We're spending the last days of pesach in Mullumbimby. There's an amazing Jewish community here, full of young families and friendly faces. The Rabbi was kind enough to let us park our caravan in the yard of the shul, so we'll be very close to services over the next two days.

This morning I was up early with Zohar and we went for a 6am walk down Burringbar Street, which is the main street of the town.

The people here are so friendly. Every person I passed, without exception, said good morning. Most stopped to chat a little longer. The street was full of smiles and people going about their morning routines in a relaxed manner. We saw people stopping in the street for a hug, cars stop in the middle of the road to wave to friends, and a busker with bunny-ears improvising a song about the easter bunny. A dog-walker saw Zohar waving to his puppies, so he crossed the street to say hello (and let Zohar have a little pat). We talked for a good five minutes about how great dogs are at helping children process complex emotions.

Mullumbimby is also a very difficult place for me to be.

Not only does Mullumbimby have a huge Jewish and Israeli population (we even encountered a couple chatting in Hebrew at 6:30), but it's also a very hippy town. Posters are plastered on muralled walls for Grief Dancing, Integrative Healing, Zenthai Bodywork, Face Yoga, Soul Healers, and Transpersonal Reiki. The streets are full of loose clothing, beaded jewellery, dreadlocks, and dream catchers.

A couple of years ago, this would really have been my speed. But since the conflict in Gaza, the progressive narrative has been infected with a pro-terror mind virus that you just can't escape. The Australian Greens are actively hostile toward the Jewish Community. And here in Mullumbimby, I can't help but wonder whether people would be so friendly if I took my cap off to reveal my kippah. How many Mullum hippies harbour resentment toward the native homeland of the Jews? How many have chanted "from the river to the sea"?

At the community Passover seder (back home on the Sunshine Coast), I was chatting with a woman who has close ties to the Liberal party (Australia's mainstream conservative party). We've debated progressive vs. conservative policies before, with me always on the progressive side. But seeing her at Passover, I told her that even though deep down in my heart I'm still a progressive, there's no way I could vote for anyone but the Liberals this year.

The Farmer's Markets we attended this morning had a strong Greens party representation, and even a "Friends of Palestine" booth. But the one thing stood really shocked and angered me was a man wearing a dual-flag badge: the Aboriginal flag alongside the Palestinian flag. I consider myself a supporter of Indigenous issues and Aboriginal ownership of our lands. I teach my children that we live in Gubbi Gubbi country. I feel like Jews and Aboriginal / Torres Strait Islander people share a spiritual connection to their homelands. That we understand each other in that small way. Why does that have to be linked to the Pro-Palestinian movement, politically tearing support away from Jews?

I have Jewish family in Mullumbimby. They said that the antisemitic ones are only a loud minority. Most people are supportive of the Israeli's living here, if not of Israel directly. There's been a lot of quiet words of acknowledgement and support. I hope that's true.

I guess we'll find out at the Federal Election in a few weeks. Labour and the Greens have moved radically to the left. Has the rest of the population gone along with them?

When was the last time you were offline?

Like, really offline. Not just signed out of Slack. Not Do Not Disturb. Not even airplane mode. I'm talking phone entirely off for a good 24 hours. Stay at home, with no internet, and no screens.

It's a forcing function for your mental health.

I challenge you to try it. Once a week, or once a month, or once a year. Some sort of schedule helps set the right expectations with friends and family.

Just think of all the things you could do with 24 hours of screen-free time.

• Write a letter
• Read a book
• Take a nap
• Play some music
• Write a song
• Do yoga
• Write a poem
• Memorise something
• Take a nap
• Draw a bath
• Make a cocktail
• Think deeply
• Journal
• Go for a walk
• Talk to your neighbours
• Bake a cake
• Light a candle
• Meditate
• Take a nap
• Play some boardgames
• Be intimate with your partner
• Paint
• Savour the flavour in a glass of wine
• Play hide and seek with your kids
• Spend time in the garden
• Take a nap
• Birdwatch
• Listen to a record all the way through
• Stargaze
• Sketch
• Swim
• Stretch!
• Cook a fancy date-night dinner
• Totem tennis
• Origami
• Practice a magic trick
• Sew
• Upcycle (DI-Why?)
• Roast marshmallows over a fire
• Dream up some travel plans
• Go backyard camping
• Take a nap

No news. No plans. No chores. Just time at home, dedicated especially to you.

Out of sheer curiosity, I applied for a job that had a really interesting cross-over between Education and AI. I flubbed the interview. I felt very out of practice, but also, the CEO had very silicon valley vibes. She was operating at a way faster speed to me.

Come to think of it, people often say that I'm calm or relaxed. Do they mean it as a compliment? It only happens when I'm on work trips. I think it might be less to do with my personality, and more to do with the semi-rural beach town I come from.

I'm studying, and I'm behind. I've overcommitted. I have another commitment that ends in a few weeks which should help relax things to something more manageable.

I also have an iOS app that I want to build. But I need to figuratively clear my desk first.

We're camping over pesach. Everyone we speak to says it's a great idea, and I agree. We've shut up the house, chametz and all, and taken off on a road trip in the caravan. Our first few nights were in Mooloolaba, to be close to the community seders. It was really nice waking up to an ocean sunrise each morning with Zohar. After that we aimed west, and found a beautiful free camp just outside Dalby. The kids had a blast swimming in the creek.

Tonight we're parked up at Girraween National Park. It's jaw-droppingly pretty here.

But! Work to do. Assignments to complete. Blogs to distract me from actually being productive.

Travelling in the caravan gives me strong "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome. Especially caravan parks, where rich city folk show off their fancy setups. I know it's unhealthy, but it's hard to suppress. Especially as a few small things on our caravan begin to need repair. We've had her about two years now.

Talia's pesach cooking is unrivalled, even with camp-kitchen limitations! Her matzah-crack is the most moorish thing I know. Aptly named.

After hiking Girraween tomorrow we'll head back to the coast, in the direction of Mullumbimby. Excited to see family there, and spend the last days of pesach in services with the community.

I received a proposal today. Someone asking me to invest a decent chunk of money into their work.

But the proposal was kind of hard to parse. It was written well, but the concepts weren't well organised. The structure was too complex, and poorly formatted.¹

Of course, it was AI generated.

I spent 30 minutes going over it with a colleague, call it an hour between us. The damn proposal probably only took 5 minutes to generate.

Now listen, if you're using AI to improve your productivity, well good for you. Go for it! Just follow this one golden rule:

Your productivity gains must not come at the expense of others.

This has been happening with plugin review, too. Someone spends an hour in Cursor throwing together a rough cut WordPress plugin. They submit it, and I spend 15 minutes reviewing it. I send back a list of requested changes, which they just copy / paste straight into their AI. And does the AI fix all the problems? Of course not! It's just rinse and repeat, over and over, until I've worked on your plugin longer than you have!

G-d forbid we end up in an agentic² nightmare where our personal AI assistants tirelessly bounce off one another in an eternal cycle of enshittification.

Normally I start with a blog post that I then convert that into a podcast. But this is a podcast first, and I'm going to turn it into a blog post later. I don't have a script that I'm reading from. This is all sort of off the cuff. There's something that I've been meaning to talk about. To speak out loud. And I hope you find it interesting.

I've been thinking a lot about academic integrity lately.

I've started university, and one of the first courses that they get you to do is all about academic integrity. Of course, in this age of artificial intelligence, academic integrity is more vital than ever. The university puts a lot of emphasis on AI in this academic integrity course. They call it the other kind of AI. You've got Academic Integrity (AI) and the other kind of AI: Artificial Intelligence.

The rule is simple. Don't use AI, unless your course specifically allows you to. Not even for grammar checks, not even for proofreading. Unless your course work specifically says you can. Which, I mean that's a different blog post isn't it?

So back to academic integrity. What is it? We all know the basics right? It's about plagiarism, referencing your source material, and giving credit where credit's due.

That's what we typically think about when we're talking about academic integrity. But there was something different that came up in my last assignment, a research report on ADHD in junior secondary education.

And as part of that report, I had to discuss "what are the recommendations for schools, teachers, and students", in the context of ADHD research. What's beneficial for managing ADHD in the classroom. And for the first time I encountered this different kind of academic integrity because, well, my first response looked like this:

Specialised ADHD training is an important first step for supporting classroom teachers. The ADHD Australia Education Survey Report (2024) revealed that 55% of teachers are unsure or do not know how to support students with ADHD.

Porter et al. (2023)¹ found that after participating in targeted ADHD training, teachers reported a significant increase in confidence in supporting students with
ADHD. It was noted that teacher attitudes, understanding, and compassion toward ADHD students improved, as well as the implementation of learning strategies and
supports. A study by Ohan et al. (2008)² showed that teachers with average to high levels of ADHD knowledge reported more supportive behaviours toward students with
ADHD, and held more positive views of intervention strategies.

And I provide the sources for that. It's all true. Well, it's all technically true. If I just submit what I've written here, I'm confident I'll get marked pretty well.

But it's missing an important nuance.

The truth is that we don't have any good answers for how to deal with ADHD in the classroom.

Teacher training, for example, is effective at making teachers feel confident, but no study has linked that to better outcomes for students with ADHD. And in the end, that's what matters. In terms of engagement with the school, in terms of post-school success, none of the research points to better outcomes. In fact, some research shows that teachers with more knowledge of ADHD differentiate less in the classroom.

So, I feel that it's disingenuous of me to leave that part out. There's a lack of Academic Integrity.

However, according to the assessment criteria of my research assignment, if I don't provide any good recommendations, then I'm not going to get marked well.

So, how does academic integrity apply to me here? What's the right answer? What should I do?

Should I write according to my assessment criteria? Say things that are true, that have research backing them up, but essentially are disingenuous?

Or, should I tell the truth and, in so doing, not directly answer the question I'm supposed to answer?

Because the truth is, in this case, there isn't a good answer.

Welcome to Pirate School! A new podcast hosted by me and Talia Carbis, about the chaotic, messy, wild world of home education.

This podcast is basically just a chat about how we homeschool. We're both trained as teachers, so we do know a lot of those foundational education principles. And, of course, we have opinions.

We just released episode 9, which you can find on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've appended a short sample of the show to the end of the audio version of this post.

Quick sidebar on how we record:

We've tried a few different approaches, including separate lapel mics, and speaking together into a condenser mic (with a splitter cable for headphone foldback). What we settled on was simply sitting on the couch and speaking directly into our iPhones! We open Voice Memos, clap (to sync the two separate recordings in post), and begin.

The audio quality is nothing short of terrible. So to compensate, I simply combine and sync the audio files in Garageband, then upload the result to Auphonic. I'm no audiophile, but I don't think you can tell much of a difference between episodes we recorded with a fancy condenser mic in a baffled recording booth, and the iPhone microphone in the lounge room.

Say something profound
Say something profound
Say something profound
Say something profound
Pull it down from the heavens
Pull it up from the ground
Say something,
Say something profound

Say something oblique
Say something oblique
Some obscure reference
Something antique
The less that they get it
The better it sounds
Say something obscure and profound

Say something brand new
Say something unique
An utterance that I’ll decode in a week
Say something brand new
And say something blue
With tongue firmly planted in cheek

Just say something

Say something
For G-d’s sake
Say something!
Somebody,
I wish that you would
If they don’t enjoy it
You’re misunderstood
Say something,
Say anything good

Say something frightful!
Surprising, delightful!
Make me squirm,
Make it gross
Make me smile,
Be morose

Speak a truth
Swear an oath
Make it real
Never lie
Make me hurt
Make me think
Make me feel
Make me cry

Say something immortal

Cast a spell that will open a portal
And take me away
Send me on vacation
To find inspiration
Because I have nothing to say

Pebble is back!¹ I wrote about it, Eric Migicovsky wrote about it, even John Gruber wrote about it, and it's now available for pre-order.

But…

iPhone users like myself have been warned. The experience will be hamstrung, due to Apple's lack of interoperability between iOS and third-party devices.

Some features will appear first on our Android app, and then eventually we’ll add them to the iOS app. This is because the majority of our development team uses Android phones, and generally we’re building things for ourselves, so naturally Android comes first.

I don’t want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. I’m publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If you’re worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.

This is such a non-starter. I'd happily switch from an Apple Watch to a PebbleOS watch. But there's no way in hell you'll convince me to switch from iOS to Android.

Essentially, this announcement sucked all the joy out of spending $225 on a new watch. I was pretty close to clicking that "Apple Pay" button for a Core Time 2, but I can't bring myself to be excited about a second-rate experience.

It's weird though. Many of the experiences that Eric lists as impossible on iPhone are unimportant to me.

• There’s no way for a smartwatch to send text messages or iMessages.
• You can’t reply to notifications or take ‘actions’ like marking something as done.
• It’s very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with Pebble.

I don't care about these features. I'm happy for my watch to live on my wrist and just give me notifications. I can pull out my phone to action them if needed. And I don't need complex integrations with other apps (and I'm sure reasonable workaround exist for this anyway). Part of my problem with Apple Watch is that it tries to do too much! Keep it simple: Time, Notifications, Health, and Calendar.

Then, Eric lists another set of problems.

• You can’t easily side load apps onto an iPhone. That means we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore.
• Getting a Javascript engine to run in PebbleOS forced us to go through many hoops due to iOS.
• You can’t reply to notifications or take ‘actions’ like marking something as done.

Sorry Eric, these are features not bugs. I wouldn't want to sideload the Rebble app (or whatever app that launches for PebbleOS), I would much rather get it from the official App Store. Apple's Javascript restrictions are for performance and privacy and security reasons, I don't want you working around those. And I don't want anyone having wholesale access to all my notifications. That leads to a privacy nightmare. Don't tell me you should at least make it an option – if PebbleOS gains the ability to read notifications, everyone will, and if everyone does then we'll see Big Social dark pattern their way into everyone's private life.

Then, Eric mentions another problem, which definitely gave me pause. Here we have something Apple should being paying a little closer attention to.

• If you (accidentally) close our iOS app, then your watch can’t talk to app or internet.

There should be an API for enabling third-party devices to speak with iOS. You don't need to give away any privacy measures for this. Just direct device to device communication, with an on-device data enclave which the app can then access as needed. In fact, it should be possible to pair a PebbleOS watch to your iPhone without the app installed. Enforce a limited content scope, enforce a limited update interval, enforce everything you learned about preserving battery life from making the Apple Watch. But at least make it possible for PebbleOS to sync Time, Calendar, Health, and also speak to the internet. It might be nice to have access to alarms, too (but even Apple Watch can't manage that one!).

Apple should have done this long ago, but because they didn't they're now being subjected to egregiously overreaching regulation.

Today, the European Commission adopted two decisions under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) specifying the measures that Apple has to take to comply with certain aspects of its interoperability obligation…

The first set of measures concerns nine iOS connectivity features, predominantly used for connected devices such as smartwatches, headphones or TVs…

To be clear, these regulations go against everything I believe about government’s role in regulating private enterprise. It’s draconian. It's heavy-handed. It's more like a geopolitical swing at America’s tech dominance than thoughtful policy. And also, Apple has been asking for it. The lesson is: If you can't self-regulate, you'll get kicked in the ass by Europe.

That said, the measures, while unnecessarily punitive in most regards, do include some of the requests I mentioned earlier: direct to device pairing, and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. If Apple was willing, they could have done a much better job at device to iOS integration, working with manufacturers like Garmin or Bose who already have products in the space. But they didn't, and now the Eurocrats are telling Apple how to make software.

John Gruber also commented on Eric's announcement post.

My advice would have been to return with just one watch. Make a decision: color or monochrome. I’d sort of lean toward black-and-white, to differentiate it from Apple Watch and other high-end smartwatches. They’re never going to out-color Apple on display quality, so why not go the other way and lean in on black-and-white utility and contrast?

Na. The colour e-ink is awesome. I'm not after a bright, saturated, colour display. Just a little interest and style to my watchfaces. Also, PebbleOS leans heavily into pastels, which will work great on this display.

Instead of arguing that “Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones”, lean into the ways that Pebble can be awesome because it isn’t an Apple Watch. 30-day battery life is awesome. I don’t think Apple Watch will ever offer that. Being able to run whatever apps — including watch faces — that you want on your own Pebble watch is awesome, and I know Apple Watch will never offer that. Lean into what Pebble watches can do that Apple Watches can’t. If the experience as a Pebble owner can be a lot better paired with an Android phone than an iPhone, lean into that. Show how much better it is on Android than iOS. Compete.

Complaining about Apple's lack of interoperability definitely paused my Pebble purchase. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it would be quite difficult to demonstrate the better experience on Android. Maybe replying to notifications, but like I said earlier, I'm more than happy to forgo this on my watch (in fact, I kind of wish that the colour version didn't have a touch screen – the button only interface is so damn charming).

What this whole thing has taught me is that there's a fundamental cultural gap separating iOS and Android users. Maybe Eric thinks that we're upset about being in some sort of unescapable prison of an ecosystem, but we're here happy and safe in our walled garden.

I've been interacting with quite a lot of Americans, Europeans, and Brits the last few days. I've learned two new things about the USA, and for once, neither comes from my typical sarcastic, antagonistic disposition toward "the land of the free".

First, Americans share a common cultural temperament with Aussies, which is that they're not afraid to call bullshit. They're inclined to stand up for what's right. Of course, this can cause problems, especially when the definition of "right" is disputed. But on the whole, it's better than turning a blind eye to suffering and injustice under the auspices of manners and "mind your business".

Second, American cities are very unsafe places right now. Houselessness has reached unprecedented heights, drug addiction afflicts a large proportion of the population, crime is up, and law enforcement is often either overwhelmed or restrained by policy.

This is all anecdotal, of course. I've gone from a place of gently teasing my boastful and confident American friends (call it Tall Poppy Syndrome), to genuinely feeling sorry, even worried, for them.

It could be good for G-d's own "city on a hill" to be knocked down a peg or two, but I hope they can sort their shit out soon!

Beautiful national parks, though.

It's pretty rare to find people who live an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle where there's no Orthodox Jewish community. But I do.

Because I'm recognisably Jewish (I wear a kippah), I often encounter people who have questions and pre-conceptions about Judaism, which I'm more than happy to oblige.

There is one particular misconception about Judaism that I encounter time, and time again. For some reason, people seem to think Jews don't drink alcohol.

Oh, but we do.

It's customary to drink wine after Shabbat services, and many congregations have a custom to drink during services, too!

No holiday exemplifies this more than Purim. The Talmud in Megila 7b instructs us, seemingly, to drink until we are very drunk.

Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.

Woah! Haman is the bad guy of the story, and Mordecai is the good guy. It's like saying "drink until you can't tell the difference between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader". That's a lotta grog.

The (let's call it) dynamic relationship between Judaism and alcohol is problematic, especially given modern social problems related to alcoholism (a problem which Jews are by no means immune to).

Thankfully, this question was asked of Rabbi Chaim Ingram this week, and I wanted to share his response for two reasons.

1. Most of the readers to this blog are not Jewish, and I think this answer provides a great insight into the Jewish mind and culture.
2. There's a lesson here beyond any questions of "how much to drink" that we can all learn from.

Rabbi Ingram directs us to the specific words used in the verse: "cursed is Haman", and "blessed is Mordecai". In Hebrew, they are: "אָרוּר הָמָן" (arur Haman) and "בָרוּךְ מָרְדֳּכַי" (barukh Mordechai).

Let's take a quick detour to a seeming contradiction, just a dozen chapters apart, in Proverbs.

In Proverbs (11:10) it is stated:

When the righteous prosper the city exults;
When the wicked perish there are shouts of joy.

But in Proverbs (24:17) this is contradicted:

If your enemy falls, do not exult;
If he trips, let your heart not rejoice.

The contradiction resolves when you understand the difference between "the wicked", and "your enemy". Your enemy might be people with their own misconceptions, traumas, goals, and beliefs, which clash up against yours and cause friction.

But "the wicked" refers to something else. There's a pure, unadulterated evil that exists in the world. When this evil is extinguished, we should celebrate! The removal of evil is the same as the triumph of good!

On Purim, we have drunk enough when we realise that arur Haman is the same as barukh Mordechai. When Haman (representing pure evil) is cursed, Mordechai (representing good) is blessed.

In an age where all moralities are often treated as equally valid, this lesson is more important than ever. Evil does exist, and removing it makes the world a better place.

Chag Purim Sameach!