Hi! My name is Josh and this is my personal blog, my web log.

The dance of pleasing the social media algorithims of the world’s biggest companies, whilst being beat to death by strangers with their comments displeased me so now I’m here.

I wish I were the kind of person who could just live without broadcasting. But there’s an animal inside me — right down in the marrow — that keeps asking ‘can you see me?’ and silence has never once soothed it.

  • Twitter’s asking a lot of questions about longer form writing today

  • Can we, or more to the point, will we innovate our way out of gestures at everything?

    "So long as we keep choosing to create. If we keep doing what it is we do as people. We are explainers and constructors. We are creators. We are resource makers."

    – Brett Hall

  • I hope for a future where our thoughts, our conversations, our relationships, and our transactions are not handled by a handful of the largest companies on the globe.

    I just think it's a nicer world that way.

    So I blog at micro.blog and that shares to some places, and I manually share to Facebook and/or Instagram sometimes, but ultimately I'd love to become acquainted with you outside of a corporate algorithm.

    One way to achieve that is email. Apart from Google's every attempt to ruin the experience for us, you subscribe to an email list and it appears in your inbox. You can reply to me, I can reply to you. It's good.

    If you like what I share, and you'd like to get it in an automatic weekly digest, chuck your email address in here joshwithers.blog/subscribe.

  • Mark Fisher, in k-punk, on naming things like music genres:

    "Naming is not a neutral act of referring. Naming produces surplus value, something that wasn't already there in the first place."

  • One of my favourite aspects of the world wide web and the internet, is the process upon which we find people who think the same as we do. People whose minds vibrate on a similar frequency to ours.

    So I present to you: Jameson Orvis's 'the essence of place'

    "The more I think about this label placement the more it pisses me off. Perhaps I could forgive the label for being so far from the geographic center of Brooklyn if the intersection of Brooklyn Ave and Atlantic Ave were at all remarkable. But no it’s just a random intersection along the A/C line with a 7/11 that the Google Maps label for Brooklyn just so happens to be positioned directly on top of. Why not just put it in the actual center of the borough? What purpose does this serve? Who or what algorithm is responsible? I descended a rabbit hole."

  • Police in San Francisco pull over a driverless car

  • Seems to have worked out ok for them tho

  • Kim Beazely - former Deputy PM of Australia, Ambassador to the USA, and current Governor of WA - on the general operational capacity of the United States of America:

    “I think it’s brilliant the US actually works.”

    Fun podcast listen at Hemispheric Views.

  • One of those weeks where I was on FaceTime a lot

  • You guys need anything while I’m here?

  • The difference 80km and a Ukrainian/Russian border makes in what you see on TikTok.

  • Ned Kelly’s legacy in tatters.

    I booked a two night stay at this motel hoping for stay based on Ned Kelly’s principles of stealing livestock, denouncing the British Empire, and shooting Victorian police.

    Not comfortability and cleanliness.

    1 star.

  • Just in: the new rankings for reading a book:

    1. Acquire the book and read it with your eyes.
    2. Acquire the book and intend to read it.
    3. Listen to a podcast with the author about the book.
    4. Acquire the book without intent to read.
    5. Listen to the audiobook.

  • we're all looking for someting, not knowing exactly what it is. then one day you’re driving toward the sunset with your window down, and wind running through your hair, as you think, “this is it, this is everything." and all you had to do, is open the window and let it in.

    • jose chaves

  • I've got a hunch that this week will be the last one where Australia has a bloke named Scott Morrison as its Prime Minister. That election looms and the coalition wants someone else at the top.

    And that makes the team at 6 News' interview with ScoMo even more important. Consider it an exit interview.

  • The view from Kirribilli last night

  • This week is one of those weeks where I’m reminded that I’m actually quite good at being a wedding celebrant and I really enjoy it despite a pandemic tearing out my soul. Just completed wedding 3 of 5 for the week and it’s only Wednesday.

  • It wet.

    Pilot just explained that he and the other pilot were flying up from Melbourne for this flight and baggage loading staff were low at Melbourne because people in baggage were off work with Covid so the delays just multiplied from there.

    2.5hrs late so far.

  • Layers

  • Now that vaccinated segregation is coming to an end in Queensland why should we give up on classism now?

    I propose we start separating people based on race.

    Like, I don’t want to eat at the same cafe as a really fast runner, or F1 driver.

  • Bedtime views

  • Feels good to be back in Sydney/the Blue Mountains today. Feels like I’m back in the office like the good ol’ days.

  • Life with a three year old and a one year old feels like a blur

  • FINANCIAL LOSSES CAUSED BY DIVORCE

  • Souht of 'Talle sunday afternoons

  • Australia

  • Why the original iMac had a handle

  • Arrived home from work late tonight to a vomiting toddler. She managed to soil two compete bed settings, a bunch of Britt and my clothes, two pyjamas, and some fluffy animals.

    In other news, laundromats have really upped their price.

  • Eight hospitality trends/opportunities that could emerge from Covid:

    • Towns for remote workers
    • Home swapping
    • City getaways and glamping
    • Coliving in lifestyle locations
    • Staycations
    • Neighbourhood coworkings
    • Campervans
    • Hosting company offsites

    … Peter Fabor

  • 2022: Mac Studio 2023: iPad Studio 2024: AirPods Sussudio 2025: iPhone Studio

  • Cows with a beef

  • Turns out I’m very much not ready to see photos of my kids growing up. Luna’s 3.5 and I’ve got happy tears looking at photos of her from 2 years ago.

  • Charlie Munger:

    “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

  • Steve Albini to Kurt, Dave and Chris, aka Nirvana:

    "I like to leave room for accidents or chaos. Making a seamless record, where every note and syllable is in place and every bass drum is identical, is no trick. Any idiot with the patience and the budget to allow such foolishness can do it."

  • VA531 SYD-OOL @virginaustralia Boeing 737 landing at @gcairport this afternoon.

  • Virgin aircraft offers me just the tip in my bathroom

  • One month ago, on the 28th of February we enjoyed 268mm of rain and our pool and lawn met for the first time.

    Today’s brought 168mm so far, enough to bring the lawn and pool back together again.

    That’s after I released about 4000L onto the lawn earlier today.

    It wet.

  • Free business idea: software that monitors your email and to-do list and tells a stranger to call you when you get through all your emails and tasks - like, just doing your job - to let you know they're proud of you.

  • Hearing about Chris Rock and his mate today reminded me to watch Bel Air, the modern remake of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It pushes The Batman way down the list in the gritty remake championships.

  • There was a really well known wedding photographer who was talking to Britt about shooting for The Elopement Collective, and on the phone to her (my wife) he told her that he hopes she fails in business along with some other rude things.

    Not long after that phone call there was a dress up wedding industry Halloween party that I knew he would be going to, so I attended in the hopes of confronting him at the event, possibly even punching him.

    The good news for all is that not only do I not really punch people, but on arrival to the event I realised how stupid it would be to publicly assault someone to defend my wife's honour.

    He is still a douche - always will be - and my wife is always worth protecting, defending, fighting for. But assaulting him isn't the answer.

    Instead we send him glitter in the mail every now and then. Plus when people want to hire him I tell them how mean and horrible he is and he doesn’t get the booking.

    What Chris Rock said was horrible. What Will Smith did was worse.

  • The Polestar O₂ concept car that will never ship has a built-in drone and now I hate every other car

  • The most unforgiving part of password parenting is needing to take your passwords to the gym so the other passwords don’t bully it for being weak.

    That, plus the brutal murder you have to commit when someone else sees your offspring and you must change it.

  • Pop quiz: name a song about New York in the year 1776

  • Against Right Liberalism, Adrian Vermeule:

    "The old right liberalism finds itself short on fresh ideas but very long on donors, dollars, second-tier publications, and institutional control."

  • Please sign up for my OnlyDads. $9.99 a month for all of my best dad content.

  • Every 'c' in Pacific Ocean is pronounced differently

  • The shopping centre across the road was on fire, so our real estate office is now a temp daycare centre for the 70 kids from Busy Bees. Because I'm a father of two I know how to be responsible around children so I'm sneaking packet sugars to the children.

  • Goldie and the light leak at Tallebudgera

  • A tourist is driving on the wrong side of the road on the Gold Coast Highway. It’s so beautiful now that the international borders are open again, nature is healing.

  • A real estate colleague asked me yesterday how I marketed myself in weddings. I said, I just did really good work and then people enquired. Like this couple.

    Breaks my heart to say no to international work at the moment, but it's not sustainable whilst there are still border variables.