Saturday 26th November, 2022 - Geopolitics, Money and Football
Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
This week it’s mostly been about the podcasts. I wrote loads of notes along the way, but I’ve been very rushed and haven’t had much time to put it all into a cohesive narrative. Things floating around in the ether include the World Cup, our flawed and complicated monetary system (but it’s the best we’ve got for the moment), entrepreneurship, the circular economy and more.
There seems to be a bit of a voices theme in amongst the noise, with a Resident Advisor mix from DJ Voices, and 3 back to back podcasts from what appears to me to be very similar easy-on-the-ear voices. Each episode is great in its own right.
In the development of my static site generator, I’ve been in a somewhat frustrating situation of having to try to optimise the deploy workflow by creating compressed tarballs of all the files, and write several long forum post threads, only to find that the original workflow deployments have jumped from around 40 mins down to just a few minutes, without any particular change. I ended up modifying the deploy action to make it easy to switch between test and real data, with real data only used for production deploys, and an extra long running development branch to test feature branches that depend on each other, with accompanying environments.
I got everything working, deployed to production, only to find that for some reason the EJS code in markdown files wasn’t being rendered properly in the archives. I thought I had that all working but there’s a bug in the archives rendering. I tried a temporary fix, but it didn’t work, and I haven’t had time to figure it out, because I’ve been caught up in gang stalker yah woah RL race condition non-sense. So currently loads of urls throughout the archives look super ugly because they still contain all the unrendered EJS. Once that is solved, I’ll have v1 of my little Heroku escape raft complete.
Not to be too pessimistic, but I’m fully expecting to be immediately clobbered by a tidal wave as soon as I go live. Then probably struck by lightning.
I appear to be once again at the apex of another gang stalker cycle, everything is once again my fault, and predictably it resulted in me getting mutilated again. This time at the end of a very long escalating crescendo of doom, I stumbled on what appeared to be a broken street tile, and the top of one of my toes got ripped off, blood spraying everywhere, kinda painful. The reaction from the people around: enormous LOLs. After asking why they were laughing, even more enormous LOLs. I’m not kidding, this literally happened.
And today, I have a bandaged foot, I’m limping around and continuously getting yah’d by random people passing by. That’s just something that happens here sometimes.
Ok, this week’s list of titles that didn’t make it. It’s worth remembering that these are often just a reflection of something happening to me, a moment in time, they aren’t really very representative of me. My own personal back channel. I’m very aware that they could be massively taken out of context, and yes that worries me, but they are honest, even if they are a slightly bizarre and sometimes macabre window into our current moment.
High Fiving Your Anti-Self
Vietnamese say Russians are lying, Chinese say Vietnamese are lying, what do the Russians say about the Chinese?
You vs Your Social Exoskeleton You
Seeing the Massively Distributed Face Pillow Help
You are now surrounded and imprisoned by a mega ginormous story structure that you must learn or you will never get out
When the tide goes out you can see who has been pissing in the pool
Network of Suns vs Network of Planets
The 💩 pink calling the kettle a 🐶
The Macro endgame
The Massively Distributed Milk and Fucking Shoulders Cabal
Allergy Gang
Just Another Gang F-ing the Poor
The Dark Side of Make Believe (Gee Thanks Hollywood)
Deletion to the Family and No to the Mob
Free dandruff for all!
Distributed RL Yah Wow DDOS Attack
Life is Global Thermonuclear War
The Reverse Accelerator Pedal
Room Full of People Raised in Dead Person Doll Houses
The Dead Person Doll House
The world turns you into a whale, causes you to get beached by feeding you plastic, gives you 3 small plasters, then is totally, utterly, inexorably shocked and flabbergasted that it’s completely inadequate, then calls you a liar, and then wins, and then is unhappy about being a winner, and then looses, and is then unhappy about being a looser, and then is also unhappy when it goes down the middle, and then you wake up again, and you write down the sequence of events that keeps happening, and guess what?
Christmas Music has Started
Gosh a bit self involved. Tough week. Unsurprisingly I decided to ditch all of those and went with something that approximates the general themes circulating:
Geopolitics, Money and Football
It’s about to piss it down with rain, so that’s the end of this week’s issue intro.
I just stood up, turned around and there’s a small rainbow peaking through the dark grey clouds.
The world just doesn’t seem to be able to make its mind up about anything at the minute.
Podcasts
Jason Calacanis Ep635 (Tim Ferris Podcast) - Jason sounds a lot like Brian Keating from the Into to the Impossible Podcast, but on adrenaline; he’s been in amidst web entrepreneurs as far back as I can remember, he was amongst the first people I started reading when I got online, sometime around when Techcrunch was blowing up; it’s good to hear what he’s been up to, he is about as intense as it gets, I find him very tiring to listen to, but he’s got some awesome stories, even if at times the interview turns into a never ending pummelling rather than an elegant dance of minds, watching a cat dance with a mouse gets kind of boring imho, and I’m by no means calling Tim a mouse, but that’s the vibe the interview has in places, however Tim is great at bringing out the best in people and perhaps that’s just how Jason dances and there’s only so much lambada I can watch, anyway ‘nough said https://tim.blog/2022/11/18/jason-calacanis
Niall Ferguson: Doom! (Into the Impossible Podcast) - Great interview, I particularly liked the bit about history being like time travel, which you can really visualise when it’s described by Niall Ferguson; what is up with the game show audio segments at the end? I honestly can’t tell if it’s a piss take, which is sort of funny and endearing https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/NmQ1NmFiNjYtNjg2OS0xMWVkLTg2OTAtZmJiYTkzMTkyZDA2?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiI_vvpzMv7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBQ
Iran: England - The Little Satan Ep259 (The Rest is History Podcast) - There’s so much great history covered in this episode, the relationship between England and Iran is fascinating, and is an enlightening window into the Middle East; a bit sad to hear Wales lost to Iran yesterday in extra time, but it was awesome hearing the Welsh national anthem getting a display on the world stage https://shows.acast.com/the-rest-is-history-podcast/episodes/259-iran-england-the-little-satan
Foreigners betting big on it and you should to Ep330 (Eurodollar University Podcast) - All about treasury bonds as far as I can remember https://share.transistor.fm/s/cdafd63c
How to Watch a Complicated World Cup (Recode Media Podcast) - A look at sone of the thorny issues surrounding the 2022 event https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vcmVjb2RlbWVkaWE/episode/YTY0NzM3ODYtNjVmMC0xMWVkLTg5ODItZmI3YTM4NzVmY2Ey?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiI_vvpzMv7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQEQ
Building a circular economy with @ziggamon Ep80 (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - I’ve been wanting to know more about this circular economy all the bitcoiners keep name dropping, and this episode gave me a bit more background though I feel a clear picture of what it is is still very much missing; as a programmer that has been bitten by several nasty circular reference bugs over the years, I’m definitely not convinced it’s a good idea yet, circles sound more like traps to me, are we all doomed to live in a Bitcoin grandhog day? i.e. some other people’s circle https://anchor.fm/citadeldispatch/episodes/CD80-building-a-bitcoin-circular-economy-with-ziggamon-e1r5ppi
It’s Bitcoin Not Crypto w/ Cory Klippsten Ep105 (We Study Billionaires - Bitcoin Podcast) - A load of stuff about FTX including a step by step breakdown of how exactly the scam worked https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RoZS1pbnZlc3RvcnMtcG9kY2FzdA/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL1RoNV9vVzVmaEhaaE9OQ0FKUFQ4c2RrUGwxWXBPMHdoenpON2pBNm9CSnM?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiI_vvpzMv7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQGg
DJ Voices Mix (Resident Advisor Podcast) - I’ve been listening to this a lot this week https://pca.st/episode/7f21e636-c077-4a11-876e-4af1ad985c22
Chris Tarbell - FBI Agent Who Took Down Silk Road Ep340 (Lex Fridman Podcast) - Great episode, full of fascinating stories infused with intrigue, technology and ethics; and he just might be a bit good at deception himself, but most probably not, though sort of maybe, which adds a bit of spicy uncertainty https://lexfridman.com/chris-tarbell/
Finding Bitcoin Signal With Jeff Booth Ep584 (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - Jeff appears initially to be a bit unclear in his thinking, but his imprecision gives him the space to delve into places that others have not; a wander through many topics including money as information, the transition between two money systems, inflation is theft, a vision of the future, technology is deflationary, value isn’t getting to where it’s needed, centralised vs decentralised money systems, network effects, and the inevitability of the fiat system breaking https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/finding-bitcoin-signal
Rick Rubin, music producer (Desert Island Disks Podcast) - Rubin has worked with a lot of the greats, I find his perspective and way of working very enlightening, different approaches for different situations, making listening intentional and central, as well being very attuned to emotions, how your body and mind is reacting to music and situations https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001dd83
Their return is becoming a near certainty even amidst all this uncertainty (Eurodollar University Podcast) - Looks at the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and it’s never ending quantitative easing (QE) program, the BOJ invents money and buys bonds from the banks which increases the bank’s reserves, which theoretically would mean they could use that extra collateral to create loans deploying them into the real economy; however they haven’t been doing that, so the money never enters the real economy; I guess it seems too risky for whatever reason, weird though because how do the banks make the money to pay the bond interest to the people that bought the bonds, who are in this case the central bank? They must be either eating into their reserves or they have another way to make income, or the bonds are zero interest bonds, but even then they have to make at least enough to survive, it makes no sense unless they are negative rate bonds; this stuff is way too confusing, it’s so frickin’ ugly https://share.transistor.fm/s/01f846d9
Jared Bibler, author of Iceland's Secret: The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Con (Eurodollar University) - This is from a few weeks back but it never made it into the mix, probably because there was already loads of money related content, but it’s really relevant to the mix this week, and it’s a fascinating interview, done by a bloke that sounds unbelievably like a young Rolf Potts from the Deviate Podcast, it’s the story of how Iceland ended up with 3 banks the size of Enron over just a few years, which all imploded; basically they were creating offshore banks, lending them money, to then buy shares in the lending banks https://share.transistor.fm/s/425fb9a7
Digital Nomad Cities for 2023 Ep677 (Tropical MBA Podcast) - This week’s been super narly for me, so this was a nice bit of positivity about the world and the future http://www.tropicalmba.com/digital-nomad-cities-2023
USA vs England: The 200 Year Rivalry (The Rest is History Podcast) - Really liked this, it’s pretty well balanced and paints a picture of this long standing relationship, which though has been through a lot of turmoil, on the whole has resulted in a world that has a bright future, turning the past into the future isn’t all that easy sometimes because it happens over such long periods of time, spanning cultures that have changed massively and even language that has changed so much it’s almost unrecognisable, yet we’re still friends and appreciate each others differences https://shows.acast.com/the-rest-is-history-podcast/episodes/263-usa-vs-england-the-200-year-rivalry
Links
World Cup 2022: Fifa president Gianni Infantino accuses West of 'hypocrisy' https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63687412
I quit my programmer job to become a chicken (HN Thread) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33673788
Joe Lycett 'shreds' £10k in David Beckham Qatar protest https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63692988
France bans Office 365 and Google Docs from schools and public administration (HN Thread) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33686599
We must wean economy off immigration, Labour leader to warn businesses https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63707941
Violent protests erupt at Apple's main iPhone plant in China https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-23/violent-protests-erupt-at-apple-s-biggest-iphone-plant-in-china
World Cup 2022: OneLove armband - Germany players cover mouths amid row with Fifa https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63729563
Herr Otto Flick - Character from the classic british comedy Allo Allo, and namesake of Germany’s manager, which won’t be missed by many brits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_%27Allo_%27Allo!_characters
What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million Are Mined? https://www.investopedia.com/tech/what-happens-bitcoin-after-21-million-mined/
dddddddddzzzz/OpenStories: The Open Stories format https://github.com/dddddddddzzzz/OpenStories
hyperstackjs · Hyperstack is a modern full-stack Node.js web framework for the pragmatic programmer - Cool name for a framework, though it’s worth pointing out that when I started out, I tried out a batteries and kitchen sink included framework and ultimately got stuck and went back to tried and tested and does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Express, but now that I know what I’m doing, it might be that one of these build-a-skyscraper libraries might be appropriate for the right job
https://hyperstackjs.io/
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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