Growing up, we always showered using (what my Italian mother called) a straccio. It wasn't until I was old enough to shop for myself that I encountered the plastic "shower puff", known also as a loofah¹.

That word – loofah – occupied a very singular place in my mind (synthetic shower accessory) until a few years ago, when I discovered a loofah growing in my garden.

The crazy part was… that cucumber-like fruit turned out to be exactly the same thing.

In our garden we think a lot about beneficial plants. Harvesting food is amazing, and particularly rewarding, but many plants have uses beyond sustenance. We love weeds with medicinal properties, we plant flowers for pest control and pollinating, or we might grow a specific plant to improve the soil. Loofah's are beneficial too! They make great washers and scrubbing brushes.

Many folks I've talked to about loofahs don't realise that the plastic thing you buy in the supermarket is modelled on the real thing – a plant with a spongy texture that works great for scrubbing in the shower.

The loofah plant grows like a weed in our garden. It's a climbing vine, not dissimilar to cucumber or pumpkin. The fruit pictured above is just growing on the ground, but usually we'll grow them vertically.

I've read that it's best to harvest after the skin of the fruit turns brown (it becomes brittle and easy to peel), but personally I find that it's more effective to harvest them early and let them mature in a cool, dry place. Otherwise the rain and humidity can cause the sponge to rot. Additionally, harvesting early results in a paler and harder sponge, which is my preference.

After the skin has gone brown, you peel it off, and shake out all the seeds! This usually takes me about 10 minutes, if I want to get all those stubborn hiding ones. We keep the seeds, and will plant them again. Here on the Sunshine Coast, they'll grow just about anywhere.

Some people prefer to bleach their loofah's before using them. I suppose this is to get rid of any unwanted dirt or plant matter. Others like to slice off the top and bottom with a bread knife for a more uniform cylinder shape. I prefer to keep things au naturel.

Showering with a home-grown loofah is amazing. It's hands-down the best body scrubber I've used. The sponge is exfoliating, but not too abrasive, and the length allows me to reach right down my back for a good scratch. Each loofah lasts about 3 weeks before it starts to rot.

I've read that some folks make a soap using sliced discs of loofah, resulting in a sort of all-in-one body scrubber. I'm keen to give that a go using coconut oil, sunflower oil, and some caustic soda (or maybe I'll try my hand at home-made lye!).

Inspired by Tobias Horvath (and a whole bunch of other bloggers), here are my App Defaults.

📨 Mail Client: Apple Mail
📮 Mail Server: iCloud
📝 Notes: Apple Notes

✅ To-Do: Physical notebook
📷 Photo Shooting: Apple Camera
🟦 Photo Management: Apple Photos
📸 Photo Editing: Apple Photos
📆 Calendar: Apple Calendar
📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud Drive
📖 RSS: Reeder
📇 Contacts: Apple Contacts
🌐 Browser: Apple Safari
💬 Chat: Apple Messages and WhatsApp
🔖 Bookmarks: Safari Bookmarks
📑 Read It Later: Reeder
📺 Watch It Later: Play
📜 Word Processing: Apple Pages
📈 Spreadsheets: Apple Numbers
📊 Presentations: Apple Keynote
✍🏻 Writing Books: Highland 2
🛒 Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders / Apple Notes
🍴 Meal Planning: Physical notebook
💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: Apple Numbers
📰 News: WhatsApp, Apple News
🎵 Music: Apple Music
🎤 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
📚 Books: Apple Books / Libby / BookPlayer
🔐 Password Management: Apple Passwords
🔍 Search Engine: Kagi
🍿 Movie Tracking: Apple Notes / Callsheet
📝 Blogging Platform: Hugo
🧑🏻‍💻 Code: PHPStorm for WordPress, Nova for everything else

Twenty twenty-five is such a great number.

Check this out: (20 + 25)² = 2025!

And if that doesn't convince you: (0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9)² = 2025.¹

Clearly we're living squarely in auspicious times.²

I've had a New Years Resolution strategy for the past few years that has worked really well. It started with a question: Why January 1st? It seems so arbitrary. If there's something you want to achieve or a habit you want to start, why wait?

So that's what I've been doing. Reflecting on the year past, planning for the year ahead, and starting on my "resolutions" mid-December. It's nice to be a little ahead of the game once everybody else joins come January.

Plus, you free yourself from the low success-rate commonly associated with New Years Resolutions. Nobody is measuring the viability of mid-December commitments – for all I know it's 99%!

A mid-December commitment might be closer to one supposed medieval origin of the New Years Resolution. According to legend (popularised by Les Voeux du paon), knights would take "The Vow of the Peacock" during the week leading up to Christmas, by placing their hand on a roasted peacock and making a commitment to chivalry.

I found this 1954 thesis on Les Voeux du paon written by Brother Camillus Casey, which summarises the vow.

On his way to Babylon, Alexander comes to the assistance of Cassamus and his nephews and niece, whose city of Epheson is being besieged by Clarus. Porrus, one of Clarus' sons who has been taken prisoner, shoots down a peacock. The peacock is roasted and served at a banquet at which all the guests vow to perform some noble deed.

So, here are my Peacock Resolutions, inspired by the square nature of 2,025.

---

Practice 4 instruments, 4 times a week.

I'm a mediocre musician at best, but I love to play. I'm trying to practice piano, guitar, bass guitar, drums, and clarinet. I've already got courses and books, and I'm hoping to start in-person piano lessons when the school term begins. When it comes to music, I'd like to call myself a jack-of-all-instruments, master-of-none. But even that takes practice.

Publish 1,024 words every week.

My children love writing, especially Eli. It's inspired me to be a more active writer. Most of those words will be on this blog, but some might be written for other publications.

Reach a 1,024 day Italian learning streak on Duolingo.

As of this writing, my streak is 896, so this shouldn't be too hard. More difficult will be my secondary goal of completing the Italian course.

Read 25 books.

This is way down on the 52 books I read in 2022, but that was pretty intense. I read 25 books in 2024, so this will be challenging but achievable.

---

Those are my goals. Some people prefer themes for the year.

I had a few scotches and a game of chess last night with a close friend of mine. One of the many things our conversation included was how people best learn. We decided that learning should be approached with curiosity, respect, and a little touch of ambivalence. Those are my themes for the year.

• Curiosity as an anti-aging remedy; it's like stretching every morning but for your mind.
• Respect for the time and effort of your teachers, peers, and students.
• Ambivalence, remaining open to multiple valences, a willingness not-to-know, embracing uncertainty. Maybe even a little indifference.

I wonder if that's chivalrous enough for those fourteenth century knights!

In 2024, I led a series of Film & TV classes for a small group of homeschool students. The curriculum was designed to explore a variety of tasks and topics, offering the students insight into different career paths within the filmmaking industry.

Here's the curriculum outline.

Term 1. Story to Script: We started the year learning about Screenplays – we read a whole bunch of them and wrote our own; a short film about an ex-monster hunter who leaves retirement to face the one that got away.

1. Anatomy of a story
2. Story jam
3. Character
4. Plot
5. Thinking in scenes
6. The screenplay
7. Rough draft
8. First draft
9. Final draft
10. Review

Term 2. The Shot-list: We explored cinematography concepts. This culminated in a full storyboarded shotlist (complete with shot size, camera angles, composition, and movement).

1. Shot Size
2. Composition
3. Angle
4. Movement
5. Storyboarding
6. Storyboarding
7. Storyboarding
8. Marking elements
9. Concept shots
10. Review

Term 3. On Location: This term was about pre-production and production. We had a blast location scouting, and learning about what it was like to be on set. We even got to have coffee with a professional actor, and learned first-hand what it’s like to work in the industry.

1. Crew roles
2. Scheduling, Planning, Budgeting
3. Casting
4. Auditions
5. Location scouting
6. Prop hunting
7. On set: Day 1
8. On set: Day 2
9. On set: Day 3
10. Review

Term 4. Final Cut: Unfortunately, we didn’t end up making it this far. A few students had to drop out, and we decided it was best to pick things up again at a later date. But here’s what we planned.

1. Meet Final Cut Pro
2. Logging
3. Assembly
4. Rough cut
5. Music and sound
6. Fine cut
7. Colour grading
8. Final Cut
9. Screening
10. Review

In the process of putting together these lessons, I came to realise that a deep understanding of media is incredibly important. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that “Film & TV”, also known as Media Class, is the most useful class a student can take.

Here’s why.

Media Literacy

We’re living in the Information Age. Everyone knows it. But what’s under-appreciated is the nature of the information that surrounds us: it’s overwhelmingly multi-modal. Text, images, video, audio – information now comes at us from every conceivable angle, often all at once.

Media class teaches an expansive form of literacy that goes beyond just reading and writing. It’s about understanding and creating across multiple modes of communication. Learning how to read, write, listen, watch, question, and converse is an essential part of a modern education.

Active Literacy

In a world where the cost of creating and distributing new content is effectively zero, critical thinking has become the ultimate survival skill. Media teaches students to:

• Discern fact from fiction
• Detect biases in storytelling
• Understand subtext and intention

This isn’t the passive consumption that traditional ”3 Rs” literacy might train you for. Media literacy is active. It’s about wrestling with the information you’re given, questioning its motives, and deciding what to do with it. It’s learning not just how to absorb information, but how to interrogate it.

Emotional Literacy

Ever been baited into an argument online? Fallen for an emotionally manipulative ad? Been blindsided by a tweet that seemed innocuous but wasn’t? Emotional literacy is the antidote to the modern internet’s arsenal of tone, context, baiting, trolling, and rhetoric.

Media class doesn’t just show students what to look out for; it helps them understand why people communicate the way they do. No other subject dives as deeply into the nuances of communication, delivering emotional intelligence outcomes that are critical for navigating digital spaces.

Inter-Disciplinary Literacy

While many school subjects serve specific purposes, Media Class is an outlier: it’s broadly applicable to nearly every aspect of life. From advertising to politics, from entertainment to religion, Media helps us decode and analyse the forces shaping our world.

Even within the school setting, Media crosses boundaries. Media literacy amplifies understanding in nearly every other subject. Take Film & TV, and you’ve gained a toolkit for analysing everything else you’ll encounter.

---

Media matters more than ever. Every year, the volume of data grows, its delivery becomes more sophisticated, and the consequences of misunderstanding escalate. Without a foundation in Media literacy, students are left vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation. With it, they’re equipped to engage with the world critically, creatively, and empathetically.

Media isn’t just a class; it’s a survival guide for the 21st century. If you’re lucky enough to take it, pay attention. It might just be the most important class you’ll ever take.

As the year draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the lasting impact of my career. Heady stuff – you know – real “leave a dent in the universe” sort of thing.

So, the big idea my whole career was really about promoting the Open Web. Idealistic? You bet. Naïve? Certainly. Successful? Well, it’s not looking good.

Here’s how I define it:

The Open Web is a network of websites, accessible from any browser over http. The word “Open” is redundant; it serves only to distinguish The Web from other closed systems, such as private networks or proprietary app stores.

So here we are, at the end of 2024, and it appears as though the Open Web is in decline. Taking its place are private social networks (TikTok, Instagram), and private messaging (WhatsApp, Messages, Telegram). Some websites have switched focus away from the browser and into a mobile app interface, like YouTube and Facebook.

The Open Web, as we knew it in the “good old days” of Web 2.0, is quickly disappearing. There are a few holdouts, like ecommerce and wikipedia, but people just don’t seem need websites the way they used to.

Nowhere has the impact been more obvious than in blogging. Gone are the days of “the blogosphere” and “blogrolls”. The internet’s long-form content writers have up and moved to Instagram and YouTube to become “creators” and “influencers”. Short-form “reels” content is the norm, and let’s face it, it’s mostly brain rot.

What about business websites? Modern businesses shrug off the idea of a custom website. Who needs the trouble when you’ve got Facebook and a Google Maps listing? It’s easier, cheaper, and gets information to customers faster.

And just in case you still harboured any hope at all that the Open Web might yet make a comeback, AI enshittification is coming for us all.

BUT

There is a trend which I find kind of exciting.

At some point, you realise that you’re addicted to dopamine. You find yourself opening Instagram without meaning to. So, you remove all social media apps and infinity wells, and you LOVE it. You discover an incredible mental clarity and wellness. You’re calm. You’re relaxed.

But there’s some detachment there. A disconnect. Other people seem to be “in” on a conversation which you’re not invited to. Naturally, you start to crave that connection.

That’s when you might discover the Cozy Web¹. The Cozy Web is a bit more of an idea than it is an actual place you can go. It can be found in a small private Discord. Or maybe you get together with friends in a group message. You could connect with a few podcast communities, follow an email newsletter, start a Substack, and rediscover RSS.

In his essay “The Extended Internet Universe”, Venkatesh Rao describes the Cozy Web like this:

Unlike the main public internet, which runs on the (human) protocol of “users” clicking on links on public pages/apps maintained by “publishers,” the cozyweb works on the (human) protocol of everybody cutting-and-past-ing bits of text, images, URLs, and screenshots across livestreams. Much of this content is poorly addressable, poorly searchable, and very vulnerable to bitrot. It lives in a high-gatekeeping slum-like space comprising slacks, messaging apps, private groups, storage services like Dropbox, and of course, email.

Rao makes an interesting observation, which I want to build on. He suggests that the internet boils down to a pick-2-of-3 constraint triangle. You can choose from Quality, Free, or Public. It’s a great starting place, but I don’t think it’s quite right.

Here’s a taxonomy that better represents the internet in 2024, which will help me to better define the Cozy Web.

---

1. Free vs. Ad-Tech vs. Paid

Many things online are still genuinely free. Altruistically so. Think of open source projects like WordPress and Node, or public benefit resources like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.

Ad supported sites aren’t necessarily evil – especially when the ads are hand-picked and delivered without any Ad-Tech middlemen. Many blogs and podcasts fall under this category. For the purpose of defining the Cozy Web, I’m counting these as Free.

Ad-Tech is a different beast entirely. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Google Search. These types of ads use sophisticated technology to become hyper targeted, delivering exactly the right ad at exactly the right time to exactly the right person. It’s insidious and dehumanising.

In contrast to ad supported models, many sites and content producers are turning to a simpler alternative: paid content, like Substacks, The New York Times, or Stratechery.

2. Known vs. Attributed Unknown vs. Anonymous

Private chats, small Slack spaces, Minecraft Realms – these are places where the participants are known to each other by name, often IRL. This is different from spaces like X or Facebook, where a user’s identity is verified, but the network operates in such a way that it becomes rare to encounter people you actually know (and, importantly, who know you in turn). Anonymity is becoming rarer for social media, but still exists in Reddit, 4Chan, gaming, and many other places online.

3. Not Optimised vs. Optimised for Engagement vs. Optimised for Insight

Private shitposting among friends is not “optimised content” in the way YouTube videos are optimised for views, or Reddit posts for karma. Unoptimised content is often private, free, and unapologetically low-quality. Of course, all communication aims to carry some sort of meaning, but the purpose isn’t to deliver insight.

That’s where news, blogs, and podcasts come in – the highest quality of which are paid. This content is optimised for audience insight, trading in opinion, synthesis, and aggregation.

Of course, then you get “Engagement Optimised” content. This is inevitably Ad-Tech supported (more views = more ads = more money), and often veers toward short-form content.

4. Private Distribution vs. Closed Distribution vs. Broad Distribution

Private messaging forms a large part of many social groups. These spaces are usually invite-only, and limited to a small number of people. Closed Distribution spaces, such as subscribed Substacks, Patreons, or email newsletters, can have larger audiences, but the content isn’t publicly accessible or searchable, and is often vulnerable to bitrot.

Broad distribution aims to capture as large an audience as possible, often including algorithmic feeds to deliver content to the perfect cohort of interested parties.

---

Using these classifications, I can extend my own definitions of Cozy Web concepts.

Clear Net

At least 3 of:

• Ad-Supported
• Attributed Unknown
• Optimised for Engagement
• Broad Distribution

Cozy Web

At least 3 of:

• Free
• Known
• Not-Optimised
• Private

---

It turns out that Open Web idealism might have been no more than a fast-track to an ad-based internet. Information wants to be free, but people want to be paid. The Cozy Web is an answer to that. It creates safe, intimate spaces to interact online, making the web feel smaller and more personal – reminiscent of the early days of bulletin boards and local online communities, where connection was valued over scale.

The internet has changed, but the good news is that it’s still changing. Not everyone is going adjust their daily dopamine diet, but there’s a growing group of troublemakers conscientious objectors who are building a better, cosier, web.

The table’s set for many guests,
with challah bread and wine
A kookaburra watches us
from the washing line

Mum prepares the salads,
Dad jumps in the shower
There’s that blue-faced honeyeater
On a banana flower

The kids clean up the lounge room,
Grandma stirs the soup
The chooks are clucking quietly
in the chicken coop

Auntie flicks the urn on
While Pa sneaks in a snooze
Screeching through the violet sky
are two black cockatoos

We put away the washing
And give the floor a sweep
A bush turkey is scratching
Through the compost heap

The guests are now arriving
We start to take our seats
What’s that noisy chattering?
Those rainbow lorikeets!

We sing and light the candles
Then watch the setting sun
The birds all sing their welcome song
Shabbos has begun