The world is waking up to what Meta has been for a long time

I don’t need to say much now that the world is waking up. So what’s new? This was exactly where Facebook was heading in the 2010s. Appeasement depending on which way the wind is blowing. Principles? Look elsewhere. Zuckerberg’s only principle is safeguarding his wealth. I’ve said for years to simply shut it off. If […]

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Luxury Facts on the Jaguar rebrand (featuring Cristián Saracco and me)

Jaguar Type 00 concept in purple, shown directly on the side.

A nice way to conclude 2024: my name in a real article by a real journalist with quotations attributed to me that are actually by me. I’m so grateful to Tejashee Kashyap and Luxury Facts for interviewing me and my friend Dr Cristián Saracco, and to our friend Philippe Mihailovich for connecting Tejashee and me […]

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Twenty twenty-four, the year of “AI slop”

The tricky thing in 2024 was, obviously, disinformation. More disinformation articles went up about yours truly than anything legitimate like press releases or media interviews. In other words, there was more “AI slop” going online—something mirrored in other parts of the web. As Cybarbie on Mastodon noted: ‘The surveillance people screwed themselves really, since we […]

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Why don’t we just stop tracking?

Person peering through Venetian blinds. Photographed by Noëlle Grace.

Not only is Linkedin OK with disinformation, thereby making itself complicit to fraud, it turns out verification isn’t that simple. I’ve said many times that I think most “apps” are just web browsers limited to a single site, but, in the interests of greater visibility, I relented and downloaded the Linkedin app. Like most apps, […]

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Wix’s terms of service are just for show—they’re OK with fraud

Ethical players, steer clear of Wix. Unlike most hosts, their terms and conditions are just for show, and are unenforced. In other words, I can report fraud, but they won’t lift a finger. From me to Wix, December 10: Dear Wix Abuse Team:   A customer of yours has posted false content, misrepresenting me and […]

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The case for Brand Aotearoa

Originally published in Scoop   During our mid-year travels, I was surprised to learn that Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t have the profile that we think it does. We’re not riding the wave of The Lord of the Rings: few abroad remember the connection two decades later. No one I encountered recalls 100% Pure, and if […]

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Autocade Year of Cars 2025 now out

A two-page spread featuring cars and their drag coefficient figures plotted against their year.

  We have put a few links around the place, Stanley Moss very kindly referred to it in his blog, and an article has gone up on Lucire: the new Autocade Yearbook is out for 2025. I decided to call it Autocade Year of Cars as that was more distinctive than just Yearbook (which, for […]

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Classic Car Catalogue closes over copyright claim

One of the reasons Keith Adams sold AROnline, a site that he put decades into, was someone alleging he had infringed copyright over a photograph. So he paid up. But for long-term survival, he turned to the team at Great British Car Journey, who had deeper pockets, as AROnline was in danger of closing down. […]

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Keep your corner of the ’net clean

There is a lot of disinformation when it comes to politics—and now you know why it was important for me to get rid of the disinformation about me. No, it’s not because anything written about me could have affected an election. But it is about a medium that takes effort to stay clean and usable, […]

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How to deal with the shrinking, independent, human web

I alluded to this earlier this year when we redid JY&A’s links’ directory, but Joan Westenberg confirms it with some real stats. Once upon a time, the web seemed limitless, but now ‘we’re trapped in digital zoos built by tech giants. Google. Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Microsoft. They’ve carved up the web into their private empires, […]

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