Gonna run a bit of an experiment for the new year. I'm heading off into the Tasmanian alps tomorrow and will be without cell service, and without BSky. Although I've not been posting a lot here, I have been reading *a lot*, and, frankly, it's not been great for me. So it's time for a change. 1/

rather glad to soon be hiking through the Tasmanian alps for 7 days with no cell reception tbqh

Once almost hit a tall, blond woman with my Volvo 262 C. I came around the corner — she was running across the road. I stopped to check she was ok. I approached and got a funny feeling inside. She was enigmatic. She dipped her sunnies, smiled, thanked me, walked on. It was Elle McPherson.

"... fear of heights has nothing to do with the distance from the ground or tall buildings,... it’s about our own human urge to fall when we get that far up, the knowledge that we could plummet, we could go, if we wanted. When I think about Spencer, I wonder why I didn’t choose to fall with him,..."

Make a Bond movie casual: On Her Majesty’s Postal Service The Living Room Skylights You Only Live Once The Spy Who Ghosted Me My Backyard Is Not Enough From Russia Pie Another Day

‘straya cc @bjkraal.bsky.social

Slacke Weeke.

Make a Bond movie casual: Casino Normale

this is what I needed to find after attempting to use Mom's internet again youtu.be/DVprerMi5Dg?... thanks, single bar of LTE phone service 💀

Make a Bond movie casual: Diamonds Are Far More Abundant Than De Beers Would Have You Believe

Make a Bond movie casual: Lawn raker.

Christ, the Crystal Waters piece, and its parallels to the story of someone I used to know, absolutely broke me. Addiction’s a hell of an affliction, and it ran very different courses in our respective lives. I’m fucking grateful for where i landed and the people who held me through it.

Journey completed in 12 hours and 10 minutes. Not bad, Margot. Not bad.

I’ve never understood why these things have the stance of a poxy junior SUV.

Today I is mostly piloting Margot one thousand and fifty four kilometres north, to a town called Lismore.

‘straya

This thread perfectly explains why AI has little value for qualitative research. Yes, large language models can find patterns in qualitative data. But, they're trained on what we already know. So, they won't find anything surprising. And, surprise is qualitative research's primary value-add.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the JDM Sigma/USDM Diamanté because it got the 4-light hardtop body with frameless glass. Also, the chrome trim around headlights and grille created a fantastic front end. Our Aussie Veradas got the rather more pedestrian 6-light bodies with framed glass.

I wrote much less this year than I've written in the past five, so there's not a whole lot to revisit. This piece, though, I still think is probably the best article I've ever written, even if it was a dumb professional move to write it [free to read] www.patreon.com/posts/empero...

This year, I’ve had three different startups offer to create an AI clone of me for my coaching clients. This thread describes why I tell them no thanks very much and send them in their way. I actually gave a session to one founder and he was left reconsidering what he was trying to achieve.

The Gerald Welter era of Peugeot. What happens when you put a racing guy with zero taste in charge of the design team of a bran that formerly stood for understated elegance. Fantastic(ly ugly) concept cars.

This much cool should be illegal

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Well that's a relief...

I wrote about the SUI COLLECTION, presented in Kyoto last month. It'ss the Cabinet Office of Japan’s strategic pitch to global markets that the country has much more to offer by leveraging its craftsmanship and culinary excellence. www.gchicco.com/the-structur...

*taps the screen* (but not while driving)

So yeah, entered our Lexus era on Saturday. '07 anthracite over grey GS450h with 211,000ks on it. Apart from being amusingly quick, it also feels unburstable. The Up! will go, obvs, but even the stupid small boot can't dissuade me from considering selling the 300 TE, too.

Why would you walk a pilgrimage? It's a common question when people think about joining Kalia and I on a thousand-year old pilgrimage trail in Japan. So I decided to string some words together to give folk a sense of what it can be like.

This, but the automotive industry and they’re still not doing good research for the most part. That’s why you can get 128-colour ambient lighting and a hot stone massage, but your seat heaters are three menus deep, you can’t fit a pram in your 100k+ SUV, and your speedo is out of your eye line.

I once worked alongside UX and UI designers responsible for human interactions with ADAS. They had no licenses and had never driven cars with ADAS. It took me 8 months of political chicanery to get a few cars in for me to *drive them around in* so they could see the systems in action.

Now heading down a Portishead rabbit hole and reliving my teen years. This band's music was a balm on my aching, yearning soul.

Well this is certainly a Friday-evening-with-a-dollar-sized-mouth-ulcer mood... I'm also imagining this as the title track for a British noir thriller series set in the grimmest and grimiest of central London.

Going to see this tomorrow... The portal, perhaps, to my Lexus era?

Found an absolutely mint GS450h with a newly-replaced battery for all of 10k. Of course, its just gone on hold for someone else :-/

Pursuant to this thread, does anyone in my network have more than a passing familiarity with the S190 series Lexus GS? Interested in experiences of the 300 and 430. Entirely disinterested in the 450h on account of borkage potential.

So: We have a 2013 Volkswagen Up! We love it! Minor design classic and stupid convenient around town. Also: it's made of chocolate, like all VAG product. At 150k kms, it needs a new sump, alternator, expansion tank, springs, shocks, and bushes. All up? Probably about 4k of work on a 5k car 1/3

I wrote a thing about how cultivating connection allows us to go deep: into ourselves, into community, and into a place like Atashilka — a tiny Japanese town enjoying a tiny renaissance. cc. @craigmod.com

My beloved sat in an LS 430 today. He loved it. There is hope, people. There is hope.

Salad shooters intensifying.

If you see this, post your black & white art!

"Wallpaper also reports that Rivian is releasing a fragrance during the event that’s “inspired by diverse landscapes from alpine to canyon to forest.”" Rivian joining the pantheon of fine automotive fragrances. My favourite? A man who's simply *dripping* in Innovation by Jaguar...

NGL, folks, I *love* the new Angry Camry aka the GR GT aka the new really expensive Toyota. Why? Not because it's pretty. No. Because it looks like an absolute weapon. No dressing up. No trying to be pretty. Just about as much bodywork as you need to wrap a mental package. That's it.

ANGRRRRRY CAMRRRRY IS *AAAAAANNNNNGGGGGRRRRYYYY*!

Trump Sending Mixed Message to Transgender Community: "Does He Want to Outlaw Our Healthcare Or Legalize Our Favorite Cars?"

Worked at Accenture when Julie Sweet gave away 60k quest headsets, created a metaverse campus (the "Nth floor"), and published research saying "71% of executives believe the metaverse will have a positive impact on their organization and 42% believe it will be breakthrough or transformational." 🫠

I trulyruly resent having to buy a Lightroom license... Wherefore art thou, Aperture?

Yes, in a certain part of the industry at least, they certainly do.

For context, these are much younger versions of me and two dear design strategist mates. We were at the Geneva motor show and had just clocked Gerry unveiling the Range Rover SV Coupe. I can't recall if he was standing on a box or not. But it was a vibe, friends. It. was. a. vibe.

Fair play: Gerry's overseen some cracking and commercially successful deigns in his time. He's also wracked with the kind of fear that makes others' lives hell, to say nothing of his own, I'll wager. That so much harm was done to so many good people in his orbit is, nonetheless, inexcusable.