Gosh I hate marketing/advertising my business in 2026.

It used to be that we would send money to local wedding fairs, expos, magazines, blogs, directories. Now those dollars have a terribly low ROI.

What has a great ROI? Shovelling money towards California. And they always want more.

I can’t help but feel that this line will feature heavily in the documentary a future generation makes about this time in history:

We unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures. From there, the goblins spread.

One consistent tension I’m navigating:

The pull to be at the vanguard of technology (learn Claude Code, install OpenClaw, vibe code everything!) and hurriedly experiment and drop ~$50 worth of credits on a project while asking Claude for step by step instructions like I’m disarming a bomb (“which wire, Claude?!”)

versus

Going analog, expanding my attention span, dive into books, poetry, re-learn to notice the texture of the moss, the buds sprouting into bloom—the small, the simple, the mundane.

These are two different speeds, and I believe, two different sets of values: In one, you concede that reality is demanding speed, relevance, and experimentation. And sure, my curiosity fits into that well. On the flip side, the other mode implies that a deeper, slower connection with our reality will not only help live life with more resonance, but also financially, will be the better way to go (e.g. in tech bro parlance “building taste”).

– Camilo Moreno-Salamanca on his Substack

First snow of the season on Sleeping Beauty

On this flight home from Sydney I achieve Qantas Lifetime Gold status.

14,000 status credits.

14,000 status credits means

• thousands of weddings around the world
• 830 flights with Qantas or its partners,
• 1.39 million km travelled,
• 2,140 hours or 89 full days of my life airborne.
• 64 airports (Sydney is my number one, 416 movements),
• 24 countries flown through, to, or from,
• 18 status-earning airlines.
• 354 movements through Gold Coast Airport,
• 222 through Brisbane,
• 183 through Tullamarine,
• 115 through Hobart.
• 446 flights on Boeing 737s, 130 on Airbus A320/321s, 72 on Boeing 717s, and numerous 747, 767, 757, A380, A350, and A220 flights.

And if you don't know what Lifetime Gold is, it means that I don't have to try and get Gold status with Qantas anymore, I earn it on the first flight each year pretty much.

I'm expecting there to be a letter from the Queen of the Skies in the mail when i get home. Can 747s write letters?

I’ve had Mark’s email sitting in my inbox all week and I just keep on reading this.

I’m posting it here so I can keep on coming back to it in the future:

Hot take: AI is going to be better at helping people with their problems than humans will be.

Not because AI is more human…

But because it’s not human at all.

– Mark Manson

I’m offended seeing items I once used as part of my craft and art now in a museum display

C.S. Lewis on what matters most:

To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor. The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a person alone reading a book that interests them; and all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, are only valuable in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes.

Only show work you like, or you’ll end up being hired to do things you don’t like.

– Victoria Pater, Designer

I’m scared

Late last night I stopped at McDonald’s drive-through for a coffee while on the way to a late-night aurora tour. The guy serving me was amazed, the 61-year-old local in the car ahead had never been to McDonald’s.

I've been thinking about that guy all day. How glorious it must be to have never been to Maccas.

Random Aurora Australis sighting on Mount Wellington/kunyani tonight

If I was getting paid $10 million a year to co-host a breakfast radio show with Kyle Sandilands you could watch a really cool slow-mo video of me gathering my thoughts in the space of about 5 seconds if Kyle was a dick to me.

And for context, I once consented in a job interview, to getting paid something like $80k a year to be called a c*nt by Kyle.

For $10 mil he could address me purely by that title.

Is red bad?

You shouldn’t worry about criticism from someone that you would never ask advice from.

– Aaron Rodgers

Brian Halligan on people:

The older I get, the more I think outstanding taste in people is the only real alpha.

I love the green tail of the Qantas A220 VH-X4A

I love how much my kids love museums

I was asking for a Mac app recommendation from Claude but now I'm a Mac developer.

An ounce of originality is worth a pound of imitation.

– Orson Welles

There is only one thing worse than being imitated, and that is not being imitated.

– Coco Chanel

I sat next to a young honeymooning couple from Guatemala on my flight home to Tassie tonight.

They booked their entire Australia holiday based on ChatGPT planning their itinerary.

I added some local understanding to a few of the routes in Tassie they wanted, but it was a pretty good trip. Hamilton Island, Sydney, Tasmania, covering all their wants in the holiday.

If you haven’t figured out how AI is going to change your business or employment like it’s changing travel then you’re behind the eight ball.

I’d also love to have that conversation with you, particularly if you don’t know how ChatGPT figures out who and how to recommend what it recommends.

My only experiences with electric vehicles are in renting them, and I rent quite a few as I travel.

The out-of-home charging infrastructure is bad.

Three stories from today:

1. I’m staying at my mother-in-law’s home in suburban Gold Coast and the nearest public charging infrastructure is a 15 minute drive away. It’s got two charging bays, each time I visit there’s a queue.
2. I had a long drive today and needed to charge in Brisbane before the drive. I get fee Chargefox charging with my Sixt rental but the best located charging station was at a BP. The app - BP Pulse - is yet another horrible corporate app that forgets logins, doesn’t work well, and the third BP app I have on my phone. The working charger didn’t work, and the second was pre-identified as not working. So once the “working charger” had not charged the charging cable was locked and would not come out of the car. The BYD Atto’s manual is electronic and requires the car have internet access. There are three methods to manually unlock, it took me to the third method.
3. Charging station locations on Apple Maps and Google Maps sucks. Tonight I wanted to charge at a certain charger and I started the journey in a no-service area so I used BYD in-built maps which don’t know about an exit that had changed so I missed the exit and almost ran out of battery because I couldn’t charge at the BP charger earlier. Further to that I'm now charging at a charger in Brisbane city that's not on any mapping application but is in the Chargefox app, however in the app it's across the road and a few hundred metres away and apparently in a construction yard.

It's a weird time to be a travelling EV driver.

Modern man is in a terrible predicament. He is helplessly enamoured with the beauty of what the old world built, yet despises the beliefs that inspired them to build it.

– Jeremy Tate