Saturday 6th July, 2024 - Surrounded By Paperclip Maximisers (Issue #171)
US EU French and UK Politics, music industry & AI, money problems in developing nations
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
It’s been truly mental this week. It’s always the case when I get to the end of developing a new feature for my tiny inconsequential static site generator that the world pushes back bigly, but this surely must have been the sledgehammer to crack all nuts. It was like a tsunami of apocalypses, one after the other, all while debugging the code I’d written before I got blocked, on my tiny little iOS device, standing up. Oh and I being starved and thirsted and my electricity has been cut off, which is why I’m having to write this issue on Thursday morning, and access to hot water has been cut off, and it’s fucking freezing and wet because it’s rainy season.
But I got the feature completed and shipped, and it looks like I’m going to die, because everyone everywhere wants me to die. And so it goes.
Only a few podcasts this week so far. There were so many I didn’t get to. When you are shivering and starving under a poncho in the pouring rain it’s difficult to concentrate on anything. The ones I did listen to were pretty great, especially the politics ones. That really is the most interesting thing happening at the minute, the UK, France, the EU and the US, and all these geopolitical issues with wars and what not. It’s fever pitch.
There’s also a great tech podcast all about how the music industry is dealing with the copyright issues raised by all these super powerful AI tools. Includes lots off fun examples of tunes generated by AI that sound oddly similar to the originals that they were trained on, but not quite the same. As a lifelong music listener and lover of the craft, this one was super interesting. Tech and music are colliding big time at the minute.
And finally there’s one all about how messed up money affects poorer developing countries. I see so many similarities with where I am in Vietnam. It’s really worth listening. But I think there’s a load of things that are not mentioned. It’s not the full picture. The debasement isn’t just monetary, it’s also in the social layer, which is difficult to explain, but if you read my daily blog you might have some idea of what I’m talking about.
So that’s it for this week, I’m going to keep it short, to save on power as I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to charge my devices again. I might get to add individual show descriptions later, but at least you have what’s in this intro.
Check out the blog, all the blog posts I wrote while offline are now published:
https://markjgsmith.com/blog
And of course the everything page has all those interleaved with notes, links, newsletters and podcasts:
https://markjgsmith.com/everything
Why this week’s title? That’s just how life feels for me a lot of the time at the minute. And it sounds a bit humorous. Just trying to stay upbeat.
I hope you are all healthy and in good spirits :)
Podcasts
Advantage Trump: Will democrats move to replace Joe Biden? (The Rest is Politics Podcast) https://dcs.megaphone.fm/GLT8717236746.mp3
The music industry’s AI fight? (Vergecast Podcast) https://dcs.megaphone.fm/VMP2828123993.mp3
The “invisible rulers” shaping politics (Politico Tech Podcast) https://injector.simplecastaudio.com/b23ac1e9-2f3c-45d0-b8ea-5b002e04a4e5/episodes/5411fa28-5c7d-4b0e-aba6-2fc69e5113b6/audio/128/default.mp3/default.mp3_ywr3ahjkcgo_c989e2b2170d84153b41d599139604fe_20379079.mp3
What Happens When You Destroy Money: The Challenges of Everyday Life in Turkey (The Flying Frisby Podcast) https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/what-happens-when-you-destroy-money
What stands in the way of a Labour landslide? (The Rest is Politics Podcast) https://dcs.megaphone.fm/GLT2595418569.mp3
Last minute addition:
Starmer’s Labour Landslide - 3:30am update (Rest is Politics Podcast) https://dcs.megaphone.fm/GLT5205264585.mp3
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!