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Saturday 6th May, 2023 - Mindblown Everything

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Saturday 6th May, 2023 - Mindblown Everything

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Mark Smith
May 6, 2023
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Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Another season 2 instalment…

It’s Thursday as I write this. I’ve been able to listen to quite a few podcasts this week, all things considered, and the tea leaves are starting to settle somewhat. I can see a nice path of possible blog posts emerging. Of course exactly as this starts to happen, the world starts to block everything in all possible dimensions. C’est la vie, I guess. I’m writing this now just so something gets sent out.

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Once more unto the breech.

As I write this, I’m listening to the Robolledo mix again:

  • Resident Advisor Mix: RA.876 Robolledo

It’s keeping me sane. I think one of the tracks features in a re-occurring dream I have where I am orbiting what appears to be some sort of binary planet. The orbit is in the figure eight. In the dream every now and then I get a bit too far out of orbit and nearly end up shooting off into the dark infinite void. It’s kind of scary when that happens, you get that empty feeling in your stomach. The orbiting takes foooooooorrrrrreeeeeeeeevvvvvvvveeeeeeer. It’s like I’m an airplane in a holding pattern. It’s weird. I always seem to wake up eventually.

Words that have been massively trending in my vicinity this week:

  • Up

  • Learn

  • You are / You our

  • Ok

  • Aaah

  • Waah

  • Lie / Liar / Lying

  • Actor

I’ve been able to get a bit of work done on my static site generator. Fixed an annoying bug where posts that occur on the same day were occasionally rendered in the wrong order. I’ve also been writing lots of scripts to attempt to cleanup 10 years of blog/linkblog/podcast data. It’s looking quite good though I’m currently stuck because the yaml library I’m using to read and write yaml is insisting on turning dates into date objects, which breaks my code and will likely leads to the dates being written back to disk in an incorrect format. Development is 95% frustration sometimes, and then someone non-ironically tries to help you by punching you in the face.

1=Infiniti again? What a surprise. Oh it’s all my fault again? Quelle surprise! Once more surprises are trending.

Ok time for the list of titles that didn’t make it. If you are wondering what that is, here’s a blog post about that:

  • The list of titles that didn't make it https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/01/07/the-list-of-titles-that-didnt-make-it

Here’s the list:

  • Blackhole Print To Enslavement Escape Velocity

  • You So Modern

Yep it’s a very short list again this week.

I wrote another couple of blog post about decentralised social media alternatives to Twitter, maybe you’ll like them:

  • Scuttlebutt and Manyverse first impressions - Writeup of my first impressions of Scuttlebutt and Manyverses, yet another decentralised alternatice to Twitter, intended to work well in situations where you are offline a lot  https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/05/04/scuttlebutt-and-manyverse-first-impressions

  • Reading through the Bluesky protocols - I continue my explorations of modern decentralised social media protocols. Today I'm looking at Bluesky which has entered the limelight in a big way over the past month. https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/05/06/reading-through-the-bluesky-protocols

This week’s podcasts:

  • Kevin Kelly on Excellent Advice for Living, Universal AI Assistants, Time Machines, and The Power of Fully Becoming Yourself Ep#669 (Tim Ferris Podcast) - Fascinating dude from the old school internet, has been blowing minds since the 70s https://tim.blog/2023/04/26/kevin-kelly-excellent-advice-for-living

  • Big Tech blow-out, Powell’s recession warning, lab-grown meat, RFK Jr shakes up race & more (All-in Podcast) - Lab grown meats, so much more mental than I had previously thought, we are getting bacterias to create proteins directly, cutting out the animals, mind blown, I hope we have backups https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbGxpbmNoYW1hdGhqYXNvbi5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YjMyYTY2ZDYtOGZmZS00ZWU2LWEzNTgtMGY1ZTlmNzU5N2Ix?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiAws2Rw9r-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ

  • Why Deflation is the Key to Abundance with Jeff Booth (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - We are measuring everything relative to a broken system, we should be in a deflationary environment but we are hiding it by massive money manipulation and inflation, abundance for a some, not much for everyone else; 1=Infiniti mind blown; my big question: what happens to innovation in massively deflationary environments? https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/why-deflation-is-the-key-to-abundance

  • Why Hollywood Fears AI - Mon 05/01 (Techmeme Ride Home Podcast) - AI is blowing the minds of the people who’s job it is to blow our minds https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RlY2htZW1lLXJpZGVob21l/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL19IdDJobkw5Q1RTRVE0SFVSWGZRdkg5LXlzRmVYQUVneFUxQXRFbjc0WEU?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwiAws2Rw9r-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQ1AE

  • Jonah Paretti, Nick Denton and Ben Smith on Digital News’ past and future we (Recode Media Podcast) - Scenes are everything, I agree but if I think about it for too long I start to get dizzy and need a cup of tea, mind blown again https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vcmVjb2RlbWVkaWE/episode/Yjk3MDQyNGEtZTg1OC0xMWVkLWIyZjYtZGI2N2E3MWExNjQ3?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwiAws2Rw9r-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQvQU

  • The director’s episode: how tech makes movies (Vergecast Podcast) - Probably the least mind blowy of this week’s collection but actually quite nice, it would have been quite nice even if it wasn’t in this collection which in itself is quite mind blowy https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/MmE5MzRhZTgtNDlhZS0xMWVkLWE2ZGMtZWI2Y2JjYTA1Yjc2?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwiAws2Rw9r-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQkwk

  • A mortgage for your sandwich (Have a Nice Future Podcast) - You had my mind blown just reading the episode title, side note I wrote a blog post a while back called The Big Tech Sandwich, mind blown by shill inception https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vZ2V0LXdpcmVk/episode/ZTZjZTU1OTAtZGRmMS0xMWVkLTk4ZjctNzcxZTVjODc1ZDc1?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwiAws2Rw9r-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQqw0

Here’s that article I mentioned above:

  • The Big Tech Sandwich - A mental model for processing the mess that is the modern world https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2022/06/10/the-big-tech-sandwich/

I haven’t had a chance to collect together links this week, though this appeared yesterday which fits with this week’s theme. Notice all the bubbles on the left. Stare at that for a while. Then move your gaze over to the right. What do you see?

  • Graphing Bank Failures https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/bank-failures

OMG, we are going to need a bigger boat mates.

Something I did during the week was take a look at the graphs of all the biggest tech companies stocks. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta. Graph all data since they started. It’s clearly ridiculous. It’s clearly exponential growth. How can that be? I mean they are going to literally be vertical lines in a year of two. How does that make any sense?

Once more: done.

All the best to all at home for the King’s coronation this weekend https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65502234

That’s all from me…

Best reguards,

Mark

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Thanks for reading!

@markjgsmith

If you liked this newsletter you might like my blog, daily linkblog or experimental podcast :)

I’m a freelance web developer, consultant and automation engineer, consider hiring me!

Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!

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