Recent good reads – web3, Elon, Stranger Things, fake Russian history, and CS Lewis

https://tcg.mirror.xyz/CCtokn_XR9yqGhL3OIKM4u8IxaVO0V0fmRxH-G5yWs8

We hear a lot of conversation around “hooks” for crypto-native messaging, like permissionless social graphs, verification, and token-gating, but these are features of web3 messaging, not the core use of it. None of these features have made on-chain messaging competitive with Telegram or Signal, because convenience (almost) always wins over quality. The reason these messaging protocols will be more convenient is they will unlock a whole new recipient of the message: the protocol itself. We haven’t gotten there yet because currently, messaging is regarded as an end, but web3-native messaging is a means, not an end. It’s a byproduct of completing actions.

Interacting with the protocol is a fascinating idea, although I suppose that’s what we do when we search google, or call an uber…and now there’s “interacting with an algorithm” too when we use ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion…

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/12/1064751/the-viral-ai-avatar-app-lensa-undressed-me-without-my-consent/

“Women are associated with sexual content, whereas men are associated with professional, career-related content in any important domain such as medicine, science, business, and so on,” Caliskan says.

I dunno, I kinda liked my new six pack

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-14/elon-musk-twitter-ownership-full-of-firings-ad-cuts-chaos

His journey from hero of the save-the-planet wing of the Democratic Party to right-wing flag-bearer has been years in the making. It was seemingly provoked by a series of real or perceived attacks from his left flank—from unions such as the United Auto Workers, which hopes to organize Tesla workers; Covid-wary lawmakers in California who shut down Tesla’s factories during the early days of the pandemic; and labor-friendly leaders like President Joe Biden, who declines to mention Tesla in speeches about electric cars and talked about extending EV credits for only unionized automakers. When Musk feels ambushed, he lashes out.

Shakespearean psychodrama? Does the msm have a hard on for Mr. Musk or what

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/most-amazing-discoveries-2022

For the first time, biologists have observed a native species, a bobcat, raiding a python nest and eating its eggs. Later, when the bobcat returned to find the snake guarding its nest, the cat took a swipe at the reptile. “When you get interactions like this and see the native wildlife fighting back, it’s like a ray of sunshine for us,” says Ian Bartoszek, an ecologist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. “In 10 years of tracking snakes, I can count on one hand the number of observations” of native animals standing up to the reptiles.

Demonstrating per usual that the “real” world is an incredible place full of potential wonder and we haven’t yet understood 1% of 1% of it

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/a-prophecy-of-evil-tolkien-lewis

The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientists in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany. Traditional values are to be ‘debunked’ and mankind to be cut into some fresh shape at will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people…

I had to read this twice to understand its gist, which is something like, when we stopped worshipping something greater than ourselves (be it values or a deity), that left a power vacuum, and a small set of “experts” stepped in to tell us what to worship instead. And in writing that preceding sentence, I realize I still don’t really get it, and probably need to read it again

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010653/she-spent-a-decade-writing-fake-russian-history.-wikipedia-just-noticed.-

Yifan went down the rabbit hole on the Kashin mine and the Tver-Moscow War, learning about battles, the personalities of aristocrats and engineers, and more history surrounding the forgotten mine. There were hundreds of related articles describing this obscure period of Slavic history in the dull, sometimes suggestive, tone of the online encyclopedia. It was only when he tried to go deeper that something started to seem off. […] Eventually, he realized that there was no such thing as the great silver mine of Kashin (which is an entirely real town in Tver Oblast, Russia). Yifan had uncovered one of the largest hoaxes in Wikipedia’s history.

Yes I am chaotic neutral, and yes I mostly find this entertaining and have more than a modicum of admiration for this high-school educated lady to weave such a George RR Martin-esque alternative history. What we humans are able to create when we truly enjoy the creating…

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/stranger-things-season-4-captions

Jeff T.: People really focused on “eldritch thrumming.” Eldritch is that sort of arcane, unknowable, vaguely threatening, otherworldly presence. I am going to reveal the depths of how nerdy I am — I apologize in advance — but it’s also the signature spell for a warlock in Dungeons & Dragons. It’s called eldritch blast. The lore of a warlock in Dungeons & Dragons is that they make the deal with an otherworldly power, whether it’s a demon or a powerful fairy lord. So I was like, “Oh, this is the perfect term for that sense of otherworldly power intruding into our world.”

Beautiful blog from Derek Sivers: “Cross the world the first time to fall in love”

Cross the world four times.

First, in your teens or 20s, to take it all in. See it all, do it all, and learn. Get involved. Stay up all night talking with strangers, everywhere. Kiss and fall and promise to them all. Make lots of mistakes.

Cross the world the first time to fall in love.

A beautiful concept, and something I personally experience each time I travel.

Now, in my late 30s, I put myself somewhere between Derek’s description of the second and third times. Perhaps closer to the third time, it just feels heavier.

And that fourth time — what a bittersweet sadness 🥹

Source: https://sive.rs/4

stable diffusion, “world travel derek sivers”

November recommended reads

Absolutely incredible long profile of MBS, Saudi Arabia’s de facto king. He’s like Kim Jong Un, but much richer, and actually driving significant change. Significant to whom, is the question

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/04/mohammed-bin-salman-saudi-arabia-palace-interview/622822

MBS rebuked me when I called this attitude “moderate Islam,” though his own government champions the concept on its websites. “That term would make terrorists and extremists happy.” It suggests that “we in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries are changing Islam into something new, which is not true,” he said. “We are going back to the core, back to pure Islam” as practiced by Muhammad and his four successors. “These teachings of the Prophet and the four caliphs—they were amazing. They were perfect.”

A great newsletter on global affairs through the lens of finance and macroeconomics. Adam Tooze’s output is astounding.

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-174-finance-and-the-polycrisis

The effect of US financial shocks on really large economies like China is relatively muted. So too for France and, surprisingly, the UK. But Germany feels American shocks heavily, as heavily, indeed, as Canada and almost as heavily as Mexico.

Another great newsletter, this one on all things China, through local (Mandarin Chinese) news sources.

https://sinocism.com/p/protests-covid-xis-diplomacy-national

Since the start of the pandemic China has had several waves of massive outpourings of online anger, especially around the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, the Shanghai lockdown disaster and the Guizhou bus tragedy. But that virtual anger about Covid policies and censorship, among other things, did not cross into real world protests. Until the last few days, as people gathered publicly to express their anger and frustration in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan and other cities, and at many college campuses around the country.

More on Mr. Beast and his incredible business success. Willy Wonka self-promo + Walt Disney ambition. He doesn’t capture, he IS the zeitgeist

https://www.shopify.com/blog/mrbeast-business-backstory

In the earlier days of his channel, Jimmy would spend all day on Skype analyzing videos with other aspiring YouTubers. They called their group Daily Masterminds. From 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., they would break down the anatomy of each other’s videos, study popular YouTubers, and brainstorm ideas. Jimmy credits these group calls with helping him perfect his craft and intricately understand his audience.

Gambling gray markets + regulatory arbitrage + people desperate for economic opportunity

https://restofworld.org/2022/cambodias-scam-mills/

Linh Ne came to Bavet in 2021 at 17 years old, she said, accepting a typist job through Facebook. To cross the border, she pushed through forested areas and waded through a ditch filled with waist-high water; only on arrival did she realize she’d been recruited to a scam company that emulated the shopping platform Tiki. Her employers asked her to defraud Vietnamese shoppers, and she said that when she refused, they starved her. She was sold after two weeks to a second company conducting a romance scam, where her boss gave her a guide to manipulate clients.

A weekly newsletter with an insider’s view of crypto news

https://page1.substack.com/p/round-tripping-677

The same relative level of energy and emotion that occurs in bull markets, has to then be inversely mirrored in bear markets for finality to occur…perhaps crypto is slowly becoming contrarian again…there will be aftershocks in the market and likely some final contagion…crypto did not need a bailout here, bad actors failed and will be punished…we have no doubt a recomposition will occur and narratives will shift again in time…’this too shall pass

Semiconductors = the oil of the metaverse

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/2020-most-traded-global-good-was-not-crude-oil-semiconductors

Since 2015, semiconductors have taken the top rank for the most traded good, representing 15% of total global goods trade

I read this once every few months. I love articles that completely change your view on a topic you *thought* you understood. If you want to *actually* understand proof of work, this is a must read

https://grisha.org/blog/2018/01/23/explaining-proof-of-work

And there is the crux of it: The difficulty in finding a conforming hash acts as a clock. A universal clock, if you will, because there is only one such clock in the universe, and thus there is nothing to sync and anyone can “look” at it. It doesn’t matter that this clock is imprecise. What matters is that it is the same clock for everyone and that the state of the chain can be tied unambiguously to the ticks of this clock.

Incredible story of Legoland Korea and financial contagion

In short, a local government built an unprofitable Legoland, said local governor threatened not to repay the loans, and now the entire Korean municipal + corporate bond market is at risk.

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/10/legoland-south-korea-bond-market-crisis/

But the fallout is not limited to local government bonds; it impacts the whole of South Korea’s bond market, worth more than $2 trillion. Corporate bonds are considered less safe than local government bonds. If few buyers are brave enough to buy local government bonds under these conditions, even fewer buyers can muster enough courage to buy corporate bonds. One of the safest corporate bonds in South Korea is issued by Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO). The returns for KEPCO’s three-year bond had climbed from 2.184 percent to 5.825 percent since the beginning of this year. But in its latest issuance, the KEPCO three-year bond worth 200 billion won (about $146 million) could not find a buyer.

And

To prevent the credit market from seizing up completely, the South Korean government stepped in by providing a liquidity facility of more than 50 trillion won (about $35 billion). The Bank of Korea also injected 42.5 trillion won (about $31 billion) to stabilize the short-term bond market, and South Korea’s five largest banks also pledged to provide up to 95 trillion won (about $67 billion) in liquidity. There is an absurdist quality to these measures: On the one hand, the Bank of Korea has been aggressively raising the benchmark interest rate to curb inflation by reducing liquidity, but on the other hand, the South Korean government is injecting liquidity to the market to stave off a total economic collapse.

Some recent reads and my brief commentary (Shein, Areopagus, Do Kwon, Mr Beast)

Great weekly newsletter, a sort of Western cultural history buffet:
https://culturaltutor.com/areopagus

Mr. Beast is the new Disney. Attention = money and Beast is the king of YouTube attention and has proven people will attentively follow him into other products even if it’s as dumb and unrelated as chocolate bars
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/25/mrbeast-youtube-fundraising-merch-restaurants

Surprise — that opaque Chinese company with the insanely cheap clothing is opaque for a reason and pays its workers insanely cheap(ly)
https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/shein-is-treating-workers-even-worse-than-you-thought.html

I also took notes on this interview and…yes. Impressive levels of self-denial
https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/10/19/do-kwons-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy-world
my notes: https://kevinhabits.com/podcast-notes-do-kwon-on-unchained-even-to-this-day-im-proud-of-work-we-didvalues-we-tried-to-defend/

What do words like “capitalism” and “free market” even mean anymore (aware that I sound like a libertarian purist curmudgeon here)
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/one-bank-makes-stunning-discovery-bank-japans-ycc-broken-and-soon-entire-jgb-market-will