Just a quick “meta” note to explain how the various bits of the JC memeplex — by which I mean this substack newsletter, the main JC site and the premium JC site, fit together.
Substack vs The Jolly Contrarian
The main role of this substack newsletter is twofold:
Publicising
A way of “push” publicising content on the Jolly Contrarian (free or premium). Carefully articulated “push” pieces — like Substack newsletters — take a lot more time and attention to write. Seeing as the JC’s punk sensibility is reflected in the size of his audience — the JC plays to “intimate venues”, shall we say — and given the wider world’s limited appetite for even more information it wasn’t asking for, the JC will continue to be mainly a “pull resource” — where readers come to it — which sends out the odd “push” newsletter to publicise what is going on for those who might have missed it.
In any case, the JC website is not a “push” but a “pull” resource: you come to it: the wiki does not push out “finished pieces”, but just continues to silt up. Almost everything that goes out on the substack is already on the JC.
Charging
Substack is a neat way of charging for access to the premium Jolly Contrarian since Mediawiki is not very good at that sort of thing. Substack paid subscribers get unlimited access to the premium JC site — as to the differences, see below.
Substack newsletters will tend to be free on publication, even where they include premium material — think of them as a taster for the premium site — but the archive will be premium.
So if all you are really interested in is the occasional newsletter, I guess that’s good news for you. But it would be lovely if you showed your support anyway!
Which reminds me:
Navigating the Jolly Contrarian
A quick word about navigating the JC.
Free and premium
Firstly, there are two versions: the plain one, which is free: https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php
And the premium version, which can be accessed for the princely sum of a half pint1 per week: https://jollycontrarian.com/secure/index.php. You get access by becoming a paid substack subscriber.
How the free and premium wikis interact involves quite a bit of fiddly engineering, but the free content is sort of “piped” to the premium site and “wrapped around” with more detailed commentary.
Owners manuals
Most of the “premium content” is in the master trading agreement “owners manuals”.
This is technical stuff relating to the economics and commercial negotiation points on these master trading agreements.
There is some financial services regulatory coverage — it’s hard to avoid — but this is not for want of trying. As such, JC regulatory coverage tends to be “broad brush”, and not detailed. There is so much regulation, it is so user-dependent, it changes so fast, and institutions are generally well enough up on it, that there is not much one dude with a website can usefully say about it.
Also, financial services regulation is dull and is often very formal, whereas JC tries to focus on substance.
There are any number of experts out there who can tell you all you could want to know — and much more besides — about about financial services regulation.
The “Owner’s Manuals” are designed so it is easy to navigate between editions of master agreements from the coloured panel. I am currently on a mission to make them a lot more comparative. You can switch (if the mood seizes you) between economy (blue) and premium (green) versions, too, with the “go premium” and “go economy” links, and you can access the equivalent clauses in the 2002 Master Agreement, the 1992 and, increasingly, the dear old 1987, in the “cross-check” section.
We are rolling out this new format, slowly, to the other manuals. The first will be the CSAs, then the Emissions trading documents, then Equity Derivatives.
Further down the panel, there is, in table form, a full set of clause cross-references for the ISDA. Redlinks are “TBD”: you will see the 1987 version is a work in progress — but it is about the journey, not the destination: everything on the JC is a work in progress. It will develop as the series carries on.
There is also an organised set of resources available by clicking the little triangle at the bottom of the panel.
MediaWiki to the Max
You may have noticed the JC looks and feels similar to Wikipedia. No wonder: it uses the same software. MediaWiki is an open-source wiki platform: just as Wikipedia is entirely user-created, so is the software it runs on.
MediaWiki is amazing at most things: especially self-organising information through categories and templates: it has its own sort of semi-code language which means you can design very sophisticated multilayered templates to generate reliable content. The panels above are good examples.
The Premium site
But being designed in the utopian early days of the internet by an amorphous collection of dreamers and free spirits as a way to freely share information and collaborate, it is not so good at permissioning and rights management.
In 2023, I redesigned the site to separate the more technical contractual material into a “premium” offering by creating a whole new site that “wraps” the main site with additional material. As the main site is updated, this is fed to the premium site; the additional material on the premium site is not available on the main site. You only need to log in to the premium site.
What eco users are missing
A sample page on the “economy” site looks like this:
The same page on the premium site looks like this:
(it carries on for a bit).
There are some extra sections in the panel, like the “Background reading” and “Nutshell” sections, and a lot more commentary in the “Premium content” section of the main page. Casual diners might not have much use for this — if so, stick with the main JC site, which will remain free — but aspiring ninjas and maybe even old hands might find it worth half a pint a week to have the deeper content.
It’s non-linear
Unlike newsletter content, the JC is never finally locked down. It is not a tightly focused, hermetically sealed linear argument. I wrote about that a bit in this post:
In essence, the JC is a sprawling mass of hyperlinked, apparently random, sometimes wrong, always provisional, loosely interconnected pages of information, pulled together by a sort of self-organising taxonomy: every blue-linked word links, or redirects, to another page on the site. Red-links represent aspiration! The panel sections are an important way to orienteer around the site.
The JC works because it has to: it is a live, working know-how system.
Knowledge management is the most important skill a knowledge worker must have.
All lawyers develop personal information management systems to suit how they work. Some are organised and methodical. Those people use ring binders, card catalogues and filing systems.
JC is all over the shop. He has a wiki.
Playlist
JC is going through a Grace Jones phase at the moment. We all do, right?
1985’s Island Life, compilation ends with the magnificent, Trevor Horn-produced single Slave to the Rhythm. If you ever wondered what different sound engineering makes to music, just listen to My Jamaican Guy — a perfectly well-mixed and engineered disco track, which sounds fine until you hear Slave to the Rhythm. It’s like moving from monochrome to technicolour.
Well, in the sort of glitzy North London establishment JC frequents, at any rate.