“Should U.S. men and women be put into the middle of another country’s civil war when their own army won’t fight to defend them?”

I mean the U.S. gets pretty pissed when China, Russia et al involve themselves in their domestic affairs.

How Horses Created Firehouse Poles

Who knew?

The World’s Largest Ad Blocker Launches A DSP

… we used to call this a ‘shakedown’ or ‘pay-to-play’.

Twenty One and counting

🚖 Rideshare fares are peaking, so why aren’t driver wages?

Anybody with half a brain could see this coming - and now we’re surprised?

So here’s what’s wrong, how to fix it and why it’ll never happen. In a very compact package!

David Frier

Got to love the Monday Morning Quarterbacks … and we’re now into Tuesday!

MacStories and AppAdvice both with pieces on a new app (Mela) that manages recipes.

I am not a recipe person - but if you are - this application looks remarkable. Definitely revealing thinking of real world implementation of core iOS functionality.

Clever stuff.

Email received today;

How To Make People Buy

That isn’t what I want at all. I want people to buy because they want to buy.

Good copywriting is a dying art form. Mainly because (like sales and marketing) it’s being done by amateurs.

Business moves at the speed of trust.

More on the trust … and kindness … of strangers.

JP riffs on trusting people.

Beyond the Web

“The result was a heaving haystack of fuck-all.”

Doc Searls riffs on what www ‘couldabeen’.

points picked up this morning

• A war of 20 years or 20*1 year wars?
• Britain … Russia … America … next please!
• The army was trained in the ways of the US military … without the air cover or intelligence!

Resonated :

“We didn’t get rid of narratives completely, but we sold our faith in the grand narratives to buy into the much smaller stories of the self and self-improvement. If the image of the era of grand narratives is the image of the mass of mankind marching behind a flag, then the image of the post-grand-narrative human is that of the solitary jogger with their headphones on, focused on the story of self-empowerment, pushed on by the narrative of self-improvement and by the texts of self-help.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d been living through the ‘believe in yourself’ and ‘be all you can be’ narrative for two decades. The story-of-the-better-self is really individuals living without any greater or more abstract “stories to live by” deciding to make their idea of a future self the story they will tell themselves. A new self, a younger-looking self, a more attractive self, a healthier self, a self with a new ‘identity,’ a more driven self, a new style, a new sexuality, a new diet, a more ecological and self-sustaining self, a self that believes in itself. We have privatised stories to live for: the story of promotion, of artistic achievement, of higher sexual market value, of the better home, of admiration in the eyes of others, of being seen to be the most eco-savvy, of having the latest tech innovation, of striving to be more positive and optimistic, of discovering some deep essential source of ‘self-worth."

Psychology Today

Full Story

What Story Will We Live by Now?

Priti Patel gains (and loses) security minister role while Johnson dithers.

Patel in charge of ‘security’ should never have been a sentence.

“The alternative, that he made his decision without even realising that his Home Secretary is herself a security risk is horrifying.”

Bought a new lamp which was delivered yesterday - sans bulb. Quick visit to a couple of stores and no - the wrong wattage .. a second night with no light.

Reminded of Jobs on the iPod - delivered with a full battery so immediately useful.

Fast forward to iPhones with everything you need to get you going immediately including contacts, browser and calendar.

… at least until the legislators have their way and you get your lump of glass for 100s - if not 1000s of dollars and it is useless until you spend the next ‘n’ days working out what apps you need.

Let’s keep going backwards …