Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Friday wrap up on the streamlined solopreneur, a short episode
where I talk about three things.
What's on my mind this week, recommended reading, and recommended media.
This is the show that helps you automate your business so you can take time off worry-free.
And hopefully, this curation will help you think more about your systems.
I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and here's what's on my mind for Friday, June 12, 26.
Okay, so number one, what's on my mind this week?
WWDC.
I've gotten away from watching the WWDC keynote in recent years.
I invariably schedule something at the same time,
which inexplicably happened again this year,
despite it being on a Monday, usually a no-meeting day for me.
But the coverage is so good that I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything,
And I can usually get the highlights from places like six colors and Mac stories and David Sparks without the kind of self-aggrandizing that Apple does.
And maybe some of that self-aggrandizing is deserved. They're very good at what they do.
But if I have to hear, this is the best version of iOS we've ever released again.
I'm going to do something terrible to myself.
So this year, Siri was the benefactor of a huge update.
Apple appears to be delivering on their AI promise from two years ago,
and it's getting its own app, and it's a lot smarter.
I installed the MacOS beta on my laptop, which is my B machine,
and the iPad OS beta on my iPad.
I will reserve installing the iOS 27 beta on my iPhone until probably after I take this trip in July.
I just don't like having beta software when I'm somewhere unfamiliar.
But this one does look a lot more stable than betas of years past.
And so with the new Siri, you have to apply for it.
and I have applied for it, and I just haven't gotten to take it for a spin yet.
But from the demos, I've seen it's definitely a lot better.
Way more aware of context.
You can ask it continuing questions, and you can ask it vague questions, like,
what's the weather going to be like where I'm going to be this weekend?
And it will look at your calendar, get the location for the weekend, and give you the weather.
I think that is super neat.
My biggest question is one that many other users, creators, pundits have.
How well will the new Siri work with apps other than the defaults?
Sure, it's going to work great with Apple Calendar, Notes, Reminders, probably mail.
But I use fantastical, Obsidian, To-Doist, and Mimstream.
Can I do the same things using those apps?
because if I can't, then this is going to be a largely useless feature for me.
But the claim is yes, so we'll see what happens.
And I know I'm a pretty Apple ecosystem heavy user here.
It's what I use.
I am genuinely excited for this iteration of Siri because it is what I use.
But I also think it's the right application for AI.
Apple has always taken a measured approach when they do things.
things. Some people don't like that. Some people feel that's why Apple is behind in the AI wars.
But I will definitely take their approach over the insecure flailing that Dario Amode does when claiming
that AI is going to run the world tomorrow. And Claude is so amazing. Maybe we should slow down
and also, hey, check out my upcoming IPO.
So I like this application of AI.
I feel like it's going to be much more accessible
to a lot more people who aren't thinking
that AI can run their lives for them because it can't,
but it will surface important data as needed
without having to jump through as many hoops.
To quote my own personal AI philosophy,
It is a computer program doing computer program things really, really well.
So I am excited for that.
That is what's on my mind.
I don't cover Apple too much these days.
I wish I covered it more sometimes, but I'm not sure if I'm going to give you hot
takes on Siri and the new app and the new operating system.
Lots of people do that way better than me.
So we'll just see if there's something really interesting, I'll end up writing about it.
But, you know, don't check out Mac stories and the links in the show notes for actual coverage of WWDC and the betas and everything that's going to be happening from here until September when the new operating systems come out.
Okay.
So moving on to recommended reading, this story is absolutely insane.
this is the story of reckless Ben on YouTube, Ben Schneider, versus bricks and mini figs.
This is a story I've been obsessed with for the past week or so.
Basically, a man named Brian co-signed his, or consigned his dad's massive Star Wars Lego
collection.
Some say it's worth over $200,000.
It's the biggest Star Wars Lego collection in the world.
He consigned it to a bricks and mini-figs franchise in Oregon, basically saying,
these Lego are still mine until you sell them and then you get a cut of what you've sold.
And this is an agreement that Brian entered into with bricks and mini figs.
It's turned into a legal mess because the franchise owners sold it back to corporate
and corporate says that they don't have to honor the contract.
and Brian, out of desperation, reached out to Reckless Ben, who is a, I'm going to call him an investigative
journalist comedian. I don't, that's not exactly right, but he will do, I'm going to say that he
doesn't feel constrained by some of the things that an actual investigative journalist does.
he really pushes the boundaries of what is technically legal.
And he tries to do everything above board.
But bricks and mini figs has basically turned into a cartoonish villain here with like an owner
that has a skinny, twirly mustache.
And they are trying to sue Brian and
Ben into oblivion and the local police in Utah where bricks and minifigs corporate is located
is, and this American Fork is the name of the town. Undoubtedly, chillingly corrupt.
Like, no matter, I've been watching a lot of legal analysis too, obviously, because like Ben is
telling a very specific documentary style story. But I've been watching legal analysts.
and by and large, it is very clear that the American Fork Police Department is incredibly corrupt.
And it sounds like this has been a known issue in the Lego community for a while, but Reckless Ben has brought it to the mainstream.
And I link in the description in the show notes to a timeline of everything that's happened so far.
It's absolutely wild.
It's David versus Goliath.
There's corrupt cops.
There's Mormons.
And it is very much ongoing.
This is not something that's happened a few years ago.
It's something that started a few years ago and is currently being updated.
A temporary restraining order or TRO was issued this week against Ben, preventing him from
releasing part three of this story.
So I'll continue to follow this closely, especially as more lawyers do analysis. That's the thing I am most interested in. One place I'd recommend staying away from is Reddit. There are a lot of, we'll call them big feelings over there. But it's a wild story. And one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is because it is deeply human and it is an ongoing story and people are really interested in deep.
human stories. And this has, I mean, Ben Mesrick is going to write a book about this in a couple of
years. I have no doubt about that. This is the guy who wrote Bringing Down the House and
accidental billionaires and he has a new book coming out about the chess cheating scandal.
There is no way he doesn't write a book about this in a few years. It's absolutely wild. So
it's something that I've been obsessed with this week. And it's really, really interesting.
Okay. Now, moving on to recommended media. Truth be told, I moved a lot of this stuff around. The Reckless Band thing was going to be recommended media. WWDC was going to be recommended reading. And I had a different thing that's on my mind, but I haven't fully fleshed that out yet. So for recommended media, I listened over the past week to one album from one band from every letter of the alphabet.
I decided to do this because I realized that I was listening to music, a playlist I made,
and it went from Fallout Boy to the Gaslight Anthem.
And so I decided to see if I could do this for the entire American English alphabet.
I was able to get a band from, a band I know, from every letter except X,
which I went with the XX.
You've probably heard the song intro from, I think, their debut album.
it's in a lot of places movie and TV soundtracks.
But the rules for this little game I created for myself were simple.
I need to listen to the entire album before moving on.
No shuffle.
I need to listen to the album from start to finish in order.
The only word that doesn't count is the.
So the gaslight anthem would count for G, not T.
And I can't listen to anything else except for when play.
playing the drums because I have a drums playlist, and long car rides with my kids who will
invariably revolt if I start listening to some of the albums on that playlist. So those were the
two rules. A couple of observations from this little game, it really felt like a slog sometimes.
I'm fairly specific about what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it. So making
myself locked into this format took some discipline. I also rediscovered a bunch of
songs mostly from high school and early college. And I did not like the XX, which is the one band I
didn't already know. Now, I have some stats aggregated by Claude. I will link to the thread.
I live posted this on Blue Sky every time I moved on to a new album. I did the number, the letter,
and then the band, the album name, and the year the album was released.
I am very proud of myself because I was pretty much, I was within a year of knowing the release
year of every album, which I'm very impressed with myself about. But anyway, so most common genre,
pop punk slash emo, no surprises there. Most common year was a tie. There were four albums each
from 2003 and 2005. I think 2003 makes a lot of sense. I was 18. It was my last year of high school.
2005, really interesting. I turned 20. There were a lot of, I think a lot of different music was
being introduced to me, but I still had that pop punk emo feel. The outlier year was 1981.
I picked Queen's greatest hits. I don't know if that's cheating. It's, that wasn't a rule, though.
So that, it was their 1981 greatest hits album.
The full year range was 1981 to 2015.
So no albums that came in the last 10 years.
And the most common three year range, which you could imagine, because I had two of the most common years, 2003 to 2005, with 2000 to 2002 coming in close second.
I will link to the entire playlist with all of the outlets.
albums in Apple Music and Spotify.
All right.
Now, before I move on to wrapping this thing up, I do want to mention a free workshop I'm doing.
So if you are wondering how I, with all of the other content I'm doing, and I don't know
if you heard my kids running around in the background, they're upstairs, but they were
being very loud.
If you want to know how I still put this weekly show together, despite everything else I'm doing,
if you want to behind the scenes look at this, I am doing a free workshop with e-cam on June 25th and 26.
It's a one hour across, it's one hour each day for two days.
Most people I talk to want to use AI as part of their content creation process to make the production faster.
But faster isn't better. It's just faster.
The real problem is that we have so much to do that we need to prioritize certain things and find shortcuts for other things.
But if you can find the right shortcuts, you will have the time and space to create authentic content that helps your audience connect with you.
So in this workshop, I'm going to look at everything, walk through everything I do to produce the Friday wrap up.
I barely use AI and I can produce an episode in about an hour.
You will learn my three favorite functions of e-cam, how to storyboard an e-cam so you don't have to edit much,
how the stream deck can help you level up even more, and what to do when you do need to trim the fat in post-production.
So you can head over to e-cam.com slash Joe.
I cannot believe they gave me that URL.
and it will show you what I love about e-cam and it also links to my free workshop.
So e-cim.com slash joe. Check it out. Register for free. It's going to be a good time.
Check it out. Register for free. It's going to be a good time. Now, if you like this episode,
Consider joining my mailing list over at streamlined.fm slash rap.
You'll get an additional automation of the week.
This week, it's one of my favorites.
As well as regular emails on how to approach building systems
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Thanks so much for listening.
And until next time, I hope you find some space in your weekend.