Saturday 11th November, 2023 - Money, Movies, Kindness, Elon and Barack (Issue #140)
Great mix this week. It’s the intersection of tech, AI and humanity and all the things good and bad that connect us. There’s a weird zen balance to it all.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
This week I went for an issue title that describes what’s in the tin so to speak. There aren’t as many podcasts as usual, but they’re all fantastic. The main topics are AI, humanity and the things that connect us. There’s some fun stuff, some serious stuff and some tech stuff. It’s a good mix.
The big news for me in my static site generator development was completing both the foundational work for the upcoming interleaved everything main page, but also a big refactor of all my Github actions build and deploy workflows. All the code repos including plugins, now share the same scripts. It’s a huge improvement as far as maintenance goes. It was a slog but I’m happy it’s done.
The week has been kind of tough, so I’m going to keep the intro short. I’m not feeling super chatty. I hope you enjoy the pods. They certainly cheered me up this week. :)
Everything perfect, everything wonderful.
Podcasts
A Deep Dive into Broken Money (The Flying Frisby Podcast) - Dominic interviews Lynn Alden and they talk about her new book, which looks at the history of money but through the lens of technology rather than politics.
Hedge Funds Have Made Billions From This (This Could Get Ugly) (Eurodollar University Podcast) - A look at a dysfunctional circular dynamic that has appeared in the current monetary system over the past decade. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL21ha2luZy1zZW5zZQ/episode/MWQ3N2E3NmEtOWZiNC00YjA1LTkwYzItYjhlOTBkZTFjYWMy?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjIpITHpbmCAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg
Brian Koppelman on TV, Movies, and Appreciating Art (Tyler Cowan Podcast) - All about movies and making movies. I don’t get to watch any movies at the minute, so the next best thing is listening to people talk about movies on podcasts, and both Tyler and Brian have a lot of interesting takes. Really enjoyed this episode. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/brian-koppelman
Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity Ep#400 (Lex Fridman Podcast) - The episode title really summarises the topics quite succinctly. It’s very funny in places, but there’s also quite a bit of serious talk about the world and our future. The juxtaposition of his caricaturish maniacal evil french person laugh, his brainy tech talk, and his very posh english accent, even though he’s american, is such an odd combination. Lots of interesting topics and stories. https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4
My Surgeon General With Vice Admiral H. Murthy, MD, MBA (Fake Doctors Real Friends) - A little bit of an odd episode, but I think it’s important to cover these difficult topics sometimes with a bit of humour. They talk about society, youth culture, bullying, kindness, mental health, and how we should think about these topics. Much more interesting episode than I thought it would be. It’s kind of odd hearing comedians talk about these topics, because much of what they do is often in conflict with the topics covered, but that’s why it’s a good conversation, and important, so we can all figure out a better future for everyone. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-fake-doctors-real-friends-60367049/episode/2023-my-surgeon-general-with-vice-127775394
Barack Obama on AI, free speech, and the future on the internet (Decoder Podcast) - I didn’t realise Obama was so into AI, he knows a lot about it. They talk about a bunch of interesting areas including AI, regulation, tech industry, deep fakes, cyber bullying, first amendment, moderation, intellectual property, copyright, AI and the workforce, and his pushing for government AI jobs. I’m always fascinated by Obama’s voice because he always sounds like he’s been working in radio or television presenting 5 times longer than the media professionals interviewing him. Nilay was a bit down on his interview but I thought it was very good, I enjoyed it a lot. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vcmVjb2RlZGVjb2Rl/episode/MmU4Y2NiMDAtMzUwZi0xMWVkLThkNTItZTM0ZTgzMWIyZmJi?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjNoemBqrmCAxWe0bsIHQkXBa4Q8qgGegQIARAE
Links
Lots of links on the daily linkblog, and they often include extra context links which there isn’t an easy way to include in substack. Please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
Notes
Some kind of dark stuff in the notes this week. That’s life sometimes. There’s also more details about my development work. Please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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