access - Seth

I have one of these on my 🖇️ blog and my (new) 🖇️ wiki - and despite both being in the menu - I am guessing I am the only person that ever clicks on the links.

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 07:34:17 +1200

🖇️ Yesterday’s was the hardest to date. Looks like today’s is the easiest - at least so far.

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:40:02 +1200

Remember when we so concerned that all our ‘house data’ from Roomba was being sent over to Google - without so much as a ‘by-your-leave’.

🖇️ Me - 2018

… and then onto 2022 when Amazon got involved …

Fast Forward to 2025 - and …

🔗 Roomba Maker iRobot Declares Bankruptcy, but Tries to Ease ‘Bricking’ Fears

Turns out all your data is now all wrapped up and safe and over in China.

The Amazon acquisition wasn’t anti-competitive — it was iRobot’s last chance to remain competitive.

💬 [Gruber](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/15/roomba-maker-irobot-declares-bankruptcy)

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 09:25:36 +1200

🖇️ 🔎 PageFind on my blog

🔗 Manton Documentation

Good. Clean. Fast. Not yet in my navigation - already have @sod search there. Unclear why one and not the other.

I do like the clean look of PageFind. Maybe add PageFind to the Nav - with Search as a choice from that page. #Thinking

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 09:41:23 +1200

Whenever I see a good ‘why RSS’ post - I will share.

Which is why I am sharing the latest - from @benwerd 🔗 Why RSS matters

🖇️ If you want to follow most of my world with RSS - you can.

About This Blog

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:36:45 +1200

Before I get there - everything below the line below was automatically generated by an AI (does it matter which one?)

🖇️ Blog.Philpin.com is a combination of imports of older blogs from other personal spaces together with this latest iteration which has been going since around 2017/18? I am in the process of reorganising my different sub domains into a coherent view of my thinking - it will - I guess be an eternal WIP - but slowly we are getting there.

I was interested as to how much of what sits in what I call my ‘Personal Journal’ - was ‘on topic’ - so to speak. (Hard - when the topic is not clear - even to the author.)

That said - Structured Thought is revealing itself as my broad category - and I have a LOT of material that fits there scattered across my hard drive - enter my new Wiki - where I am starting to collect and curate the material.

So - with thanks to @manton and #micro.blog it took no time at all to export my thousands (no exaggeration) of posts and easily as many replies to zip and json files - upload them to a new project and with that said - let the analysis begin …

I asked the AI just to give me a quick 4 paragraphs on its take of what it found in the archive.

Your blog reads like a long, rolling attempt to make sense of systems that don’t behave the way they pretend to. You’re tracking the gap between how the world is structured on paper and how it actually functions in practice — whether that’s tech, politics, identity, business, or the internet itself. Underneath the commentary, there’s a consistent itch: why do institutions keep choosing the path that works against people, complexity, and common sense? And why do we keep letting them? It’s observational, sometimes wry, sometimes annoyed, but fundamentally grounded in curiosity about how things should work if we weren’t so collectively distracted.

Another through-line: you’ve always been a ‘people first, systems second’ thinker, even before you had the language for it. The posts keep circling back to the same tension — humans don’t behave like the tidy diagrams or workflows created to manage them. You poke at corporate theatre, political spin, tech evangelism, and the strange incentives that create distortion instead of coherence. More often than not, you’re tracing the hidden mechanics: the power relationships, the data trails, the business models baked into digital life. There’s a quiet sense of accountability running through it: don’t just look at what a system claims; look at what it rewards.

There’s also a personal arc that floats just beneath the surface. The blog isn’t memoir, but it carries the fingerprints of someone who’s lived enough cycles to spot the patterns early. The tone shifts over time—from early curiosity, to a kind of mid-period frustration, to a more recent strategic clarity. You’ve moved from ‘this is odd’ to ‘here’s the underlying structure’ to ‘and here’s how we might actually fix it.’ The personal reflections act as calibration points, showing how your own lens sharpened while the world got noisier.

And stitched through all of it is the same project you’re running now: trying to build ways of thinking that actually help people navigate complexity instead of collapsing under it. The blog, taken as a whole, is you working that out in public — testing ideas, calling out nonsense, mapping where things go wrong, and nudging toward a more honest, human, future-oriented frame. It’s not a brand play. It’s a long record of someone interrogating the shape of the world and refusing to take shallow explanations at face value.

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 16:16:59 +1200

Well - thats been a job I have not been doing for. long time - but once again - thank you @Munish for reminding me that other people do on occasions look at 🖇️ my actual site. Styling moved along, search back in place and the start of my documents directory re-enabled. Onward.

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 10:35:10 +1200

I know how he feels. 🖇️🎬 My Review 😂

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:39:11 +1200

David Merfield at Blot Rocks

.. there I said it. So happy with my new 🔗 Blot powered Obsidian Wiki - now in the menu of my 🖇️ Public Journal

What David Merfield built is very impressive and the Obsidian integration is stunning.

My wiki is based on the Forty template with extended CSS and functionality like 🔗 this page all built in collaboration with Claude.

Looking to now add an image gallery

Have I taken away a programmers job? No - without Claude I just wouldn’t have done it.

Next job moving a raft of material out of various archives and folders into the Obsidian vault.

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:41:30 +1200

Just rewatched: Red Notice 🎬

🖇️ ‘Full’ Review

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 13:46:35 +1200

This was publisehd in 2017 - and I am sure I saw something this pst week that announced essentially the same things as ‘news’. Ofc ourse I cant find it - but when I do - will come back here and add it.

🖇️ Reuters Reporting Ten Year Old News As Something New. // 💬 John Philpin

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 18:28:21 +1200

Haven’t done one of these in a while - but have to say i started it - and it just flowed out - so publish and be dammed is what I say.

🖇️ Marketing in 2025

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:03:43 +1200

🖇️ Best viewed on my site

… in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into The ~~shrink~~ [BAD Business] wherever you are, just walk in say “[BAD business], ~~You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.~~ You “support election deniers, I’m out”.

And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and They won’t ~~take him~~ pay attention.

And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, They may think they’re both ~~????~~ nuts and they won’t ~~take~~ pay attention to either of them.

And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in ~~Singin' a bar of Alice’s Restaurant~~ sayin’ “BAD Business you support election deniers, I’m out” and walking out. They may think it’s an Organisation.

And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said Fifty people a day ~~walking in singin' a bar of Alice’s Restaurant~~ sayin’ “BAD Business - you support election deniers, I’m out” and Walking out.

And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 10:33:20 +1200

🔗 The Ten Warning Signs - Ted Gioia

GREAT READ

I think my 🖇️ Age of Reason » Age of Experience themes that I have been writing about recently are totally in synch.

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:18:37 +1200

A Public Policy Framework

🔗 The Thought

Another doc prompted by something on LinkedIN - this one around a twenty year old doc called ‘Public Policy Framework for the New Zealand Innovation System’

I was curious as to

how well we had done - not well.
how well we could do - hard - but not impossible
how much the analysis connected to my own experiences and thinking - a lot

While down here, I bang on this a lot - as do others. It never seems to take hold. For whatever reason(s).

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:48:21 +1200

Stop Calling It Content

🔗 The Thought

Content is a non differentiated, horrible, generic, cheap, replaceable kind of word.

Content is stored in silos - with grains and other commodities.

Content has minimal value.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 07:12:20 +1200

Time To Self Medicate

🔗 The Thought

Is Silicon Valley a destination, or just part of the journey?

… and where is it anyway?

… oh and why, despite the best attempts, countries all over the world seem to fall short of replicating it.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 21:05:21 +1200

Pattern Breakers | Breaking The Mold

🔗 Pattern Breakers | Breaking The Mold

I don’t particularly recommend books.

I recommend people.

Mike Maples is one of those people.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 13:10:01 +1200

Charity Is Doomed To Fail

🔗 Charity Is Doomed To Fail

If you don’t know who Dan Palotta is - you should.

This is a short introduction to him, his ideas and his work and how it ties to something I wrote nearly 10 years ago.

We built 🔗 The Future Found with these principles at core.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:24:59 +1200

Work Life Balance

🔗 The Thought

Chris Lockhead dropped a post on LinkedIN regarding retirement.

To me retirement is the macro version of the daily work-life balance.

It solves the wrong problem really well.

Get The Full List of The Articles 🖇️🔎 Hand Crafted With Love

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:20:20 +1200

Today was the 🖇️ 80th quote in the ‘Inspired By People’ series and as I intimated 🖇️in this comment, I have no hesitation in bringing it to an end. Such was the demand. 🥳

Feel free to scroll through and be inspired.

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 11:41:11 +1200

It’s going to be a (very) slow move - but decided to move all pages hosted on Micro Blog to Craft.

🖇️ This Is My First.

As I move them will delete the page and add the old page URL to my redirects.

COUGH

When I did that first one - found a lot of redirects that I know are broken - so maybe I will fix those first.

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 11:31:54 +1200

🖇️ Any Thoughts from anyone?

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:25:51 +1200

🖇️ The ‘Microsoft Disruption

Jax often tells me that I need hearing aids - but have to say I had NO issue very clearly hearing what Ibtihal Aboussad was saying at the ‘Microsoft 50’ Event. None at all. The fact that people are writing that they had no idea that she was protesting the war in Gaza suggests a few alternatives

they just weren’t listening because they don’t anyway

they block out women’s voices

they block out foreign accents

they have no idea that ‘something’ is going on in Gaza, so none of it made sense.

they need hearing aids more than me.

It’s a repost of one of mine.

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 13:33:04 +1200

Inspired to finally for out my Feedland space today after reading @Dave ’s 🔗 doc

Simple instructions and it ‘just worked’ - so much to the point that I am happy to link to it from my 🖇️ Blog Navigation.

The link takes you to my 🔗 news feed which is a ‘river of news’ driven by my 🔗 subscriptions - early days yet but it’s a start.

The impetus was that Dave was also talking elsewhere about adding BlueSky feeds to the list. I tried it out - and added a couple of my own. I didn’t use the handy dandy ‘sub’ short cut that Dave demonstrated.

Would be great if I could edit the title - maybe you can, but not found out how yet.

// @andysylvester - because I know you are tracking this stuff.

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:44:36 +1200

I am very much liking the location / check in feature on the micro.social app. It has given me some ideas that are not so much about ‘checkins’ - but are related to ‘location’. Thank you.

There is an odd issue though @manton @gregmorris - any thoughts?

🖇️ In this post I noticed that the image used in the post is duplicated with two different file names in the media library.

The post itself uses the second image - so where has the first image come from and why?

Pretty sure this is happening because of the micro.social app - since this behaviour is also on the other post which came via micro.social using location.

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 21:16:58 +1200

The Tinted Rose 📍

Talking of excellent beverages … The Tinted Rose is just down the road from PPO. Smaller, more subtle. Beer choice not extensive - but great cocktails and an excellent wine list.

🖇️ 🔎 My Other Location Posts

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 21:13:00 +1200

Hotel Ponsonby 📍

Stunning building known locally as The Ponsonby Post Office .. which is what it was - before its recent transition to The Ponsonby Hotel - which is called that by nobody. Through those hallowed doors can be found excellent beverages from the ‘Hops’ family.

🖇️ 🔎 My Other Location Posts

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:01:03 +1200

Goodness Cafe 📍

Back when we first arrived in New Zealand The Goodness was called The Governor and became our go to place for coffee and breakfast. I think it’s now onto something like the 4th or 5th owner since then (that’s what COVID has done), but it still remains our ‘go to’. BUT .. our hearts remain with ‘The Governor’ and Steve and Bernie who owned it remain great friends of ours.

🖇️ 🔎 My Other Location Posts

📺 The Residence ★★★★½

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:32:00 +1200

Should it be 5 stars?

Probably because it is quite simply an absolute spectacular gem.

🖇️ After one episode I wrote:

🎬 Cordelia Cupp is my new hero. Absolutely F A N T A S T I C stuff. The writer Paul William Davies is masterfully channeling David Hare’s ‘rapid exchange’ in the dialogue and Uzo Aduba is brilliant in the role.

It’s a Shonda Rhymes production - and additional cast hat tips to ‘Giancarlo’ for playing the dead guy, Al Franken playing ~~himself~~ a Senator and Jane Curtin who knew all along? But really a wonderful cast, story, set up.

Yes it’s a ‘whodunnit’ - but that isn’t the point.

The Residence on 🔗 Reelgood

‘All’ My TV Show Reviews

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:46:45 +1200

Talking of 🖇️ Herb .. this is one of his iconic ones and it got me to wondering why Haight Ashbury wasn’t called Ashbury Haight. I now know the answer - BUT - now I’m wondering what rules the signage in SF follows .. I have my suspicions, but need to check - and if they are consistent.

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:09:48 +1200

💯 🔗 It’s Scorched Earth Time - let’s start with over throwing 🖇️ Chuck.

This is the second post from Indexed with that headline …

🔗 This is the first

Work Life Balance - AGAIN.

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 10:06:28 +1200

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

🔗 Your Life Isn’t Meant To Be Balanced, It’s Meant to Be Whole - Gapingvoid

and that article concludes ….

The leaders who change the world don’t offer better boundaries–they offer better stories. More meaning. Gandhi didn’t check out at 5pm. MLK didn’t compartmentalize his dream.

Were kinda trying to say the same thing.

A few years ago now, I developed the ‘Pay|Purpose|Play|Passion model.

It looks something like this to most of us …

Maybe ‘Balance’ is more like this?

Of course ‘Nirvana’ might be a single circle image where all four areas fully overlap. Impossible? Probably. Is that what to aim for? Probably not.

Because it is different. For everyone. All the time. In different contexts.

And that is ok.

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:25:28 +1200

Are you the same at work as you are at the pub? - Gapingvoid

Personality isn’t permanent

🖇️ More Gaping Void Nuggets

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:21:24 +1200

🔗 Big Tech: Proceed with Caution - Gapingvoid

Imagine a ‘connect-the-dots’ (Ed: playbook). The people in an organization are the dots. Their relationships are the lines connecting them. That complex web represents an organization. And culture, which occurs in the spaces in between, is the picture that emerges based on how those dots are connected. If you erase 10,000 dots, what happens to the picture?

🖇️ More Gaping Void Nuggets

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:16:13 +1200

🔗 Charlie Munger’s Greatest Lesson - Gapingvoid

The reason why there are thousands of quotes across the internet from Steve Jobs, Richard Feynman, Maya Angelou, Henry Ford, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ben Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, is because their ability as communicators is what drove their success.

🖇️ More Gaping Void Nuggets

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:13:52 +1200

🔗 Culture Got Us Into This Mess - Gapingvoid

Over the last few decades, while China created a world-class manufacturing capability, we created the Rust Belt. We bled our manufacturing capability dry.

🖇️ More Gaping Void Nuggets

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 02:12:01 +1200

🔗 Control is an Illusion - Gapingvoid

The map is not the territory.

🖇️ More Gaping Void Nuggets

Generation Beta?

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 13:27:32 +1200

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.

Consider the labels and birth-year brackets commonly used to pigeonhole entire generations:

1.	The Silent Generation: Born 1928–1945 (17 years)   
2.	Baby Boomers: Born 1946–1964 (18 years)   
3.	Generation X: Born 1965–1980 (15 years)   
4.	Millennials (Generation Y): Born 1981–1996 (15 years)   
5.	Generation Z: Born 1997–2012 (15 years)   
6.	Generation Alpha: Starting from 2013—so far, 12 years

And now?

Apparently we are already ushering in Generation Beta - 3 years (at least) early.

Generation Beta officially arrived on Jan. 1, successors to Gen Alpha. While the name follows the conventions of the Greek alphabet, its connotation is less scholarly and more sus for some young parents and every school-age child. Beta is commonly used as slang for weak and passive.

💬 Ann-Marie Alcántara, WSJ

Seriously - The Wall Street Journal? The article wasn’t on the ‘joke page’ - and last time I looked they weren’t doing satire - though I get it - it’s increasingly hard to tell in this climate. But still.

Is this really real?
Who decided this?
Who’s in charge?
Who’s making the rules?

It’s a Corporate Marketing con that for some eye popping reason ‘we the people’ seem to have adopted.

Why?

It’s right up there with ‘content’ - if you are following you know what I am talking about. But in case you don’t - 🖇️🔎 I have hundreds of posts on the topic) that can be reduced to this …

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word. Which is why it has no value.

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’, homogenized, 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.

Bottom line … the ‘con’ in content is there with intent.

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 06:24:00 +1200

🖇️ On my ‘TV Show Reviews’ - some are growing in number of series - so rather than repetitive postings on the same series - I am revisiting older ones as I watch and editing. I discovered I’d missed Slow Horses - just ‘fixed’ - not completely since I need to add reviews for a couple of the series - but really. Why? ALL so good.

The Butterfly Effect Is Real

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 11:36:50 +1200

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.

Me on related threads .. April to July last year.

🖇️ Setting The Record Straight

🖇️ We Are Being Forced To Conform

🖇️ Is This How You Get ‘Silenced’?

Seperately, I am English and have lived in the US a lot .. and have never been tempted to do the citizen thing. That doesn’t stop me writing commenting and signing up to campaign on the ground for politicians that are fighting for what I believe is right. People ask me why? If I can’t vote .. why bother?

Answer.. if I can convince just one person to vote for ‘my politician,’ then I am using their vote as my surrogate. A second .. and more .. icing on the cake. The same goes for writing, cartooning, talking in bars .. play to your strength .. the margins are so close these days that the shift is getting easier every day to make the win happen.

Keep going. I am.

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 05:56:36 +1200

Originally published on ‘this’ blog in 2007 - 🖇️ The world has not changed as much as we think …

18 years later … the quotes hold and still I would argue that “The world has not changed as much as we think”.

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 16:50:27 +1200

Saw it a couple of nights ago … and gave it the worst movie ever award …

🖇️ Full Review

To be fair others did like it - but nobody even thought it worth a nomination .. much less a win .. in any category.

5 wins out of 6 nominations?

Seriously?

I know the world’s gone mad … but really?

Freedom OR Liberty - Don't Let Them Confuse You

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 05:59:13 +1200

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. It involves being free from arbitrary or oppressive control while respecting the rights of others and adhering to societal rules. Liberty assumes accountability and is often tied to justice and fairness in a structured society.
In essence, freedom is broader and can exist without limits, whereas liberty is freedom regulated by responsibility and mutual respect.

I kind of have/had that in my mind - but not all the time really only when I think about it. AND Perplexity is right - the terms are used interchangeably.

I would go further.

It happens a lot.
It happens more and more.
It happens too much.
It is happening to muddle the mind.
I am pretty sure it is sub consciously and constantly passing through our collective brains.

It’s a good reminder and one to watch out for as certain people scream ‘Freedom’ … of whatever they are talking about. Don’t forget #LanguageIsImportant

🎥 Anora, 2024 - ★

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 03:16:42 +1200

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.

The rest of the movie just had me repeatedly asking myself ‘why’. The final 10 or so minutes found slight redemption .. but not sufficient to move the movie out of the worst movie I’ve seen this year (have to think more if that should read ‘ever’) .. but even ‘the year’ qualifier is significant given that I recently saw Babygirl (a 2 star rating from me.)

Side note .. one reason I didn’t want to see it was it struck me as a low rent remake of Pretty Woman .. and yes similarities in the set up .. but no.

It was just bad .. and Oscar nomination? PLEASE!

BUT judging by the ratings of others … I am very alone.

🖇️ Baby Girl Review .. in case you were wondering.

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 08:51:26 +1200

🎵 🖇️ Blog Challenge - Music Edition - thank you for the inspiration @Annie

🚧 Links To Posts by Others

@Annie - Annie’s Post

@kaa

@hutaffe

@endonend - Jason’s Post

@gregmoore - Greg’s Post

@mb - Michael’s Post

@robb

So What Was That About?

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:07:41 +1200

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.

On BlueSky (185 followers) after 6 days … Crickets #### On Mastodon (275 followers) after 6 days … apart from 1 ‘like’ … again, Crickets #### And on Threads (158 followers) after 6 days … holy hell! … 809 likes, 346 comments and over 55,000 total views … All of this definitely not to say ‘look at me’ and all about ‘WTF’ .. and what actually makes people tick. I don’t do twitter - but when I did - and generally on any of these sites - if I hit double digits - I am eternally surprised. This Threads thing actually delivered 2 orders of magnitude more comments than the likes I would typically achieve. Needless to say, I have not even tried to read - much less replied to - the 336 comments - but as I watched the thing spiral up - it was interesting to see it take a life of its own. #### Questions So many - that I don’t know where to start - so I won’t. Just observing.

Collections - Improving The CSS

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 08:45:27 +1200

Collections is a new micro.blog feature on micro.blog that allows images to be grouped together in … wait for it … ‘Collections’!

It’s a cool extension, but I wanted to feature collections in related posts which gave me problems if I used the recommended CSS. (Problem, because 20 images in a collection resulted in those 20 images appearing at the bottom of all the posts that featured the collection which I felt was overwhelming. Not anymore.

My real desire was to feature them on each post on my blog as a scroll (like on the micro/blog timeline. (The default was to lay them all out on a grid - which resulted in the post being overtaken with a lot of old images). Nothing in the standard CSS allowed for that.

My short term fix was to have a link on a post to a page, 🖇️ like this.

BUT - let’s face it - a kluge.

Just cracked the entire problem in less time than it has taken for me to write this post.

Give ChatGPT current CSS
Ask it for the CSS that would do the same job - but so that images weren’t just there - but featured as a scroll.

First Time.

See what I mean : https://john.philpin.com/2025/02/17/inspired-by-people-martin-luther.html

Next job … Have the scroll sometimes display square images - and sometimes landscape / portrait.

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 06:31:17 +1200

🖇️ Should We Cry For Argentina? … my latest newsletter if you are interested. A bit different to my usual newsletter themes.

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 05:34:22 +1200

I was thinking of posting a quick response analysis of 🖇️ this post from yesterday - but not yet.

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:12:34 +1200

🕵💬 Inspired By People | 🌐 Mahatma Gandhi

17th Feb, 2025: Turns out this one is a fake quote. 🖇️ This is the correct attribution.

🔍 All The Posts can be found here, or scroll through the quotes below.

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:12:16 +1200

🖇️ Me back in 2016 - commenting on a post by Doc Searls - including an early start to the ad / tracker blocker dialogue

Fresh into the feed today - Doc on the difference between 🔗 Blocking Tracking and Blocking Ads

Its amazing how after all this time they are still conflated (I think mainly because it suits the advertisers dialogue- and ‘ad blockers’ rolls off the tongue better than ‘tracker blockers’)

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:40:44 +1200

🖇️ Re this - fixed. It seems that I am definitely am all over the place on movie watching.

🎥 Ferry 2, 2024 - ★★★

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:03:59 +1200

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.

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:57:21 +1200

🖇️ How to Achieve Immortality - Ted Gioia

In ancient times, you attained immortality by doing great deeds. Today you attain immortality by getting blood transfusions from teenagers, and freezing your body for later revival. Needless to say, there’s a huge difference between these two strategies.

Too True Ted. Too True.

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 10:55:02 +1200

Seeking Alpha .Reporting …

Security officials in the U.K. have demanded that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) create a so-called ‘back door’ which would enable them to retrieve all the content any Apple user globally has uploaded to the cloud, The Washington Post reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The U.S. tech giant is likely to stop providing encrypted storage in Britain, rather than break its security pledge it made to its users everywhere, the report added.

… not sure how easy this might be technically - but 🖇️ there might precedent

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 08:17:42 +1200

? If you’re feeling stressed, hum a few bars of Alice’s Restaurant

💬 Dave Winer

Yesterday .. (If you’re feeling stressed) reminds us to tune into Alice’s Restaurant and hum a few bars. Me? 🖇️ I remind you of one specific verse late in the song

Either way - it’s all good - delivered nearly 60 years ago.

BUT

It is now 2025 - the same year as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones won Grammies - so nothing has changed right?

🎵 I know - who cares - its just a …

🔗📼 Sign ‘O’ the Times

🔗📼 Sign Of The Times

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 06:52:29 +1200

There are an increasing number of posts featuring this thinking …

🔗🎙️Trump’s Mafia World Order - Alastair Campbell

🖇️ I think Rushkoff said it best.

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 14:22:19 +1200

📸 This 🖇️ probably was.

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 09:22:04 +1200

We’re nearly into February - so the ‘Holiday lights’ at 🖇️ john.philpin.com have been uninstalled - and it is no longer snowing. #LifeMovesOn

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:32:13 +1200

I have something I call my public journal. Some might call it a blog. I used to call it a ‘Lifestream’, but the name doesn’t really matter. Does it? 🖇️ It’s here.

‘It’ is a chronological record of thoughts I have had over the years. (The Philpin domain moved to its 26th year - this year and the oldest post that I have yet found turned 21 (I keep hoping that I will rediscover the first 5 years somewhere.) Hope is good. Right?

There are gaps of days with nothing … not that I didn’t have a thought or two, I just didn’t record that thought on the ‘stream’, sometimes not even in the journal that sits in a ‘private’ corner of the words stored as 1s and 0s on my computer.

There are also some days where you can see 20 or 30 separate posts … and that doesn’t include the ‘extended thoughts’ … that are also recorded there.

If it wasn’t there, would the world change? No.

My life - all ‘three score years and ten’ (plus or minus) of it - is but a blip in the matrix, much less these words.

Which is to say that it was quick. Relative I suppose. But it was.

With two actions, I was 🖇️ gone and then 🖇️ not gone.

To tell the tale.

The tale is incomplete - until the future joins it. There is no past. But past is incomplete without future.

Oh - and of course I wasn’t truly gone. Just from this node.

A Reminder About ‘Content’

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:04:25 +1200

… 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’. Moreover, we then only have ourselves to blame and the resultant payment for your art, your thinking, your ideas, will continue to race to the bottom.

💬 John Philpin

And

It is not in the interests of any creator to allow that, so why allow their interests to define how we think?

💬 John Philpin

And

Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word. Which is why ‘content’ has no value. It is also important to know that it is in the best interests of the buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep their price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our net earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly. And it has to start with you - the creator, because it isn’t in the interests of buyers to change their behaviour and vocabulary - ‘they’ want great work at no cost.

💬 John Philpin

So. What you going to do about it?

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes | 🔗🔎 Content

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:55:24 +1200

🔗 The Case for the Executive Chair

I annotated this in the middle of 2024 with the intention to share, it’s pretty damming.

Only one or two directors on the typical 11-member board say they understand industry economics and how the company makes money. Two or three say they have little or no understanding.

Exactly in line with my observations - failure to understand leads to a focus on history, compliance and not losing - because they don’t even understand how to grow and win.

🖇️ You might not be surprised to learn that I have a fix. It’s called The Business Equation

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 05:19:36 +1200

🔗 Scorsese Takes Aim at Streaming’s Lack of Curation … and more … including ‘content’

the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator” by conceptualization of films as “content.

🖇️ 🔍 You might recall - the ‘content thing’ has been a drum beat of mine for a while now.

As always delighted to find more people jumping on the bus … or is it a train now?

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 05:58:04 +1200

🖇️ Globalisation Defined -18 Years Ago 😂

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 12:09:52 +1200

🎥 The Two Popes, 2019 - ★★★★½ 🖇️

🎥 Conclave, 2024 - ★★★★★ 🖇️

I’ve clearly got something about Popes‼️

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:21:25 +1200

To be real clear - I am NOT an Airline Analyst. I haven’t even played one on TV. But I do tend to look around and question claims that seem spurious. (And in my time down in New Zealand, I do hear a large number of claims made that do not seem to add up).

🖇️ My take on Chris Luxon. If you don’t know the name, that’s because he’s no Jacinda Arden .. though he holds her office in Aotearoa

(I wrote this in response to a newsletter on Substack suggesting that despite being one of those CEO types, he’s not doing a great job as PM. My point is that despite the press, I’m not sure he was what good as a CEO!)

(Another old post that didn’t make it into the ether until now)

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 10:46:25 +1200

🔗 Om on content, it’s as if I wrote it - not with the natural flow of Om - but definitely 🖇️🔎 the subject matter.

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 08:56:11 +1200

Not my words - but I did 🖇️ call it nearly 5 years ago - and 🖇️ 🔎 a few times since.

It All Makes Sense - until it doesn't. We are passed that point.

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 10:54:19 +1200

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 …

🖇️ My highlights on the companion article

Meanwhile …

(Talking of ‘creating emotional connections at scale - one of those silent companies that you know the name of - but wonder what they do is Palantir (remember Cambridge Analytics - who paid the price?) .. yeah, Palantir was the ‘power behind the throne’ - who not only avoided paying the price - but have gone on from strength to strength.

Anyway, 🔗 over in Dana land .. he’s looking at the next 4 years - and pointing a very large finger at one 🖇️ Peter Thiel … you know the guy that really runs Palantir (all due respect to Karp), but to remind you who he really is …

The New Zealand Herald did quite a job on that topic - do take a read - eye opening - even if you think you know all about him. (Pro tip - if you have ‘reader mode’ - use it if you really want to read it.) .. and at the end…

According to building consent records, his Queenstown Plasma Screen holiday home last year suffered a serious fire, causing more than $500,000 in damage. Building consents for the repairs filed with the Queenstown Lakes District Council in May show Thiel took this opportunity to rebuild and repurpose a walk-in closet. Plans now describe this nook as a panic room.

.. a panic room. In Queenstown? .. and this is the guy who is quietly influencing the US Govt?

And then there is ‘Ted’s Take’ on the changing nature of communication.

🔗The related article

Are we doomed?

I guess not until this happens …

(The New Yorker)

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:09:06 +1200

“So are Sapiens and Neanderthals the same species or different species? And is “species” an objective reality that biologists discover, or is it an intersubjective reality that biologists impose?”

💬 Yuval Noah Harari

🔗🖇️ Coincidentally, have been exploring this idea as applied to Mathematics.

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:54:58 +1200

Over on Substack I published 🔗🖇️ this …

At first blush, it might seem to be about maths and it certainly connects, but it’s really about those who challenge the status quo, see something different, push boundaries, which, not coincidentally is exactly what great startups do.

Love to know what you all think?

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes | 🔗 More

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 12:36:19 +1200

🖇️🔎 The Business Equation involves a number of dimensions starting with ‘The Quadrants’ - the top quadrant is market facing, bottom is organisation facing.

The Organisation Facing quadrant is supported by ‘Systems of Record’ - increasingly transitioning to ’Systems of Compliance’

The Market Facing quadrant is supported by ‘Systems of Engagement’.

Businesses spend an inordinate amount of time focussed on ‘systems of compliance’ - to the detriment of ‘systems of engagement’.

Despite Business Growth emerging from ‘Systems of Engagement’.

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes | 🔗 More

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 13:22:26 +1200

🔗 🎙️You Must Answer The Questions About Feet

I might have posted this link before, but I keep sending it to people. It ties back to 🖇️🎙️my own podcast about Agents - nearly two years ago now. Still an issue - and will be for a long time yet.

🔗🔎 BusinessBytes | 🔗 More

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 11:10:48 +1200

🎵🖇️ 18 - 1975 - Pete Wingfield.

🎵🔗 19 - 1996 - Another Great (though very different) Track - this one from Paul Hardcastle.

Sometimes time goes slow.

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 08:11:14 +1200

Searching my site for something totally different and it found 🖇️ this joke post - one of those things that used to circulate the wires. It is seventeen years old. It’s funny - though the names are definitely from a moment in history. The fourth one down caught my eye …

MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHAF (COMICAL ALI):
The chicken did not cross the road. This is a complete fabrication. We do not even have a chicken.

Comical Ali (Ali G) is of course the Sacha Baron Cohen creation from before Borat …

Fake News in a comedian’s kitbag 17 years ago.

This shit has been going on for too long.

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 18:24:44 +1200

🖇️ The Coming Labor War - Dana F. Blankenhorn

.. yup. If I have posted this before. Sorry. But it does bear repeating.

Spatial Computing Has Another Contender - AND - They Are Not Called Meta.

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 18:04:52 +1200

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.

Their glasses predates Zuck’s and I would argue stand to be adopted more because they are going to be focussed on what looks like a single use case … virtual screens in confined spaces.

Yes folks - Spatial Computing for the rest of us (though to be fair - no pricing that I can see - so may still be only for the wealthy.)

Revenge Of The Nerds - Real Revenge

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 13:13:52 +1200

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.

Even to the point of AI🖇️ Avatars Doing Job Interviews

You cannot make this stuff up!

A lot of my objections about so much of this tech is that it;

ends up in corporate hands
is misused
is badly misused
is extremely and badly abused

… and all the time never does anyone build a similar system for people. AND corporates don’t end up recruiting the best people for reasons like;

the best people ‘don’t have time for that’
the best people want to work with the best people - not bots
the best people don’t tune their resumes to be Keyword and SEO compliant - necessary if you stand any chance of an ATS letting you through its gates

Until now. Brilliant …. The new story is from 404 Media. I haven’t checked but - does this tickle your fancy? It does mine …

🔗 ‘I Applied to 2,843 Roles’

The solution is sitting in Github - 🔗The solution is sitting in github so I am not qualified to comment on how well this works - but I have friends.

Of course corporate HR is going to declare ‘no fair’ because their systems are going to be swamped … too bad.

I presume that someone is going to fork the code and use it to apply for contracts .. and it wont be long before their AIs contact someone on Amazon Turk and convince them to register and sign on (on their behalf) for Job Boards and Recruiter sites - so we can do the same thing there. (Of course it won’t be long before the AIs can also do that.)

We know that the retaliation is going to happen - example case - someone inside the company uses their brains and writes code to get their 5 day job done in 2 to 4 hours - and then take a second job - repeat - and a third job - repeat … what do you think the corporate does when they find out? Promote them?

My prediction - they will work out how to block this access.

Let the battle begin.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 22:39:52 +1200

More on Kris

I ’never’ do this - so take this as the exception that proves the rule. We all know that 🖇️ Kris K recently passed - on Maui

My friend Randall wrote to me (these extracts reproduced with his permission)

Such a sad loss of a hero whom I actually knew …. Sarah Teed and I had the privilege of a hanging w/ him and John Prine when we played the Castle theater many years ago and I opened for him at the MACC many times sharing moments with him and his wife Lisa.

Randall went on and shared some Kris wisdom …

”He believed that songwriting is a spiritual communion of mind, body, and soul, and he believed that William Blake was correct in asserting that anyone divinely ordered for spiritual communion but buries his talent will be pursued by sorrow and desperation through life and by shame and confusion for eternity.

” (Blake) is telling you that you’ll be miserable if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do," Kristofferson said in the Ken Burns' documentary ‘Country Music’.”

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 10:40:26 +1200

It’s only getting worse …

🔗 AI Avatars Are Doing Job Interviews Now

For the longest time I have argued against the thoughtless deployment of ATS systems in corporations.

Downside for corporates - totally miss the nuance of people and their ‘particular sets of skills’ because they are over simplifying what they think they are looking for.

Downside for people - your resume and cover letter are no longer enough - you know need to think about tuning yourself with keywords to ensure you are fully ‘Search Engine Optimised’.

The whole thing is just one giant mess that benefits nobody.

Me previously …

The Crafting of Craft.

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 10:58:55 +1200

🖇️ 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?

Great read - even if you aren’t technical you get the idea of their focus on good design - Steve would have been proud of them

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

💬 Steve Jobs

… which probably explains why they won app of the year and were name called (not once - but twice) in this year’s WWDC.

The article ends with …

All of this for what? Will all users see the difference? — Probably not. Was it worth it? — Absolutely. These are the minor details that often go unnoticed when present, but become conspicuous when missing. We strive for having as many of those details as possible, making the experience great but at the same time — seamless.

Kudos to Craft - a Great App and a serious tool for writing documents in the 21st Century.

( 🖇️ Related (Page-less Writing Apps) )

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 08:55:15 +1200

Somebody googled me recently and emailed me asking if I was ‘the criminal profiler’, or at least connected to him.

I am, and back in 2017, I wrote a little post connecting the two of us.

I have just added the full story of when we ‘met’ a loooong time ago -and appended it to the 2017 post.

🖇️ You will find it here.

(The story started before Google.)

In 2024 if you Google “John Philpin”, you will indeed find that there are two of us, but back then, there wasn’t a Google … I know kids .. hard to believe. There was something called ‘Alta Vista’ and Yahoo - but nascent at best.

We Are Being Forced To Conform

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 12:06:12 +1200

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. We are.

It all started as I was 🖇️ building on this post which was about flavor (🔗the original Substack and how it reminded me of Rick Beato’s piece on people not understanding something being ‘📼 🔗 out of tune’). Small potatoes really - a little bit o' fun.

At the time - over on Substack I commented on the flavor post

I couldn’t work out which bit to highlight so read the whole thing it’s the food version of Rick Beato talking about people not understanding what ‘out of tune’ means … and we wonder why the world is being turned upside down?

Then I started thinking more about a thread that emerged over on Micro.Blog, where @manton commented that he had started and been noodling a post for months before scrapping it and starting again before he published a post he had been noodling on Gaza.

🔗 The comments on the original post are informative

I think 🔗 this is the post that Manton finally settled on., which on the whole assumes a reasonably fair and neutral position that everyone applauded .. and what is really not to love? (A lot IMHO - but that is for another post.)

What follows is the nub of my worry …

The French have (had?) an expression

vive la différence

.. that in my life I have used a lot, despite the fact that according to the OED, there are around 0.3 occurrences per million words in modern written English of the word ‘vive’ - let alone ‘vive la différence’. But heh - vive la différence 😂

The phrase is used to express appreciation of diversity. Maybe that is why it has fallen out of use? Should I stop using it too?

When I was a lad I learned about standard deviation and how oft times populations fell into some kind of ‘normal distribution’ with the vast majority sitting within ‘±3𝜎’.

It seems to this bear that no matter what our private beliefs and personas might be - the crowd is forcing us into only sharing the parts of our personas that fit the vanilla of modern life, with the result that on the face of it, society is forcing conversation in ‘the town square’ to something more like ±𝜎 - and you keep anything outside of that to yourself - for fear of retaliation.

Consider 🔗 this post from @pratik for example.

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. It’s a place where ignorance is not so much celebrated as ignored - and ignored because on the whole it isn’t recognized, and if you do anything counter to the noise - expect to be piled on because 🔗 you are either with us, or against us.

Our Way - Or The Highway

The Road Less Taken .. ‘Less’, by Bob, not to be confused with ‘Not’, by the other ‘Bob’.

Bob L agrees.

Rick’s video is referenced in para' 4.

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 18:25:32 +1200

📺 Presumed Innocent

Another in that 🖇️ theme of ‘TV shows that were movies’. Just watched the last. Unusually for me, not as a binge - but week by week - and loved it.

Information on Reelgood

‘All’ My TV Shows

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:45:41 +1200

In case you were wondering about 🖇️that last post, 🖇️ I just dispatched this on Substack, which links back.

Thinking about performance.

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 15:14:46 +1200

📸 🌊 On 🖇️ yesterday’s post I remarked how all the boats had collected in one corner of the bay. In the comments a friend wrote

The boats are huddled in the corner because the wind is meant to swing around to the east.

.. a ‘sea farers’ explanation - which I kind of had in my head - but when it is so pretty, it is hard to think that it is going to get worse.

Anyway. It did. This was taken earlier today - and that has been the high spot! Next job move the cushions inside.

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 09:13:02 +1200

There are 56 in the series .. I just counted. There only going to be two more and then the unplanned series that you probably thought was never going to end .. well, it is ending.

🖇️ The Photo Gallery

🖇️ For posterity - because the photo gallery will get redefined soon.

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 14:20:25 +1200

It all starts at 🖇️ john.philpin.com - which reposts to

🔗 Threads and 🔗 Bluesky and 🔗 Mastodon

Seperately my blog on john.philpin.com is revealed as @me@john.philpin.com on Mastodon - which is also followable - so of course i follow it with my (real) Masto account.

So if i post on Masto with my ‘real’ Masto - my blog’s Masto can see it and so those posts can manually find their way back to the blog …

I can also post a message on Threads and Bluesky BUT those messages would stay in their respective domains … until today.

I just enabled Fediverse sharing on Threads - so now if I post to my blog, like always it gets pushed to Threads - which is now visible on the Fediverse - so I can follow myself with my Threads account on Masto - and I presume vice versa.

I am writing this to get my head straight.

So far - BlueSky is only federated via Bridgy which I am not going to use because there is enough to do now in working out what goes where, why and how on my accounts - and do not get me started on the new accounts I am setting up for The Future Found - where I have already enable the Threads account for Fedi access.

I mean, you’re either ‘all in’ or why bother. Right?

A. There is a lot wrong with that last sentence!

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 10:33:45 +1200

And kind of related to 🖇️ that (the previous post) - but this is ‘Ted’.

🔗 Link with my highlights

🔗 The Original

Is This How You Get 'Silenced'?

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 12:39:00 +1200

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.

Feeling that my strategically placed emoji was sufficient to indicate that there was a certain amount of playful humor going on. (Or so I thought.)

It took a few days for this reply (my bold)

I understand you were just making a comment, but I feel it is important to check your facts before making claims about cultural appropriation that may just be fuel for a false fire. ….

… and the writer went on about the contribution of black musicians to the genre " who have been unheard and unacknowledged, and who have contributed so much in largely unrecognized ways." .. etc etc, stuff anybody with a pulse would know .. and then went on about what they have done in ‘Country’.

… and .. what facts?

I resisted responding how the Beatles at the beginning and the Stones - almost forever - did exactly the same thing, as did Led Zeppelin - oh and Elvis. I KNOW - well documented ….

I elected not to respond at all. And instead became decidedly less vocal in there at least 😵‍💫)

Curious that back in April 🖇️ I had cause to write this. I didn’t highlight it at the time - but I wrote it in response to a different thread in this exact same group where I was accused of using tired and well worj sterotypes and tropes.

My approach is not to respond and ignore. Easy.

But - is there something else going on?

Thoughts?

Prompted to write all this because - well this reminded me …

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 11:33:55 +1200

🔗 I’ve done mine. .. have you done yours?

🔗 Thanks for the the link Joe/

(This is why my 🖇️ Guestbook blog roll is useful.)

🎈168/366 Guestbooks, Blogrolls, Reciprocity and Paying It Forward

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 10:41:55 +1200

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. - and anyone signing mine can move on to the next …

And then I added a new blogroll. If I sign your guestbook, I add your feed to my NetNewsWire and from there it appears on my 🖇️ ’Guestbook Blogroll’

Enjoy.

Image courtesy of ChatGPT 4o - prompt - “Guestbooks, Blogrolls, Reciprocity and Paying It Forward”

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 14:16:31 +1200

📺 Turn Up Charlie

Just like 🖇️ Loot .. not one to dislike … and likely more a passion project for the only reason I watched it ( a while back now) .. Idris.

But I do like to occasionally log some older stuff .. cos we don’t all watch everything at the time do we … so you still need to know.. right? Wrong?

Or do you?

Turn Up Charlie on 🔗 Reelgood

’All’ My TV Show Reviews

🎈155/366 The First Vision Pro Concert Movie

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 11:06:28 +1200

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. Scoble was at the time (He’s very quiet these days, isn’t he?)

🖇️ But February this year I made some pretty logical predictions about the first Vision Pro Movie.

🖇️ And in October last year I was predicting that The Sphere was a pretty good place to start on a ‘Vision Pro Concert Series’ - and I think Apple will be the one to do it. Well, maybe not ‘doing’ it - but certainly financing it.

I still think that.

But who will be the director and/or subject matter for this groundbreaking event?

Who’s Out?

Despite Tay Tay’s global appeal, it won’t be her. The Swifties don’t have the money to buy the Pro.

Peter Jackson is deep into the latest tech to do great things, definitely a friend of Apple - and his foray into music with The Beatles is interesting - but no, no Sphere experience and besides 🔗 he is deep into his next Trilogy .. as Producer - not Director, but still ..

Original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy filmmaker Peter Jackson and his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are producing the movie and “will be involved every step of the way,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call Thursday.

Phish? I dunno - not seeing it.

So Who’s In?

Two very real possibilities …

U2 - deeply intertwined with Apple - remember the album? And then they were first up at the Sphere - and Zane Lowe hanging out with them, talking with them. We have seen some of the footage, but who knows what was taken off the ‘back stage’ for the first Vision Pro movie?

… but I am wondering - and well out of left field - but …

The Grateful Dead - who have always been at the bleeding edge of touring and spectacle

The ‘Home’ band for Bay Area based Apple
Sphere residency happening - even as I type
Residency coincided with Earth Day 2024 (very ‘Appley’)
Lots of San Francisco through time imagery featured in the show
🔗 and then there is this - Huff Post - so maybe a pinch of salt is needed, written eight years ago …but written by Bill Bradey, so not his usual subject matter - but certainly no slouch.
Note that Mayer is also part of The Sphere residency.

It’s all fitting in for this bear.

The only hard thing to reconcile is that ‘Tay Tay’ problem. Is there an overlap?

I think there just might be.

What do you think?

Thu, 30 May 2024 22:34:07 +1200

Today I got my first 🖇️ guestbook signature from a total stranger.

Thu, 30 May 2024 15:38:46 +1200

📸 🌊 After 🖇️ yesterdays weather - this was rather welcome particularly since it was so bad that it knocked the power out. Bed by 7 for this bear.

But … the next morning - what do they say ‘calm after the storm’?

Or is it before?

Tue, 28 May 2024 11:43:39 +1200

🎈149/366 | 📸 🌊 Some days you see the conflict of the weather over time and I publish a short series - like 🖇️ yesterday. Today the conflict is happening all at once.

.. and yes this post features in both series I am running at the moment.

Mon, 27 May 2024 11:22:49 +1200

🎈148/366 Talking about ‘series’ .. as we are in the process of closing out ‘May’ - I finally got round to updating my 🖇️ 🔎 366 series

Mon, 27 May 2024 10:54:49 +1200

🖇️ Back then I was undecided whether the early images constituted a series. This morning I hit ten - so I hereby declare that 🖇️ we do in fact have a series.

Sat, 25 May 2024 12:52:47 +1200

🖇️📸 The series - I guess it is now - is building nicely

Sat, 25 May 2024 10:56:05 +1200

I stumbled across this today as I was collecting 🖇️ these. I nearly moved through because ‘Kelly’ - but I am a sucker for Jeff, so …

Holy Crap …🔗 🎵 📼 Jeff Daniels

.. I was under the impression he had only recently written it - but this from 13 years ago - suggests otherwise.

🔗 🎵 📼 Jeff Daniels.

If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video gives an error. Click on the link above. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it.

… another two ‘broken links’ .. has something changed?

Thu, 23 May 2024 10:50:01 +1200

🖇️ 🎙️ Vinyl Sneak Peek

Conan’s short promo had me laughing out loud 😂 as I wandered down to the ferry this morning.

🎈142/366 A Bucket Of Slop

Tue, 21 May 2024 14:06:59 +1200

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 use the word loosely.)

Imagine then my delight to read that ‘Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content’.

Sidebar - if you don’t know what a ‘bucket of slop’ is - ‘Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content’.

Perfect.

Slop is also a name given to what is left at the bottom after any of the remotely useful homogenized content that has been stored in a silo has been removed.

The trick now is going to be how readers will be able to spot the slop - given that they already have difficulties separating content from any kind of value.

Read the whole piece …

🔗 Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content

… and hat tip to John Gruber who referenced this post on Daring Fireball.

🔗 Meanwhile, over in Finland, they do have an idea or two.

Sun, 19 May 2024 09:03:55 +1200

📺 Sugar

Stunning .. great job from Colin F .. but the homage to ‘noir’ yet modern, the direction, the cinematography, the colors, the lights, the nuance … everything. Just so good.

I have read that people loved the mid season ‘twist’ …if we are talking last scene in episode 6 .. yeah no .. I had that scene in my head for a couple of episodes prior, so no twist for me. In fact, it happened to coincide with when I thought the show had finished .. and I 🖇️ even posted that I was very disappointed with the ending (EEJIT I am).

Anyway .. all this to say … loved it. If you have 🍎 📺, whatever else you are watching stop - and go take a look.

Sugar on 🔗 Reelgood

’All’ My TV Show Reviews

Thu, 09 May 2024 23:38:15 +1200

I’m gonna say that even though my ‘pages’ - you know the ‘about’ .. ‘doing’ .. ‘new’ .. ‘using’ .. aren’t ‘done’ - they are clearly done enough to add them to the menu.

Sat, 04 May 2024 09:04:23 +1200

😂

🖇️ Me - in the middle of April - but had been having the problem (an out of control mouse) for a lot longer.

Cracked the issue this morning.

Sidecar.

It seems recently that I have not been closing my iPad, and so my Mac believes that I have a second screen.

Issue resolved.

Thu, 02 May 2024 16:13:59 +1200

🖇️ Me a couple of days ago ending with ‘wondering what ‘Rob’ will say.

Now we know.

He just delivered a great story - as always and funny. He didn’t say it the way I did (mainly because he has more talent) … but I think we agree. Take a listen.

🔗 🎙️ Paramount: Buy, Sell, Fight

Thu, 02 May 2024 12:45:40 +1200

I have referenced 🔎 🖇️ The UNDaunted on this blog a few times. On a call this morning - and we are going live in two weeks . Letting a few friends and family in early. If you are into Social Impact - you are going to love The UNDaunted. Hit me up in whatever way makes sense to learn more.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 09:59:29 +1200

As I wrote in January … The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 📚is a wonderful little book .. so who knows why I am posting on April 30th that I have just finished it. Opinion not changed. Read it.

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 20:03:26 +1200

🖇️ Remember Micro Monday Follow Day? - I just fixed the click through - because after all this shuffling a few things got broken. There are some crackers in there … 5 Years Ago Today Apparently!

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 06:28:21 +1200

I do like @jsonbecker photo plugin that basically allows you to 🔍🖇️ for a post based on the image that’s there … (I know that’s not how it is promoted - but that is how I am using it …) … just wish I could ‘present’ them better. Maybe a second plugin?

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 08:58:27 +1200

🖇️ About This Blogroll Thing

I updated the base to include @ameripie and @jedda specifically.

While I was there - I found some peeps in my Feedbin that I had - but weren’t in the right folder - so fixed that and now the list is a bit longer. Discovering some additional anomalies;

@manton - Is there a way to make that list alphabetical ?

@simonwoods I have you - and I also have ‘TIL’ - but there are two different feeds?

@odd - I pulled what seems to be your feed - but these are your replies(?), whilst your real feed is here - raising in case you didn’t know.

Just to make it easier to check - this is a screen capture of the blogs in the system as of the weekend of 20/21 April. Proving it in alphabetical order. LMK if want to be added - or indeed taken off … all good.

🚧 Logged Blogs

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 11:29:27 +1200

🎲 Surprise Me! is now the phrasing in my single post footer - replacing ‘Random’ .. seemed more in keeping with the tone that I am trying to achieve on this blog - not to mention that it is consistent with the other places I reference this functionality.

🎈107/366 A Personal Knowledge Repository?

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 11:13:41 +1200

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? The point is that the core thinking has stuck with me … write once - use many.

It’s good advice and indeed many corporate processes follow this idea. Think help desk, somebody asks a gnarly question, it isn’t available in your ‘knowledge repository’, so you reply with original thought and then publish that answer into the repository so that anyone else who has the question can find the answer.

BUT - when it comes to the personal blog, even I - who has this ingrained in my brain, still doesn’t do this as routine and - even more frustrating - when i do .. it gets forgotten about over time because I don’t have a real system to manage such things - and why would I?

So it is about memory - but also I have found the Micro Blog Search-Space PlugIn by @sod absolutely excellent for unpacking such posts'.

All this to say that I have just put up a page on my blog that is the start of attempting to provide help to others that ask.

Enjoy.

🖇️ Getting Started With Your Own Micro Blog

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. Simplicity really is rather nice. As I write on 240413, I am now going back and filling in the gaps. PLUS - unless something strikes me immediately, I will not classify until the end of the day and go back to move one of the posts of the day into the 366. Also - if you are wondering how I have update the words at the bottom of over 100 posts at a stroke, well - THANK YOU Andy Sylvester and his Glossary plugin.

📡 Follow with RSS

🗄️ All the posts

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 23:12:01 +1200

I am still running these words in my mind …

Starting right now we must invest time and resources to hone, sculpt and architect the six key skills will be essential in the future to complement machines, co-exist with change, and ensure continuous re-invention.
Three of these have to do with individual competence (Cognition, Creativity, Curiosity) and three how we connect with each other and the world outside our minds including new AI agents. (Collaborate, Communicate, Convince).

💬 Media Village

🖇️Their Site

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 20:53:25 +1200

Have to say that were somebody to back me up against a wall - put a gun to my head and ask me 🖇️ who my top 10 artists - ever - were, XTC would be on that list.

📼 Just finished watching this

Just lovely and a tremendous trip down memory lane.

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:41:21 +1200

🖇️ Me 5 Years Ago - Simpler Times. .. who would have predicted where we are today.

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 21:52:50 +1200

I have had Raindrop for yonks, but it landed with a thud in my conscious this past week. Yes - the usual AND the possibility of 🖇️ this - or even this!

Not sure - yet - how / if it connects to everything else in my newly emerging connected world of NetNewsWireFeedBinReadWiseRaindropMicroBlog.

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 12:50:05 +1200

🖇️ Meanwhile … I stopped off for a well deserved ‘Latte and Eggs Bennie’.

I don’t know who this young lady is

(angle to purposely disguise her identity) , but she talked for the duration. And I do mean talked, barely drawing breath, much less pausing to listen to whoever was on the other end.

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 13:25:58 +1200

🎈096/366

Seperately I still look forward to having MicroBlog and Readwise just synch with my chosen folder in Newswire. And then I thought I read the other day that this is indeed possible. Is it? I can’t find anything about it anywhere. 🥺. But there’s more. I want the opportunity to change the order dynamically, based on ‘last post in’ - but no plans according to Manton.

.. from 🖇️ here - where i have just published V4 of my ‘blogroll - but still no answers to those question - plus - I wonder if there is any plan to offer a ‘nested’ list. (If you click through - the need becomes clear. 🤒

📡 Follow with RSS

🗄️ All the posts

🎈091/366 - It's Historical ...

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 12:51:34 +1200

🖇️ 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.

It came up, so I will report … though I have said this before AND I am going to keep saying it in different ways.

AI used to be about being the best. If the chess program couldn’t beat a grand master then clearly it wasn’t very good. And then it was - so then they said what about ‘GO’ … it never won - and then it did. Clearly AI doesn’t work - until it does.

But this stuff is new.

Yes - it doesn’t write like Stephen King or paint like Monet .. but most of us don’t and …

AND that’s not the point.

The point is that it can write better than the average person.

So (to begin with ) only the below average people will be replaced.

Problem 1 - ask anyone how good they are at anything - they will ‘generally’ see themselves as ‘better than average’.

Problem 2 - statistically - 50% of those people are wrong.

Problem 3 - a substantial part of the population can’t see it coming.

This video is more recent and is an ad - been circulating in places like the book of faces - but makes for a good two minute watch and relates.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

📡 Follow with RSS

🗄️ All the posts

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:00:25 +1200

🖇️ You wouldn’t thinks so - but the culling count hit double digits today.

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:29:25 +1200

🎈090/366

The new blogroll functionality has taken me down a rabbit hole as I have come to realize how disorganized my feeds were - are, despite appearing very organized.

Anyway. 🖇️ V2 is now in place. V2 ≠ Final.

📡 Follow with RSS

🗄️ All the posts

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:21:18 +1200

Started watching a new series on Netflix. First episode definitely has me hooked ,,, though it seemed that I knew the plot. So, looked it up. Of course I knew the plot. It was a movie from a 5(?) years ago. A very good movie actually. But different as it was, the connections were tight - even down to the directorial style. It was if the TV dude was emulating the Film dude … 🤦‍♂️ similar! Identical. It was the same director - Guy Ritchie - I do love me some ‘Guy’.

Turns out that he made the movie and then turned around and said - right them let’s do a TV show. It’s going to be good.

🖇️ 📽️ The Gentlemen

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 17:56:26 +1200

And of course fussing with only 🖇️ one change is never enough - now I am onto blogrolls - very much like the OPML import. Thankyou @manton

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:40:53 +1200

If you are watching closely you will know that my 366 project is pretty messed up right now. Just a little bit too much going on - so laying out breadcrumb markers that I will be revisiting slowly but surely.

🖇️ Like this one for example.

A WIP - but had to share a 13 second video of some lads on the beach taken with an iPhone from a long long way-a-way.

🎈037/366 | 🔁 Serendipity

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:41:12 +1200

’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. (Not the post itself - the layout.) I have never been diagnosed with OCD, but I have my suspicions.

It has now all settled down, a flow has been building, so much so that I have topics in my head that are maybe a week out.

The trouble is that some of the topics are big, and I know I don’t have time on that day and some get really big so have to flag with 🚧 - my signal that I will be coming back.

🖇️ Like this one for example, which I flagged with the emoji - but I know there is so much more to say that I even added words for more context.

Let Me Explain

I happen to share 366 posts into specific, yet different communities to solicit feedback. 🖇️ This one for example, has spawned comments applying the thinking to a game, which then moved on to applying that game to corporate workshops. Which is just brilliant really. No idea if any of that will take off - we will have to see .. I just like the idea that

a post on LinkedIN by someone I do not know resulted in
a comment from someone I do know that caused me to
write a post about how that triggered a connection to something that I bang on and on about which meant I had to
find that original post so I could share that, so it made sense
which then made the 2nd person in the chain seek to clarify the idea I was spouting
which I confirmed that it was indeed
so he then took that and suggested that a game could be developed around the process, to which I said
or maybe turn it into a framework for Corporate Workshops and ….

… and that’s where we have got to so far. In amongst all of that I have some actions I need to do to close some loops - but it’s all because of the serendipity of the different people coming together in this chain of thinking. #Awesome

But - and here’s the weird part … this wasn’t the serendipitous event that I was referencing when I first ideated the theme of this post. Not at all.

The thread started as a simple idea that as I came up with this project - so too did Om, who I follow and read anyway - but within his ‘river’, he has a sub-theme called 🔗 Project 36

I don’t really follow his photos (though they are really rather good), and I became aware of it because of 🔗this post on his blog, which ends with these words …

They really resonated with me. ()Om often does) and on the 3rd🖇️ January I linked to his New Years message because those words there in my mind right at that point because just three days in I was already feeling the enormity of what I had challenged myself to deliver, daily.

I also have a couple of posts in the 366 series that are very short - to maintain the flow - but they don’t take much time. Like🖇️ this one from the 28th January - it’s a quick photo!

But there’s more. fellow MicroBlogger 🔗 TeeJay seems to have also latched on to the one a day post. In his case - every single day he is putting a lovely image that he takes on that day.

Turns out - for him it is not a new idea. 🔗As his new year post points out. and now his daily photo comes into my RSS feed each and every day - reminding me to stay the course.

And to tie it all back. This whole post was one of those quick throwaways. I had the idea for a ‘serendipity’ post when I had seen Om and Teejay - it was up my sleeve to write it when I was short of time. Like today.

Short of time? What the hell happened?

The observant amongst you will have spotted that an ‘eye candy’ image accompanies every post. In this case, I wrote my two lines and hopped over to Leonardo to generate my image.

This was the first image to come out …

Seriously? Cubes? After just writing a a long post that featured a cube. Is Leonardo watching me? Of course I had to connect those dots and unpack that serendipity.

And with that … done. Time to post. A quick check reveals the word count to be roughly 100 times my original target. I know I am hitting the send button with the post not fully proofed, which is why 🚧 is at the top.

I will come back later to make whatever inevitable fixes I will need to do. For now though … I feel I have rambled to the end of this garden path and I can sense it has come around full circle back to where it all started.

If you are still with me. Thankyou for seeing it through.

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Tue, 06 Feb 2024 16:46:59 +1200

💬

I really don’t like ‘PM’ - so I take great delight from reading pieces like this. Robert Hutton is seriously funny and yet its true.

If you want to read the whole thing - 🖇️ I Put it up on Readwise - and you can speed read my highlights - some real zingers.

🎈035/366 | 🧊 TL;DR | VL;MR

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 10:17:53 +1200

« 034/366 | 036/366 »

’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. It was touching on a pet peeve of mine, despite TL;DR being a technique I use from time to time.

This was the essence;

Sometimes it just can’t be any shorter and still be useful. Some lynchpin bit of data or context would have to be sacrificed, a risk go unnamed, a requirement remain unidentified.
Sometimes information exchange has to include all the information AND the meta data it needs to build a bridge from you to me.
Sometimes “Too Long; Didn’t Read” is a terrible risk/reward proposition, and you have to go all the way to “Very Long; Must Read.”
When everything extra has been distilled out, but there’s still a lot there, that’s a sign of something complex enough to be fascinating, or at least full of critical, decision-influencing intel.

He ended his post with a reference back to the source.

I remember 🔗 Marjorie Anderson activating that thought in my head weeks ago, and now it won’t leave.

This resonated ….

Sometimes TL;DR simply must yield to VL;MR

Which got me to thinking.

You know how I am with that word … ‘content’.

To remind from one of many posts on the topic - just on this blog ….

As long as ‘we the creators’ keep 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’, ‘homogenized, non differentiated, interchangeable fodder’ (which coincidentally is what silos have always been used for), then, we only have ourselves to blame as the resultant payment for our art, our thinking and our ideas, will continue to race to the bottom.

And whilst on the topic of silos ….

You should never … ever … trust a Silo. It’s theirs. The stuff you put there is theirs. Even our' handle is actually ‘theirs’.

All this and more can be found in an earlier post here : 🖇️ Friends Don’t Let Friends Write Content

And it is not just me …

Just today

and last year .. Dana Carvey and Will Arnett brought it up (listen it’s a one minute snipped) on the Smartless podcast.

Anyway, with that all said … ‘set up’ done … ✅

So What?

It struck me that ‘TL;DR | VL;MR’ is the second axis I have been looking for in my one man war on ‘content’. So I drew the picture.

‘content | material ' on the x axis and ‘TL;DR | VL;MR’ on the y axis - and I was left with ‘Yeah .. so what?

The ‘so what’ was because I realized that it was missing the third axis …‘Entertainment | Understanding’

The fact is that so much that is running around the ‘interwebs’ is ‘Entertainment’. Nothing wrong with that, but VL;MR is really about Understanding.

Moreover, the front facing 4 quadrants are all about ‘Entertainment | Understanding’ and TL;DR | VL;MR - not ‘Content | Material’

So I drew it again.

The coloration isn’t quite right for all occasions, but in this particular context

on the entertainment side - it doesn’t really matter which end of the TL;DR | VL;MR spectrum you are - a 240 character tweet can be as entertaining as a 3 hour movie or a 1,000 page book, BUT on the understanding side .. sure sometimes a pithy one liner can shed light on an issue that a three volume encyclopedia will never do. It’s also true that a very short mathematical equation is very powerful when it comes to ‘explaining’ - IF you understand the language of math(s) (I like to accommodate both sides of the Atlantic if I can), which most people do not.

But generally that is not the case, because what triggered me is that context and history and space and time and .. is needed to really bottom out ‘Understanding’

So far so good?

I added the third dimension.

And we are there … nearly.

The dimensions are right - but the colors remain at odds with my thinking. I have the image in my head plus the colors need to be fading from one color to the next - depending on the context. I am not a graphic artist … and I could draw what I am thinking … eventually … and maybe I will return to complete / correct this.

But before I do that. Make sense? See where I am coming from?

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🎈033/366 | 🥇 And The Winner Is …

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 07:10:57 +1200

« 032/366 | 034/366 »

’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.

And so on down the line …

4 : 🖇️ 026/366 | 🆔 The ‘entity’ in Identity.

3 : 🖇️ 004/366 | 🏢 Demonstrating The Pace Layer).

2 : 🖇️ 003/366 | 💬 A New Purpose.

And the winner - at least for this month, coming in at number …

1 : 🖇️ 002/366 | ♟️ Is There Planning In Strategy❓

Thoughts

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are respectively the 2nd, 3rd and 4th posts in the series, so not surprised.

I am surprised at the 26th post coming as high as 4th, after all, It only had 5 days to get there.

By the time you get down to Number 5 - well, it’s a topic that resonates, and had a full half month to ‘move on up’, so once again, no real surprise.

I will run the numbers again next month, for February - and again for January - and will also provide a ‘year to date’. Be interesting to see the comparisons. (BTW, I am specifically running the data between specific dates - in this case for example Jan 1 to Jan 31 - not just ‘last month’.)

I am also interested to see if this posts gives a jump on these particular posts, so I will check the data in 7 days.

That’s all for now - except to say, my many thanks to 🔗 Vincent who wrote and maintains the 🔗 tinylytics app that in turn produces the data I need to write this email. Couldn’t do without it.

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Thu, 01 Feb 2024 09:02:11 +1200

🖇️ As I wrote;

🔗 Pakistani military use age-old tactics to keep Imran Khan away from election.

Any pretence of due judicial process being followed was abandoned entirely at both cases where Khan was sentenced this week. Instead of an open courtroom, the trials were conducted inside the jail where Khan is being detained and his lawyers were not allowed to choose or cross-examine any witnesses.

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:24:08 +1200

🔗Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package is too much, judge rules.

A line in the sand has been drawn.

That said - not quite where the 🖇️‘limitareanists think it should be drawn.

But it is a start.

🎈030/366 | 🔗 Just A ‘Few’ Links

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 05:44:18 +1200

« 029/366 | 031/366 »

’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. Trust me - you don’t want the whole thing!

Together - A social reader.
- An app.
The Connecticut CyberHub Initiative.
- Provides a pipeline of talent to fill security jobs.
National Cyber Group.
- A national version of same.
John Wooden - Wikipedia.
- It’s funny who gets places named after them, a bar/restaurant in LA I frequented in the early part of 2023 had a John Wooden room. Famous apparently. I had never heard of him.
Is “stream” as a design paradigm over?.
- One of ‘Om’s’ - I started to write about ‘Streams’ at the time.
Streams of Consciousness · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer.
- So did Matthias.
Adactio: Journal—Home stream.
- …and Jeremy.
Organizing my blog - Ben Werdmuller.
- Ben on - well - organizing hi blog, which is what I was doing at the time. Still am! Witness this 366 entry.
Every Company Disney Owns: A Map of Disney’s Worldwide Assets.
- Always loved these kind of visuals.
Reflect.
- An app
Andrew Corser.
- a small blog by a long time family friend that I didn’t even know had a blog.
Geyerhof StockWerk Grüner Veltliner, Kremstal 2021
- Organic wines anyone?
Sky Bridge.
- A bridge - twixt Mastodon and BlueSky.
AI risk must be treated as seriously as climate crisis, says Google DeepMind chief.
- A Guardian Article
Obsidian ✍️ A new take on notes .
- A newsletter.
Grupa Trias.
- a company I met in Poland.
Personal Digital Agent - Google Slides.
- It is what it says on the tin.
Motion | Pricing.
- An app.
The Great Cash For Carbon Hustle.
- Is it? I am mixNo doubt it makes a lot of money for people - but we all know thatisnt right - don’t we.
Micro.blog Feature Requests - Developers - Micro.blog Help Center
- MicroBlog feature requests.
Struck | No Mercy / No Malice.
- A link I have saved for a future post - not yet. I think (know?) he is wrong.
Seven Gigabytes.
- Robin Rendle.

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Sometimes There Is No Pleasing People

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:09:21 +1200

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. Nothing innovative.”

Apple … hold by beer.

Behold, not just a new product, a new category that we call ‘Spatial Computing’, to give you an idea of what we mean.

The Masses:

“Yeah - that sucks it is going to fail.”

A couple of links.

🔗 Isn’t That Spatial? | No Mercy / No Malice

🔗 The AR Vision

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:01:09 +1200

This is about ‘that’ Andreesen post/ But first … context, because I know - life has moved on.

I am in the process of trying to catch up on a massive backlog of notes that I am steadily

deleting
filing in Obsidian
posting to 🖇️John.Philpin

Not sure if this will end up taking longer than the 🖇️ category deletion. We will see.

This one is in the third category. The news has been and gone now - but my opinion hasn’t changed.

Some of you might have stumbled across Andreesen’s Substack :

🔗 Why AI Will Save The World

TL;DR .. who cares.

Despite what he wrote, he’s wrong … not least of which being that word ‘world’ .. it will be fine - regardless of what Marc thinks. People? Yeah - that’s different. Anyway …

What you might NOT have stumbled across are these;

🔗 Alan Jacobs (pdf)

🔗 Wired : Marc Andreessen is (mostly) Wrong this time

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 11:02:32 +1200

I just worked out how to add captions to my images on my blog like🖇️ here for example.

I adjusted my TextExpander template for future 🖇️ 🔎 366 posts.

I need to decide if I should go back and fix all the posts published in 366 thus far?

What’s the name of that psychological problem again?

🎈028/366 | 📸 Just A Picture

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 10:08:46 +1200

« 027/366 | 029/366 »

'Just A Picture' By 'Leonardo'

Because somedays 🖇️ Ain’t Nobody Got Time For ‘Dis’. Sorry.

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Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:51:11 +1200

🖇️ Me from 2019

That’s how long I have been thinking about writing a newsletter around this thought (surviving that is).

I really should extract the digit!

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:48:14 +1200

🖇️ 🚧 🔍 Posts I Need To Revisit

🎈025/366 | 🐫 Do Not Put ‘Product’ In Charge

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:55:34 +1200

« 024/366 | 026/366 »

'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. Reproduced here for posterity

I don’t disagree on taking the finance wonks out .. but not sure I agree on putting product in … I know lots of companies that lead with product .. and it doesn’t work unless there is wider purview which is often missing in product thinking. Our friends in Cupertino don’t lead with product .. though many pundits think they do .. they lead with vision, experience and story that the product delivers against.

The ‘top’ needs to be market, future market, visionary oriented. Disciplines that used to fall under marketing … though sadly not anymore .. as they are all chasing data and models and RoI .. but those people exist. In all of those disciplines. The dude at the top can still be a focussed finance wonk … their ancillary skill (beyond those three core requirements) is to listen to everyone, take advice and pay attention.

Again .. the man at the top of Cupertino is ‘operations and supply chain’ ( by history ) but to the casual observer, that isn’t so obvious. Meanwhile, the man before him was vision and experience and story .. sure he definitely had a say in product … but from an holistic viewpoint -

Just one slice of the holisticism (is that even a word)… how many ‘product’ people get what good design can do.

If they do .. I mean REALLY do .. why are there so many badly designed, poorly performing products out there?

What Do You Think?

Postscript - sometimes the Leonardo images take a few tweaks to get even close to my underlying message - but in this case - third go - and was only generating 1 image at a time. Sometimes I run out of the 150 free credits that I get every day - and have to choose from a bad lot.

This image just spoke volumes to me as ‘the house that ‘product’ built.

Funnily enough - today’s emoji was also absolutely clear.

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Thu, 25 Jan 2024 12:13:01 +1200

🔗 Donald Trump wins Republican primary in New Hampshire

He is representing the American people. He is not out for himself. He’s not out for political gain. He’s not out for financial reasons. He doesn’t need money, he doesn’t need fame and fortune. He already has all of that.

💬 Tina Lorenzo, 63, a Trump supporter since 2016

No comment … you know 🖇️ my position

🎈024/366 | 🍏 Tim’s Job Is Safe

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:38:42 +1200

« 023/366 | 025/366 »

'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. I am guessing that at some point in time I just closed him out of my mind, because he more often than not wrote rubbish.

That certainly seemed to be my opinion .. what? 7 1/2 years ago! 😃

That all said, posting this as an early (quasi) ‘claim chowder’ (tip o' the hat to @gruber) entry. I didn’t believe him (Scoble) then - and said so - and though the jury is strictly still out - I am firmly in the camp that the vision pro IS the next big thing and more importantly that it is because of ‘Tim Apple’ - not despite him. In short - I don’t think Tim needs to worry too much. Certainly not about ‘Bob’.

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Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:10:43 +1200

There’s 📼🎵 something in the air. Anybody else feeling it?

It started happening last week. All good.

But .. not all good apparently 😖

I tried to find a post on my site to link to - #FAIL.

This is the message

2024-01-23 11:34:07 Error: Error building site: open content/2022/01/01/the-first-message.md: no such file or directory

🖇️ But it is there

Gnashing teeth.

Talk about a downer!

If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video gives an error. Click on the link above. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it.

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 12:59:28 +1200

🖇️ Today’s 366 Contribution is different again.

Continuing to experiment with both format and material in the 🖇️ 366 posts to see what resonates with others - because they all resonate with me. I mean, why would I bother posting things that don’t?

🎈023/366 | 9️⃣ Highlights From Yesterday

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 12:47:28 +1200

« 022/366 | 024/366 »

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.

Who knew?

2️⃣ 🔗 Trump Says He ‘Aced’ Cognitive Test, Mind Is ‘Stronger’ Than 25 Years Ago

.. not exactly a high bar.

3️⃣ 🔗 Flanders government looks to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenue | Belgium.

Some lessons here. Most Governments pay (they don’t use that word … but that is what they are doing) to attract film production.

I think this is the right way round.

4️⃣ 🔗 Rise in measles cases prompts vaccination campaign in England.

Oh .. so it’s ok to get vaccinated now?

5️⃣ 🔗 The Musical Instruments Market Size Is Expected To Reach $14 Billion By 2027.

Wonder what constitutes a ‘musical instrument ‘ these days?

6️⃣ 🔗 January 21, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

I wonder if Dobbs, with its announcement that when Republicans are given power over our legal system they do not consider themselves obligated to recognize an established constitutional right, will turn out to be today’s version of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

No Comment. Yet.

7️⃣ 🔗 Thousands of Māori gather to tell New Zealand’s government: you cannot marginalise us.

Got to say .. ‘Cristopher (sic) and crew’ were warned.

8️⃣ 🔗 DeSantis Might Be the Worst Presidential Candidate in Recent Memory

Say what now?

Isn’t The Orange Clown a Presidential candidate? Problem nailed .. ‘they’ve forgotten already .. and he is in the fucking race!

9️⃣ 🔗 It seems that ‘God sent a quitter’

If his campaign is remembered at all, it will be for setting fire to a pile of money big enough to be seen from space in order to win a grand total of nine Iowa delegates.

ROTFFLOL

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Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:46:16 +1200

So here’s an odd thing for anyone interested to do with the very excellent ‘Conversation on Micro.blog’ plugin. 🖇️ This link (2016) works - BUT at the bottom - it reads ‘Also on Micro.blog - and not the usual ‘Conversation on Micro.blog’ like on say 🖇️ this post.

‘Also on’ - just takes you to the home page of the blog.

‘Conversation on’ - takes you to the actual post.

On closer looking at the plugin I see something that is called a fall back link - which i THINK is new? Certainly newer than my original install - so I am guessing that posts of a certain age and/or posts that were imported (like this one) don’t work.

Is that right @sod ?

Anything a mere mortal can do to improve this?

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 10:49:01 +1200

🖇️ Yesterday’s ‘366’ post about the future was societal in nature..

🖇️ Today’s retains the ‘future theme’, but is more personal..

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:11:41 +1200

The WIP emojis on my ‘366’ postings have been removed and we are up to date and back on track.

Just been checking my tinylytics data, they seem to be catching attention.

Trying to work out why some do - and some don’t.

[🖇️ The archive so far](john.philpin.com/categorie…

🎈007/366 | 🚣‍♀️ The Pace of Change

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:47:35 +1200

« 006/366 | 008/366 »

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. And so ‘the people’ weighed in - with the inevitable group waxing lyrical about business and government working hand in hand to innovate and become world leaders in ….

Pipe dreams - and ‘Pace Layers’, illustrated above explain why.

The model was developed by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno of all people. A quick study will reveal why government involvement in innovation is flawed. If you are still missing the challenge comes down to the

The order of a healthy civilization. The fast layers innovate; the slow layers stabilize. The whole combines learning with continuity.

💬 Stewart Brand

It reminds me of something 🔗 Venkatesh Rao wrote about many years ago - and which I in turn referenced in my 🔗 book a couple of years ago.

Bottom Line

I have always had a fundamental problem with government being joined at the hip with business. In principle, it sounds lovely. It can work. It does work … but not if you want to be fast, innovative, different, leading edge, using new technologies - all of these things are not part of a government’s DNA - the pace layer model reveals why it won’t work.

Whatever speed government works at, it still wont be fast enough for business and if you slow down business to more readily accommodate government, then others will beat you to market.

Just three case studies out of the hundreds if not thousands just in the software industry; Uber, AirBNB and Facebook.

And don’t get me started on Tesla, The Boring Compnay, SpaceX, X, xAI, Neuralink and the rest of the ‘Musk Suite.

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Sat, 06 Jan 2024 10:44:35 +1200

🖇️ The first of the 61 batches has been completed.

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 09:50:27 +1200

It has taken a couple of days (and gos), but I am beginning to get my new series settled in. Still some tweaks to go - and there is a BIG fix needed on the site around syndication - but nearly there.

🖇️ 🔎 You can see the series coming together here.

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 10:30:44 +1200

.. and so a new year begins and the Daily Stoic … as a publishing event … ends.

A variation on a theme will be forthcoming .. inspired by this thought from a Daily Stoic entry on 🖇️ December 22nd

Meanwhile …

Happy New Year

🔗 Copyright

About That Adobe - Figma Thing

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 11:32:10 +1200

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

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:29:45 +1200

You might remember that I was never a fan of 🖇️ Ramaswamy

Just 4 months later - even Fox has tuned on him … FOX!

Fox🔗 News Goes Absolutely Nuclear on ‘Court Jester’ Vivek Ramaswamy - The Daily Beast

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 17:00:55 +1200

Hell No … in fact why am I still subscribed after 🖇️ this fiasco?

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 14:10:18 +1200

🪦🖇️ Et tu Henry?

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:08:33 +1200

🔗 Apple’s Vision Pro Isn’t the Future

Flagging this to highlight that I am betting that Wired is WRONG. I will come back to it in the future - let’s say round about the end of Q1, beginning of Q2, 2024?

The Wired link is from June. Meanwhile 🖇️ me in October. I will try to find a few more.

A Where’s Waldo Update

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 10:29:40 +1200

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
December : New Zealand

Sadly the Sydney/Oz will not register on my ’🖇️ Where’s Waldo ’ live post, due-to the self imposed rule of not just ’no stop overs’ … but a minimum two nights. Next time. This was actually the first time ever in Oz. (Hard to believe)

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 02:29:08 +1200

🖇️ Never had a high opinion of him … … seems like others feel the same way….

🔗 Please get Ramaswamy off my TV, and other debate thoughts.

Us vs Them OR Us and Them OR Us + Them

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 07:40:21 +1200

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’.

From the thread …

You might notice that the original song was called ‘Us and Them’, while the tour and film is called ‘Us + Them’.
“It’s not a mistake. It’s a subtle modification. The original ‘and’ was not necessarily inclusive. It was highlighting one or the other. The power of ‘+’ sign is additive. It drives home the idea of being united. Together.”
It’s a small and very important detail. It’s language.

If you want to read the newsletter I was going to write about … ‘🖇️ Rewriting History’

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 05:32:33 +1200

I didn’t see the sign above this graphic saying no photography until after I took it.

Then again, there was nothing to say you couldn’t publish it if you had.

I was more taken with the ‘consistency’ of the advice as to how you should pack and travel.

To be clear - not taken at 🖇️ Heathrow.

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 19:38:05 +1200

Finally! Can sit down, ‘avec l’ordinateur’, and fix the broken posts and links that have been posted on 🖇️ my blog these past few days.

Thankyou for your patience.

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 23:22:24 +1200

And so we hit ‘30’ - 🖇️ September Challenge Completed.

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 10:37:08 +1200

📸 230930 🖇️ #MBSept

What a way to end the series … a treasure indeed.

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:10:22 +1200

📸 230929 🖇️ #MBSept

Bulbs that improve the contrast.

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 16:58:10 +1200

📸 230928 🖇️ #MBSept

workout - not many of these in this library!

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 17:32:26 +1200

📸 230927 🖇️ #MBSept

(Em)Bracelets also available .. they are the ones on the left.

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 17:19:41 +1200

📸 230926 🖇️ #MBSept

Beverage line 1 - where ‘Establishment 1’ could teach ‘Establishment 2’ a thing or two about attracting a crowd.

Beverage line 2 - where ‘Establishment 2’ could teach ‘Establishment 1’ a thing or two about providing a relaxed environment.

There’s always a balance!

Bonus? The word ‘beverage’ appears in both photographs.

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 03:21:22 +1200

Just updated my ‘🖇️ Places I have lived and visited’ list to include Poland. Got here last night … heading back on Sunday,

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 03:10:26 +1200

It takes a lot of energy not to trust someone.

.. 🖇️ same friend

Heathrow Is So Special … And Not In A Good Way.

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 21:39:31 +1200

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. Some items thrown away … like a small bottle of perfume, creams etc. Some items packaged up and in around 48 hours you can go online - pay the ransom fee and have it shipped to an address in the UK .. good job we had one.

They wanted to confiscate the medications .. no we don’t have the prescriptions with us, but if someone dies are you prepared to accept the consequences?

In the end, one small bottle of perfume thrown away was the most expensive item, but maybe 10 others also disposed of … several other bottles packaged up into a plastic bag … in the next couple of days, we can log on … pay the ransom and have the balance shipped to the UK address. It was totally unclear why;

some items were destroyed
others were repackaged to be sent ‘home’
whilst others were given to me, so I could travel with them … Jax couldn’t

I asked if we had checked the bag, would it have been ok? No problem at all sir.

And then I just couldn’t resist. Can you explain why all of these containers are a problem … after all, they are all below the publicised amounts allowed. Oh yes sir… that’s not the problem, there are just too many of them. So, I went in to ask … where do I find the regulation that describes the total number off containers am I allowed?

Blank looks.

“Leave it John”

Adding insult to injury … get to the gate and told that it is a full flight … ‘that bag’ needs to be checked in.

🖇️ The Full Story Starts Here

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:21:01 +1200

📸 230925 🖇️ #MBSept

We learn about flares very early.

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 20:43:45 +1200

📸 230924🖇️ #MBSept

Maybe the most famous belt to certain aficionados?

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 02:07:22 +1200

📸 230923🖇️ #MBSept

With Champagne you could have not just ‘a day in a life’ … but more importantly ‘a life in a day’.

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 00:49:41 +1200

📸 230922🖇️ #MBSept

This is ‘The Road to Hana’ … just not the one that everyone else travels on … maybe because a different part of it is ‘giving way to the Ocean’?

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 02:28:28 +1200

📸 230921🖇️ #MBSept

Did the Elephant fall in .. or is it climbing out?

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 01:30:59 +1200

📸 230920🖇️ #MBSept

Disruption isn’t new. Disruption isn’t always about Silicon Valley. Disruption isn’t ’American’. Imagine the disruption to people’s lives in the tiny hamlet of Akaroa when this was installed in 1901.

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 21:37:25 +1200

📸 230919🖇️ #MBSept

Looking down on the edge of the world.

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 22:51:31 +1200

📸 230918🖇️ #MBSept

You might not think of wine as fabric, but with the right wine in the right hands, it can be just that … if not the very foundation of ‘good society’. Clearly the French agree. You just have to read the label.

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:45:14 +1200

🎵 Back in the day, a gentleman by name of Pete Frame produced two stunning 📚books … Rock Family Trees. Hand drawn ‘family trees’ of Rock Giants at the time.

I know of Theo Travis because of his work over the years with Steven Wilson, but also as a performer in his own right and then most recently with Soft Machine, which is how he came to write 🖇️ John Marshall’s obit’.

Family Trees tend to be very hierarchical, so I plugged the two threads together and then added 50 years of humanity.

‘Hierarchy’ is old school. ‘Networked’ is new school’.

How cool would it be to choose (say) 50 musicians like Theo and build networks of

the people he has played with (studio and live) as
one offs or over a prolonged period of time and
inside bands and as a solo artist

It needs to be someone like Theo … a wide enough eclectic career to be interesting but not so overwhelming it becomes meaningless. For example someone like Bowie would just be a page of lines.

Just #SpitBallingHere

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 03:25:41 +1200

🔗 Russell Brand: In Plain Sight review – so many red flags ignored for so long.

From demeaning sexual remarks on radio to offering his assistant naked to Jimmy Savile, every disturbing detail of this cogent documentary makes it mind-boggling that these alleged abuses have taken so long to surface.

Exactly.

🖇️ 🔎 Branded

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 03:07:15 +1200

📸 230917🖇️ #MBSept

Our first promotion of Stop Child Traffic was as intense as the intense chocolates that made up the floor prizes at the IIW. But nowhere near as intense as the next three years.

P.S. … we know the chocolates were intense … it says so, right there on the packet.

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 04:12:15 +1200

I am no fan of Brand … as I have 🖇️ 🔎 previously touched on … so this comes as no surprise. Of course, I have no idea of the truth and we don’t yet know the story … but where there’s smoke etc etc.

🔗 Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse.

🔗 Just some of his shit.

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 03:17:20 +1200

📸 230916🖇️ #MBSept

Oof just what was needed. Wish it was every day … ‘needed’ or not.

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 00:00:27 +1200

📸 230915🖇️ #MBSept

it’s the ’Red Fort’ … How much more red can it be?

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 02:42:19 +1200

📸 230914🖇️ #MBSept

Pretty sure this qualifies as a statue. I mean, I’ve got others, but to riff on the words of Mr. Dundee …

Call that a statue? This is a statue.

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 04:53:58 +1200

📸 230913🖇️ #MBSept

The ‘glow’ might not immediately be apparent - but it is there.

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 08:34:10 +1200

📸 230912🖇️ #MBSept

Don’t Panic

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 04:03:29 +1200

📸 230911 🖇️ #MBSept

Released in 2011, 🔗🎵 The Floyd Retrospective is itself old enough to be a retrospective, but in any case, this footage is not part of it, because it has just been rediscovered.

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 04:41:53 +1200

📸 230910 🖇️ #MBSept

Not my cycle.

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 08:10:40 +1200

📸 230909 🖇️ #MBSept

A little north of Auckland these is something called Sculptereum, and in one of the corners of Sculptereum, there is an installation that includes one of my favorite quotes.

Music [is] an art form that transcends language.

💬 Herbie Hancock

People: Cody

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 09:36:45 +1200

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. The doctors recommended he have surgery. He went through the surgery and ‘radio’ and ‘chemo’. “Let’s see” they said.

A year later in 2018, the doctors did a PET Scan, and found ‘some more’, so they recommended he have surgery and ‘radio’ and ‘chemo’. “Let’s see” they said.

A year later in 2019, the doctors did a PET Scan, and found ‘some more’, so they recommended he have surgery and ‘radio’ and ‘chemo’. “Let’s see” they said.

He got his clearance a year later in 2020, and as I write, it is 2023. Finally he is three years clear.

He is such a positive, focussed, alive person … despite not having eaten solid food for 5 years. Despite having to grind the pills he needs to take daily into a powder before he can swallow them. Despite having lost so much of his throat where the surgeon had cut and cut and cut … to remove the cancer. Despite having had his vocal cords so damaged that the raspy, quiet speech is now his voice. Despite no longer having any of this teeth left because of the radiation therapy. Despite all of this and so much more … like going through all of this totally alone.

His positivity was absolutely awe inspiring.

No ‘poor me’. No ‘why me’. No ‘sad face’. Just happy and grateful to be alive - and alive he most certainly is. Living life as much to the full as he can as he put it.

—

All of this resonated deeply.

My cancer diagnosis was January 2021. It was identical. Both of us were ‘T2, stage 4’, with three significant differences.

I did not have surgery. My doctors said it was inoperable.
I was in New Zealand, not the US. They told me that I didn’t have time to get back and ‘start all over again’.
I was not alone. 🔗 I had Jax by my side every step of the way.

As of now, it looks like we beat it … having got my two year clearance just a few weeks ago.

That said at the time, hospitalized twice, in the first visit, Jax was told to be prepared for me ‘not to make it’. I was warned that everything that Cody is experiencing could be me plus, needing a cane to walk, maybe even a wheelchair. For me, I have essentially blocked this all out (my way of coping), so this served as a massive wake up call … a bigger one than I experienced when I walked into a new doctor who looked past me waiting for ‘John’ … expecting to see me hobbling in at best. Or another doctor here in the US who knew my background from the advance files that he had received and was stunned that they hadnt operated and ‘looked this good’.

Sure I have side effects, some of which I am told will be with me for the rest of my life, but compared to Cody … so insignificant that I shouldn’t mention it. I tend not to, but sometimes people ask.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!’”

💬 Hunter S Thompson

.. I try, but ain’t nothing compared to Cody who is doing just that … in Spades.

This is a story from my occasional series ‘🖇️ Travels Without Charley’ - my small ‘homage’ to John Steinbeck. The names are changed to protect the innocent, but they are all true and based on conversations I have had with people that I have met around the world … and who’s story resonates.

This particular one - more than any other in the published (and unpublished) series - resonated more than any other.

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 02:26:05 +1200

📸 230908 🖇️ #MBSept

I approached today’s prompt with apprehension. ’Yonder’ for goodness sake. But I 🖇️ stuck to my guns, took a deep breath, opened photos and entered ‘yonder’ into the search. Just a single image came up.

Initially it made no sense. But look closely and all is revealed.

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 03:56:03 +1200

📸 230907 🖇️ #MBSept

Sometimes the panorama setting just doesn’t do justice.

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 12:21:03 +1200

I asked ChatGPT to read 🖇️ my post and give me a 200 character summary.

This blog questions if institutions can be founders. It argues founders are individuals, while organizations serve as vehicles for change, relying on teams for success. Established companies often struggle to innovate.

Not bad.

Why Large Organizations Often Fail To ‘Innovate’, Where ‘Tiny Companies’ Succeed.

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 11:37:47 +1200

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.

In Summary

I asked ChatGPT to summarize the post. 🖇️ In 200 characters AND 200 words … not by usual gorgeous style 🤣 - but not wrong.

My Reply

The piece was good and I wanted to add my two cents, since on initial read I found it confusing. My interpretation of the core premise is to better understand some of the reasons behind why large organizations often fail to ‘innovate’, where ‘tiny companies’ succeed.

The confusion I had started in the title of the piece, ‘Can Institutions Be Founders’ … which extended into the piece itself.

Confused because IMHO, founders are people and whether an organization is big or small, new or old, innovative or staid … they are not people, though they are made up of people … and processes, strategies, plans …

… yes … AND … the organization doesn’t allow the founder to behave like one.

PayPal, to randomly choose an innovative start up, was an organization with a large number of subsequently famous founders that went on to start many other successful innovative companies that changed the landscape of business. The founders were/are people. It is people that are the innovators. The startups, the organizations are the vehicles that enable that change.

One of the great unspoken truths of the start up world is that despite our worship of the individual, we ignore that they don’t do it by themselves. They have an idea and build a company made up of many people to realize their vision. The team all contribute to the organizations success. Don’t look to me to document the traits of a great ‘founder’, plenty of places to check that list, just to say that an organization can allow those traits to soar and create … or they can kill it.

Jobs, Gates, Ellison … insert your ‘hero of choice’ … are great at what they do/did because of their original vision, their leadership, their focus, their tenacity, their communications, their sales ability and so much more … but none of them succeeded without their team to realize their ambition.

In other words .. it is the Organisation that delivers the vision.

So the real question is why does it more often than not, take an organization called a startup to deliver those transformative innovations rather than an existing organization? (Yes - there are exceptions.) Remember Gates and Ellison seperately out innovated IBM, Jobs, Xerox, FinTech startups are leaving Banks and Financial Institutions in the dust, Bezos destroyed the bookstores … it’s an epidemic .. but we associate the founders name with the innovation and success .. and forget that without the team of people they assembled they could never execute.

With that caveat out of the way, arguably Ellison could have joined IBM and … with an instant team, and finance ‘ready to go’ would likely have failed. Bezos could have joined Barnes and Noble … and failed, the Collison brothers could have joined Citi .. and failed, Jobs … you get the picture.

They would have failed, not because they didn’t have what it takes, because clearly they do, but rather because because the organization would have clipped their wings.

Why?

The topic has been very well studied and reported on in a book called 🔗 Zone To Win by 🔗 Geoffrey Moore possibly more famous for 🔗 Crossing The Chasm

In the pages of ‘Zone To Win’ you will find a pretty solid analysis of why established organizations fail to innovate. Turns out the first job is to identify what kind of innovation we are talking about …

… and build from there.

(Interesting to note that when we talk about ‘innovation’ our minds automatically jumps to what Geoff describes as ‘disruptive innovation’ on the left in the diagram, but there are also ‘sustaining innovations’, which tend to operate inside those large organizations.)

Meanwhile, the founders build their organizations in their own image, make their own rules, and relentlessly drive their vision over years … sometimes to the frustration of people inside this companies who have their own ideas as to what could happen. For example both Marc Benioff and Tom Siebel are Oracle alumni that had the vision of ‘software for sales’ respectively (not respectfully) creating Salesforce and Siebel. A vision that at the time was not shared by Larry, so they left. Subsequently LJE became a believer having been an early investor in Salesforce, launching NetSuite and eventually buying Siebel.

In the end, I don’t believe that Phil and I are that far apart in thinking. His summary of the seven people traits are not wrong … but hand in hand with that goes the need for the organization to not just support the fledgling initiative but to actively defend it from the cuckoos who inhabit the rest of the organization.

.. and a framework to unpack the challenge and work out what an organization can do about it.

If there is interest I can expand a lot further, but for now, if you have got this far, THANKYOU. What do you think?

Please throw in your two cents below and let’s see if together we can make a buck.

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 07:32:06 +1200

Whenever MicroBlog launches one of their challenges, it takes me a while to lock into the format I want to standardize on for the series. I think I finally have it nailed for 🖇️ #MBSept

Key rule for my entries this time round is that I use the prompt to search my photo library and use the ‘best’ picture for that entry.

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 03:22:54 +1200

📸 230906 🖇️ #MBSept

A well, not a stairwell - but definitely in Wellington.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Silos To Publish Their Thinking.

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 02:54:45 +1200

🖇️ 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. When that happens, I start a new post on said silo .. where there isn’t a character limit .. but I find myself doing that less and less … because why do I want to give my original thinking to a silo that stores undifferentiated commodities like bulk chaff? That’s why I don’t write ‘content’ …

But these days there’s even more reason not to use the Silos for being the prime origin of your IP, your work, your thinking.

🖇️ The short ‘case study’ just yesterday is all about the problem.

My next post started as a reply to a very good LinkedIN post .. and is a prime example of the ‘too long’ problem. I’ll link to here when it is finished.

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 02:20:13 +1200

📸 230905 🖇️ #MBSept

They say that sometimes you can’t see the forest for the tree .. I know what they mean.

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:57:08 +1200

📸 230904 🖇️ #MBSept

Orange isn’t my go to fruit for a good cocktail, but they do still work.

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:23:45 +1200

📸 230903 🖇️ #MBSept

There is nothing more precious

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 04:44:12 +1200

📸 230902 🖇️ #MBSept

At an Unconference buildup is the process of assembling the agenda.

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 20:02:15 +1200

📸 230901 🖇️ #MBSept

An extract of some abstract wallpaper.

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 06:28:03 +1200

📺 Secret Invasion

… and while we are on the topic of ‘🖇️ back stories’ of movie franchises … it’s got Samuel J - so definitely not bad - but also not the greatest.

Information on Reelgood

‘All’ My TV Show Reviews

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 06:20:45 +1200

📺 Obi-Wan Kenobi

Historically not been a big watcher of the Star Wars franchise. Sure I have watched them - but not ‘religiously’ - so expert in the story arc I am not. That said - I really like the back story series that they have been producing. (Even 🖇️ Boba Fett - despite my review at the time and definitely 🖇️ The Mandalorian)

Information on Reelgood

‘All’ My TV Show Reviews

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 05:09:31 +1200

If you are keeping up, you will know that I use 🔗 to highlight links to other places on the web. This morning I am introducing 🖇️ to highlight links to this blog. Like here. - there will need to be a limited amount of revisiting older posts to ‘make it so’. But the ‘rule’ is already in place.

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 11:54:58 +1200

CSS Frustrations - hope some passing good samaritan might help …

Can anybody tell me why I can’t get the ‘cite’ element on this page : 🖇️ https://john.philpin.com/2020/01/05/people-kevin.html to move over to the right?

It SHOULD look the same as this

🖇️ https://john.philpin.com/2023/06/24/robert-f-kennedy.html - where I have used my usual tag ‘attribution’

I have tried

cite
p.cite and
blockquote.cite (I know - I know)

David Merfield and Blot Once More Deliver. Simple Solution - but QUITE BRILLIANT

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 07:59:04 +1200

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.

The current method is to take note of whatever the content is - open up dropbox and navigate to the file, which may - or may not - be as easy as it sounds. For me - because of how I structured my dropbox - it is generally a pain in the neck.

No More.

Thanks to David I know have a bookmark that he wrote for me.

Now I can click on that book mark and voila - there is the dropbox file.

Let me know if you would like the code.

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 07:14:43 +1200

🎛️ About ’That’ Film

I wrote about it back in mid July. 🖇️ Smelt fishy then. Still smells fishy.

Kafka’s podcast goes ‘off piste’ - but well worth it as it explores what exactly was/is going on with the movie - that’s in part one. In part two - the ‘other side’.

The Full Podcast:

🎙️ Explained: Sound Of Freedom

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 09:56:31 +1200

🖇️ That said …. there’s more.

Not just ‘topped’.

‘Tailed’

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 06:46:58 +1200

The county of Maui hosts a number of tech m/billionaires with ownership of land counted in tens of thousands of acres. Hell, one of them owns 96% of the island just across the strait from Lahaina.

I do hope they find their way to seriously helping the island get through this and then really recover … and not just go live in one of their other houses while things ‘settle down’ — whilst offering ‘thoughts and prayers’.

🖇️ Related

🌺

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:44:10 +1200

I’m no fan of CardiB’s music .. but with her all the way on her 🔗 reaction to the dick in the Audience who threw his drink at her … it really is time to hold people accountable for their actions … 🖇️ like Gaga.

Cracked It. He is a Misogynist. Pure and Simple.

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 05:58:44 +1200

… 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.

The Story

It had been a long hot day, Margarita’s and a bite to eat were necessary - so we decided to hit a local bar for Happy Hour. Jax was finishing off some errand, so I went ahead, sat down in a couple of corner seats, ordered a Margarita, some ‘bites’ and waited. I looked around and observed the other patrons - you know - as you do.

All was what we would expect, except for one guy who’s behavior with the bar staff was weird. He clearly had an issue about how he was being served. ’Spidey senses up’ … he was definitely more antagonistic to the one woman bar keep than the two male ones. Just an observation. Thought nothing of it. No words were exchanged.

15 minutes in, Jax appeared, extended the food order, modified the margarita order (as she does, it is her prerogative) and we were off to the races.

Not sure how it all started, but before I knew it Jax was in conversation with this same dude. I paid no attention - just earwigging. Climate Change, Immigration, American Exceptionalism, Biden’s lies, Democratic corruption were all terms that he brought into the conversation seemingly from nowhere. I nudged Jax and suggested she just let him go. He wasn’t worth the time. She wanted to explore. Before long I was brought in to the flow - since he was making some pretty outlandish statements about Climate Change … I offered an opinion … and was rapidly ‘closed down’. I disengaged. Jax continued, developing the ‘conversation’ to how climate change has a strong link to human migration and so trafficking (very much her world), and that rapidly morphed into him going on about ‘IMMIGRATION’, ‘BIDEN’, ‘WALL’ and … Jax pointed out to him that whatever your politics, it is clear that … he cut her off - asking her how she knew more than ‘experts’.

I couldn’t resist, so I once more interjected … and asked whether he wanted to listen to what she had to say, because she actually is an expert. He shut up for two seconds and then asked her if she had seen ‘that movie’ … I drifted off and he’s once again in full force telling here that ‘she is no expert - and how can she possibly know what she is talking about … I tried to pull her out again. Failed …

The dude went on about something or other … I didn’t care what and pointedly got out my phone and posted this (to clarify - the ‘they’ referred to in that post was actually Jax - not sure why I said ‘they’).

The ~~conversation~~ lecture continued and then he leant over to me and said ‘high five’? Holding out his hand, grinning. I ignored him. ‘fist bump’? … changing his hand formation.

I continued to ignore him and Jax told him that she knows me and ‘he isn’t going to do that’.

His voice raised (I assume that was so he made sure that I heard) …

You see this is the problem - how can we ever discuss things we disagree about if people don’t engage.

I had had enough and asked the barkeep if there was another part of the bar we could move to. (No, sorry, full).

A quiet exchange with Jax … and then I looked directly at the dude and said …

“You are spouting such a pile of crap that I am no longer in this conversation.”

… and walked out to the deck.

I was there for about ten minutes and got a text from Jax to meet her ‘downstairs’.

I did.

The next few days, Jax kept going back to the conversation. Why was he like that? Why was he so rude? How could I have been different? (She’s good at that - I should learn from her more.) Slowly what happened in those ten minutes emerged … sadly he had got to her … like crap on your pants.

That was last week - thankfully, she now seems to have got over it.

I haven’t. I better not see him again.

What follows I can only report on because Jax stayed for an additional ten minutes.

He continued with his monologue.
At one point called the barman over and told him to offer ‘whatever they want to drink’ to the ‘lovely young ladies at the other end of the bar’.
At no point did he ask Jax (who he was talking to and sat right beside him) if he could buy her a drink (though for the record, she would have refused).
At one point he said to here “You never told us who you are” … she was two sentences in when he closed her down with “Sugar - I don’t need your resume”.
Jax learnt that he was (in his words)
- “a very successful businessman from the oil industry”
- “very rich”
- no clarification was to why either of these unsubstantiated facts were important to the conversation (a word in this case that I define very loosely).

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 09:19:28 +1200

I hope this isn’t AI …

AND - if you don’t want to click through to Twitter I understand - so 🖇️ click here.

Dear Lady Gaga - you are my hero. ♥️♥️♥️ pic.twitter.com/RfyqxffFmU
— ᒪᗩᑎᑕᗴ 🏳️‍🌈 (@LanceUSA70) July 20, 2023

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 04:00:02 +1200

Gosh darn … I was so taken by 🔗 this conversation today that it rather unusually derailed my routine. 🖇️ I am now back on track … and also rather unusually (first time?) this morning my extract is from the source material, not Ryan’s summary.

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 05:03:40 +1200

🎬 It would be around 1,315 days - cant be more exact, because I am not sure of the first date, since I last went to a Theater to watch a movie.

The movie back in late 2019 was Knives Out, yesterday’s was Asteroid City. (I only reviewed 🖇️ Knives Out 2) - 3 stars and flagged as better than 1 if that gives you a clue.

Both coincidentally featured an ‘ensemble cast’. (I don’t make a habit of those kinds of movies.)

But the funny thing is that we saw last night’s movie with the same couple that we saw Knives Out. That is the only time we have been to the movies with those friends and the only time we have been to that particular Theater.

Like pandemic bookends.

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 12:13:07 +1200

I think Louisiana has a Dem as Governor and the rest are Rethuglicans. Just earlier today I referenced 🖇️ North Carolina sailing towards being a second Florida.

Hold that in your mind as you read that the 🔗 Decline in Budweiser Beer Sales has lead to the Closure of Two Bottle Factories in the South. … specifically the closures are in those two States. In that same article I read …

Munhall also said the closures may also be connected to a conservative boycott of Bud Light.

Which in turn got me to wondering how many conservatives in those two states helped impact those closures through the boycott are now directly jobless or will soon be suffering financially because of the inevitable knock on effect.

I think I might enter the entire Republican voting base for the Darwin Awards.

Seperately, it is increasingly clear that the Dems should just step back and watch the ‘alternative’ just self destruct.

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 09:44:48 +1200

🔗 Is North Carolina Going to Become Like Ron DeSantis’s Florida?

… certainly seems to be 🖇️ heading that way.

🎥 Extraction, 2020 - ★★★½

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 04:24:06 +1200

🖇️ See Extraction 2!

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 07:13:45 +1200

🖇️ Here and 🔗 here and here … clearly🍎 are not listening to me.

But Apple notes does have smart lists on iOS - why not Photos?

It’s not as if Photos is missing the needed underpinnings.

Search versus Search

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 07:03:53 +1200

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. Not sure what he is doing behind the scenes to make that work - but like all of Hitchens - it just worked out of the box.

But … BUT … ever since installing @sod ’s plugin, having two searches has annoyed me, but I lived with it. Although I knew how to hide the built in search in CSS, I did NOT know how to identify the element that needed hiding, Until NOW.

Thanks to Jason I can now find and identify the elements I need to drop into the CSS. (Again, I new all about ‘Inspect’, but for whatever reason I had a mental block when it came to finding the specifics.)

No longer - and as a result, I now have only 1 🖇️ Search on my site.

No idea if @sod is reading this - maybe I will ping him separately - and find out if he is working on an update - because I do have a few ideas.

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 06:31:00 +1200

🔗 CNN chief Chris Licht to leave cable news network days after Atlantic profile

Good Riddance.

and again on

and finally on

Fri, 26 May 2023 12:34:20 +1200

🎵 Mirror To The Sky By Yes … as I type on my second time through it … so that’s good … right?

… update. 🖇️ Review

📺 The Madame Blanc Mysteries ★★★

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:14:41 +1200

It’s one of those ‘little shows’. Lovely and gentle in itself. No deep mysteries - just one to gently unwind to. BONUS - the theme music has ear wormed itself into my brain - and is embedded.

🖇️ More on that here.

Series 1 ✅

Series 2 ✅

Series 3 ✅

Series 4 ✅

The Madame Blanc Mysteries on 🔗 Reelgood

🔄🖇️ Review Ratings

Setting Categories Automatically On MicroBlog

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:23:21 +1200

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. It works.

Of course if you have a lot of posts (sorry), it might take some time - but it does seem to get there. So. after a while, when I view the categories I can see the post count increasing. And - when I look at the posts through the lens of Mars Edit I can see all the new posts where the category has been applied.

All good. UNTIL. I noticed that though every thing SEEMED to be working - actually, over on the web site, the categories were not being allocated. Turns out patience is a virtue - because after several days (I kid you not) elapsed, it seemed that everything was also working on the site. All good.

( @manton - is this time delay expected behavior?)

All good until I set up the filter to

find text = ‘youtube.com/watch' and add that post to the category ‘myyoutubes’.

The wait aside, it ran like a dream. Except it didn’t. I realized that posts that definitely contained links back to YouTube were not being picked up. I ran the filter again - and waited. TWICE. Nothing changed.

This morning I discovered why.

Turns out that there is a second URL format that YouTube uses … youtu.be

I am guessing that the youtube syntax varies depending on whether you are on a computer versus iOS or something similar. Anyway, I then set up a second filter that adds the post to the same category - and … it is now working (wait aside)

BTW, the really cool thing is that I also use the plugin ‘Lite YouTube for Micro.blog by @rknightuk - so those links automatically render as embedded videos on my site. 🖇️ Say, like this one - which at time of typing still hasn’t been correctly allocated its category - but I am keeping an eye on it.

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 07:39:14 +1200

5th Session of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic starts in 25 minutes … live conversation with a few of us across 3 continents who like to read books … let me know if you’d like to join us .. I’ll send you the zoom link.

Tue, 24 May 2022 22:07:27 +1200

I promise that I didn’t plan it this way but the last three meetings of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic differ in length by only 14 seconds.

Mon, 16 May 2022 12:04:47 +1200

📚Great Meeting Of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic today - wonderful book recommendations that I am documenting. Notes to follow.

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 17:05:05 +1200

📚 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic Invite was just sent out for May 15th/16th - let me know if you didn’t receive it.

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 21:44:34 +1200

📚 Just looking out ahead and realized that I still need to come up with my two books for the next meeting of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic.

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:48:25 +1200

I have closed and archived a number of blogs I had in different places over the past year.

They all now sit in words.philpin.com.

During ‘🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic meeting’ this morning, I finally decided to point an obsidian vault at the blot folder - and see what comes out.

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 07:41:26 +1200

📚My Goodness Time Flies …

🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic is upon us again!

Watch out for the deets in your email and calendars ….

Notes Reminding Us About Notes

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 16:47:56 +1200

Two short posts that arrived almost back to back in the multivarious reading apps that seem to be multiplying on my iPad.

The first came from Derek Silvers about why we should write plain text files.

The ‘shouldness’of that instruction cant be more emphasised. All that he says I do know, but it’s good to be reminded. But, even then it still doesn’t stop me from writing a lot of stuff in a couple of the most proprietary formats out there .. Apple’s ‘Pages’ and ‘Keynote’.

YES Keynote … it isn’t just for presentations, I use it to create simple graphics and structured workbooks.

The second was Note-taking became a full-time job, so I stopped

Last year out of nowhere, I became aware and interested in Obsidian. I learnt about Zeitelkasten. I discovered that Obsidian was just the latest application that promised to be my salvation.

I haven’t stopped using it - but boy did that post resonate!

Important to 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:58:07 +1200

With thanks to @richnewman and his demo on 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic earlier this week, I find myself looking at DevonTHINK again.

The price mentioned on the day was a couple of hundred bucks - but it looks like there is a version at $100 - will I be disappointed?

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 15:00:46 +1200

🧶 📚The second session of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic is coming up - delighted that @artkavanagh will be hosting. Sadly @ton will not be able to make it, so his session will need to run at a future event.

Otherwise, looks like we are all in for a good session on the 6th/7th March.

We MUST Abandon the Language of the Market to Reclaim our Humanity

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:18:14 +1200

🔗 Thomas Keneally’s 2020s vision: We must abandon the language of the market to reclaim our humanity

I posted this link at the time it was published (2020).

It surfaced the other day through my DayONE - and I decided to repost it in the category 🖇️ ‘Language Is Important’- ‘Tom’ and I are on the same page.

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 16:34:01 +1200

‘Language Is Important' - a new category now available on this blog.

LATER

Category depricated - that said 🔗 🔎 click here - and all those posts re categorized will come up - along with a lot more.

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 14:56:42 +1200

“If, at the end of your show you say “Available where you get podcasts,” then my friend, you have a podcast. If you have to say “Only available on Spotify” (or some other exclusive service), good for you, but it’s not a podcast.”

💬 Dave Winer

… and I very much agree with him.

Language is important … and I am done with Corporates hijacking language so to appear better than they are.

🖇️ 🔎 More ‘Language' posts here.

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 15:35:49 +1200

🔗 The Crypto Crash Has Destroyed a Trillion Dollars in Wealth

I question the use of the word ‘wealth’.

The $1Trillion came from nowhere … and now it’s gone back to nowhere.

🖇️ 🔎 More ‘Language' posts here.

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 13:03:03 +1200

Building on an earlier thought Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended …

Bit by bit we are being divided and ‘taken out’ …

United we stand … divided we fall!

🖇️ 🔎 More ‘Language' posts here.

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 07:29:26 +1200

If you are part of 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic - check your inbox.

🚧Rebuilding My Micro Blog

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 09:56:14 +1200

By simply adding stuff / pages and plugins to my blog without thinking something eventually had to break - and it did. My thanks to @manton and @pimoore for pointing out the error. Turns out Hitchens doesn’t include a ‘Replies’ page - which caused my archive to disappear.

Flatearth time. I mean - everything. (Barring two hidden pages being used for 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic ).

The Rebuild

Install Hitchens ✅ - thankyou @pimoore
(need to move my footer into Hitchens footer.)
Install Conversation ✅ - thankyou @sod
Install Surprise Me ✅ - thankyou @sod
Reply By EMail ✅ - thankyou @sod

Next Steps

Install Bookshelves - courtesy @moondeer
Install Webmentions
Install Cards - courtesy @moondeer

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 07:16:05 +1200

📚Promoted on Substack this morning

Struck me as an interesting read for a number of Micro Bloggers including 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic

What To Read

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 17:23:34 +1200

📚 🪦 🔗12 Authors Who Died In 2021

Of interest to *🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 10:53:15 +1200

🧶 📚[This is what 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic is all about - so far!](https://www.craft.do/s/q4t5GKyMPcWXCp)

If you click through - and are interested … there is a link to register at the top of the page.

// @artkavanagh @pimoore

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 09:45:26 +1200

📚 🚧 Funny how you come across stuff that is so cool - and then it disappears again … such as the Literature Map

I used it to create a 🔗 series of 7 posts last year and then it got lost.

Maybe something to use in the 🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic?

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 09:21:47 +1200

🖇️ 🔎The Readers Republic Signal Group Is Now 13 Strong

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 11:56:09 +1200

🔗 Joe Manchin, who is holding up crucial climate change initiatives in Biden’s reconciliation bill, collects $500,000 a year from coal stocks dividends: report

Follow the money.

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 13:07:42 +1200

2021

“For the party to move forward, we got to move the party with Donald Trump. There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him. That’s just a fact. And I think we got a decent chance of coming back in 2022. But we can’t do it without the President.”

Lindsay Graham, 2021

2016

“If we nominate Trump we will get destroyed. And we will deserve it.”

Lindsay Graham, 2016

UPDATED - 26-01-27

🖇️ Here

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 16:21:39 +1200

🖇️ archive.philpin.com

seems a more appropriate URL for my second blot site than

🖇️ archive.philpin.com

UPDATE : 2024|04|22

Both those links are now updated - since everything is now at https://archive.philpin.com

UPDATE : 2024|04|22

Both those links are now dead

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:18:01 +1200

🔗 Want

Wed, 20 May 2020 19:04:45 +1200

It’s a ‘Sound’ update!

Convocast : 6 ✅

BUNKER-19 : 4 ✅

Snickelcast : 9 ✅

Snickelcast : 10 ✅

OK - @macgenie … I’m ready for the podcast challenge!

Wed, 20 May 2020 18:23:07 +1200

I don’t really write fiction. At least fiction that sees the light of day ….

🔗 The Letter is an exception. Published yesterday on BizCatalyst.

I decided to 🖇️ narrate it in the latest episode of BUNKER-19.

Wed, 20 May 2020 16:23:52 +1200

BUNKER-19 - Episode 4

The series continues - but Episode 4 had to go up to YouTube - too big to hangout in Micro.Blog

🖇️ The BUNKER-19 Archives

The Defence We Have Is Simple - A Snicklecast

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 17:07:51 +1200

A snickelcast highlighting the solution and what can go wrong.

🖇️ The Text

Corporate Speak

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 12:11:29 +1200

I have a problem with ‘Corporate Speak’. Putting aside how ‘we the people’ seem to adopt corporate speak as part of our conversation - how else does ‘content’ become part of our day to day vocabulary? (Although that is an entirely different topic.)

Here’s the thing … the same organisations that use phrases like;

‘Share of Wallet’

‘Attacking and Targeting a Market’ (that’s you and me folks) and breaking down those

‘Adoption Barriers’

‘Taking the hill’

‘Users’ not ‘People’

And have something called a ‘War Room’ !!! - you know the place where Marketing meet to plan how to extract out last cent. Anyway these organisations are exactly the same organisations that say things like

‘Your Passion Is Our Satisfaction’,

‘Pleasing People Is Our Motto’ and

‘A Customer Is Always Right’.

Which language do you believe reflects the true nature of the corporation?

Me? I think what is said behind closed doors more often reflects the truth. What is broadcast in public is what they think we want to hear. It’s politics, not business, but isn’t that what happened to Mitt Romney?

This week’s newsletter explores corporate language and asks why have people just blindly adopted it without question? It doesn’t serve us - only the corporation.

🔗 Read the whole thing here.

🖇️ 🔎 .. and much more on what I think about language here.

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 07:10:36 +1200

Sorry - just because we voted you in, or you own a newspaper or are a big strapping tech jock … whatever … you are not ‘an elite’ … another example of language being co-opted to maintain the status quo.

🖇️ 🔎 More ‘Language' posts here.

Sun, 24 Feb 2019 07:18:24 +1200

🖇️ Published this two years ago today … trying to put context around world events and what they mean to young people and why it might be different to old …

Words and Pictures ... There's Room For Both

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 08:55:00 +1200

In my world, there is even a space for both!

Pictures - they say - are worth a thousand words.

Words however are very specific and in many ways less open to interpretation (lawyers aside!!)

So, I am going for both.

Here on my muttering stream - i have oft’ referenced the closing down of my different social spaces, so might I welcome you to :

Words - now Archives - the lead content on this space are words - sometimes supported by pictures … but not always. (UPDATED LINK)

and

Pictures - now Archives- the lead content on this space are pictures - sometimes supported by words … but not always.

Both are based on Blot.IM

I will also publish a picture of how it all connects on … where else … Archives !

Also to come soon … Sounds.

UPDATE 2024 04 22

More broken links identified in the archives.

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 07:09:00 +1200

🚧 Micro Monday Recommendation Number ‘FOUR’

🧶 just a reminder that I keep my recommendation history here …. in case you are wondering who else to follow.

John Philpin

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 05:36:00 +1200

Two John Philpin’s? It might get confusing.

Yes we have talked on the phone

Yes we are related (we think)

🔗 This is his philpin site

🖇️ This is one of my philpin sites

This was originally posted to my 1999 stream, which after importing from 1999. seemed to get ‘upset’. So I have moved it here and deleted it there to fix the problem.

Originally posted on ‘river.beyondbridges.net’ : April, 2017