🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
An Afternoon In LA
A little foraging around the hood yesterday afternoon … some observations.
Going by car makes … Teslas had the most unfriendly, aggressive drivers on the road.
To provide context, on one occasion I was mildly surprised when one car jumped the red lights .. red now, not amber … red, only to see a second one accelerate across right on the first car’s tail causing me to swear in shock. After a brief gap, I guess people ‘with the green’ figured it was ok to move … and they all did … only to slam on their breaks as a third car barreled through.
None of the three cars were Teslas … and yet Tesla still won the afternoon’s 🏆🎖️🥇
At the beginning of the expedition, I needed to do a ‘quick’ trip into Costco. As I left, I found myself standing in line with my receipt and cart. The Latino lady with two-children directly in front of me was definitely being ’checked’ as the ’checker’ worked around the cart accounting for each item on the list. It was maybe 7 items … 2 of which were flat packs of water bottles.
I had forgotten this process and had already packed my few items into a box. Watching the detailed reconciliation going on in front of me, I was just thinking about unpacking the box … when she was waved through.
The checker looked at me and just marked the receipt of this old, caucasian male. There was no way he knew what was in my box (X-ray eyes aside).
Later in the Mall, I passed a Tesla store. Back in the day, I remember lines at Tesla stores … This one was empty … other than a couple of staff … maybe all the aggressive dicks in the area already have their Tesla?
Meanwhile, the Apple Store was as full as ever. I quickly found my ‘pencil tips’ but was told I needed to ‘book an appointment’ to buy them … he clearly spotted the horror on my face …
“Or you can check yourself out.”
I had totally missed the sign. The process took me a whole minute. Very efficient. (I know, I know … this has been possible for the last ‘n’ years … but this was actually my first time in an Apple Store for such a minor purchase in nearly 3 1/2 years .. slack needs to be cut)
On my way home I stopped off at a Wholefoods to pick up dinner for the night. Inside the store was a communal eating area with a total footprint equivalent to half the store - including a bar with seats for maybe 25 people. I am sure this also is old news - but again - it’s been 3 1/2 years
New Zealand | Leaving - On A Jet Plane
🔗New Zealand loses appeal to rich foreigners as investor visa numbers plunge..
Maybe they have been reading Rushkoff’s book - and don’t want to be put in the same bag as Peter Thiel?
It was bizarre. I do get called out a lot to do these talks for businesspeople about the digital future. So, it was one of those where they paid me a bunch of money to convince me to spend some jet fuel and leave my home and pontificate, but then instead of taking me out onto the stage, they brought these five guys into the green room and sat around this table and started asking me all these very binary questions about where they should place their bets for the digital future: Bitcoin or Ethereum; VR or AR; and finally, New Zealand or Alaska—where should they invest in land to put their bunker for “the event”?
💬 Douglas Rushkoff
(my bold)But still ….
It’s not just rich foreigners not arriving - it’s ordinary people leaving … again.
All kinds of reasons - but just from my own peculiarly tight Kiwi circle
-
me - of course - though I haven’t abandoned the country completely!
-
a kiwi friend and his wife moved to Portugal in January.
-
a highly networked and successful tech entrepreneur who has built his businesses in New Zealand for the last 30 years, very well connected, recognized by many for his contribution to the country has hit a wall and is looking at the US and The Far East as new opportunities. His words;
“In New Zealand there is zero appetite in thinking beyond the shores of the country.
- an internationally successful VC who had spent the last two years in New Zealand seeking to kick start an incubator and accelerator wrote to me last week;
My overall experience in NZ shows that it is a country that is too small and internally focused to get meaningful traction as an innovator, not impossible, just a smaller pond and appetite …. I plan to build connections in Australia and further regionally in Asian markets this year.
- a good American friend who has lived in Aotearoa for the last 8 years. Again, accomplished and connected and still can’t get local traction, yet without trying is fielding calls from Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.
But there’s more. COVID saw a lot of Kiwis returning ‘home’. COVID has ‘moved on’ (well - we all know it hasn’t - but it is clearly now manageable), net result, the Kiwis are back out on the road again.
Example - just like the UK, there is a severe shortage of healthcare professionals just one of many articles .. a shortage of 4,000 people (this in a country of 5 million people). If a similar ratio were applied to the US, there would be a shortage of over 1/4 million healthcare workers!
Here’s the rub … in my three years in New Zealand I lost count of trained healthcare professionals (and accountants and engineers for that matter) who were driving for taxi companies and Ola. (I am sure that the same applied to Uber - but can’t speak to that, because - well - Uber ). Why? Because New Zealand requires them to go through all their training again. (Not just pass exams - but actually retrain.)
Meanwhile - a Kiwi trained Healthcare professional can fly out of Auckland, land in Sydney, get paid more and have a lower cost of living.
There’s a lot more around the challenges that New Zealand face - which I’ll save for another day - just to leave you with a couple of quotes from Bernard Hickey - a Kiwi journalist and political commentator based in Wellington. (again - my bold.)
Wayne Brown is actually simply expressing a view held by most asset owners and investors in Aotearoa-NZ’s economy, or as I call it, a housing market with bits tacked on. That deeply held and and so-far-extremely-profitable investment strategy is that owning shares or investing in businesses in Aotearoa is vastly inferior to owning land, especially leveraged residential land, and even better if it is residential-zoned land that remains banked and undeveloped. The
Wayne Brown (ed - the new major of Auckland) is being exactly what he is: a property developer who has actually made most of his personal money from land price appreciation on land made valuable through rezoning and paying for water connections at a lower-than-full cost.
Displaying MicroBlog Categories.
Micro Blog categories are badly displayed - there I said it.
In MicroBlog and the New Drafts Plugin - it is unclear - but I think it is oldest to newest created? (In fairness the plugin probably pulls the raw list from the back end somewhere and uses the default.)
The same behavious in the iOS app.
BUT, in the Mac app, categories appear in three columns - and they read left to right on the first line and then the second line etc - NOT down column 1, then column2 etc … who knows which is the right way? Its like a book spine - should you turn your head to read sideways top to bottom OR bottom to top. There is a 99% standard - but still the 1% of spines designed the other way are around.
I read columns like an old newspaper - down first - then across - not across then down as if you are reading a spreadsheet.
In Mars Edit - they are displayed alphabetically - so clearly that is possible.
I have called this out to @manton - and we agreed, I am more than likely an edge case (over 50 categories (don’t judge)), but surely others have this challenge?
It would be good to choose preferred order in settings - but failing that, can we just have them alphabetically like @danielpunkass has them?
/end
📽️ Better Call Saul
Back when I posted about how great Breaking Bad was … let me paraphrase @pratik … “if you though that was good - wait till you try Better Call Saul”.
Then @GramrgednAngel@zirk.us talked about The Atlantic who …
published a series examining it through a Shakespearean tragedy lens and making the argument that the ultimate main character wasn’t Walter, or Jesse, but Skyler.
I just started series 3 of ‘Saul’. Oh my. Tragedy? I don’t know my Shakespeare as well as I could, but Saul has to be a contender. The character is heartbreaking. The relationship with his brother makes me tear up.
I love the back story of Breaking Bad and the various characters emerging that eventually appeared in Breaking Bad.
Superb series.
Sculpture
“I think the relationship of a warm-blooded creature versus an object that is still and silent—which is essentially what I think sculpture is—for me is the sort of fundamentals. Sculpture is in our everyday lives the whole time. Crossing the road with a lorry coming towards you is, in my opinion, a sculptural experience, where you as a flesh-and-blood object [are] up against the thing that isn’t. And one’s emotional and psychological assessment of that all happens in a flash.
To me, there is a big, sculptural presence there because of the way that large lorry is constantly displacing space as it comes towards you—so the track that is left behind, which is now empty, was once filled. And that’s what I think we do when we’re interacting with sculpture: the space is filled. As we walk around it, we are constantly losing an image of it and finding a new image. So quite a large part of what sculpture is, [is] not necessarily visual. And I think that’s quite shocking. [It’s] a state of affairs that we’re assessing.”
💬 Phyllida Barlow
🎥 Luther: The Fallen Sun, 2023 - ★★★★
The story continues and gets weirder, but it’s Idris .. right?
And it all ends with an interesting set up for the next story.
🎵 The Theme Song Of Madam Blanc Is More Of A Mystery Than Any Of The Stories.
The Theme Music for the Madam Blanc mysteries has firmly embedded itself into my brain and I love it. Still do. But who is the artist?
Turns out, a ‘duo’ called ‘Hague and White’. But the White might not be who you think.
I thought ‘the white’ was one ‘Steve White’. You might know him as the drummer for The Style Council and pretty much all the subsequent solo albums of Paul Weller. He clearly has chops in the drumming arena. He is also married to Sally Lindsay - the star of Madame Blanc - and the co writer and creator of the show. (I guess they thought they would keep it in the family).
But no …
The song is actually written by Hague and Joel White - who is also the vocalist. In fact Joel is credited with writing their first (and only album), Alan seems to have come along later.
And who is Joel White? Only Richard Hawley’s cousin!
That explains (so much of it) it.
🎥 Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018 - ★★★★
I’m not big into biopics … but for this I will make an exception and all because of Rami Malik. Quite brilliant in this role.
🎥 Paddington 2, 2017 - ★★★★
Loved the first one. Loved this one. Love the books. In my mind, Paddington can’t go wrong.
🎥 Office Space, 1999 - ★★★★½
Maybe it should-be 5 stars ... but that would mean it couldn’t be improved ... and everything can be improved .. can’t it? How? No idea.
🎥 The Pale Blue Eye, 2022 - ★★★½
3 stars from me, 4 stars from Jax. I likeChristian Bale’s work, I thought the ‘Poe’ character was excellent … but in the end, I didn’t really care, even with ‘twist’ at the end.
🎥 RRR, 2022 - ★★½
I wanted to like it … nay .. love it. I really did. But it was not to be. Definitely extraordinary scenes of ‘spectacularity’ within, but they weren’t enough to create a 3 hour movie and even at under 2 hours would have still been a push. Sorry.
Exploring Tracking Crud in Readwise
This is in Stoop.
I click on the ‘Read On’ link and see this.
BUT - if I save to ‘Read Later' in ‘Readwise’ and then open Readwise, I see this
🔗 The original page (sans the 5 lines of tracking crud)
Here’s what I am wondering.
When I visit the public Readwise link it includes this tracking crud;
which to this untrained bear, seems to be very different tracking crud to Liminals, so there is some rewriting going on?
Why?
And …
If I remove that tracking crud, I can still see the article, so could Readwise automatically remove that tracking crud as they save the link into my library?
🎵 This Is The End
I wrote an email this morning, responding to something that had been sent to me, announcing - and I paraphrase - that despite the longevity of the work that he had been personally driving for decades, he has decided that this was indeed - ‘the end’.
I guess it is one of those days, where every where you look, every page you turn emotion takes over and (at least for me), music takes hold.
Because I - and indeed he - are ‘of a certain age’, ‘The End’ came to mind. (If you aren’t of a certain age - I commend you to watch just one (if not all three) of the YouTubes below.) If you are of a certain age - you don’t need me to tell you.
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again
“Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song… Probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood."
💬 Jim Morrison
If you want a really good cry, the images most certainly do nothing to distract from the pain of the song …
If you want to listen to the original recording of nearly 11 minutes that took just 30 minutes of studio time (think about that) …
If you are of the live music persuasion… in the US you had Woodstock. In the UK we had The Isle of Wight …
New Zealand | Unrecognized Leadership
If the UK and/or the USA could find more leaders that demonstrate the qualities of Jacinda Arden, wouldn’t both surely be better off for it?
Sadly, she’s had her run, the voters are not going her way hence her resignation. ‘Hitch’ is being allowed to reset the agenda and so far at least, seems to be turning the ‘anti-Labour’ tide. Make no mistake though, yes, she took some wrong turns but the problems being laid at her feet won’t go away with new leaders. It’s a global problem … and despite New Zealand managing to punch well above their international weight over the last few years … these global issues are exactly that … global.
🔗 Colbert pays tribute to Jacinda
🎙️ What was behind Jacinda-mania and why did it end so suddenly?