markjgsmith

There was loads of weird escallations yesterday. I’m feeling really sneezy this morning, likely alergies rather than a cold. Not really feeling like writting anything. Feels like the extreme abusive worldo is super angry about something yet again.

Here are my escallation notes from yesterday:

• A piece of transparent sticky tape stuck on the table top at the place I usually sit in the shop cafe. Another piece of tape, but color green stuck on the surface next to the power outlet which is closest to the graffiti dick. I hadn’t noticed it. I’m essentially oblivious to the graffiti dick at this point. I was immersed in a Rogan podcast. Anyway a young girl and her guardian, perhaps mother, arrive and sit next to the graffiti dick. They could have sat anywhere else, there was no one else here. The guardian chose the graffiti dick, and sat down first ensuring that the young girl had to sit next to the graffiti dick, which had been whitewashed but you can still see the outline of the very cartoonish dick+balls. The girl, who was early teens, looked unsure about siting there, kept looking over at me. But it was strange, it had the appearance imo of a planned situation, a sort of faux embarrassment. They both sat sideways, which is unusual, most people sit looking out the window. It was in such a way so they could both see me, and the entire time they were there it really felt like their attention was in my direction. I ignored them, kept listening to the podcast. About 10 mins later I needed to charge my device so got up and moved a battery I was charging at the power outlet closest to me to the power outlet next to the graffiti dick, which the teenage girl was sitting near with her back to it. As I plugged the battery in to charge there was this whole commotion of faux offendedness by mainly the teenage girl but also the guardian. I was no where near either of them. At least 30-50 cm away from them at all times. I didn’t think twice about it, until I noticed the green tape. They got up shortly afterwards and left, leaving a single plastic spoon where they sat. Very strange imo manufactured situation. There was something off about both of them as soon as the entered the room.
• Man sitting behind me suddenly started choking and coughing up extremely loudly like he had just drank something disgusting. Went on for a couple of minutes.
• Coughing maniac just took an apparent phone call as I was moving the battery charging on the plug next to the graffiti dick. He answered the phone, said ‘hello loudly’, waited a while then just said ‘allow’ and hung up the phone. He’s a short cranky elderly bloke wearing a security guard light blue shirt.
• Now two other blokes are talking loudly very nasally and saying words like ‘gay’ and ‘I don’t like you’ over and over. And ‘you will learn your money now’, ‘we lie’, ‘we are’, ‘lie’, ‘wanker’, ‘gay’, ‘yah’, ‘okay’, ‘we learn’. They appeared to be having some kind of argument. I’m they were getting louder and louder then would be quieter, then louder and louder. Kept repeating that pattern interspersed with various specific English words. Eventually I started getting a runny nose and started sneezing. They create the problem they complain about, the block the solutions they suggest, they escalate and escalate and escalate, and eventually blame everything on me and won’t stop until I get mutilated in sone way.
• The two blokes saying weird shit sat down at a table and were quiet for a while. Now they appear to be trying out a variety of new words sounds and pronunciations. ‘I know’, ‘I owe’, ‘I know’, ‘I owe’. The O sound seems to be very interesting to them. ‘Hellooe’…’Oooe’. Also when I type, they suddenly go quiet.

There was a bunch of other weird stuff, like school kids waiting for me at corners waiting for me to pass and saying 'okay' but I just want to get on with the day. What is up with all these creepy god damn kids?

I hate sneezing and alergies. Everythingvis swollen, everything id enflamed, and the world is blaming it all in me. Nevermind that the world never learns when to stop. Thd world thinks it knows when to stop. In reality it only stops when I get mutilated.

Build minutes reset today or tomorrow. Lots of code to test, debug and merge. #

Inspired by the latest Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast, Preston Pysh has James Check on for a technical analysis deep dive into the current bull market Ep#220.

Really interesting discussion around Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy playbook. James mentions he’s a bit worried others will try to copy it. I wonder why wouldn’t a smaller nation state do it too? For example what would happen if say El Salvador started selling treasuries to explicitly buy bitcoin for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?

Perhaps in either scenario buying Doge might become the strangest hedge the universe will ever see. #

cat << EOF > Peter MacCormack and Freddie New on the UK government front bench and value extraction by private equity

I’m currently dealing with another one of the horrid fortnightly sneezing and runny nose attacks that have been plagueing me these past several months, so this post likely won’t have quite the polish I wish it should.

I just got done listenning to Peter MacCormack’s latest podcast episode with Freddie New. It’s essential listening for anyone interested in UK government, the UK economy, or anyone thinking of running a business.

Firstly they get into some of the issues that have been affecting the government recently, and specifically the useless front bench of government [12:54]:

PM: I did the research, nobody on the front bench has had any real world experience running a company. That concerned me.

FN: I saw your tweet.

PM: I was talking to Steve Baker, and I said "in government what happens when you talk to politicians about this?" and he said "They don’t understand it". And I said "huh? … what do you mean?" and he was like "they don’t really understand economics and the few that do, their position is always the same, that can be dealt with by the next government".

FN: Not to be too rude about politicians, but I think that if you did understand economics you wouldn’t be a politician, you’d be off working for Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan.

PM: But isn’t this insane? Our country is being run, we are electing people to run our country and make important decisions that affect the lives of all of us, and they have no experience of running a company, the reality of it, and don’t understand economics.

FN: You’re completely right.

PM: So what the fuck are we doing?

It’s a great observation.

When you think about it, a nation state is in many ways a very complicated, ginormous business. How can it be that the people running it have never run any businesses? It’s completely ludicrous. If you said the next CEO of Apple had never run a business, you’d be laughed out of the room, yet somehow when it comes to nation states, people are okay with that. What does this say about nation states?

The rest of their discussion is super interesting, especially the long segment on private equity, special purpose vehicles, and the monstrous practice of extracting value from and imposing debt on acquired companies. I found this entire topic massively shocking and eye opening.

Coincidentally today’s Rest is Money podcast featured Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress. I didn’t expect I’d like much he had to say, but actually I found he made a lot of good points, though he’s coming from a completely different angle. They have a lot of noble goals and seems very earnest, but I wonder if he appreciates a lot of the realities on the ground.

One thing Nowak mentioned was that some companies were making enormous amounts of money, and essentially weren’t paying their fair share. Also his view that big foundational improvements to the health of the population are needed to remain competitive long term, make a lot of sense. I actually agreed with a lot of what he was saying.

Which is why I’m so very confused because I also agree with much of the criticism from right leaning commentators. For what it’s worth, I think Nowak would be a great guest on Peter’s show.

Anyway how many businesses are currently in the private equity death grip predicament? Is this the reason the business sector can’t cope with the new tax rises? Are they all weighed down by parasites sucking out their value? Is that why these big companies need to make so much money just to survive?

Listenning to Freddie New’s detailed description of the realities of how companies are structured, and how the money flows, it starts to seem like the entire UK economy is a very sophisticated industrial scale business milking factory. Eventually there just won’t be any way to make any money as a business owner, which leads to the question...

Who milks the milking factory?

Also isn’t this private equity led value extraction essentially just an industrial scale abstraction of chattel slavery?

I feel like we need a better dashboard. How bad is the situation? Is it as bad as Peter and Freddie are saying, or is it more like what Nowak is saying? Or are they all right in some way?

Right, time to rest my sneezing head. #