Saturday 30th September, 2023 - Bitcoin Butterfly (Issue #134)
Money, bitcoin, free speech, AI assistants, static site generators, roman history, kiosks are cool, physics is barmy, Cockney rhyming slang and I’m loosing my mind again.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
It’s Tuesday morning. So many gang stalker + brick incidents this week. You might have seen my posts on Twitter / Mastodon. That’s been accompanied by what appears to be removal of my water and electricity access. Hard to tell though. Maybe it will be fine, but just in case I’m putting together this issue, so you at least know what happened if you never hear from me again.
I don’t want to leave you with nothing so here’s the very latest podcast I listened to:
The 50-year quest for AI virtual assistants https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NThjYmRiMjgtMzE0OC0xMWVlLWFmMjAtZTNiZWQ1YzU5YzY0?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiwrMWa8MaBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Update: It’s Friday now and I was able to put together the list of podcasts this week! Butterflies are beautiful, and there’s lots of bitcoin stuff this week, so I’m going with that for the title.
The thing I’m thinking about today: could you build bitcoin as an etherium layer 2? How about etherium as a bitcoin layer 2? It’s likely a very silly thing to be thinking about. What about the entire fiat system as a layer 2? This is definitely very silly now. Sorry I need to go and get some dinner.
I’ve been stuck with no github build minutes, having run out because of issues setting up an npm module cache. Github at one stage said they would add some minutes to the account, but then changed their mind. Then there was a week of back and forth, basically they ran down the clock. What a waste of time and effort. Today it’s the last day of the billing cycle and they have decided to 50% increase my minutes for next month, which is nice but it’s too late, and the way things went down I’d say it’s practically malicious help. Sorry there were no links, not much I could do about it.
Anyway here are the podcasts, some really awesome episodes this week, hope you are all well :)
Podcasts
Selects: Cockney Rhyming Slang: Beautiful Gibberish (Stuff You Should Know Podcast) - It’s been a while since I’ve featured a SYSK episode. This is a pretty great one, that reminded me of home. I learnt a lot, because I had no idea about the history. Some of this street talk gets kinda involved! Why is Josh so down on Guy Ritchie? If I were to hazard a guess I bet it’s the endings. Just a strange hunch. Also: Chicken circularity. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/selects-cockney-rhyming-slang-beautiful-gibberish-123905855
Global Banking Cartel That Prints Trillions of Dollars (Exposed) (Eurodollar University Podcast) - Where does all the money people lose end up? It’s all about the shadowy, off book world of FX trading which accounts for trillions of trade per day, is responsible for matching people that need dollars with those that have dollars, and keeps the money circulating around the system at a minimum viable level. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL21ha2luZy1zZW5zZQ/episode/NjdlN2M4NTAtMGRlYy00OGM2LTgxNjUtOWJlYWE5ODg2ZGZj?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiw1s2t6M-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech Ep#397(Lex Fridman Podcast) - There are a lot of important topics covered in this episode that will make you reflect on the communication systems we are building, including elitist universities, elites vs the working class, left vs right, perfect rhetorical fortresses, elitism masquerading as compassion, lazy criticism, hypocrisy projection, whataboutism, orphans of the culture war, academic freedom, viewpoint diversity, being able to be wrong, hate speech, interviewing controversial people, offence archeology, importance of curiosity, epistemic anarchy that followed the printing press, the scientific revolution, enlightenment, and the discovery of ignorance, size and shape of the collective brain, mental health and social media, maximising for happiness, free speech being for everyone even your enemies. https://lexfridman.com/greg-lukianoff
Community Partnerships, Images, and Astro with Fred K. Schott Ep#584 (Shop Talk Show Podcast) - All about static site generators. Astro is one of the hot ssg tools at the minute which is making an impression. They have recently been adding features around view transitions. Also discussed: open source, partnerships, Wordpress + Astro, image component, being sucked into the SVB debacle, on demand page building, Astro + bun. https://shoptalkshow.com/584
The 50-year quest for AI virtual assistants (Vergecast Podcast) - Summary of the history of virtual assistants, Xerox Parc, the conversational user interface, natural language processing, neural networks, AI based search, ChatGPT, the cold start problem, private information, writing email and code, chat bots for students, internet connected bots and citations, AI as primary interface to the internet, AIs to help you with your mortgage. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NThjYmRiMjgtMzE0OC0xMWVlLWFmMjAtZTNiZWQ1YzU5YzY0?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwiw1s2t6M-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQuAM
Opt-out of Keneysian Brain Rot with Godfrey Bloom (TFTC Podcast) - I feel like Godfrey Bloom is what you would get if you cloned Nigel Farrage and Dominic Frisby and spliced them together in a petrie dish. There’s something eminently listenable to Godfrey’s patter. Lots of interesting topics discussed including privacy, government overreach, corruption of parliament and the King of England, fascism as a system of government, the European Union, constitutions, politicisation of everything, the french rioting at the drop of a hat, central banking, inflation, the degradation of money, lack of quality financial journalists, off balance sheet debts, the BRICs nations, self sovereignty, Keynesian economists believing the sun revolves around the earth, the family money printing machine, the bitcoin provenance issue, importance of bitcoin being a medium of exchange, shield of law becoming a stick, journalists in bed with the CIA, and the terrible reporting of the Ukraine war. https://tftc.io/tftc-podcast/opt-out-keynesian-brain-rot
The Bitcoin Debate with Jeff Booth and George Gammon (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - This was a bit of a weird one. It’s like Jeff has this incredible thought that he is unable to fully articulate, and literally the entire episode is spent trying to figure out what this golden thought is. I really want to know what the golden thought is, and so does everyone else, otherwise they wouldn’t listen to him go on and on and on about whatever it is he’s going on about. Topics including the 3 eras of bitcoin, bitcoin is re-pricing the world, the flaw in measuring bitcoin value with fiat, US dollar network affects, importance of bitcoin security and decentralisation, the free market’s role in providing loans and derivatives. Also I ended up wondering whether the entire money system is just a layer 2 on an invisible Bitcoin network put in place by people existing in a separate innascesible realm? It’s probably not that important. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-bitcoin-debate
Parallels to the Roman Empire w/ Dr. Peter St. Onge Ep#149 (We Study Billionaires Podcast - Bitcoin Fundamentals) - I’m a bit of a fan of Peter’s podcast. I’ve previously included some episodes in the newsletter. I find his takes to have unusually high clarity when it comes to macro. This episode does pretty much what it says on the tin, drawing parallels between the decline of the Roman Empire and today’s world environment. I need to listen to this one again. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RoZS1pbnZlc3RvcnMtcG9kY2FzdA/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL3ItR2FpeGVPQTd3QlFEQU4wZjIybWxHVW5OYUtQTzgyc25CbUU3ZTJGVFE?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiA0K6V68-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQQA
RIP DVDs (Vergecast Podcast) - This was a lot more interesting than the title makes it out to be. Hard physical media was another era, or was it? The segment all about kiosks across the US is very interesting. Then there’s a segment all about viewer metrics in the modern age. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/MmNiYTc0NGEtNDlhZS0xMWVkLWE2ZGMtY2I1ODdlYzgwN2I2?sa=X&ved=0CAQQ8qgGahgKEwiA0K6V68-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQgAI
Eric Weinstein on the Possibility if Nuclear War and the Twin Nuclei Problem (Into the Impossible Podcast) - This is the episode to listen to for the latest in the everything-is-falling-down-and-we-are-doomed-no-really-propper-doomed-seriously. There’s some very interesting science history, and it’s all quite somber and you probably have to be a goth or really into the blues. Academia is wild sometimes. It’s like a very very big node_modules folder with the bouge sound effect, combined with inception of every heavy idea in your head all at the same time. But there’s also some interesting ideas about where we are in science, and it’s important because it underpins all the things we build, and because it considers much larger timescales than we consider in web development. Also humanity escape roulette, armageddon, collapsing civilisations, bitcoin conferences, decentralisation in multiplanetary or multistar systems, artificial gravity, space travel, theories of everything. The 3 legged stool of mathematics: geometry, algebra and calculus/analysis. The only people that can save us being mathematicians and physicists. The importance of being important. If you manage to get through this without the skin sagging off your face, then you’ll probably be all right in life. We desperately need antigravity for physicists. Perhaps they need some of the dev tools and techniques we use in web development, new scaffolding, some exoskeletons, so they can do a bit of a makeover. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/NGY5ODQ3NWEtNWM2Yi0xMWVlLThlM2EtYTM4MmE1MTE3Mzkw?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwiA0K6V68-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQogY
Jason Pack: Why disorder may be the new order (Keen On Podcast) - Something about this episode rang true to me, even if the hosts were bickering a bit. It’s an interesting idea especially in the age of AI. It’s the observation that some folks aren’t behaving as the textbooks expect them to, maybe they are merchants of disorder? https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hamtlZW4ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/ZDlhNTc0NzYtNWQ0OC0xMWVlLWI5YWUtMmJkNjUxOWE0OTUy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwiA0K6V68-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQ9Qg
Keith Teare: Dumb devices, dumb bureaucrats and dumb entrepreneurs (Keen On Podcast) - There’s a very controversial angle on the Bankman-Fried situation, but I actually found it quite a refreshing and level headed counter balance to what feels like recent mob heavy movements in the media. It’s very difficult to keep things in perspective with all the sensationalism. Also covers regulators going after Google, Lina “princess killer” Khan vs Amazon, the neutering of Facebook, OpenAI + voice, OpenAI + Johny Ive. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hamtlZW4ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M/episode/OThiMjNiMzItNWQ1OS0xMWVlLWI2M2QtMGZjMjRlZTc3ZTBi?sa=X&ved=0CAQQ8qgGahgKEwiA0K6V68-BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQ6wg
Links
I haven’t been able to publish any links this week, been blocked by running out of build minutes again, but please checkout the linkblog there are many links in the archives:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
Notes
It’s been so hectic I haven’t been able to publish many notes, but please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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