Synchronicity Apocalypse Days (Issue #191)
UK healthcare++, the big Bluesky migration madness, Bitcoin & memecoins are blowing up, forums are still cool, making music with AI, crypto-anarchism, aliens and lost civilisations detour
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
This week’s been such a wild ride. It’s like everyone on the planet was having a post election mega hangover. Honestly you should see the state of my notes. It’s a giant mess of bubbling craziness. It was very difficult to make heads or tails of literally anything.
And real life for me was completely bonkers, culminating yesterday in yet another synchronicity apocalypse day. These happen every so often. I don’t know how else to describe them. It’s like if minus infiniti and plus infiniti went on a pub crawl. The spirit world goes absolutely bananas. It’s like some sort of singularity. I wonder whether all this time these have been happening to me but I didn’t notice because I myself was often out on actual pub crawls. Anyway I haven’t had a drink in years at this stage. But the world keeps on going mental every now and then. It just doesn’t know how to stop. That’s where this week’s issue title comes from.
I think it’s likely a good sign though. Out of all this turmoil will emerge a better more streamlined reality. But it will be a bit of a bumpy journey.
I’ve noticed that some of the democrats that I thought had turned into real a-holes were suddenly a lot more chill. I guess they had just been in extreme battle mode for the past few months. That’s strange to me, I don’t really think of politics like that. I like to think you choose the options that align with you the most, but many see it as the last chance they will have to have control of everything. And many of those that think like that are in the main stream media, which means they are totally compromised.
These were the 3 main themes that stood out to me as being useful in some way:
Collaborating with AI Slop - Humans might be relegated to cleaning up. Oh noes! Certainly felt a bit like that this week.
Avoiding the imminent control everything trap - We might end up creating the very thing we are trying to avoid.
The internet finally changed main stream media - Seen this echo’d in a few places. We’ve been saying this was about to happen since at least when I got properly online 20 years ago.
As for podcasts, there were tons of amazing ones. I picked out 7 of the best.
The UK healthcare system is world famous, was the first of it’s kind, is much loved, but these days is riddled with issues. The Mr Obnoxious podcast on the subject is for sure the best examination of it I’ve listened to, with phenomenal real world examples of systems around the world that are based on the UK system but have improved it’s function significantly. Definitely worth listening to.
Bluesky was also much in the news these past few weeks given that so many folks on Twitter are diversifying their web presence following the elections. Worth understanding what’s happening in that space, social media and free speech is likely going to remain a hot topic over the coming months.
Bitcoin and crypto have been ripping the past week. I checked earlier and it was a whisker away off $100K per coin. Up from around $70K a couple of weeks ago, and $60K just a few weeks before that. That’s insane. It’s likely going to keep going up over the coming weeks but with a lot of ups and downs. I’m finding the discussion really interesting, especially around memecoins. These are very risky at the minute, but I wonder how memecoins will start to change things in the real world over the next few years. I feel like there’s a lot of interesting experimentation going on in that space.
We don’t talk a lot about forums these days, but forums used to be wildly popular online, and they still are. There’s a ton of useful, weird and wonderful stuff on them, and still worth exploring. Foundational pillars of the internet.
I really enjoyed the aliens stuff in the podcast feeds this week. Both Rogan and TWIT had really great episodes. A little bit of a fun diversion after all this serious election stuff, felt like a mini virtual holiday. Also underwater alien civilisations on TWIT! Among all the craziness, it really is the most fun world we live in :)
The Vergecast episode on making music using AI tools is both worrying and maybe also exciting. Crazy times we live in.
I wrote a couple of blog posts:
The peaceful transition of humour https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/11/16/the-peaceful-transition-of-humour
Thoughts on integrating your website with Bluesky https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/11/17/thoughts-on-integrating-your-website-with-bluesky
One humorous and a bit mind melting (certainly was to write it), and one more practical and developer focussed.
You too could have as big an impact as aliens arriving on planet Earth. I’m pretty sure some of them read the newsletter and would love it more than ever if it got even better. Yep I’m still saving for a laptop, to replace my old one that got hosed in last year’s rainy season. The newsletter sure would get a lot better if I wasn’t tied down to just this ridiculous iPod Touch I use for everything. Please please please donate! :) Thank you.
https://markjgsmith.com/donate
This week’s selection…
Podcasts
Tarim Sammour: Healthcare, Big Pharma, Inflation & Outcomes (Mr Obnoxious Podcast) https://www.mrobnoxious.com/episodes/tarik-sammour-healthcare-big-pharma-inflation-outcomes
Bluesky’s quest to be the next Twitter (Vergecast Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/415434?episode=30250438980
When Shift Happens: Will the Banana Zone Make You Rich w/ Kevin Follonier (Raoul Pal: Journey Man Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/4473895?episode=30294563369
Chris Person on Forums, Reddit, Cooperative Reporting Ep#642 (Shop Talk Show Podcast) https://shoptalkshow.com/642
Jimmy Corsetti & Dan Richards Ep#2231 (The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/550168?episode=30398465717
Underwater Alien Civilizations: Bluesky Growth, Tyson vs Paul, AI Granny Ep#1006 (This Week in Tech Podcast) https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1006
Why Are We Here? Crypo-Anarchism Explained | Arjun Bhuptani (Bankless Podcast) https://www.bankless.com/exploring-the-core-of-crypto-anarchism-a-reflection-on-arjun-bhuptanis-vision-at-bankless-summit-2024
Making human music in an AI World (Vergecast Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/415434?episode=30295813573
That’s all from me…
Best regards,
Mark
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!