Starting to feel a little bit alone over here in Italy. Trying to get some Aussie work done and it looks like Telstra cuts you off from WiFi calling after your SIM card hasn't been on an Australian Telstra tower for seven months. Google Fi was three months.

A birds eye view of Martina Franca, in southern Puglia, where we've been hanging out this month.

In these photos, happening at the same time, is a funeral procession, a dance contest, and an opera, amongst whatever else the 49,000 residents are getting up to.

There's also two 360 photos of Martina Franca in this embed, a higher and lower shot, look for the hotspots when you're scrolling around.

I've just finished reading Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P. W. Singer, recommended by my favourite Cybersecurity Guard, @qldnick 📚

It was a compelling and enjoyable read, and honestly, a refreshingly human conclusion that somewhat settles its disturbing and frightening chorus of a society a few years ahead of where we are today struggling with the effects of advancing technology.

Never go into battle with a bot you can’t trust and never trust a bot you don’t know how to snuff out.

The largest truth in this fictional read is that fear always takes the wheel, especially for those who have apparently been listening to the guy who said not to fear.

This is Luna, pitching you her idea for her new TV show. If you are a TV producer, Luna would like to sit down and talk about you buying the rights to her show.

Please, no tyre-kickers.

Love will save the day

📷🇮🇹🚁 Fifteen of Monopoli’s best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday

📷🇮🇹🏖️ Torre Canne, Puglia

One day we'll have to explain to our grandkids that we all dressed daggy now because of Elon Musk.

Big news crew, new gender droppin

Doing the right thing is always the right thing

If you're interested in learning more about Tony Bennett's activism, take a look at this story from NBC, which covers his civil rights work. Bennett walked at Selma beside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., having been invited by the late, great Harry Belafonte.

https://flip.it/zaSY.F

#TonyBennett #Entertainment #Activism #History

⛪️ I did it, I finally did it. I crucified the sun.

... and other photos from the sunset over Monopoli, Puglia, this afternoon 📷🌇🇮🇹

This might be a silly question for an old nerd to ask, but for those that know the answer, why is the book he famously write in prison, 'The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick', not really listed as a book by him on his website etc? Also, the only eBook version I can find is on Kindle. Why?!

Derek Sivers in The past is not true:

Aim a laser pointer at the moon, then move your hand the tiniest bit, and it’ll move a thousand miles at the other end. The tiniest misunderstanding long ago, amplified through time, leads to piles of misunderstandings in the present. We think of the past like it’s a physical fact - like it’s real. But the past is what we call our memory and stories about it. Imperfect memories, and stories built on one interpretation of incomplete information. That’s “the past”.

No matter how hard they try, the modern web can't escape Wordpress.

📷🇮🇹🏖️ Family day at the beach at Cala Maka. The beach is apparently/allegedly called Torre Canne Nord Prima della Casa Grigia, which translated from Italian means, North Canne Tower Before the Gray House, which is the most romantic beach name I've ever read.

Good luck ever naming a beach better than that.

I shared these words from Craig Mod a year ago today. But since then we made the choice to uproot our life in Australia, move to Mexico, then leave Mexico, travel around the USA and Europe for a while, and come home to Australia in a month's time.

I can guarantee I'm coming home changed, but like Craig, I'm also more confused than ever about why some people travel. I mean no judgement towards any of you, but I've been in Italy for a month now and it seems such a waste to leave in a few weeks. Even considering my feeling that I've barely seen or experienced anything, I still have a deeply resonating feeling that I'm selfishly taking in the culture here, and to do what with it? Just to give the girls a childhood photo album that was cooler than mine?

The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, ‘better’ version of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, uncurious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind-controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion. An eminently photogenic set of torii in Kyoto.

Regardless of my, and Craig's, trepidations of travel being an unjustified expense or impact, I'm forever changed by 2020-2022's travel-related traumas and 2023's travel adventure.

I think this would be an awesome idea: a mashup of a reddit-like voting system with events calendar and geotagging plus some Atlas Obscura.

Basically a “cool things near me and/or happening near me soon” web app.

Will the 2026 Commonwealth Games, originally supposed to be in Victoria, Australia, be the first ones to test the "Vancouver should be the permanent Olympic Games city" that Jonathan Fischer reignited seven years ago in Slate, of course but for the Olympic's little sibling, the Comm' Games:

That’s why the Olympics should relocate to a city that won’t just relieve the rest of the world of hosting duties for the Summer Games but of the Winter Games, too. It would have to be a place with the right climate. It would have to be a place that could afford it. It should possess something of an international flavour. It should have a proven track record. It should be located in a democratic country but not a hegemonic one. It should be Vancouver.

📷🇮🇹 40 degrees celsius today in Martina Franca, but the second you step into the shade the temperature drops about fifteen of those bad boy degrees.

Thought I would check on the two-year-old before going to bed ...

A Declaration of the Interdependence of Cyberspace:

Closed Fiefdoms of the platform world, you weary giants of stocks and small talk, I come from the Pluriverse, the new home of the Heart. On behalf of the future, I invite you to join us.

Apparently, it's wise to let people know you have things available if you indeed do have things available ... which I have neglected to do about my piece "South o' Talle" being licensed to Priints in London. It looks great on walls if you have any, any walls that is.

I really like the tiny awards

Much gratitude to @Mtt for designing a really nice and extremely useful Micro.Blog theme in Tiny Theme. I woke up this morning with a blog refresh on my mind, and the theme is great + he's been so helpful! In addition, thanks to @vincent for Tinylytics bringing the stats and click-kudos to my blog.

I feel like not a day goes by that I don’t witness an even more Italian thing than I had witnessed previously. Today’s most Italian thing I’ve ever witnessed is an Italian driver beeping at a parked Italian ambulance to get out of the way as the medics attend to someone.

It’s always easy to differentiate Italians and tourists on the streets of Puglia. Italians are in the street yelling at each other, tourists are in the streets scrolling.

📷🇮🇹 Alberobello, Puglia

Looks like Canon is doing five blades

Aliens have come to Australia. When they ask for our leader, who do we call? Chuck, Albo, Sandilands, or Murdoch?

📷🇮🇹 Polignano a Mare, Puglia

Wild times back in the forties

Diver

Swimming in the ocean and in ocean caves with your four year old is a workout right?

This week ahead sees the Australian celebrancy movement celebrate its 50th anniversary.

50 years ago 0% of Australian weddings were lead by a civil celebrant, today over 80% are. And the entire movement has driven the Australian wedding industry forward to a point where we lead the world’s wedding industry in product, service, brand, professionalism, and creativity.

For a movement that’s grown from Canberra to the world, thank you Lionel Murphy, Lois D’Arcy, and my celebrant colleagues for making a way for me to make a job that takes me aroundd the world.

Read my whole article on the Celebrant Institute website.

I sure hope these peeps who make somewhere between $150,000 USD to multiple millions a year are going to be financially ok through this strike.

If I can be really frank, does anyone else “have parents” but honestly really doesn’t have parents relationally/socially/spiritually and when you have a down moment in life you just feel super alone? Or is this just adulthood? Or do other relational orphans just develop thicker skin?

Italian kids get way more realistic puzzles than Aussie kids

The most terrifying thing I’ve seen in Italy so far was ten Italian youths aged around 12 years old loudly chanting “gay!” and aggressively geaturing in a way that was a little bit too familiar for this Sarina High School alumni, taunting this young lad who was just laughing in their face!

He’s either gay and joyfully proud, or not gay and impervious to the bullying that brought earlier generations to their knees.

My favourite/least-favourite thing to do when travelling Italy is go to these million year old classical Italian osterias (restaurants) run by the village’s most heralded humans, and ask for takeaway.

The first reaction from the staff is a blank look on their face, as if I’ve just asked them to murder the weakest member of the wait staff.

The second thing they do is ask permission from someone in a back room. I assume it’s the pope.

The third is agree then go searching for takeaway boxes or dishes. I’ve seen them run across the road and get some.

Finally, after all this I’ll ask for a glass of vino “while I wait” and the same thing happens every time. The young wait staff member comes back and explains that they can’t do takeaway glasses of wine.

I just wish I could explain to them that we’re dispassionate about disciplining our two and four year olds in restaurants and the world’s just a nicer place if we takeaway.

But thanks to the magic of Apple Translate and hand gestures we get there in the end.

Does anyone else have weird iPhone storage glitches? I've had this problem for the last maybe 4-5 years where my iPhone doesn't actually know how much storage it has. I've been on a 256GB iPhone for a while now, and Apple Store staff have asked me to backup and restore, I've even started on new installs recently.

The only thing that normally fixes it is doing a backup to my Mac.

My gut feeling tells me that there was a time maybe 4-5 years ago where I was loading in RAW images from my camera into iCloud Photo Library and editing with RAW Power and I reckon that they're stuck in the iCloud/phone storage jungle.

My Mac's Photos library also has this weird thing where it picks 1 or 2 photos that it allegedly cannot upload to the cloud, yet it actually originally got that photo from the cloud (it was uploaded on my phone), and the photo is still in the cloud.

I'm semi-tempted to burn this 20-year-old .mac/MobileMe/iCloud account to the ground, export everything, and start again. It feels like there's always something small that could be buggy happening ... or is that just how iCloud feels for everyone?

The most fascinating, whilst also overwhelming, experience in travel, especially when you undertake it for more than a weekend is 'noticing'.

Almost every time I notice something I think about what Steve Jobs once said:

"When you are a stranger in a place, you notice things that you rapidly stop noticing when you become familiar."

I sincerely love being a stranger. I think that's a common thread in my life, that when I become too known I feel uncomfortable. I feel very comfortable being a stranger in a strange place and rather too uncomfortable being at home.

I hope I can give my kids the upbringing that would help them feel the complete opposite, but still curious about the world, still desiring to be strangers in a strange place, noticing.

I think I just accidentally haggled with a vendor in an Italian street market. I thought the fruit cost less than five euros, I gave him five euro., he looked at me and giggled, winked, and points his finger at me and took the money and gave me no change. Is that what haggling is? I’m good at life.

When I first went into self-employment over a decade ago now I set up templates for common or transactional emails and I was always aware that I didn’t want an email not from me, yet from me, to not sound like I had sat down and written the letter.

So I used to write the automated emails from our cat, Stevie.

Stevie is no longer with us, her liver went south, but she lives on as of this week. I’ve replaced all of our automated emails with ChatGPT-generated emails and yet messages written by Stevie AI. Seeing what ChatGPT/Stevie is writing is amazing and hilarious and really good.

Consider that my teaser to enquire with me for your wedding, that a cat will send you emails.

You've heard the phrase "Content is King", coined by Sumner Redstone - the old rich white person behind CBS, Viacom, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central etc who passed in 2020 - but Bill Gates popularised the idea for the internet back in January of 1996. It's so beautiful and odd to read this essay 27 years on.

But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.

15 years of the Apple App Store and my first purchases are realllll nerdy

I’ve been featured in all the great newspapers around the world, the New York Times was one of the coolest. But none felt as good as having one of my photos printed six years ago in the newspaper I read as a young adult, the newspaper I got it earliest jobs from by reading the classifieds.

Why the rush to 5G?

On a per user basis, a 5G network is cheaper to operate than a 4G one. The technology is easier to maintain and more reliable. It’s not sexy. That’s something that is hard to sell to consumers, but makes a huge difference to telcos. There’s much more to this. The additional capacity may not be a pressing matter in New Zealand right now, but in time there will be more connections and 5G gives carriers headroom to cope with future demand. There may be future apps that can use the speed.

Did you notice the 5G mobile revolution? billbennett.co.nz

Jiddu Krishnamurti:

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.