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4 minutes

I’ve been sketching out an essay in my head and have been pulling together some references together. I’ve been laughing to myself all day about this open letter dated Feb 3 1976 that Bill Gates wrote to the Homebrew computer club when he was 21.

It explains why he’s a multi billionaire today and also explains his current views on vaccine patents etc.

But really, looking back at the argument in this letter from 2021 the whole thing is utterly laughable.

Also, as a chaser since i’ve just bookmarked it check out this clip about the heist that occurred in the late 90’s around Open Source vs Free/Libre Software.

Honestly Stallman is the only person in that clip that doesn’t come across as a total dickhead.

GPL was and is a wholesale attack on intellectual property rights. Open Source made Web2 possible, sure. But it also made Google / Amazon / Facebook etc extremely rich.

Meanwhile, FLOSS in 2021 is making its own money and keeping the value it creates for itself.


In other news, I acquired one of these (thanks Ben! <3) and intend to be playing with it for the rest of the afternoon. See you in VR chat.

Permanently Moved

The Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum

This phrase is powerful anti-worker propaganda that has dominated the public imagination for a century. If we are going to get DAOs and more Coops etc we must push past 100 years of metaphor.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

I have one last thing to do still and then I can do my own thing for a bit!

Recorded a new episode of CIWM this week.

Sketched out a series of three essays or Dimensino covering my thoughts on Web3. It’s a time delayed response to the awful NFT ‘discourse’ from back in March.

Dipping the Stacks

The anonymous Korean vloggers creating the most meditative content on YouTube – i-D

Each vlogger focuses on the minutiae of daily life that too often fades from memory. There are no in-your-face sponsorship plugs, extravagant vacations or excessive product hauls. Instead these videos take you through the little things in life, like making breakfast, reading or tending to a garden, elevating the mundane into something wonderful.

Pentagon War Game Included Scenario of Gen Z Protests

Documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a Pentagon war game, called the 2018 Joint Land, Air and Sea Strategic Special Program, or JLASS, offered a scenario in which members of Generation Z, driven by malaise and discontent, launch a “Zbellion” in America in the mid-2020s.

Has The Iron Fish’s Luck Run Out? | by BRIGHT Magazine | BRIGHT Magazine

Villagers threw the fish-shaped, cast-iron ingots into their food and the Lucky Iron Fish slowly released about 7 mg of iron into whatever was being cooked. This was meant to help reverse anemia, a condition in which a person lacks enough healthy red blood cells that is frequently caused by iron deficiency.

Meet the Magical Mystical Oz Characters Behind Instagram’s Ever Popular Affirmation Accounts

In this period of enlightenment, daily affirmations and mantras have permeated the Instagram zeitgeist in a unique way. Lunch pics and selfies still remain in the stories, but now exist between something deeper, something that signals a connection with one’s higher self. You know, ~ vibes~.

Enhancing Photorealism Enhancement

We present an approach to enhancing the realism of synthetic images. The images are enhanced by a convolutional network that leverages intermediate representations produced by conventional rendering pipelines. The network is trained via a novel adversarial objective, which provides strong supervision at multiple perceptual levels.

Here’s a video of from the article linked above

Reading

I finished 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. It was really interesting. I read a book about how ‘the sea peoples’ destroyed the bronze age years and years ago. It’s nice to read something recent on the same subject including all the modern archaeological evidence. TLDR, the book says ‘its more complicated than that’.

I’m currently reading Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth, its been on my shelf most of the pandemic but I’ve only just picked it up. It’s written as a dialogue which I wasn’t expecting – but its really quite good.

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki arrived. Its next up on the list.

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist 

The Snipe & The Clam by Burning Pyre & Canadian Rifles

I’ve been listening to this full-length collaboration between Burning Pyre and Canadian Rifles this week. It’s 30mins of melodic ambient. I really appreciate that there’s been a lot of attention paid to dynamics, melody and mood throughout the album. Recommend listening to the whole thing straight though at least once before you make up your mind about it.

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