I wrote this in the earlyish hours of Saturday morning before a sleep. And now, some twenty-plus hours later, I'm publishing it...

It's been a long day. Last night I worked on my seminal essay for the great crypto exchange writing contest of 2023. Which went ok. And then very early this morning my collection of 223 books, having sold for £4.20 GBP (equals not much money), got collected. Nice to get a little more space. I had a clean and tidy while listening to the Freestylers Essential Mix from 1998 (breakbeats).

Anyway... the evening finds me sort of catching up with myself and six bookmarked reads from the internet. I thought I might check them out while writing a post. With all the AI software about I guess Google or Apple or an app will curate material from all around the web for you to read based on your interests. I guess yeah sure that happens. Has it found this for you, though? This article (The Great Online Game: How to Win the Internet) looked quite the sort of thing I'd pay good Upland UPX to travel to read. But I haven't read it yet. I'm only about to do so. I have six bookmarked articles to (kind of) read here, I'm not really sure why, and this looks the most exciting of them. So I'll read it. It comes well rated on Substack which has just added a Notes feature (Twitter for people who don't like Twitter) which is exciting the Substack cohort. Anyway... The Great Online Game...

Wow... there you go. That was one ball of an article to stop by. Interesting. I'm not sure I'll get to the rest of my bookmarks. I guess, just reflecting a bit now before I read the comments... yeah, that... I feel that is going on. I'm, as ever, not sure I want in, as other people probably feel. The author has run with an idea and it's kind of... it sort of reads really obviously and yet I've never read it put into that kind of shape. Of course it's not all - even the internet - isn't all about that. That's capitalism or capitalism meets social media and not everybody wants to do that or be Elon Musk. Some people just actually want to chat with their real life friends and family online, say, for a contrary example. While being nurses or firemen or humble real estate agents or baristas or even socialists. Good, I'm getting over reading this article now but yeah it sure is quite... wow! A bit breathtaking in some ways. And I'm glad I'm only playing a little tiny bit. And in fact not much. I'm happy to take a few satoshis and keep my head down, I don't know. What's next for Eth 2.0 after Shanghai Upgrade? asks Kucoin. No that's not one of my bookmarks. Comments. Oh yeah, comments on that article. I'll have a cigarette. I've read the comments. That article is two years old! Oh my Game of Life that was quite prescient.

Ok, ok, coming back to reality a little... that's not my life. My life is more nuanced and contradictory than that. And it's just telling a tale we've all heard called 'the game of life' and also it's just capitalism-meets-social-media... yeah, I did say that. It was quite fun for an hour. I best thank the person who linked to it on Substack Notes.

Next up... something from Hive which is a link Allen 'Web 3.0 Collector and Curator' Taylor has sourced (he didn't write it): The Problem with Music These Days...You have to find it yourself. That's a cool title. Yes, you do I think. Sort of. I don't agree with a lot of what this article says however. I'll listen to Jacob Collier and Snarky Puppy and move on.

AI might be good for music because... because music is music and just flows and finds its way. AI might be a threat to musicians (at a pretty low point anyway let's face it... it's a hobby, a pastime; it's not about celebs and stars and record companies) but not to music.

Some of these bookmarks just need filing away. This has been knocking around: World’s First Web3 Music Patent for Capital Distribution. This article skates around the houses (Snarky Puppy helped me get through it) but "NFTs will be the catalyst that drives the most disruptive, revolutionary changes to upend the music industry since music streaming began” is the upshot of the article.

Slightly bonkers article about a patented framework for music distribution based around NFTs. You can still (as I write [and publish]) become one of the owners of the first 25 of these NFTs for a very small amount (just gas fees for ETH on Optimism). Cool! Here's something I can struggle over attempting to buy for an hour.

I managed it and, after an hour, my NFT has been minted. It didn't cost much at all in the end - just small Optimism fees. It was hard work the way crypto is.

So the Great Internet Game goes on and I move onto more important matters now... sleep and the annual crushing disappointment that is failing to pick the Grand National winner later this afternoon.