231 - Manchester again
🇬🇧 Manchester's lively historical architecture, frustrations with its public transport and pedestrian infrastructure, not to mention political corruption. Exploring Bitcoin governance, thoughts on AI usage and evolution. Techniques to identify epistemological warfare in media narratives.
🇬🇧 We have had another busy week, starting with last weekend. V wanted to go to Manchester to meet up with a friend from HK and, after our trip there last year, we had high expectations, especially when we found out that we had booked our trip over Manchester Day - the annual celebration day of the city!
Manchester did not fail to surprise and disappoint. One surprise that everyone gets there is the incredible number of huge, historical buildings from the 1800s. You find them everywhere - many have been repurposed into new businesses of all sorts including hotels restaurants and pubs. Next you will also be surprised by how many people are out in the streets and in all of the many pubs and restaurants. It is a really lively city.
The disappointments come from the failures of the local authorities and government and the cynic (realist?) in me suggests this could be emblematic of what is to come for the UK, following the remarkable sequence of events in recent days around the Prime Minister.
Manchester public transport is rather unintegrated and often chaotic. For example - we arrived on the weekend of the annual Manchester Day festival. The quickest way from the airport to the center should have been the tram, however it was disrupted for two weeks "for improvements". There was a "replacement bus" (150m walk and across a busy road) that takes ages to get you to one of the train stations; you then need to transfer to a tram to get to the main station and our hotel. I did hear one of the locals complaining that "it takes more time to go home in Manchester than it does to get here from Spain".
One more: all of the pedestrian crossings have been converted into a pedestrian-hostile (and I would say outright dangerous) configuration where you can no longer see the red/green lights any more where you are crossing to. Instead, you need to look around and you will see many red/green lights angled in all directions from every post at waist-height. In addition, they have removed the deaf-friendly (and pedestrian useful) beeping sound that would tell you when it is safe to cross. Likely the triumph of some ESG-DEI committee.
There is also a strange smell. Seemingly, a friendly MP voluntarily stood down to create a parliamentary vacancy, enabling Mayor Andy Burnham to win the resulting by-election, forcing Starmer out and Burnham (as the overwhelming favourite of Labour MPs) was elected leader unopposed and to become PM. All in less than one month - at least that is the official story. Stranger still is that it seems that the Lease agreement on the new "No 10 of the North" was signed 8 days before the (s)election. If you don't like the result, "vote harder", they say!
Aside from all that, we did have a good week. The weather continues to be cool and cloudy with sunshine and showers - just like always. We are into the last few weeks of our stay here, so if you want to meet up do let me know. We are planning another Bitcoin meetup, likely with Pizza and snacks one of the coming weekends.
Thoughts for the week
James Corbett is an independent, listener-supported investigative journalist and the founder, writer, producer and host of The Corbett Report, a podcast and alternative news website he started in 2007. I have supported his work for many years and you will find much to open your eyes and mind on his website. Recently he published this:
If you are looking for an excellent source of old books that you can freely download, read, keep and share, do check out the Heritage History website. This is created by a Home-Schooling advocate who has assembled this excellent repository of information that you will not be taught in the Empire indoctrination system (aka schools).
Heritage History maintains the largest collection of Classical Student Histories on the internet. The library includes hundreds of books and over five thousand historical illustrations. All are Freely Available online and in EPUB and PDF formats.
The complete collection can be searched by Country, Genre, or Author Name.
She has recently been collaborating with Peter Duke on some rather interesting research. Peter is working on his book that will include all of his research. He also has an excellent substack - The Duke Report which I encourage you to check out.
The Duke Report™️
Do check out Peter's work - you will find lots to inform and amaze you
More in this issue
- Photo memories - Manchester last weekend
- Project Updates - BIP 110 - beware, AI - the good, bad and ugly
- Plenty of useful links - don't say nobody told you!
- Closing out - Epistemological Warfare - now you know
Manchester last weekend
🛠️ Project Updates
This week I am sharing my thoughts on a couple of topics that people have been asking me about recently. Both are somewhat topical and will likely come to a head in the coming months. What are you doing?
The Second Bitcoin War
We may be in or approaching WW2 for Bitcoin. You might recall the "Blocksize War". This was a high-stakes technical and ideological conflict within the Bitcoin community that took place between 2015 and 2017. While it appeared to be a simple debate over technical limits, it was fundamentally a battle over the governance, philosophy and future purpose of Bitcoin.
We are likely in or approaching a similar situation now. All of the discussion around BIP 110 and the recent seemingly inappropriate behaviour within Bitcoin Core development team to change a decade-long setting that nobody wanted changed are clues to the forces behind what is going on. Just like with WW2 and with the Protestants and the Catholics (and so many more situations), the Empire funds both sides of any conflict to get people fighting with each other rather than recognising the true source of the conflict.
Roger Price
Click for summary and to listen to the full explanation
Daniel gives a rather good explanation above as to why BIP 110 cannot achieve its stated goal. There is a risk of a chain split (as there was with BCH) and to safeguard your holdings and potentially to benefit from any such split, you do want to hold your BTC in self custody, not on an exchange or with any 3rd-party. Safest and best practice is to use a hardware signer so that your key is never exposed - especially if you should ever choose to move any split coins.
What about AI, then?
Corey and I have similar views on the current AI situation. He is a long-time developer and educator and I learned much from him over the years that I have used in my own projects. He, like me, uses AI daily with thought and consideration to get maximum benefit and you really can achieve things that would have been impossible, even last year.
In the explainer above, he also shares thoughts on the larger ecosystem and how things are likely to evolve. In these, he is likely close to the truth.
The End is Nigh...
Meanwhile, on the financial side, things do seem to be approaching Peak Insanity. Like George, I feel that it is only a matter of time until something triggers the bursting of this bubble. I often say that in situations like this, "things will happen faster and slower" than you expect.
TechLead thinks similarly, albeit from a different viewpoint.
🔗 Links for your edification
Just one link from my Liferea RSS feeds this week - learn, enjoy and share.
Nicole nails it
I listened to Nicole's talk this week. In this video essay, she explains rather well how the cultural status of internet usage has flipped from a symbol of connection to one of social isolation and addiction. She argues that being chronically offline now represents the ultimate luxury and status symbol, asserting that reclaiming leisure and hobbies is the best way to combat the enshittification of modern digital platforms.
🤔 Closing Thoughts
Epistemological warfare
Peter Duke is a photographer and independent publisher. He argues from personal experience that the Palisades Fire, which destroyed his home, was a deliberate act of war orchestrated by powerful elites. He draws parallels between this catastrophe and his coverage of the January 6 Capitol events (at which he was a photographer), framing both as manipulated narratives.
His website and substack is a mine and treasure-trove of information and research and I recommend you check it out. Below is just one example of what he is uncovering - more to follow.
Roger Price
Click for summary and to listen to the complete walk-through
Deletion, Distortion and Generalisation
Once aware of these techniques that politicians, hypnotists and The Media use you should be able to spot them. You will also be able to respond with the questions that completely expose and disarm the attempts to mislead you.
| Mechanism | Example statement | What's hidden | Recovery question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deletion | "They made a mistake." | Who? What? By what standard? | Who specifically made what specific mistake, and by what standard? |
| Distortion (nominalisation) | "The science is settled." | The active process (inquiring) frozen into a static noun; the actor and method deleted; subjective judgement presented as objective fact | Which scientists, investigating what, by what method, have settled what — and what remains contested? |
| Generalisation | "People always let you down." | Universal quantifiers (people, always) substituted for specific instances | Which specific people, on which specific occasions — and are there counter-examples? |
Each of these is a statement that sounds complete and authoritative precisely because the compression mechanisms have removed the information you would need to challenge it. The metamodel recovery questions restore that information by targeting the specific structural artefact — missing referent (deletion), frozen process (distortion), or false universality (generalisation) — that the compression left behind.
Putting it into practice
Peter goes on to give a very interesting example of how he does his own research using AI (which is fully trained on all of these techniques) to reveal the true interpretation of many statements and texts. For example pick John 1:1.
"Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος."
which is translated in KJV as:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
You can indeed ask any AI the following question. Sit back and be amazed as it gives you the information, straight from its "fingertips".
Provide an interlinear translation of John 1:1. Use the Liddell–Scott lexicon. Ignore hermeneutic translations — do not use political or doctrinal translations. If any word has more than one sense, include all of the senses of the word in the interlinear translation. Trace words back to their Aramaic roots where applicable.
Expanded literal reading (all senses visible)
With every sense of every word laid out, the verse could be expanded — without choosing a single gloss — as:
In / at / among / within [the] beginning / origin / first principle / source / rulership, was existing [the] logos — [the] articulating-reasoning-narrating-reckoning-discourse-ratio-principle. And / also / moreover [the] logos was existing [moving] toward / against / in engagement with / in reference to / face-to-face with [the] God / deity. And / also / moreover [as to its nature/category] deity / divine / God was [the] logos.
Summary of what this interlinear reveals (per Duke's methodology)
| Structural artefact | What the Greek actually shows | What "hermeneutic" translation conceals |
|---|---|---|
| ἐν ἀρχῇ | "in/at [the] beginning/origin/first-principle/source" | Compressed to "in the beginning" — drops origin, first principle, source, rulership |
| ἦν (imfective) | "was [continuously] existing/being" — imperfect = ongoing, continuous existence | Rendered as simple past "was" — loses the durative aspect |
| ὁ λόγος | the articulating-reasoning-reckoning-narrating-discourse-principle | Frozen into the static noun "the Word" — loses computation, reason, discourse, ratio, principle |
| πρὸς τὸν θεόν | "toward / in directed engagement with / face-to-face with [the] God" | Rendered as "with God" — loses the directional, dynamic, relational-engagement sense |
| θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος(anarthrous θεός as predicate) | "[as to its nature/category] deity/divine/God was the logos" — qualitative predicate | Often rendered "the Word was God" (with articular English "God") — collapses the qualitative/categorical nuance into simple identity, and reverses the Greek word order |
This is precisely the kind of analysis Duke's prompt is designed to surface: by refusing a single hermeneutic gloss and requiring all senses of each word, the interlinear exposes how much semantic range the standard translation compresses — and where structural artefacts of political/doctrinal translation decisions may be visible.
Roger Price
For those who want the full analysis - click here
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- The Architect
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