Unified Narratives (Issue #180)
Bitcoin end is the beginning, second brains, theories of everything, media manipulations and market distortions, LLM video game characters, 20 years of podcasting!
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Update 6: Message from the future - I put this issue together while listening to this live mix, the audio quality isn’t great but if you’ve ever been to a rave, music festival or DJ live set, it does capture some of the atmosphere. I imagined that all the gangs in this issue were partying along in various ways. Turns out this week there are a few things to celebrate. Listen along too: https://ra.co/podcast/952
Same as last week, world is doing its usual starvation thing again, has cut off washing water and power so once again preparing this issue early. One entire week early. Literally the newsletter just got sent out and I’m having to prepare next weeks issue already.
Anyway so far it’s only 1 podcast, but it’s a good one, it’s the last episode of What Bitcoin Did. Great episode, looking forward to their next project, just hope I don’t starve before that starts.
At least issue #180 will live. Tidy darts.
X
I’ll add more content at the end of the week, world willing.
Update 1: I added 2 podcasts! Wow world is being hyper hyper contrarian in most dimensions today. Not easy to listen, grok and add these at all. At least there’s something. Unfortunately will need to get offline and turn devices off soon to save on power. Only managed to charge devices a bit today.
Update 2: I added two blog posts! Both a bit weird. But it’s been quite a weird day, in fact it’s been quite a weird few days. See this week’s notes on the blog for more details and context.
Update 3: Added 1 podcast and 3 blog posts! The Raoul Pal episode is kind of fascinating. Media manipulations, seeing distortions in markets, algorithmic rabbit holing, unified narratives, memes replacing religion, ai & deep fakes, consciousness, population collapse, synthetic vs biological life forms, LLMs in video games. Also the very nerdy physics theories of everything discussion. Even though I didn’t understand it all, having an understanding of what’s going on at the bottom of the tech stack is useful. Not just the nerdy stuff but also the people dynamics. Everything we do in tech is built on these sciences, and are thus affected by it in some way.
Update 4: I added 2 more podcasts. Bret Weinstein on Rogan was pretty great, tons of interesting topics explored with skill, intelligence and humour, including politics, the multiverse and aliens. The TWIT episode has a fun trip down memory lane, early internet, especially early days of podcasting, which celebrates it’s 20th birthday this month. I can’t believe I’ve been listening to podcasts for almost 20 years! IPodder synching to my click wheel iPod was such a long time ago!
Update 5: I’ve updated the title to ‘Unified Narratives’. The idea of things being unified this week feels like a bit of a background theme, an undercurrent. From theories of physics that try to unify the quantum world and gravity, to unification of money with bitcoin and cryptos, to unification of fractured media narratives, to unification of thoughts and brains, to unification of open source publishing and cool web publishing. The cosmic microwave background vibrations are all about unifying things at the minute.
Update 6: See start of issue. Bizarrely since writing this issue, I’ve run into a weird bug in my git client where it wouldn’t reset a branch back 3 commits in the past. It’s a “back to the future” bug. Surely the chances of that happening have got to be pretty close to zero.
Update 7: Last minute addition of a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a few days. It’s about theories of everything, money and poverty. I imagine some might think I have no business asking such questions, but I do have both an engineering and science degree, so even though I don’t work as a scientist I feel like I should be able to ask this question.
It’s probably blog posts and questions like that that are getting me in so much trouble with the universe. If you think there‘s some value in this, or you just like my slightly out there analysis and writings, podcast selections or my fascinating development reports and you want to help out, I sure need it, lots of options including Buymeacoffee, Patreon, PayPal, or directly using Stripe. You choose the amount. Any contribution would be awesome:
https://markjgsmith.com/donate
My goal is a new laptop, replacing the one that got hosed in last year’s rainy season, so I can get out of this infiniti hole I have fallen into. Once I have that, getting back onto my feet with freelancing, resurrecting my SaaS, and open sourcing my static site generator become possible. And the newsletter will get even better too. You could make a huge difference.
Blog
Perverts vs normies https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/03/perverts-vs-normies
Hyper hyper control days https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/03/hyper-hyper-control-days
Sequence down at the canal https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/03/sequence-down-at-the-canal
Tumblr moving open source, Wordpress getting cool https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/04/tumblr-moving-open-source-wordpress-getting-cool
How to get a balanced view of Europe? https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/04/how-to-get-balanced-view-of-europe
Journalists do definitely spread false information https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/05/journalists-do-definitely-spread-false-information
Is the concept of money blocking our understanding of the universe? https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/09/06/is-the-concept-of-money-blocking-our-understanding-of-the-universe
Podcasts
What Bitcoin Did With Jack Mallers, Matt Odell, & Harry Sudock (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/what-bitcoin-did
Dave’s Second Brain Idea, Notion Thoughts, and Google’s LLM in Chrome Ep#631(Shop Talk Show Podcast) https://shoptalkshow.com/631
Marty Bent Aligning Expectations in Bitcoin Ep#191 (Gold, Goats ‘n Guns Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/236253?episode=27221451301
Perspectives on the Theory of Everything With Eric Weinstein, Sabine Hossenfelder, & Lee Smolen (Into the Impossible Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/324783?episode=26160373168
Civil War 2.0: Tom Bilyeu on the American Divide (Raoul Pal: The Journey Man Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/4473895?episode=26452640889
Bret Weinstein Ep#2198 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/6786106?episode=27365244429
The Story of Us - AnandTech Shuts Down, Brazil Bans X, Alexa Revamp (This Week in Tech Podcast) https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/995
That’s all from me…
Best regards,
Mark
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