markjgsmith

2024/07/22 #

• Lots of low grade escallations this morning from motorbike drivebys. Yesterday there was a massive, IMO clearly co-ordinated, escallation that lasted the entire day. Literally every location I went to, and at key points I passed as I walked between places, there were folks waiting to shout harrassment at me. These were clearly manufactured incidents in each location. The general theme was you-do-what-we-say, you-belong-to-us. Yah’ing basically everywhere. I calmly responded in each case by calling the perpetraitors theifs and said for them to stop stealing from me. Ultimately, when all is said and done that’s what’s going on here. They might not like to hear it but that’s what it is.

  I’m not here by choice. I’m got stuck here and continue to be stuck here because of decisions other people made. I did all the right things I was asked and supposed to do at every step, and now I’m having my life stolen from me, by people who believe they literally own me. That’s theft of the worst kind. Stealing someone’s life is literally equivalent to murder. Calling them thieves is extremely generous, in reality they are murderers. Slow murdering me. Every. single. day.

  I took some notes about the escallations yesterday so maybe I’ll write them up into a blog post today.

  Trying to blog as much as I am able to but the conditions are very confrontational, adversarial and bleak everywhere. #

• I see this morning that president Biden has dropped out of the race. I have to admit part of me is a bit disapointed there won’t be a Rocky Balboa coming back from the brink moment in this story. That would have been a very american thing to happen, at least based on all the Hollywood movies I’ve watched in my lifetime, and the situation sure does feel like some sort of movie a lot of the time. Anyway, it will be interesting to see where this takes us. It’s not a Rocky movie.

  I wonder what kind of movie fits the current moment. What movies did GenZers grow up watching?

  Also video games, I don’t know anything about those though.

  Also what movies are scheduled to be released in the next 12 months. I’ve found in the past that somewhat bizarely movies can be quite an accurate bell weather of things to come. #

• It feels like societies are reaching some kind of maximum. Peak fakeness. Peak everything.

  It’s is happening so much quicker than in the past. Films have much more complicated plots than in years gone by, same for television series, video games, and it’s the same for other literature based art. We’ve been ramping up the complexity in many different dimensions for decades at this point.

  I wonder whether the pendulum will start to swing in another direction at some point, because in a similar way to Moor's law, perhaps we are running out of space. We are bursting at the seams. Is there a maximum complexity that these city based systems we live in can feasibly process?

  As a reaction to all the crazy fast paced infiniti everything, maybe there will be a shift towards more ambient and ephemeral ways of existing, maybe we need some time in the Chill Out room. More Brian Eno. Less Gaba. #

• I just can't bring myself to writing up the latest escallation I mentioned in this morning's note. Everything is just too dam bleak. Not much interesting to blog about today :( #

• Lots of people dressed in black today, many fake sneezing, and I’m sneezing now with runny nose, and wouldn’t you know it, the people all dressed in black are saying 'you learn'. I guess that signals the end of the current escallation cycle, me once again mutilated.

  Everything is clearly too difficult now that they’ve escallated everything in every dimension and the only solution is to mutilate me and blame everything on me for the millionth time. Lazy fucking thieves. #

Today’s links:

• Selects: The Duality of Caffeine (Stuff You Should Know Podcast) - Very useful episode, especially since I started drinking coffee again this week. Just another what are the chances. Turns out there are quite a few health benefits to caffeine, but also downsides. I’ve been finding it definitely improves my ability to write blog posts, especially in adversarial environments. The science behind how caffeine works is kind of fascinating. If you drink coffee definitely worth listening to this episode. podcastindex.org #

• What do small businesses think about the new worker’s rights? Ep#77 (The Rest is Money Podcast) - Robert and Steph have on Dragon’s Den dragon Deborah Meaden. A load of interesting discussion around the change in government and what it means for small businesses. Why the need for employment rights, pros/cons of zero hour contracts, weening employers off of their reliance on immigration to keep wages lower, and betting on the green economy future. They then have a more personal chat with Deborah about her entrepreneurial journey, touching all sorts of topics including running your own business, franchising if you don’t have money, investing in other entrepreneurs, scaling up, British risk aversion vs US risk appetite, dealing with business failures, time value vs impact value, technical vs instinct when making investing decisions, crowd sourced investment, looking beyond the pitch deck, meeting founders and other investors, and the importance of shared values. Great episode with a good mix of the current business zeitgeist and more general long term advice for entrepreneurs. podcastindex.org #

• The all-seeing AI webcam (Vergecast Podcast) - Will Poor piece that looks at Dries Depoorter, who not only includes Will’s family name in his family name, but also creates weird absurdist internet based AI / surveillance themed art and installations. He’s flemish belgian so has a cool accent and a downtempo kind of vibe. His projects tend to turn the tables on power, highlight important aspects of modern society that we aren’t considering, and create tools that use the latest AI models to create delightfully odd tools that make you think. podcastindex.org #

• ROLLUP: Trump Pump | ETH ETF Next Week | Mt. Gox & Germany | Crypto Wars 2.0 (Bankless Podcast) - They are all about crypto but I feel that the Bankless guys are often a bell weather for what’s going on in the wider world. Their takes are often sensible yet also they regulary appear to notice important trends before others do. This Rollup episode has all sorts of interesting titbits from commentary on the Trump assassination and it’s aftermath, but also prediction markets becoming more mainstream, top bitcoin holding countries worldwide, ETF and Larry Fink fully orange pilled and maybe opening the door for etherium, bullish miners, uniswap browser wallet improvements, legal cases changing the playing field and tracking the growing crypto lobby. www.bankless.com #

• Joe Biden withdraws from presidential race following debate debacle - Not much to say about this. Can’t say I’m all that enthusiastic about it. I was never really into Biden, but still it feels like when they replace the lead singer in a band. Or a lead actor in a film or TV series. It rarely works. Can I really be arsed to invest time learning about a whole new cast of characters right now? Nope not really is how I feel about it today. I bet many feel similar to me. www.theguardian.com #