Deprogramming Dénouement (Issue #189)
JD Vance, state of the UK, bitcoin & memecoins, wine tasting and coding, Lessig, Bricks & mBridge, Kemi Badenoch, Elon Musk, left Trump analysis, Dave Smith, and Web Components still cool
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
There’s no getting around the fact that today’s newsletter is really politics heavy. I guess that’s to be expected given the US elections that just happened. It just doesn’t feel like there’s much tech stuff that’s original and interesting happening. It is still there if you dig deep but it’s completely drowned out by the politics at the minute.
The irony is that as far as politics goes it’s really quite an interesting moment. I’ve been kind of fascinated by this mass deprogramming event that’s happening right in front of our eyes. I think it’s become extremely obvious to a huge amount of people how utterly bat shit bonkers insane crazy distorted the main stream media has been. It’s a very strange moment, like many folks are waking up from a sort of dream they have been in most of their lives. And I’m not talking about the so called ‘woke’ ideologies. I’m just trying to find a way to describe the phenomenon of many people slowly realising how much the media shapes their reality, and seeing behind the curtain, realising that so much of it is BS.
To those of us that spend a lot of time online, finding alternative news sources, doing our research, listening to competing ideas, that’s not too much of a surprise, but for regular folks that have regular jobs, that don’t have the time or energy to do that, and that mostly just consume the mainstream narratives, I think many of them have noticed something pretty fundamental isn’t right.
It’s worth pausing to reflect that that is happening. People are going to be feeling somewhat lost and confused, and it’s not really their fault. That’s where this week’s issue gets it’s name from.
If you have the time, it’s worth spending the time to listen to some of the long form podcasts like Rogan, you get a very different view of the people involved than you do listening to the factory farmed main stream media. Also I was surprised by how good the retrospective analysis has been from the left leaning podcasts, the Rest is Politics for example. To really figure out what’s happening you really have to listen to both sides, no matter what political leaning you have. I think many will discover that when all the exaggerations and spinning fall away, most people actually do share a lot of values and agree broadly speaking on the important things. It’s not that easy to do because both sides are swimming in very polluted water, so to speak.
Let’s be kind to each other :) Ultimately we are all in this together.
One thing I will note is how strange it is that a lot of the themes and patterns I’ve been exploring in this newsletter but especially on the website, have ended up in discussions in many of the podcasts, especially, but not only, on Rogan. For instance it often felt like Elon was reading and re-packaging some of the dynamics I’ve been documenting. Totally uncanny. Some of these patterns are very specific. It’s very strange.
Anyhow as far as my development work goes, I actually got a lot done this week, working on a somewhat minor looking feature but that’s actually a very important one. It’s a feature to ensure all posts have an item hash link. That will make it obvious where each post on the everything page starts and finishes. At the minute blog, newsletter and podcast posts don’t have a hash link. That makes it very difficult to see the beginning and end of posts.
I’ve pretty much got it working, but it involves lots of changes across all the plugin repos and consequently I’ve used up most of my build minutes for this month. I think it’s likely I won’t be able to get the feature across the line until the next lot of build minutes at the end of the month. Very frustrating.
I wrote a few blog posts:
JD Vance on Kamala’s talking style https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/11/03/jd-vance-on-kamalas-talking-style
A better metaphor for growth https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/11/03/a-better-metaphor-for-growth
Electronic music range https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/11/03/electronic-music-range
A couple of quote posts with a politics theme and an uplifting and gratitude filled one about electronic music.
That’s about the most of it for this week.
If you get some value from these newsletters, or in fact even if you don’t, I’d really appreciate any donations. I’m still saving for a laptop. The newsletter sure would get a lot better if I wasn’t tied down to just this ridiculous iPod Touch I use for everything. Please donate! :) Thank you.
https://markjgsmith.com/donate
Podcasts
JD Vance Ep#2221 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/550168?episode=29784076928
Joseph Robertson: Debt, Inflation, Culture, Cost of Living & Regulations Ep#18 (Mr Obnoxious Podcast) https://www.mrobnoxious.com/episodes/debt-inflation-culture-cost-of-living-regulations-joseph-robertson
ROLLUP: Bitcoin’s ATH Run, Memecoins Meta, Blobs Price Discovery, Microsoft Buying Bitcoin? (Bankless Podcast) https://www.bankless.com/rollup-bitcoins-ath-run-ai-memecoin-meta-blobs-price-discovery-microsoft-buying-bitcoin
Wine Web and a whole lot of whatnot (Changelog & Friends Podcast) https://changelog.com/friends/68
How AI could hack democracy - Lawrence Lessig (TED Talks Daily) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/980370?episode=29836421959
Vince Lanci and the mBridge Two-Step Ep#196 (Goats, Gold & Guns Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/236253?episode=29841045941
Kemi Badenoch, Tory Part Leader (The Rest is Politics) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/5083933?episode=29855648025
Elon Musk Ep#2223 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/550168?episode=29904292151
Trump Returns: What Now? (The Rest is Politics Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/5083933?episode=29984029054
Dave Smith Ep#2225 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/550168?episode=29999879774
Navigating the Pros and Cons of Web Components Ep#640 (Shop Talk Show Podcast) https://shoptalkshow.com/640
That’s all from me…
Best regards,
Mark
Consider buying me a coffee or becoming a patreon, any support would be very much appreciated. Check out the donation page for all the donation options:
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Thanks for reading!
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!