Maximum Frontrun (Issue #176)
US Election buildup, Middle East turmoil & geopolitics, boots on the ground with homelessness, future of liberalism & conservatism, Saylor on surfing the Bitcoin bull market, and Germans on drugs!
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
It’s once again another week that’s shaping up to be full of escalations and tsunamis. It looks like water and electricity are about to be cut off again. So just like last week, I’m preparing the newsletter early, even though it’s only Monday. Literally the week has only just begun. Somewhat amusingly there are signs that the world is front running me writing up the newsletter early. It’s amusing because there isn’t really anywhere else for the world to go, any further back and it’s back into the previous bullying cycle, so the world is quite literally blocking itself at the top level, and of course I’m getting blamed for it.
I bet none of this makes any sense, it hardly even makes sense to me. Anyway the good news is that since I’ve kept on doing podcast reviews as I’m listening to them, I already have 3 pretty great ones to add to this issue. Oh and I’ve got a blog post too.
As far as development goes, I’m still trying to make progress on the reusable deploy workflows feature. It’s really slow going because if there’s anything that’s suffering from all this front running it’s development, because I’m spending all my time spinning my wheels on crap the world is throwing at me. I have a few small fixes that I managed to add in between harassment tsunamis. Maybe I’ll be able to test those later today.
Life goes on regardless.
Here are the blog posts written, not as many as I’d hoped:
Trump assassination counter factuals https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/08/04/trump-assassination-counter-factuals
Max Richter on infusing context into your work https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/08/05/max-richter-on-infusing-context-into-your-work
It’s interesting to consider what the world might have looked like had the assassination been successful. That’s what this post tries to do briefly recapping on what major events have happened since.
As I’m preparing this I’m noticing that not much of it is tech related, at least directly. If the week takes a turn for the better I’ll continue on with blog posts, links and podcast reviews and update the issue at the end of the week. If that happens no doubt there will be some more tech and maybe even javascript topics :)
I noticed that I’ve been making quite a few mistakes with urls on the website, particularly with podcasts that I review in links. I have to prepare these offline then add the url later, but things are so chaotic at the minute that I often get confused which I’ve added, and sometimes also get them mixed up. Sorry for that, I do try to fix them when I notice. If you find a dead link check back a few days later, I will usually have updated it. If it’s still dead after a few days email me and I’ll look into it. I’m doing the best I can here :)
Update: It’s Saturday now, it’s been a very stop start sort of week. I managed to add a blog post and a couple of podcast reviews. Not as much as I’d hoped, the world was being exceedingly blocky, eating it’s own tail over and over and trying to pretend it was all my fault, as usual. But it didn’t really work because it was so obvious what was going on. I ended up getting mutilated, first some sort of mysterious skin “allergy” appeared, then an entire day of horrendous sneezing yesterday. All while people seemingly everywhere kept telling me ‘you learn’ and ‘obey’. I wish I was kidding, but this isn’t a joke, this is really happening. It just feels like I’m stuck in between an argument that plus infiniti is having with negative infiniti. Each side is maximumly righteous, absolutely certain that everything is my fault. I hope next week is better, but it just feels like more of the Ludditocrats vs Ludditicans in every friggin’ dimension:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes/2024/08/09/180800-markjgsmith.com
Podcasts
Kamala Surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escallations, Ackman postpones (All-in Podcast) - They featured in last week’s newsletter issue, and this latest episode was once again a cracker. The Harris - Trump election build up discussion was great, with some very insightful observations and analysis. That was later followed up with an even better discussion of the Isreal/Mossad/Hamas/Iran assassination situation. The All-In guys are at their best when they are handling geopolitics and relating it back to global macro and Tech. There are some other smaller topics peppered in amongst those. Jason is pulling a Biden this week having caught COVID, but the show was still top notch, though there were signs of a few small resentments festering, which were kind of funny but will no doubt need some fielding from the best moderator in the universe. I bet it’s a tough job keeping the train on the tracks when your team is made up of an alternating current of Sith Lords and Rebel Aliance Jedi knights. Likely that’s why he took the week off in the first place, to see how well balanced everyone is performing. https://podcastindex.org/podcast/1015378?episode=25918148207
Alan Graham (The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - Interesting exploration of the homeless and poverty situation in the US by talking to someone that has 25 years boots on the ground experience with his Mobile Loaves and the Fishes organisation, has been organising food trucks and programs to promote hope, meaning and purpose for the chronically homeless. They talk about his background, his religious thinking and how he integrates that with the difficulties and contradictions of modern life. Interesting discussion around some of the core drivers in city regeneration, problems with the education system that have all contributed to the homeless situation that has been getting worse since the 70s. Overall will give you a different way to think about some of these highly politicised problems, which underneath are about real people doing the best they can given the circumstances. https://podcastindex.org/podcast/6786106?episode=25617895648
Norman Ohler (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - I thought this was a pretty fascinating look into a side of german cultural history that has been completely missed. It’s about the drugs that germans were taking around the time of the second world war. The attrocities of the war were of course happening but in parallel, psychadellic drugs were literally being discovered by scientists, and they were having hippie like experiences, hoping to spread love and togetherness to the world. These were the origins of the psychadelic movement in the US. It was also a time where mild stimulants like coffee didn’t exist yet, so people took meth instead! Norman’s research adventure took him deep into the archives of companies working on drug programs, and he discovered a treasure trove of information that paints a much more complete picture of what was actually going on around that time. It’s almost as if the seeds of destruction and it’s solution where somehow being created at the same time. And the story of how Norman got to the information, in it’s own way, is as interesting as the stories he eventually found. Really worth listening to this one. https://podcastindex.org/podcast/6786106?episode=25868052198
Edmund Fawsett compares the future of liberalism and conservatism Ep#2151 (Keen On Podcast) - Edmund’s last name makes me think we are in the fractal version of the simulation currently. Regardless it’s an interesting conversation exploring a topic that I’ve always found quite confusing. Deciding if you are liberal or conservative has always seemed to me to be like deciding to be a fast or slow car driver. Surely, it depends? Needless to say Edmund has a much more complete understanding than my overly simplistic take on things. History, ideas, traditions, and how it all relates back to the current day political environment we find ourself in. It’s all very interesting and I feel like I need to listen to this one again because the world ironically was trying to be both at the same time as I was listening to this, so it was a bit tricky to focus. This feels like a fundamental topic any person operating in the business world today should better understand, and I think this episode lays out the somewhat amorphous problem space pretty well. https://podcastindex.org/podcast/240566?episode=26054398875
Michael Saylor X Odell Bitcoin Park Fireside (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - Odell interviews Saylor live at Bitcoin Park. It’s a relatively short interview compared to some of the Saylor interviews I’ve listened to over the years, but it’s interesting because it feels like there’s been a noticeable shift in the overall narrative. This conversation to me felt like it was grounded in actually very practical and immediate topics, rather than a lot of the interesting but sometimes long winded bitcoin philosophy. It seems to coincide with the big recent increase in bitcoin interest from companies and institutions. You get a sense there is a wave coming and people are positioning their businesses for some bitcoin action. It’s not just businesses, countries too. All sorts of useful things talked about including operating companies vs investment trusts, hurdles to companies holding bitcoin treasuries, bitcoin as medium of exchange, stable coin + bitcoin as the perfect combination, building nation State FOMO?, and Bitcoin strategies the US Treasury could take. Great interview. https://podcastindex.org/podcast/1365851?episode=26114300586
That’s all from me…
Best regards,
Mark
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