COVID
We live in a world where taking personal responsibility for you health is a rebellious act. You know that new contact tracing system we have in Victoria? Well they screwed that up as well. The one thing we can rely on is government overspending to not do IT well.
There’s only 5 community cases left in Victoria (and Australia as a whole). The world is at 21,831,041 active cases, and 2,601,188 total deceased. Since last week I have switched sources for the world numbers because the usual site I use is out of action, so I think there’s a discrepancy between sites, which kind of throws the whole tracking out, but if you ignore that and just look at week to week trends instead.
Pretty much nothing else interesting has happen except for some noise about vaccine – none of which provided any new insight, so here’s some funny pictures.
Finance and Economics
Australia’s net debt is on track to blow out to $1.3 trillion. Mainstream news thinks you are poorer because your salary hasn’t been increasing fast enough. The reality is inflation has been a lot higher than the 2-3% that a CPI says. It’s probably closer to 9% (in the US, which I would imagine is similar in other countries). There’s a great (US focused) site called Shadow government Statistics, which takes the 1980’s definition of inflation as defined by government sources and applies it to today’s number to work out what today’s inflation is. As we all should know the central authorities adjust the definition over time to exclude things because putting it in would put the inflation target outside of the range. An example of this is excluding land price and only including the building construction price.
(above image as no relevance to anything except I thought it was funny!)
A crypto exchange in Australia has collapsed. It serves as a reminder do not leave AUD or crypto coins with the exchange being the custodian, move it off the exchange the moment you are done making your trade.
Bitcoin is power, and power is everything. When we outsource the control of our money to centralised powers it is not different to when an abusive partner has control of the bank accounts and finances in a relationship. It controls and restricts your freedom in sometimes subtle ways and other times in obvious ways.
Bitcoin is going to $1 million dollars says Kraken CEO. Bitcoin is replacing bonds. I also saw Goldman Sachs think it’s going to $100k, but everyone is missing the point. It is not price that’s important, it is that a financial system is being built in parallel. To most of the people I know this is unimportant and hasn’t registered the significance of this until you’ve realised that we are part of the 1.5-2 billion people on earth that are part of the global elites that freely have access to global finance. We can be trading on the NASDAQ in a matter of days. That is not the norm that the other 6 billion people on earth experience. They are un-banked or under-banked because they don’t have the right name, they were born in the wrong country, or don’t have the correct identity papers or do not look the part or they are under currency controls or having their money inflated away. And there will be a huge shift when these other 6 billion come online and get financial inclusion.
But won’t governments make Bitcoin illegal? When someone says that, the first thing you should say is “Illegal Where?” Legality implies jurisdiction. Some things are illegal in one country but legal in another, somethings are illegal in one state but legal in another. Did you know that in 13 countries being an atheist is punishable by death?
Bitcoin is in a holding pattern around $50,000 USD or $65,000 AUD
State of the World
Morrison government has destroyed the rule of law makes you furious at the double standards. Also did you know that Australia is the only country in the world to have a ban on nuclear power, we not talking about weapons, we are talking about it as a way to generate power.
Uh-oh someone is whistle blowing the government on it’s hotel quarantine, which means they probably will be going to jail cause that’s generally what happens to people who dares to call out the government, not in china, but in Australia. If you’ve seen the recent artistic display at St Paul’s Cathedral, they are all Australian gov whistleblowers.
The US has deployed B-1B bombers to Norway. I remember seeing a B1-B at an airshow in Avalon, and it was impressive plane that made a huge amount of noise.
Tech
Best NBN plans that include 4G backup. Or you can do it yourself, we had NBN outage the other week, and so now our router has a 4G modem plugged into it so if NBN drops out again, the internet connection will automatically fall over to the 4G connection and everything keeps running. Most people probably don’t need that and should just tether to their phone.
Turn on creepy eyes on Facetime. You know how the camera is above the screen and when we do a video call we always look at the screen instead of the camera, well this feature makes it appear as if you are looking at the camera when you are looking at the screen, hence it’s called creepy eyes.
Building a design system at a startup is an interesting read.
Other Stuff
Have you seen the time lapse progress on the Melbourne metro tunnel. It feels like Melbourne is finally getting transportation that gets us a little closer to some of the cities I’ve visited that have great transportation like Paris, Hong Kong, London, Sydney, Stuttgart and Beijing.
Can someone explain to me how this guy changes face?
Sleeping bag comparison. I think we need a few warmer sleeping bags after that really cold night camping in the middle of summer!
Successful landing of SpaceX starship gives me hope for humanity, but also makes me nauseous of being upside down while landing. Also doesn’t help that it exploded 8mins after landing… Back to the drawing board with new data!
Advice and Reminder to Myself.
When you say “yes” to something, you are saying “no” to something else in life. – This is what I think about when I take another job opportunity. This is what I think about when I choose to spend time hanging out with some people, if I’m not huge fans of those people then it’s taking away time from other- most likely from family. This is what I think about when I look at when I’m doing with my time. This is what I’m thinking about when I choose to work on one thing, something else is probably getting neglected.
Anyway if you are not subscribed, then make sure you put in your email address in the side bar to receive these updates automatically in your inbox on a Monday morning. And if anyone is interested in coming to try rock climbing please reach out, I had lots of fun going bouldering for the first time last week. It was a little unnerving to not have the security of a rope at first! But this video about how to fall correctly helps, which is just saying ‘protect your wrist’.
Have a great week.