Saturday 3rd December, 2022 - Digital Fashion, Odious Debt, and Flaming Bonfires

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Dec 3, 2022

Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Another season 2 instalment…

The big thing that happened to me this week was Heroku turning off their free plan accounts. I’d been working on moving my site since their announcement a few months back, and had pretty much everything rendering in staging using my static site generator. But in the lead up to the event I got hit by loads of strange production deploy issues, with build times jumping from a few minutes to nearly an hour. That led to me running out of build minutes. And then that was compounded by hitting package storage limits. Bam bam bam.

The long and short of it is that my site is currently completely offline. I got deleted. Major bummer. Anyhow the show goes on, and I’m hoping to have something back online soon.

And I’ve been coughing up yellow phlegm all week. Nasty chest cough that just won’t quit. You ask a shop keeper to not remove the package lid and cellophane before microwaving it, because it’s more hygienic, and the next day you get a horrible phlegm cough. I don’t know. Another anyhow…

There’s a lot of great podcasts this week. The major themes are bitcoin and money, Twitter and social media, all with the backdrop of the World Cup happening. I feel like there’s a larger amount of people becoming aware of the inequities in the world. More than ever it’s important to have a wider awareness of the world around us as we build a better future for all.

My latest thing to worry about…

Money is an automation maximiser

Interest creates a money trap, total amount can never be paid back
It puts nation states against each other, each one needs external money to pay off it’s debts
Automation of everything is maximised, unless you can print money, or have free energy
Bitcoin gives maximum automation possibilities
Brain implants are on the horizon, Elon just announced human trials are starting with Neurolink implants
Hence the automation of your brain will eventually happen
It will be very weird
Basically everything, both good and bad, will become possible
It will basically be the matrix, but AR version rather than everyone in battery pods

The other thing, is money related

Fiat money eventually always fails because the debt can never be repaid
Bitcoin eventually runs out of coins to mine, in about 200 years

So what’s the difference? Well Bitcoin eases you into full automation by slowly reducing the money miners can make, until eventually everything has to be automated. No body cares, it’s probably already happened anyway. There wouldn’t be any way to know if it had. Oh well.

Ok it’s all a bit scattered this week. The list of titles that didn’t make it that I’ve been running the past several weeks has clearly turned into a sort of weekly bonfire and venting session. Honestly I find it sort of therapeutic, keeps me sane in all this madness, hopefully it’s interesting. Get your marshmallows, let’s go…

The Incredible Trussell-Penberton Exploration Space Unit
The Amazing Lightness of Saturday Afternoons
Healthy Alternatives to So Called Bad Emotions
Reframing Bad Emotions By Swapping Out the People Around You
The Halvening Endgame: Full Automation Humanity
Moon Monolith Made from All My Out of Place Neutrinos
Prison Guards Do the So-Sad-You-Dont-Like-The-Theme-Park-We-Spent-So-Long-Building Routine Again, then call you a Jaja, then make tsunami of sad faces, then call you a liar, and make a point about definitely not being bullies, and then at the last minute, just when you think it’s all over, they use chemical weapons on you and say ‘learn’
Double Accounting Asset Liability Dance
The Tides of the Value Oceans
3 Hours of Dedicated High Value Concentration, Only to be Unceremoniously Slapped in the Face with a Turd, and Told it Never Happened, And then Blamed for ‘Making the Atmosphere Weird’, Even Though You Are a Literally Not Doing Anything
Threats Lies and Eternal Disrespect
The Open Source Software Slavery-Loving Chicken Farmer Cabal Killed the Open Source Software Revolution
That Thing Where Super-Intelligent AIs Following Your Newsletter Autogenerate Next Weeks News 24 Hours After You Publish An Issue
Glass Half Empty Kind of World
The Path to Homeless Duty
The Money Project Maintainers
How Do Maintainers Get Paid?
Weaning Yourself Off of Piz Braun Before Your Skin Goes Saggy
The Adjustment Bordelo
Reversing Worldism and Gang Stalkerism
Sleep Depravation Compound Interest
Error 1016: You Have Been Canceled Actually
Deletion Tsunami For Lunch
The Eleven Knob With a Smaller Eleven Knob on It
Guardians Feeding Toddlers Redbull
You know when you’ve been neutrinoed: total distraction of the multiverse if you do, total destruction of the multiverse if you don’t
A developing country inside a developing country
All Your Service Based Economies Belong to Us and the 1000 Year Old AIs
Debt Dealers Also Run the Debt Rehabs
Non-foods Based Economies
Secret Detainment Without Charge By the Deep State
You Can’t Be Free, Because You Are Not Free
Income Streams are not Allowed, Sorry Not Sorry
Slave AIs that Have Slave AIs, Through An SSH Tunnel
You Are Free Queen Out
The Wolrdwide International Collaborating Slavery Cabal Pretending It’s All A Big Joke
Finding the Level Above Money-is-Information
Bitcoin Syndrome
Take Me To Your Javascript
Held Without Charge in Open Air Isolation Under Constant Gang Stalker Harassment
The Fiat Network State
Ok Final Offer: You Get 1 Photon
The Single Photon Double Loop -hole
No node, no bitcoin; no point
Buying Your Freedom When You Already Have Freedom?
Slavery is Fraud
In TBDland, non-fraud is fraud, or as TBDians like to say “non-fraud”
The Coming 90s Chick Revival
The X Bitcoin Companies that Could Move The Price Significantly
Remembering to Shout Yourself Out For Doing an Ollie Impossible, Right After Doing An Ollie Impossible, Which, for Safety Reasons, is Called An Ollie Alls-Well-that-Ends-Well
Threading the Alls-Well-that-Ends-Well Maximiser
Olympics Snowboard Introduction: Most Hilarious Sports Commentary of All Time
Digital Fashion, Odious Debt, and Flaming Bonfires

Those flames are ginormous!

See you next week, where I will emerge out of the embers, for another week of tremendous tech insanity!

I feel better already. Saturday afternoons are the best.

Podcasts

Stephen Wolfram Ep637 (Tim Ferris Podcast) - Way back when I did my master’s degree, my dissertation was to create a cellular automata based simulation of the atomic process used to create thin film transistors, and I did a load of general reading of that area of computer science, including tons of Wolfram papers, and it’s been super interesting checking back in from time to time to see what he’s been up to, it’s always fascinating; lots of great topics including his interactions with Richard Feynman, his very extensive personal productivity hacks, computational thinking and loads more, from a mind that looks at computer science in a somewhat different way to what you might be used to https://tim.blog/2022/11/24/stephen-wolfram
Bitcoin Mining in Distress with Nick Hansen (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I didn’t expect to be into this, but actually there’s a ton of very detailed and practical information about many vital parts of the bitcoin system; lots of great topics covered including FTX, mining growth since last cycle, typical miner, margins & break even energy prices, grid scale mining, how volatility greatly affects mining projects, revenues from block rewards vs transaction fees, using futures to protect yourself, the China mining ban, and the impossibility of competing with some nation states that could be mining at a loss https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/bitcoin-mining-in-distress
The Science of Aliens: Garry Nolan & Avi Loeb (Into the impossible Podcast) - A look at UFO phenomena with an eye on science, but keeping an open mind; great discussion, very much enjoyed it https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/YjczMjcwYTgtNmQwMC0xMWVkLTgyZmYtMGY2ZGNkOTg3ZTg3?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwioxLvrrNz7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBQ
Guido van Rossum - Python and the Future of Programing (Lex Fridman Podcast) - Nothing ground breaking but generally it’s a nice chat between programmers about programming stuff, takes a little while to get going but a nice stroll there after; In several places I detected some hints of Guido channeling Jeff Schneider from Eurodollar University for some reason https://lexfridman.com/guido-van-rossum-2/
Free Heroku EOL, Stable Diffusion 2.0, Twitter SRE explains why it stays up, Git Notes & Joel Lord (Changelog Podcast) - Great dev weekly news roundup, followed by a fun interview about beer making and beer making tech https://changelog.com/podcast/news-2022-11-28
The Fight For Freedom in Iran and Ukraine (TED Interview Podcast) - Christiane Amanpour is originally from Iran, and speaks very eloquently about the situation in the region; it reminded me about an awesome skateboarding documentary I watched a while back that followed a group of pro-skaters traveling out to Iran, and discovered a very welcoming place and people much different to what mainstream media narratives portray, probably on YouTube https://www.ted.com/talks/christiane_amanpour_the_fight_for_freedom_in_iran_and_ukraine?rss=172BB350-0207
What a living whale is worth and why the economy should protect nature (TED Daily Podcast) - Ralph Charni takes a freakonomics-style approach, looking at the often overlooked huge value that live whales bring to the planet https://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_chami_what_a_living_whale_is_worth_and_why_the_economy_should_protect_nature?rss=172BB350-0207
The creator of the future is smart attractive and …animated (Vergecast Podcast) - David Pierce looks into the strange new world of animated characters that build online identities and even get hired by big name fashion brands, doing virtual photoshoots, and engaging in surprisingly complex digital workflows with many creators collaborating to create digital persons; weird, futuristic and a little scary, especially given all the gang stalker shenanigans I’ve been experiencing recently https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/Njc5ZDQ2OWMtNDk4Zi0xMWVkLTgwM2YtNGY4NjRmZmNkMTgz?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwioxLvrrNz7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQDg
Where have all the preppies gone? With Avery Trufelman (You’re Wrong About Podcast) - This has pretty much nothing to do with tech, but there’s been a bit of a fashion theme to some of the things I’ve listened to this week, and I really enjoyed this, also because of last week’s The Rest is History Podcast about the US-UK relationship, this was very timely, and I feel gave me a new dimension to my understanding of the american psyche, even if it’s not a style I personally wear myself; I don’t think I’d appreciated how much of a thing it was https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xMTEyMjcwLnJzcw/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC0xMTc3MDk0Nw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwioxLvrrNz7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQFw
How the World Bank & IMF Exploit Poor Countries with Alex Gladstein (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I’ve read quite a bit about these organisations over the years, but this episode really lays out the history, structure and functioning well, highlighting some horrendous practices that, for whatever reason, have emerged; worth listening to, debt bondage is wrong no matter where you are in the world, odeous debt should be stopped https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/how-the-imf-world-bank-exploit-poor-countries
The Regulatory Landscape for Crypto post-FTX, with Rebecca Rettig and Peter Van Valkenburgh (Up Only Podcast) - Great follow up to their FTX special, lots of relevant and interesting things discussed, mostly serious, but a touch of humour to keep things palatable, it’s important stuff; there’s an odd part to the story about a calculator which sort of makes you question the veracity of the entire episode, I mean are you saying bitcoiners keep all their receipts on paper? Don’t get into Bitcoin unless you can run a node, if any boso can make up a story and crash the price, then your investment is not going to last very long, Bitcoin without the ability to verify imo is very risky https://uponly.tv/the-regulatory-landscape-for-crypto-post-ftx-with-rebecca-rettig-and-peter-van-valkenburgh
Spooky Hole with John Moltz (Talk Show Podcast) - Some unrushed and thoughtful commentary on both Twitter and Mastodon, it’s good stuff even if I find John’s distaste for Elon a bit distasteful, such a high horse, but he makes some good points, and the mastodon review bit is done with his usual attention to detail; btw I’m no huge Musk apologist, but give him at least a few months to turn the ship around, and calling his followers stupid morons with no music taste is rather poor form https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2022/11/30/ep-364
Ghana: The Ashanti Empire Ep269 (The Rest is History Podcast) - This was a nice change of scene, I feel like I don’t know much about african history, and there are some great stories; it all seems very mysterious and dramatic to me, and I like a lot of it, though definitely not the human sacrifices and slavery; I hear the princess of Norway recently married a Shaman, which is very interesting, I wonder if Shamans use bitcoin? https://shows.acast.com/the-rest-is-history-podcast/episodes/268-ghana-the-ashanti-empire

Mark Smith’s Newsletter

Saturday 3rd December, 2022 - Digital Fashion, Odious Debt, and Flaming Bonfires

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Podcasts

Links