I've listened to many podcasts with historians over the years and I just realized one thing that my favorite historians all have in common: you can just watch/listen to a talk from years ago and it will still feel accurate.
You basically can't hear which year it currently is. Great historians talk about long lasting and persistent phenomena instead of ephemeral ones.
There is this common narrative that social media promotes misinformation since you can end up in a bubble. But non-social media also doesn’t have to be correct, does it? So then it’s about which of the two publishes more misinformation? It probably depends on what bubble you might end up in.
At least you could say bubbles are more diverse. One person can be inside one bubble and another in another so for society overall they might cancel out? Or maybe new ideas might start to arise?
Maybe the argument should be that mass (social) media may lead to misinformation since both correct and incorrect messages would be amplified.
In 2017, Stephen Kotkin gave a 5 hour long talk about Spheres of Influence at the IWM Vienna. The talk is long not because he repeats the same ideas, but because he doesn't give conclusions. As I see it, his talks clearly step through both sides of an argument and then leave it up to the audience to decide what to believe; largely in-line with the Socratic method. One part of the talk stood out to me: he said that the West does not have a clear hopeful picture for the future anymore.
After World War II, people introduced the phrase "never again". Never again should the whole world fight a war against each other. Never again should Germany, Japan, and Italy attempt to get rid of people from other countries. Or as Elie Wiesel wrote: "Never again' becomes more than a slogan: It's a prayer, a promise, a vow ... never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence."
As a thought experiment, how can we ensure that this never happens again? "territorial integrity" seems to me like a great start. Allowing nations (read: groups of people) defend their border to me seems to go a long way in protecting people from each other. Sovereignty also plays an important role. It ensures that people are allowed to rule themselves. What is the point of a fixed border if someone else makes decisions for you?
Maybe podcasts, YouTubers, and individual producers are more beneficial to society than some institution that says things. An individual can be held accountable and thus needs to show integrity. For example, which companies are more integer generally, founder-led or institutions?
Windsurf sold for $3 Billion
Cursor now valued at $9 Billion
Windsurf bought by OpenAI
OpenAI is an existing investor of Cursor
Both are VSCode forks
VSCode is owned by Microsoft
A few months ago I suddenly wondered where have our heroes gone? Or at least where are the heroes that stand up and do the right thing regardless of the negative effects that might have on them. Most CEOs seem to care more about their own income than integrity, which in the introduction of terms like “enshittification”. I noticed this after reading Investing Between the Lines by L. J. Rittenhouse. In the book, the author argues that integrity is associated with outstanding long-term investment results. So with the book in hand, I have gone through about one hundred shareholder letters and found only three that satisfied the basic criteria from the book. Also TV and movies seem to be full of mostly dull characters that mostly care about not stepping out of line. Or what would be the modern equivalent of Die Hard? It seems like most things become duller, blander, and more average. And from the politicians I’m currently missing a strong positive story for where we should be going. It seems to be mostly against things. Against Israel, against climate change, against capitalism, and even against the West.
The large Dutch pension fund ABP achieved an annual return of about 6% over the last 20 years, according to https://www.abp.nl/over-abp/duurzaam-en-verantwoord-beleggen/beleggingsresultaten. The S&P 500 had a 10.392% return (dividends invested) over 20 years, according to https://tradethatswing.com/average-historical-stock-market-returns-for-sp-500-5-year-up-to-150-year-averages/.
I'm trying to get jas (just an installer) published in the snap package registry for a few weeks now. This is how the process is going so far.
According to the docs, I can just register a new snap and publish it. So in a fresh Ubuntu 24.04, I ran:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install neovim
$ sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
$ git clone https://github.com/rikhuijzer/jas.git
$ mv pkg/snapcraft.yaml .
$ snapcraft # installs LXD at first run
$ sudo apt install gnome-keyring
$ snapcraft login
$ snapcraft register jas
$ snapcraft upload --release=edge jas_0.2.0_amd64.snap
Store operation failed:
- resource-not-found: Snap not found for name=jas
Full execution log: '/root/.local/state/snapcraft/log/snapcraft-20250408-093243.551840.log'Kyle Chan: "BYD Mexico plant: BYD’s plans for building a new EV plant in Mexico were put on hold after Trump got re-elected. Then suddenly in March, China’s Ministry of Commerce jumped ahead and withheld approval for BYD’s Mexico plant, arguing that BYD’s technology might get “leaked” to the US (which doesn’t make any sense given the many BYD plants popping up all over the world). [...]
One explanation for this pattern of actions is a battle over symbolic control. Rather than getting hit by a ban by the other side, it looks like you have more control when you jump ahead and implement the ban first yourself. It’s like the classic line: 'You can’t fire me—I quit.'"