šļø 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.
š„ RRR, 2022 - ā ā Ā½
I wanted to like it ā¦ nay .. love it. I really did. But it was not to be. Definitely extraordinary scenes of āspectacularityā within, but they werenāt 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.
Ā
I click on the ‘Read On’ link and see this.
BUT - if I save to āRead Later' in āReadwiseā and then open Readwise, I see this
š The original page (sans the 5 lines of tracking crud)
Hereās 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?
šµ 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 - āthe endā.
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 āof a certain ageā, āThe Endā came to mind. (If you arenāt 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 donāt 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
āEvery time I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye songā¦ Probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood."
š¬ Jim Morrison
If you want a really good cry, the images most certainly do nothing to distract from the pain of the song ā¦
If you want to listen to the original recording of nearly 11 minutes that took just 30 minutes of studio time (think about that) ā¦
If you are of the live music persuasionā¦ in the US you had Woodstock. In the UK we had The Isle of Wight ā¦
New Zealand | Unrecognized Leadership
If the UK and/or the USA could find more leaders that demonstrate the qualities of Jacinda Arden, wouldnāt both surely be better off for it?
Sadly, sheās had her run, the voters are not going her way hence her resignation. ‘Hitchā 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 wonāt go away with new leaders. Itās a global problem ā¦ and despite New Zealand managing to punch well above their international weight over the last few years ā¦ these global issues are exactly that ā¦ global.
š Colbert pays tribute to Jacinda
šļø What was behind Jacinda-mania and why did it end so suddenly?
Substacks Fail At Providing Joy
A claim made by Mike Pesca on his ‘occasional’ š Substack. But maybe that isn’t the point? Maybe that is also not right? He asked for comments. This post is is my response. What do you think?
š„ if...., 1968 - ā ā ā
I had it at 4 Stars in my head when I first watched the film. I checked it out again recently. Itās dated ā¦ and not as great as I remembered. Because Iām older? Or just more considered.
I still like the idea of never quite putting your finger on when it suddenly went the characterās tipping point occured.
š§ New Zealand | The JigSaw
I popped in a couple of posts recently that are part of what I am naming the ‘New Zealand Jigsaw’. This post is one of my āliving postsā that will serve as the gateway to the full set, once they are all published - and assuming that I can publish faster than I can think of more topics.
Introduction
Ardern Resigns - Hashtag
Colbert Monologue
Compared To Iceland
Compared To The United States of America
Compared To The United Kingdom
Conversations
- with Anna
- with Mitchell
Crossing The Chasm
Investing
NZTE
Why You Can't So Easily Replicate Silicon Valley
Wherever you go in the world, New Zealand, Scotland, Austin Texas, Raleigh North Carolina, Hyderabad, Shenzhen ā¦. pretty much anywhere, you will find there are tech centers. Tech centers that often adopt āSiliconā or āValleyā or variations on such in their names, but there are many more. The local government will often declare they are investing and building a tech center of excellence to ārivalā Silicon Valley. Except they arenāt. Let me explain.
My Knowledge Stack
Another post that started life as a reply - and then got longer - and then seemed to have added general applicability. So …
Why ChatGPT Will Change the World, Lower Your Fees BUT NOT Raise Your Revenue (Unless You Differentiate)
Shel Israel writes : š How ChatGPT Will Change the World, Lower My Fees and Raise My Revenue
I get what he is saying - except I donāt.
His argument centers on his unit price dropping - but he will write more.
Back of an envelope calculations. Letās say he increases his output ten fold and reduces his price by EIGHTY PERCENT.
This would double his revenue. All good nay ā¦ all great!
But if this works - he isnāt the only writer that will do this.
And if that changes broadly across the writing industry, that 80% will likely have to fall further - unless there is substantial differentiation.
The differentiation will vary - but will become essential. (It’s essential now - but that’s a different story.)
People that write ācontentā have a problem.
The problem is that if you write content - how do you differentiate?
Iāve written about it before here and here and here and here and ā¦ well - you get the picture.
This is why for the longest time I keep repeating (sorry - I am going to have to quote myself) ā¦ though Will Arnett at least has caught on and so has Chris Lockhead
Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, anything will do kind of word. Which is why ācontent has no value. It is in the best interests of buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly.
Job One - Stop making content.
Job Two - Start writing blogs, articles, white papers, posts, scripts, essays …
The ultimate oxymoron: Strategic Content
An Afternoon with Kafka
Sometimes you need to tell a story just to get it out there. Because otherwise you really would think that you were actually living in a Kafka novel.
šµ Charleyās, Paia, Maui is no more
If you know Charleyās, this is not new news.
If you donāt know Charleyās - then why should you care?
This just in from my good friend Randall Rospond ā¦ number 25 in the image below, right beside another friend Tom Conway.
Randallās friend and Maui artist John Woodruff is the artist, the painting features many Maui Musician Regulars on stage with many of the Charleyās staff and regular patrons.
“Although this famous live music venue in Paia is no longer ā¦ the history will always stand.”
I saw numerous Willie Nelson shows, Neil Young w/ Promise of the Real, Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, Steven Tyler and Pat Simmons and so many more.
š¬ Randall Rospond
Randallās performances at Charleyās included opening shows for;
- St. Paul Peterson: keyboardist for Ā āThe Timeā discovered by Prince
- John Kadlecik of Dark Star Orchestra & Further { Bob Weir & Phil Lesh }
- Guested w/ the Planetary Bandits Ā { Willie Nelsonās Maui Band }
- Performed solo and with the Haiku Hillbillys for over 25 years
(Sadly the resolution of the image of the index is not good enough to always get to the ‘numbers’.)
Setting Categories Automatically On MicroBlog
Itās 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 āautomatically set categories when text in new posts matches a filterā.
For new posts it seems to work flawlessly. The cool thing is that you can āRun Filterā - 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 = āyoutube.com/watch' and add that post to the category āmyyoutubesā.
The wait aside, it ran like a dream. Except it didnāt. 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 ā¦ 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 ā¦ it is now working (wait aside)
BTW, the really cool thing is that I also use the plugin āLite YouTube for Micro.blog by @rknightuk - so those links automatically render as embedded videos on my site. šļø Say, like this one - which at time of typing still hasnāt been correctly allocated its category - but I am keeping an eye on it.
New Zealand Declares A National Emergency For The Third Time In Twelve Years
That’s how bad it is getting .. and not just in New Zealand.
Bernard Hickey reporting that New Zealand has declared a š National emergency for Gabrielle. The massive storm and floods two weeks ago where 4 people died did NOT have the same focus. In fact, it’s only been enabled twice before. Though in fairness, the Hawke’s Bay earthquake in 1931 would have resulted in it being declared a National Emergency had there been such an organization and in later years, with other earthquakes, it was the Department of Civil Defence that was called into action.
That all said, these challenges do seem to be accelerating.
An 'Unknown' Podcaster - He Sounds Boring - He Is Fascinating
šµ Despite my initial resistance to the 500 song podcast narrated by š Andrew Hickey .. I am now moving into my third ā¦ first āThe Monkeesā, then āLoveā, now āThe Moveā. The depth of information flying through the speakers is really quite incredible - thoroughly researched, packed with information - some of which I know - a lot I donāt.
A particular speciality of his is identifying groups that todaysā mega stars played with in the very early days. Examples like when Albert Lee played with Hendrix and Jim Morrison wishing he and The Doors were as good as Love. Or how Graeme Edge and John Bonham both played in the same band - sorry, cant recall who replaced who ā¦ and and and ā¦ fascinating - and NOT information that is on ‘the wiki’.
So - I did some prodding around to work out who Hickey is - assuming he must have been a music journalist at some point - but no. At least not that I could find. He seems to be a relatively āunknownā creator who writes books and does podcasts.
Interesting that in the search, I came across this review of his podcast : Pismotality: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs that has one comment - from Andrew Hickey. He spends a little time talking about his accent and deadpan delivery … something I referenced in my first post on him, and it turns out there is a reason.
Anyway - suffice to say - if you love rock and related music genre and want to learn more - particularly about the genesis of the ‘names’ - highly recommend.
Rabbit Holes, YouTubes and Criminals
I wonder why this link is not actually on the MS site any more?
I mean, it seems like it would be important for people to know? Part of the URL reads ' host-clayton-morris-leaves-country-amid-fraud-allegations-lawsuits ‘- so you can guess what it is about if you donāt want to click through
Yahoo and many others still have similar links reporting the story.
I came across him today when a friend mentioned the YouTube channel - and after what I was being told, I felt it all seemed … shall we say odd?
Three minutes of ‘deep’ search found the info that really makes me wonder.
What’s worse is that according to my LinkedIN profile, I have one person in common with ‘Clayton’ … a person who is in a really senior person and has had many senior roles over the year. I can only hope that the connection is an old one when they might have crossed paths when ' Clayton ' was on Phaux News. But these days - you really never know do you?
Phaux News? I know right - that alone should have been a warning!
