markjgsmith

I got quite a bit of rough sketch, slightly scrappy blogging done yesterday, and resolved a really annoying bug in my code. Several very interesting podcasts, all seemingly related at a high level. I had a quick look at the RSS refactor, I might try and fix a few bugs in that to get a feel for how much work it might be.

The thing with blogging is you need to absorb a bunch of stuff, have time to process and analyse it, putting it into context, before the good quality posts start to flow. The world at the minute doesn’t understand this and just expects posts to pop out on command. It’s constantly trying to maximum. But it doesn’t work like that. Also blogging doesn’t work if you are being starved and have no fuel in the tank so to speak, and that’s another of it’s favorite things to do.

Anyway here’s to hoping worldo will figure out a good balance, and allow itself to do the things it needs to do. #

Why right leaning folks should listen to the Rest is Politics

I’m still after several months trying to place the Rest is History podcast. Rory and Alistair claim to be from the right and left respectively but after listening for a while the cognitive disonance of that simplistic view is too much to bear. Rory is very often more left wing than Alistair, giving out scathing criticism and distortions at anything a micron to the right of center, which is no doubt why he gets on so well with Alistair.

It’s almost as if he’s a mole sent in from the Conservatives to try and teach the left wingers how to do their jobs. It’s like his main thing is to brand everyone as extreme right just so he can pull them back into the center.

Having said that, his analysis is very good. I’d recommend all right wingers to listen to the show, even if they disagree with much of what is said to get an idea of how they are being painted.

I’m also finding it somewhat interesting listenning to Alistair’s views soften somewhat. He’s still very left wing but he’s open to ideas when him and his bum chum haven’t scared the wits out of each other with ghost stories. And to be honest some of their ghost stories do have grains of truth and insightfulness to them. Worth remembering whichever side you are on, the US is playing offense. And that’s okay. They might have good reason to.

All that to say, today’s show was great, worth a listen, especially if you are right leaning:

Starmer vs Musk: Why the richest man in the world turned against the prime minister

While I remember, why don’t Rory and Alistair go on Rogan’s pod? I think that would be spectacular.

Oh and one more thing, and I had to go digging to get this, having to trawl through nearly the entire episode, to find the following quote from Alistair, which I think is perhaps the most important thing said in the entire episode [44:29]:

"By the way though Rory, though I agree with you that it’s not just you and me talking about mushy idealistic values, I still do think that one of the challenges of all non-extreme parties, which includes extreme left and extreme right, is how we do build a sense of excitement and optimism about things that we believe."

This is the real challenge. It’s easy for the left and right to fight. Much harder to build together. Zoom out and realise that at the minute it’s 99% fighting, and one meager, lonely, starved of life sentence, of building together. The fact is that if we don’t do something to start growth, we are going to fucking die. We’re not able to build anything together at the minute because we only fight, so the only thing left is beatings. And then everyone complains about the beatings, because yeah beatings suck, but there’s no other way...unless of course we find a way to work together. #

Was planning to spend some time this morning reading and posting links, it’s been a few days since I’ve had a chance to do that, but worldo has other ideas. Specifically an exageratedly loud young teenage boy has situated himself nearby playing video games on a portable, smacking and door nocking the table over and over, as well as periodically having strange epileptic type convulsions of his pelvis. He’s wearing a school uniform. It’s almost as if he’s been sent to annoy me.

Earlier there was an apparent motorbike taxi bloke wearing a yellow top who wouldn’t sit down, insisting on standing next to the white washed grafiti dick. Then he kept leaving then coming back. Must have done it 5 or 6 times.

I guess I’ll read and post links later when worldo has gotten over it’s episode. Are you getting angry again worldo, while trying to say it’s me that is angry? #

Worth noting that yesterday I door knocked the glass at the sandwich store to get the attention of the sandwich guy bloke, who is always moody with me. It was a busy morning so I wanted to make sure yet another person didn't cut the queue ahead of me, something that has been happening almost everyday the past few days. As it happened it appeared he was already preparing my sandwich even though I hadn’t asked for it yet. He seemed annoyed at me. Yet was happy to recieve orders from the queue cutting overly loud and bossy women.

I decided against a sandwich this morning. Strange then that teenage boys sitting next to me are going on impromptu table knocking rampages today.

Worldo trying to create contradictions so it can get angry perhaps?

Also multiple coffee and small bottle of water situations today. Coffee and water bottle incidents have been trending since coffee was blocked a couple of days ago at another shop cafe. #

Pressure cooker world

Just listened to this recent Eurodollar University pod this morning. It appears pressure cooker analogies are trending [02:19]:

Jeff Snider: It’s looking like things are really starting to really break here. Where it’s putting pressure on, not just China, but all of these other places around the world.

Brent Johnson: [...] I kind of feel like we are at a point with the dollar where everything is just kind of simmering. It’s like the pot, and it’s bubbling and bubbling, and if the dollar doesn’t turn lower soon then the lid is going to blow off the pot.

Jeff Snider: I think that’s the way I look at it. We have all these places that have enormous problems to begin with. Then the dollar comes along and it’s just one more thing too many. So you have Korea, as you mentioned, Syria, there’s a bunch of other ones, Brazil is another one. [...] Brazil’s Real has just uterly crashed causing all sorts financial chaos.

It’s not that the dollar caused it, but the dollar was like a pressure cooker, turning up the pressure so much that it leads to all of these other negative consequences. They don’t just showup, but it seems like they just showup if you are not really paying attention to what is going on.

I can confirm that here in Vietnam most days feel like pressure cooker days in one way or another. Everything ends up being just one thing too many. It’s non stop some days. It’s happening right now as I write this. It’s been happening all morning!

And some people really like the pressure cooker. In fact a big contingent actively use the pressure cooker as leverage to control others. Their lives are simple enough that the pressure cooker doesn’t affect them as much.

Still looks like I managed to write this post anyway :) #

Konstantin Kisin [42:46]: "What people don’t seem to realise on the progressive left, for want of a better term, on the extremes is the cancelation, the silencing people, for shaming people for having mainstream political opinions or cultural opinions, they don’t seem to realise that they are then fueling this rise on the opposite side of the spectrum. That the more they push down here, the more this rises. Then they complain about what’s happening to the culture. And you say to them, do you not understand that this is partially being created by what you are doing here?" #