markjgsmith

I was just assaulted in what appears to be a compleately unprovoked motorbike driveby attack. The projectile was a plastic cup full of red sticky soft drink. It hit me directly in the face with considerable force.

A few minutes afterwards there was some intimidation by western looking men, I have no idea if the two situations were linked in some way. They then proceeded to laugh uncontrolably in what seemed like fake very loud laughter to me.

Happy birthday to you too world.

Update: Police have made an appearance, apparently stoping a driver right near me. There was at some stage a mention of the word 'dog'.

Update: Now female motorbike gang stalkers are shouting 'No!' #

Not the best start to a birthday.

So I guess this is my actual morning note this morning, as technically the previous one was in middle of the god darn night.

There’s all sorts of fractal and cascades and just a lot of unpleasant good vs evil stuff and mirroring at all scales, so I’ll keep this one short.

At least I can eat today. Happy birthday me. #

cat << EOF > Human body threat detection tech

My first thoughts after skimming through the latest microplastics research was about the recent increase smell issues many folks have been having. Turns out it’s potentially worse than that though as it’s the first time breaching of the bloob brain boundry by environmental plastics has been detected. Clearly that’s an issue since if it affects overall brain function, it could affect our ability to fix any resulting problems. I wonder if emergency precautions should be enacted.

In the worst case you could imagine having to have some backup humans raised in environments known to be totally uncontaminated by microplastics And the way the world is going at the minute in terms of conflicts and escallations, one wonders how long until such a phenominon could be weaponized. On the other hand raising some people in a completely seperate environment could be a very inhumane thing to do to somebody.

I bet in the near future, companies will popup that offer, by today's standards, rather extreme body modification tech to prevent or at least detect cellular level attacks on the human body. Maybe a new era where we’ll have to defend out bodies in the sand way we secure networked computers.

We should also collectively be realistic about things. Just based on my involvement in the tech industry over the past 20 years, finding long lasting, trust worthy, open source, solutions that promote freedom takes a lot of time to get right. I’ve been following social media for 20 years and though there’s been huge steps forward and periods of big evolution, it’s still a mess. And that’s something relatively speaking, much less complex.

We are going to have to admit collectively that we are going to be passing through an extended difficult period, and agree to not metaphorically or physically DDOS each other for every tiny disagreement, or we risk not making it to a safe place. Getting on well with each other without tech is the most important things at the minute. We need to be kind to each other. That’s the reality I see.

Even as I type this I’m being 'yah’d', so I’ll stop here.

I don’t think we can fix things if we can’t think, talk or communicate about them. The world is imperfect, it keeps on turning reguardless. #

cat << EOF > Front Running the Big Bang (Issue #182)

This week’s newsletter is out!

In this week’s edition:

Alien life in the universe, Google anti-trust deep dive, the history of beards, and lots lots more...

Issue details:

• Title: Front Running the Big Bang
• Issue: 182
• Page: issue webpage

Another awesome issue of the newsletter. #

Richard Dawkins: I think it’s a remarkable fact that Darwinian evolution...Darwinian natural selection was not discovered until the middle of 19th century, and then it was not discovered by sophisticated mathematicians or philosophers. It was discovered by 2 traveling naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, both of whom were collectors in tropical jungles, and I’m actually genuinely puzzled as to why it took that kind of skill, that kind of experience, to tumble to this really remarkably simple idea, it’s a terribly simple idea when you think about it, natural selection. And it evaded really really clever people down the centuries, until 2 traveling naturalists in the 19th century, so yes I think scientists of the future would benefit from field trips as well. #

Trumps visited Pubkey, a Bitcoin themed bar in New York. He was able to pay with Bitcoin. Here’s the tech stack:

• Trump used Strike app to pay the invoice.
• Pubkey was using Zaprite to receive the payment.
• Zaprite connected to their own LND instance powered by Voltage, an LND service provider.

It takes a while to build the pieces the right way, but it’s a great example of loosely coupled, open source freedom orientated tech being used to build a better future. #

Reminder that Oracle is still holding Javascript hostage, as they technically own the trademark. There is a movement to free Javascript, sign the petition!

Javascript is most popular programming language in the world, the one most extensively used to build the open web we all use every single day. #