← 2021 December 2021
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In 2016 Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Academy Award. Many scholars believe this upset the gods and brought torment on our people and the only worthy sacrifice would be Betty White. May her sacrifice lead to peace in our land.
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Some personal news, I’m changing the definition of fun to things that take less than four hours to do.
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James Cameron walks into the boardroom and “wrote the word Alien on a board. Then he pluralized it, making it Aliens and insinuating he was about to up the ante on this planned sequel. Finally, he drew two lines through the S he had added, turning it onto a dollar sign.”
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Song idea: Nugget Connection.
A song about why there are so many songs about chicken nuggets and why they look like little maps of Australia if Australia would just let Tasmania be free from its reign.
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This is the first episode I’ve heard of Seth Roger’s Storytime podcast, but it’s a beautifully made podcast, and this episode is gripping and the story is so good! • The Ballad of Mount Doogie Dowler, Storytime with Seth Rogen
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Productivity inversely affects creativity, and vice-versa. So, welcome to the lowest productivity week of the year. May your creativity flourish.
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A letter to a newborn child, requested of Desmond Tutu by the girl’s father, July 2016:
Dear Juliet
Hello, little sister.
You don’t know me. I am a very old grandfather from South Africa nearing the end of my journey on earth while your journey—on another continent many miles away—is just beginning. We may never meet on earth, so I thought to send you a secret. Well, it’s not really a secret because we should all know it. So I don’t mind if you tell everyone else.
Did you know that all people belong to one family, the human family? That although we may look nothing like each other, live in separate homes, practise our own cultures, subscribe to different religions—and some of us have more money than others—we are all sisters and brothers of God’s family?
You and I, and everyone else, were born with the same purpose. For love, for goodness and for one another.
God Bless You.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
Cape Town, South Africa
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Whenever I hear Carol Of The Bells I have this tribal urge to run home to protect it because I think it’s about to get robbed.
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Disney+ thinks that Iron Man 3 is a Christmas movie. Is everything a Christmas movie now?
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Bob Lefsetz, self-proclaimed boomer, on boomers:
“Going to see McCartney, the Stones and the Eagles has become a ritual. Because their music reminds us of when we were our best selves, when what we had to say was important, when we were against the man before we became the man, when we wanted the new instead of the old and familiar, when we wanted change instead of stasis.”
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“A tribe without enemies is, almost by definition, not a tribe. As a consequence, tribal dispute and warfare is part of what defines humanity.”
...
“Things have changed a lot since. The biggest enemy we have to fight against right now is our tribal past. What served us so well for thousands of years is now an obsolete concept. It’s no more about the survival of this tribe or that one, but about Homo sapiens as a species. … For the first time in our collective history, we must think of ourselves as a single tribe on a single planet. ... We are a single tribe, the tribe of humans. And, as such, not a tribe at all.”
— Marcelo Gleiser in “The Trouble with Tribalism” via Tim Ferriss’s email.
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I met a Betty once and told her that when she calls me she can call me Al.
She just nodded in reply.
I think about this a lot.
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If you got your professionally shot wedding, couple, or family photos printed at Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Big W this Christmas, know that you broke your photographer’s heart.
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“In the not too distant future, learning video editing will be the new learning cursive.”
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When I’m elected your President I will legislate that bakeries are allowed to make and serve real rum rum balls. None of this bullshit chocolate ball stuff.
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A lot of people whinge about Jesus being taken out of Christmas, my issue is much more important. My two local grocery stores have zero Christmas food. Who took the rum balls out of Christmas?
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There’s a very late model MacBook Pro on my kitchen table and aside from all the power in that chip, I’m getting serious PowerBook Titanium G4 vibes from the body shape.
I’m that old that I’m having nostalgia for old computers.
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Sophie Zhang and a Honduran disinformation researcher on Facebook’s election problem:
“We don’t expect Philip Morris to solve tobacco addiction”
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The British Medical Journal fact checks Facebook's false fact checking of the BMJ's “news blog”.
I can't help but feel that the skill of knowledge, the skill of knowing something, will be a superhuman skill in the future. Because we can't leave it up to algorithms.
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PSA: next year isn’t actually 2022, it’s 2020 Two. It’s the sequel.
2020 II: 2020 and the Chamber of Secrets.
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I really want to help this guy find this photo of Leonardo DiCaprio at the University of Sydney student bar, but the websites he mentions - 2Day FM and others - have all been re-made os many times there's be no archives.
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Is Santa coming on a one horse open sleigh, or with nine reindeers? Why are there so many holes in a fabricated story? Does Christmas need better writers?
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Some personal news: in the new year I’m also going to be studying a diploma in the difference between the “Auto Intensive”, “Auto Wash”, and “Super Wash” modes on my dishwasher.
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What a time to be alive. When Dawkins defined a meme as “unit of cultural information spread by imitation” he was definitely thinking of Sidetalk NYC’s Thanksgiving on IG spreading to the Jonas Brothers in the Whitehouse on Tiktok. Bing bong.
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What exactly is Crazy Frog riding? Is it a spacecraft, a motorbike, a bicycle, an Imperial Speeder Bike?
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Alan Jones’ “audience didn’t go anywhere. It’s still there and it’s still being fed the same old shit to serve the same old interests of the truly wealthy, madly powerful and deeply, deeply unaccountable.”
From JB’s Alien Sideboob
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Spiders, mannn looks large over Brisbane
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📈
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Calile-rise
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Astral Codex Ten on the potential threat of ancient plagues emerging:
“I think if something goes wrong, the third most likely vector will be curious Siberians who see a corpse half-hidden in the ice and go investigate. The second most likely vector will be archaeologists. And the most likely vector - by far - will be scientists investigating to see whether something could go wrong.”
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Listing of the day: “With minimal land left in this stunning new estate”
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“Researchers have identified an odorless compound emitted by people—and in particular babies—called hexadecanal, or HEX, that appears to foster aggressive behavior in women and blunt it in men.”
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Just a heads up and reminder - because @scottymcdonald reminded me - that maybe you’re walking around with excess blood this Christmas, so why not donate some and they’ll pass it onto some peeps that really need it.
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Nature is healing!
The Queensland border has been open to other people for 12 hours and our roads are filled with tourists who don’t know the roads again. It’ll be a good week for tow trucks.
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Business idea: Home Alone 6: Too home, too alone.
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Name the song with lyrics and without searching:
“You serve me up with cake and that’s your big mistake”
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How you know email communities are a real threat: when Facebook enters the game.
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James Clear:
“Someone else living a good life does not prevent you from living a good life. There are many ways to win and plenty of space.”
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Mavic 3’s 1x versus 28x zoom.
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Somewhere in my nerdiness - born in DOS, grew into Win 3.11-XP, morphed on over to macOS sometime in 2006 - I missed the workshop that explained how websites work in 2021.
It's like website admin has gotten harder since Frontpage and Dreamweaver, then Wordpress, not easier ….
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I’m so keen I reckon I’ll double these numbers before 2022
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After being grounded for over a year - since the great wave vs. drone fight of 2019 - some of my favourite people bought me a new bird to commemorate my 40th birthday.
I am beyond pumped to get back in the air making art!
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Cherian George for Nieman Lab:
“China’s and Russia’s global influence operations won’t need to resort to fake news to exploit the genuine dysfunctions in the American system.”
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Photoshoot with a spider
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The most depressing take on the state of "the media" today is the one in Max Read's email that basically suggests that Buzzfeed's public listing failure will be its biggest success because it will prove that there's no market for more new media.
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Happy Pretend to Be A Time Traveller Day!
(Yes, this is a real international day, Google it.)
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I’m vibing this Dutch multigenerational living space
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Ever seen a goanna scale a brick wall?
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“So let's sink another drink, 'Cause it'll give me time to think, If I had the chance I'd ask the world to dance, And I'd be dancing with myself, oh-oh.”
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With every drop of news about Omicron I feel sicker about our future. The pandemic is strangling the life out of a business we've spent 10 years building. Even just on Saturday with the closure of the Queensland and Tasmanian borders to Adelaide, that cost me $3130.
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“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
— William Morris
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Spouses, as you cross the 75% completion mark of cleaning up after dinner, be like: “oh, honey, I’ll clean up, leave it to me”
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Hello! I’m Josh Withers. You may remember me from such movies as Regional Breakfast Radio Guy, Weird International Wedding Celebrant, Super Zoom Photographer, and 2022’s Newest Real Estate Agent.
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All the world’s a social feed, and all the men and women are merely variables in an algorithm.
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I find it interesting that this important research of 60,000 Australians released as a YouTube video has only been watched 154 times. It’s fascinating data on Australian consumers trust, and also separately, distrust of Australian brands, companies, and industries.
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Southern Gold Coasters wondering what’s happening at the old Pizza Hut beachside pavilion, it’s called Siblings, and I’ve been documenting the build.
