The Social Media Challenge

“Most posts in social media are automatic replies, bots, spammers, time wasters, people in their own bubbles with a microphone and THEIR amp turned up to 11, but no headphones - so they don’t see the occasional REAL post.


Repeat after me.

Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing interface. Do NOT carry out major edits in the Micro Blog writing ….


🚧 It's A Pattern

In my book ‘For Business Leaders Slapped In The Face By A World They Thought They Knew’, I referenced an organization called 'The Prout Institute'.

It came to mind as I watched this relatively unwatched (in the big scheme of things) video.

Andrew Pancholi is definitely an interesting man.

It's a 2022 video - but predates the invasion of Ukraine, though not the build-up with the result that we have an immediate feedback loop on some aspects of how right or wrong his thinking is. (He seems to be right.)

The talk is only 35 minutes or so of the nearly 1-hour video (the rest is a Q and A) - and touched on many topics including China's penetration into the world that Peter Frankopan - amongst others - wrote about in his 2018 book The New Silk Roads. (The Guardian). An excellent book that if the future of the world is interesting to you, this book should be either on your bookshelf - or (as in my case) in your iPad.

There is part of me that questions the pattern making ‘proofs’. Kind of like the ley lines of England … that are in the canons of ‘lost knowledge’. If you are loose enough with definitions and correlations then yes - everything is going to align.

Still, for all of that, it’s a good 35 minute listen - and it gets harder to say that as each day passes.

 


“A lot of the current hype around NFTs consists of the belief that the rest of the world will follow the same rules as NFT art. But of course part of the point of art is that it doesn’t follow the same rules as the rest of the world.”

💬 James Grimmelmann

Grimmelmann is a professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech - directing the Cornell Tech Research Lab in Applied Law and Technology.


Not just techies …


Just had cause to send this message to someone

“Oh the vagaries of WhatsApp - it truly is an appalling app (thats appalling - and definitely NOT appealing).”


What you need to know about the state of the metaverse today - the problem is that Vox published this on the 19th of this month - so it has now all changed.


Moving from 1Password to iCloud Keychain

… reading and absorbing as 1Password 8 approaches.


Experimenting With Footnotes

🚧 I wanted to write this post as a permanent test of applying ‘footnotes’ on my blog.

Here in the time line it is almost certainly going to look weird if there isn’t a title - but the idea is to improve the reading experience on the site - and then of course explore what it might look like in an RSS feed.

Post Posting

The footnotes aren’t coming through hyperlinked. YET!

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl.

Click On The Arrow To Get Some Context

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.

Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.


Video embed test

youtu.be/F4SB8vIMt…


Blockquote Test

Normal

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti.”

💬 Joe Blow

Hitchens Specific

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius sollicitudin consequat. Etiam cursus blandit nisl accumsan fermentum. Phasellus faucibus velit non porttitor tincidunt. Ut quis erat ac nibh auctor tempus. Sed a metus sed dui pulvinar dapibus pulvinar et nisl. Sed consectetur, magna sit amet vestibulum dapibus, augue orci dignissim nulla, nec interdum ligula nibh at dui. In in dolor sit amet urna tempor pulvinar. In ut odio et ligula faucibus placerat. Proin pulvinar ex et sagittis molestie. Vestibulum dignissim faucibus diam, quis lacinia lacus mollis et. In fermentum ex quis consectetur semper. Nullam ut metus quam. Suspendisse potenti."

💬 Joe Blow

Meanwhile ….. why not explore header formats while I am here

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5
Heading 6

Why America Can’t Build Big Things Any More

…// @kaa - saw this and thought of you.


How An AI Became My Code Writing Genie

Read the article on Wired here …. (Paywall)

It’s not yet ready for prime time .. but still ….

So, using Visual Studio Code, I wrote a plain ol’ comment describing the first step I needed done:

write a function that opens a pdf document and returns the text 
 For about four seconds, nothing happened. Then Copilot wrote this: 
 def pdf_to_text(filename): 
pdf = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(open(filename, “rb”)) 
text = “” 
for i in range(pdf.getNumPages()): 
text += pdf.getPage(i).extractText() 
return text




SXSW: four people shot in downtown Austin during festival

Is nowhere safe anymore?

Of course ‘Gunless’ New Zealand has its own problems. Shooting in the center of Auckland just last week and are the police really fatally shooting people at ten times the rate of the UK?


As a reader … I am liking the substack app.

As a substack writer … I still THINK I like it .. but it isn’t clear that it is an open and shut case.


Finished reading: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl 📚🎶🎼🎵

A proper review needed, but I tend not to do those … but someone definitely at the intersection of two personal passions - People First and M U S I C


Makes sense?

Discuss?


Inside the Palace With Mohammed bin Salman

“You Americans think there is something strange about a ruler who sends his unqualified son-in-law to conduct international relations,” one Saudi analyst told me. ‘For us this is completely normal.’"


Is the President a ‘ruler’?


I need an app that understands all the tv/movie services I subscribe to … and don’t … where I can have one ‘watch now queue’ … and where to watch it … as an extension here are the other shows you could watch if you had these services.


Linktree | The Only Link You’ll Ever Need

… except haven’t we seen these services before … About.me anyone?

What’s different about LinkTree that warrants a $152 million investment - much less a $1.3 BILLION valuation!

There are countless more alternatives.