markjgsmith

I’m finishing off a few smaller tidy up type features. Getting rid of some old configuration that’s no longer necessary. I had left it in while I was making bigger changes and put in new configuration alongside it, to avoid inconsequential things breaking. But now that the bigger changes are all implemented it’s time to remove the old config and fix any things that are affected. So far it’s as I expected, none of the old config was even being used for anything, so just removing it hasn’t caused anything to break.

After that I’m not totally sure. It will depend on how many build minutes are left. There is the RSS feed refactor, but since I got it working using the old structure, and I’m enjoying seing all my posts in the RSS reader, I’m thinking to leave that for a while. It would be nice to get that done at some point but it’s not urgent. The refactor is all written, it just needs testing, but my sense is it will take up lots of build minutes because the feeds plugin has an npm module cache, and that always eats up build minutes during testing because anytime you change anything in a plugin you have to refresh the module cache.

So more blogging would be great but worldo has started blocking things again the past few days. The new thing is coffee has been removed from one of the shop cafes I go to. They are suddenly only selling big boxes instead of single items. And of course it’s accompanied by people playing badmington ordering me to 'blog!', so they are literally blocking the thing they are ordering me to do by people doing the opposite. There’s also some new thing at one of the sandwich shops, where as soon as I turn up the apparent customer being served says 'maximum' then some new people suddenly appear out of nowhere and cut in line right in front of you. It’s just the same old bullcrap bullying. And of course it escallates in every shop as everything in the universe gets blamed on you, and then they start removing cold drinks in the fridges, replacing them with warm ones. And then in the evening you get gifted tons of milk and cold sugar free coke just when you are brushing your teeth, and I’m being gifted a million small bottles of water, so many I can’t carry them. It’s just maliciousness dressed up as kindness.

And so it goes. World keeps on turning, everyone gets a bit more angry, and blames it on me. The world win win win wins while ademently pretending that it’s lose lose lose losing. It then has a win maximus tiddle wave of win, where literally thousands and thousands of people are blowing air horns and waving flags in an enormous celebration orgy, keeping me awake all night, then is sad and angry and will probably block coffee again later.

And so it continues going. Yet again, even more more total reality inversion maximus. And still it is sad and unhappy.

All I can do is shrug. #

Maybe leaders don’t run blogs or podcasts because they literally can’t. Strange to think this, because it’s so easy these days, but maybe for whatever reason, they literally can’t.

Things might be a lot worse than they appear. #

Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the importance of digital communication

Volodymyr Zelenskyy talking with Lex Fridman via AI translation and live interpretors, on the importance of leaders being able to communicate with the people [49:05]:

We distributed weapons to people. That’s how it was. Trucks came and simply distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital. To ordinary people, just on the street. To ordinary people who understood that if the russians entered the city then we would have the same thing that is happening in other cities per the information we received.

Thanks to digitalisation, we had very good digitalisation before this. We preserved a lot and even when they were surrounding certain cities, a lot of things still worked. The banking system, the internet, we had television and thanks to this I made several decisions to ensure people are united and have all the information. Russia is very good at spreading large scale disinformation.

Fortunately I have 2 decades of experience managing a production studio, TV channels, and large media resources. I understood that we needed to build an information network very quickly. Thanks to this I began to address the people constantly. This happened 3-5 times a day. In fact I became that information source for people that were in cities, cut off from other information.

It was very important for me to keep all things digital. To keep the internet. To stay in touch with everyone. With all the people. Initially that’s the contact we had. We also built a media platform where we had all the news agencies of Ukraine and this network was called Marathon, and it was also very important for the people to trust us, and people had to receive information.

Why? There were waves of russian, on the first day, who said ‘he ran away’. I had to go out into the street, I left the office and went outside, because I was showing that this was no green screen. That it was the street not some digital manipulation. I did these things then I touched various objects. Now people might think that these are small things, but I was actually showing that I was in a real place. All of this had an impact.

Aside from the fascinating insight into the practical reality of war in a large city and how important daily communication is, I’m struck by the number of impossible things that have been overcome in order for this interview to even be possible.

And then for me to even be able to write about it publically. Even down to being able to copy and paste the most ridiculously difficult name to spell ever.

And even having the energy for my brain’s neurons to fire so I can string these words together into something that’s just about readable. It’s like every gosh darn thing in the universe is blocking this thing.

And all the other impossible things that I can see but don’t have the time or energy to write about here.

And all the other impossible things that I can’t even see that are no doubt here, there and everywhere.

Somehow life finds a way.

Our leaders need to be able to rapidly set up basic comms networks from their laptops or even phones.

Update: then life immediately finds a way to break it all! Literally. But I still managed to add this update! Take that life! :)

Update: Hey guess what, life tried to block everything again and again right after tge kadt update. But I still managed to make this update to the previous update! Ha haaa! #

On the latest Punk Till I Die podcast, Neal shares stories from his recent trip home to England.

England belongs to Neal Ep#320.

All sorts of funny shit, but also heart felt stories from people and families stuck in between cultures. Oh yeah, and tons of excellent non pop punk punk and metal.

People stuck in between cultures in bizare ways seems to be trending the last few days. #