Life status: my three year old lives on my shoulders.

I’ve got 99 problems and they could all be solved with a new MacBook Pro, a DJI Mavic 3, and maybe a new 35mm lens I think.

Seeing as though my social media influence is waning on the daily I have some personal news, I’m starting a Withers Media & Technology Group. You’re going to love it.

How do you know things?

I think all day every day about the world I want to leave Luna and Goldie in.

I spend so much time wondering how to teach them how to know things. What they know will forever by growing and changing, but how they know things. How they learn, and how they research, and experiment, that’s so important to me.

So I’ve decided to create email accounts for them and to start writing to them. Because my words matter to them.

Your words matter.

Share them, with anyone, everyone, with me.

I don’t really care about fitting in with cool buzzwords and virtue signalling. But tell me how you lived in a tense moment today and how it was weird or awkward, but we learned more about each other.

Tell me about how you didn’t know something and you said you didn’t know.

Tell me about how you were scared and you said you were scared.

Life’s too short for platitudes and fitting in. Let’s be scared, daft, vulnerable, and authentic together. I don’t care what you know, but I’d love to know how you know it.

“The committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a new Decentralised Autonomous Organisation company structure.”

In the Australian Financial Review: Senate report proposes model to regulate the crypto economy

Every day I wonder when the day will arrive when it’s the last time I ever pick Luna up. What I mean is that when she’s 35 I’m probably not going to pick her up and throw her on my shoulders. So when, between three and thirty five will that day be?

“You always know when you’re doing something for the first time, and you almost never know when you’re doing something for the last time.”

Via The Last Time Always Happens Now

Explaining stocks to NFT kids

“I collect shares of businesses … I use a certain type of non fungible token called a stock certificate for this.

Speedtest’s quarterly Australian internet report shows that Aussie Broadband outperforms everyone else, including Telstra. I’m an Aussie customer, I’m getting about 900mbps down, if you signup using my refer-a-friend code we both get a kick off our next bill: 5272836.

The most annoying position anyone can take through this season is a religious devotion to vaccines, or anti-vax, or lockdown, or open up, or whatever fucking position you think is correct.

We’re all mostly wrong and have no idea.

Screenshot from today’s NYT email.

GG

Guy on the phone with me right now from Australia Post is trying to convince me that Australia Post does other things on top of delivering mail, I’m like “just deliver me my mail, mate” and he’s not too sure what to do with that information.

Ben Sherpherd’s “The Commercial Experience 21.11: Programming the news media” dissects how the news has changed over the last three years

“My view is news media was more like SVOD, but COVID has made it more like TV.”

It really has been a blockbuster season of tiring news.

A walking disappointment to his mother

The Gold Coast gets one case of Covid, the first in 15 days in Queensland, and the whole state breathes in through its teeth.

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

Charles Bukowski, click through for 94 more

“The stated mission of a company worth almost two trillion dollars is to “organize the world’s information” and yet the Internet remains poorly organized.”

– Re-Organizing the World’s Information: Why we need more Boutique Search Engines

Happy third birthday Lu, I’m so proud to be your dad

Me, telling friends about the Hamilton soundtrack being re-released in spatial audio

What the actual? The notification takes you to the iCloud Backup section of settings to make sure you’re backed up before you switch to a new iPad?!

I have not purchased a new iPad, do not intend to, nor do I need to, this one is months old.

I know that ultimately this is a tech error inside Apple, but damn you’re looking creepy Apple.

"The measure of a commercially successful newspaper is not simply how well it reports the big events, but what it does when there are no dying statesmen, bloodthirsty desperadoes, or heinous crimes to write about. Hearst succeeded in New York not only because he knew how to report the big stories, but because he was a master at constructing news from nothing.”

From The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, via David Perell’s email.

David goes on to say,

“Newspapers aren’t any shorter on a slow news day. People need to stay busy. Advertisements still need to be fulfilled. The revenue needs to keep rolling in.

To that end, the biggest source of bias in the media industry isn’t the perspective a newspaper takes on a story, but its decision to report on a story in the first place. Knowing that, Hearst was a master at taking inconsequential stories and turning them into must-reads. He knew that events only become news once journalists and editors commit to publicizing them.

Are things any different today?”

Avis Car Rental brings “car as a subscription” to Australia.

Have you ever wondered who coined the term “Content is King”? The year was 1996, and Bill Gates published an essay.

Apple Prediction in October 2021: the Apple Music Voice/Siri plan lasts no more than two years.

Going down market never looks good on Apple. “Here’s a cheaper crappier version of our thing if money’s really important to you, whatever, we don’t care”.

The year is 2061, @Anthony_Wiggle with a long grey beard is sitting on a large wooden throne in Wiggle Town making an announcement of a new Wiggle coming & an old Wiggle leaving; people in virtual reality are booing and slapping the elderly Wiggle, screaming for good ol days.

I’ve just finished the seven episode podcast, 9/12, which tells the story of a post 9/11 America, and crescendoes to a beautiful finale. It’s a valuable story to engage with, not just what happened on 11 September 2001, but how the world responded, and why we “never forget”.

Sunday was a doozy. Over the past few months we’ve shared photos on social media from trips when travel was allowed and legal, in a time when it wasn’t allowed. So the Queensland Police received an anonymous tip to Crimestoppers, and that was the start of the day. Luckily I keep great photo and travel records and we didn’t actually breach travel restrictions. So thanks, anonymous.

To end the day last night’s groom got aggressive and threatening because as his wedding celebrant, MC, DJ, I played songs not on his playlist, as he called it “my standard list”. My music selection had people dancing. I guess he wanted his wedding to be a show of his music taste instead of the red flag he kept on waving: “it’s her day.”

If you’re ever curious why late night activities that include drinking alcohol are more expensive, it’s because life’s too short to deal with irrational drunk people.

Ben Shepherd is asked a question that I think about often:

"If you were to start a media company right now, what would it look like?"

And he shares his insightful answer (that I really liked) on his Substack: The Commercial Experience

“I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me.”

– I adore you sweetheart - by Shaun Usher - Letters of Note

“The human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before this millennium is out unless it starts to colonize space, top British scientist Stephen Hawking warned on Tuesday.”

– Stephen Hawking, 15 October 2001

“We are born with only one obligation – to be completely who we are.”

– Mark Nepo

Turns out that in 2005 I was the 312th person to register for an account on the new website, Reddit, and today I’m one of 30 of that 312 still registered users.

This is what old age looks like.

In 2055 I’ll be interviewed on 60 Minutes for the 50th anniversary of Reddit.

I’m that insecure the password to my heart is my first daughter’s first name, capital first letter, followed by the number 1 and an exclamation mark.

Please tell me there are more than 30 people that have been on Reddit for more than 16 years?! I

Hey, I don’t like to discuss medical freedoms on here, but what is Apple TV+’s insistence on viewers watching the show’s credits to the end? Every other streamer shows the “watch next” selection straight away.

"The best business ideas have yet to be tried. The best books have yet to be written. The best relationships have yet to be formed.

It's not too late. The space of possibilities is endless. The most interesting terrain remains unexplored."

– James Clear

Your top 20 songs by plays says a lot about who you are

“We are a revolutionary cloud-based website” says this guy selling virtual staging to real estate agents.

Why does everything in sales have to be dodgy and buzzwordy.

Are humans not capable of being sold to without bullshit?

Hey nerds, I was not aware of how nerdy we are. Someone in my Certificate IV in Real Estate class right now just asked the trainer “how many people do you think are moving to smartphones”.

Lodge

Brisbane as the clouds subsided today at sunset

JQ940

I auditioned to join the Kyle & Jackie O show in 2011 & was flown to Sydney. In the interview the EP asked if it was ok for Kyle to call me a c**t, so him defending Denis Handlin isn’t surprising. I was ok with ‘the name’ but quit radio soon after cause life’s too short.

I was so excited for the gig and remember walking away thinking that if that was the top of the ladder, I didn’t want to climb the ladder anymore.

Buying a property soon? I’m hearing some crazy stats about meth and what it means for your personal health if you live in a house where meth has been used. The trainer is recommending people sign contracts under condition of not only building and pest, but now, also meth.

Over the last 18 months of the spicy cough tearing apart the wedding and events industry, confidence has never been lower.

So I’m in a classroom today studying for a Cert IV in Real Estate.

🌵

I think about this daily: Your Professional Peak Is Earlier Than You Think - The Atlantic

For the first time in history, Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible has been followed in a playlist by Feel Good Inc from the Gorillaz. Attending this real estate course this week has been a wild ride of experiencing the trainer’s playlist tastes.

My greatest fear, as recognised in 1947 by ad-man, Bill Bernbach:

“I'm worried that we're going to worship techniques instead of substance.”

If there was a vaccine for “sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas” I’d be first in line.

Remember that time Sesame Street’s Bert marched with Bin Laden?