Good stuff.

Adverts on TV (and YouTube) are really useful, they are usually so obnoxious and agenda driven that they serve as a great way to show me what not to buy and what to avoid. Well done adverts, keep it up, keep saving me money :)

"Wow you grew up in the 80's, that must have been so cool". No, no.. It was shit. We were poor, and everything was expensive. Every day was another day a nuclear war might happen. Chernobyl. There were 3 TV channels and they all sucked. You had to be pretty tough to survive. On the upside, the music was good, video games and computers became a thing. You tended to have lots of friends you actually went and played with and spoke to all the time. You could do stupid things without half the world finding out about it. Best of all, most of us were blissfully unaware of just how messed up the world would become :)

I'm losing a fight I didn't even know I was taking part in. One of the top sales guys at my work recently, proudly, told me how he was now using AI to write his emails as he was fed up with his own "brash style" of writing possibly rubbing people up the wrong way. He then told me that after doing this he got a really nicely worded email in reply, so therefore he must be doing the right thing. I did point out to him that the person who replied to him with that professional writing style, also likely used AI to write it. My argument was then, what's the point of you and him even being involved, just get another AI to write up the report and email it to the customer AI to do what it needs to. The reason that sales guy is so successful is because of his personality. He can be abrupt and demanding, but his customers love that, they see him as someone who will fight for them. His emails are part of that. You learn that if you get a really nice, happy email from him, then you did something he really appreciated. With AI writing his emails for him, all the personality is lost. The thing that made him popular was being diluted. He had to agree with me that he would not have many of his clients if he didn't have his "tough but honest" personality, and since 80% of his interaction with them is by email or messaging, that was how he put his style across. So what's the point of this ramble? Well I didn't convince him.. He walked away saying "yeah sure, but people now expect you to be more polished, everyone uses AI to write their emails, I'd look stupid if I didn't". Its like we've become lemmings, racing over the edge to our own demise, cheerfully and willingly. I am losing the battle to try and get people I know to stop using AI so much, in offices its becoming a plague, worse, management encourage it, we're doomed. :) AI has a purpose, I know it can be good, but people are starting to get a little too hooked on the easy mode, convenience thing.

The best way to make money in photography is selling all your photography equipment. Sad but true :)

My list of places where I refuse to shop because they don't take cash grows longer by the day. Restaurants are especially bad, loads of them have banned cash. It would be great if they took bitcoin but of course they don't :) Most people just don't get it, they don't understand why losing the ability to use cash is a bad thing, they just want "convenience". But I always have a laugh when these cashless shops go into full on panic mode when their payment processor/WiFi/card readers go down and they have to turn every one away, small victories :)

When I go visit my family I like to take my instax and take and print photos for them. Its important. I've still got photo albums, that have pictures going back 2 or 3 generations of my family. Most kids or under 30s today won't have that. They're entire life is on a phone, probably stored in a cloud that could be deleted or lost at a moment's notice. Seeing someone smile when you hand them a photo to keep is a blessing. The joy of going through an old photo album, taking out the pictures and laughing about them with your friends and family is a treasure that's going to be lost for future generations, its just not the same scrolling through a gallery on your phone. So print your photos, give them to people, hang them up, save them. Its a relatively safe way to permanently record that you existed. When you lose your phone or memory cards get corrupted or cloud services ban you, those printed photos will be precious, especially to hand down to your children.