Categories
Chronicle Preparedness

Day 49 and Waste

I’ve been using WordPress as a content management system for fifteen years or so. It’s had a penchant for losing drafts all of that time. Journalists complain about it constantly. You tend to retain that information in your lizard brain after losing a few pieces and get in the habit of saving things into other systems when it starts to get janky. Call it muscle memory.

However, as I learned tonight, if you don’t have a longtime blogging habit you don’t have this habit. I spent the last forty five minutes writing about my memories of Hurricane Sandy and how the crisis in Texas is bringing back memories of the storm that brought about my preparedness interest.

Sadly an expired SSL cert meant I couldn’t publish the draft. I asked Alex to help fix it as he’s got a knack for fixing glitches quickly. I warned him that the post was only saved locally and he should copy it to the phone clipboard and paste a backup into Gmail. He apparently has never lost a draft into the hungry maw of WordPress so “saved locally” was good enough.

After deleting and reinstalling the certificate well I bet you can guess what happened. The writing is lost to the ages. Alex didn’t have the muscle memory to save it to other program. But like hell am I losing my streak of writing every day. So here I am writing about the the annoyance of spending time crafting something only to have it disappear into the ether. A new post will be sent into the world.

I’m somewhat comforted knowing that the post didn’t seem very good to me. Which probably means it was excellent. But alas some eldritch horror has spirited it away into the black hole where lost socks and blogposts live.

I also kid you not I got a text warning me a negative energy had wandered into my room and I should open the door. I guess the world knew I was pissed I lost my post. So I’m going to go burn some sage. Because I live in Boulder and honestly I don’t want the bad juju of anger on me before I sleep. the key to happiness is never going to bed angry. Or so I hear.

Categories
Chronicle Politics

Day 48 and Rush

My high school years had some ups and downs, which is how I ended up in Manhattan as an 18 year old, making up credits from the year I dropped out. I had an interest in news, so I talked my way into a job at a talk radio station 77WABC.

I’d take the 1 train down from 116th St to Penn Station and l, without even going outside, went up into one of the Penn Plaza towers where I screened calls for the block of radio programs that took the afternoon and evening hours. Some of the programs were pretty shoddy “left wing white guy vs right wing white guy” and announcing for New Jersey Devils hockey games.

But the marquee talent was Rush Limbaugh.

In the back of the rabbit warren of sales team cubicles and behind the other recording studios for B-list talent (which at the time included Sean Hannity), Rush had his own recording studio. And yes, the golden microphone was real. It stunk of smoke. His producer had somehow struck a deal with building management to allow him to smoke his cigars when the rest of the station had to plod down to 34th street for a cigarette.

The funny part of him having his own private recording studio is that Rush had already moved to Florida. Sure he recorded at the station, but even at the time he was enough of a star that he maintained multiple private studios. Such was the power of the EIB Network. Dittoheads had made Rush a fortune even before 9/11 and the rise of the neoconservatives. I can still recite the ditties. I can hear Rush recording his commercials. The way he would say Ruth Chris Steaks will stay with me till I die.

I have complex feelings about having spent time in talk radio. I didn’t stay long, I saw the money wasn’t particularly good in media and I decided a college degree was worth pursuing. Conservative chit chat hadn’t yet fully diverged from the overall skepticism of mainstream media into its own behemoth yet. 6 o’clock news on broadcast probably still mattered. Facebook hadn’t been invented. People got their hard news from real television and the side opinions of grumpy white men hadn’t fully turned to grievance culture yet. Sean Hannity was still partners with Alan Colmes.

Seeing what Rush Limbaugh wrought on America has been hard. I don’t doubt that without him January 6th wouldn’t have happened. Trump might not have been president.

But without Rush and my experience in talk radio maybe I wouldn’t have studied economics. Maybe I wouldn’t have pursued business. I might have stayed a comfortable Silicon Valley liberal. But spending my afternoon talking to the weirdos that call into talk radio was an experience I value. I had come from crunchy hippie comfortable white upper class towns like Palo Alto and Boulder. I hadn’t ever considered the kind of politics that bred Republicans and subsequently Tea Party reactionaries and eventually Trumpist alt righters. A lot of ground got covered in the years.

I doubt Rush (or Sean) would have liked where my politics landed. Libertarians are frowned on in “real” conservative circles. Probably worse than the kind of pleasantly socialist left wing politics I had when I arrived.

I hope no one takes any of this as affirmation or justification or even acceptance of what talk radio culture birthed. I’m not even sure how to feel about Rush Limbaugh’s passing. Not that we were close, heck I doubt he knew my name. I was a teenager doing shit work and I spent much more time on other programs. But I still had to take the afternoon off as social media rushed to rejoice in his death. Even knowing the scope of his legacy I just couldn’t take it. My life path might have looked very different without encountering the EIB Network.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 47 and Unraveling

The saga of the specialty doctor continued this morning. To recap quickly my doctor wants me to see a specialist for an urgent medication but the clinic didn’t have any appointments till mid April. So I said I’d take any cancellations. Apparently this guy is in such demand a 23 minute lag time has me missing out on a canceled appointment. So carrying on, I got a call at 8am from a Denver number. “This is the clinic we have a cancellation at 11am can you make it in?” This time I’m smart enough to say yes immediately. I hadn’t rebooked my calendar so I was available.

I spent the morning organizing supplement and pharmacy charts, brought in my biomarkers and a list of tests. I worked myself into a small frenzy coordinating with my doctor on what information and part of my medical history needed to be brought up in the short appointment as my case is complex. No need to bring up unnecessary or extraneous detours. I could feel myself unraveling. I took an Ativan after throwing a pile of books off a chair in a fit of frustration to get a better angle at the laptop. It was at that point I realized I might have some medical trauma spooling out.

I say this not to insinuate I have unchecked anxiety or am concerned about my mental health but to say that even the most stoic can quickly find themselves unraveling in the Kafka logic of our medical industrial complex. The people tasked with healing us are burdened by a system that is poorly suited to anything that can’t be solved with acute care. Break a bone or need emergency care and you can’t go wrong with western medicine. Add any additional complexity to their already onerous system and you may wish you had a broken bone instead. Finding a way to through the maze requires willpower and focus just when you are at your weakest.

Add in a dose of chronic care and health quickly becomes a discussion of just how much better to you expect your life to be. Maybe this is as good as it gets. You ask yourself why do I bring trauma into my life? Why bring on the stress of yet another specialist when it may get you just another dead end. Even with a good diagnosis, and an excellent doctor pain, exhaustion, and other “irritating” but but not life threatening symptoms get to be things you start to accept. You live with debilitating issues because getting good care can sometimes be worse for your health than living with it.

Except I’m not good at taking no for an answer. I don’t stop just because a hurdle or even a panic attack gets thrown in my way. I keep plugging away. I’m what you might call resilient. Still I know medical systems have become places I associate with trauma. But I keep at it.

This is how I’ve become someone that swipes my credit card for $900 in supplements and no longer turns my nose up at esoteric and unproven treatments like cold therapy or electromagnetic pulses. I want to be 90% better not just “can get out of bed” better. I can work 5-6 hours a day now. I want to get back to 10-12. Even though I know my half day is more productive than most people’s whole days. Because I just don’t accept that what I’ve got is good enough. Even when the search for health unravels me. Because progress is something that you work at every day. Even with the setbacks. Especially because of the setbacks.

Categories
Chronic Disease Finance Internet Culture

Day 46 & Time Value

My day went entirely off the rails around 5pm. A doctor with a very particular specialty that my current general practitioner wants me to see didn’t have any availability until mid April. I took the first available appointment and said I will take literally any cancellation you have. Well they had a cancellation for tomorrow at 11:20am and it’s now been 18 minutes since their email was sent as I was, ironically, in another doctor’s appointment (my therapist).

Upon getting out of my appointment, my husband (who is on my healthcare email since being sick in America is basically a part time job) immediately tells me to check my email as he checks how far the drive to Denver will be and if he can drive me as I frantically check calendars. We email another commitment we had saying sorry we have to cancel for a crucial medical appointment. We discuss if this drive is feasible as he has a 10am. Decide that it will be fine. Approximately 23 minutes since the email was sent have elapsed. We email to say yes.

They email back thirty minutes later telling me that someone else took the appointment. I literally scream. I tell them to again let me know if any other cancellations I will take anything available I am a 35 minute drive away.

Meanwhile I get an email from some global consulting firm asking me if I would talk to them about direct to consumer cosmetics companies for $500 an hour. I initially say yes sure why not. And then I see their questions.

Can you discuss the following: Key drivers to expand digital outreach?

I scratch my head. I mean I guess. Key drivers to what? For what purpose. Digital outreach to whom to achieve what ends? This sounds like management consulting drivel. So I look at the next question.

Can you discuss the following: Strategies to effectively utilize online+offline channels?

At this point I lose it. Utilize what channels for what ends! I’m an entrepreneur for fuck’s sake. We either deal in complete pie in the sky or incredibly detailed absolutes. We do not faff about discussing utilizing channels for …strategies. I email the recruiter saying these questions are better suited to a management consultant and I can’t be helpful. Sure $500 is a lot for an hour of my time but an hour of my sanity?

Meanwhile one of my absolute favorite human beings, who is also an investor, has emailed me to ask for help with an opportunity a founder I introduced him to has on the table. I tell him my entire afternoon is available to run the numbers and I’ll pull out my previous actuals for a similar situation so we can figure out a way to help her score this win.

This is all an elaborate way of saying that the time value of your life doesn’t have an easy dollar value attached to it. If it’s your health? Literally will cancel everything to get to a doctor. So will your spouse. Your friends will understand if you prioritize the doctor. If it’s relationships that matter to you then you will go out of your way to help someone succeed. But $500 to bullshit someone? I guess I’d take a pass on that.

Categories
Aesthetics Chronicle Politics

Day 45 & Noblese Oblige

With great power comes great responsibility” is a comic book classic known as the Peter Parker principle. If you are bestowed with gifts, you must gift them back to your community. Noblese Obliege or “nobility obliges” suggests that nobility comes with a responsibility to fulfill obligations to the people who guarantee your status.

This sounds like a social good, and sure it anchors all the great heroic narratives of our modern age, but it appears to be unraveling in modernity. It used to be that we believed the morally good are the ones with gifts, if you weren’t wealthy it was because you didn’t deserve it. It was a bit of a religious and heroic tautology. But it worked! The nobles and the superheroes felt an obligation to their subjects insofar as publicly demonstrating their inherent goodness was crucial to demonstrating their nobility.

A key component of noblese oblige was showing off moral worth by giving to the people without the insistence that the people be inherently good. The people didn’t need to be worthy to get anything. Being worthy was the job of the nobility not the peasants. Which meant that all gifts from nobility to peasants were inherently gratuitous. No one deserves to be given gifts. Gifts were bestowed at random and in significant largess.

I’d suggest the reason our institutional trust is breaking down is not because we are wising up to inequality, but because the narrative arc of nobility living up to its responsibilities have broken down. America’s first robber baron class understood this with their grand social gifts of libraries, parks and endowments. Some of our Billionaires still do. But we no longer feel the gifts match the obligations. No matter how much this new nobility gifts, the rabble is still pissed.

Maybe it’s the insistence on making charity go to worthy causes. Or welfare go to people that deserve it. That is ass backwards. The nobility are supposed to be good. The peons with outstretched arms never had any worth to begin with. If they did then they would definitionally be noblese oblige too. You can’t ask everyone in the system to be good, moral, and true. That’s fucking exhausting. Even Christianity got that sin was so encompassing that literally only God could be expected to be without it. Probably why we used to let nobility get away with bad behavior. That is fine as long as they did their part. The prodigal son got shit without deserving it. That was the moral of the story.

The trouble with a time that has broken with historical arcs of goodness is that now no one is nobility or peasantry. No one is noble or good. Which means nobody deserves anything they get. Which is about as close to the war of all against all as I can imagine. Hobbes would be pleased.

Categories
Internet Culture Media

Day 44 and The Press Culture Wars

While I am a child of Silicon Valley (literally), I came of age professionally in media soaked New York City. The battle of startups versus the press has been one I’ve largely ignored as I think it represents cultural misunderstandings between two very distinct groups. I love startup life and I love media people. But to say they don’t grok their different motives and power incentives is an understatement.

So watching them fight is a bit like watching your two best friends in a spat. It’s awkward, you don’t want to pick sides, and you just hope everyone simmers down. But I’m beginning to think the beef between the 4th estate and the tech sector is starting to have some collateral damage. Not least of all because bad actors have infiltrated both: on the tech side we’ve got blackpilled monarchic misogynists and their jackbooted political protofascist admirers, on the nominally left wing media side we’ve got neo-reactionary Jacobins. Kinda hard to pick a side when those are your bedfellows.

I have generally sided with skepticism of media as I was raised on AdBusters and am vaguely aware there was a time when corporate media really was dominant. I’ve also been in control of large advertising budgets and seen first hand the little compromises that get made to stay in business. But the newest volley in tech versus media has erupted a new low of bickering and ad hominem attacks that have the memetic mobs of both sides are hungering for blood.

All this to say that I’m finally considering picking sides. And I don’t like it.

In the current narrative tension portrayed as techno-optimists rationalist thinkers (lol) versus the new reactionary left wing media, I’m sad to say I’ll end up siding with media. Not because they are right (they aren’t), but because the fragility of these self proclaimed centrists aren’t worth preserving over the 4th estate. We need the press more than we need “‘well, actually’ reply guys.” Feel free to take bets on how fast I get my first reply correcting me.

Too many of the critics of media have been black pilled by operatives that chose to be fascist influencers when they couldn’t make it in the traditional realm. Gamergate brought us the first wave of directed mobs sent to harass nominal new media figures. A lot of that was misinterpreted, but the end result has been that portions of the technologist and web set adopted too many of their rhetorical gambits. Which is not a winning strategy. Mid tier thinkers would rather martyr themselves on the sharp dicks of clout defenestration than actually win anyone over to their cause. So instead of being decent media critics, which we need, they just throw themselves down on their chosen causes.

Like I get it. I too was once a kid who was convinced being right was the only moral cause. Then I realized what “to the victor go the spoils” actually means.

You have to win so being right matters. Being morally right without a win is Pyrrhic victory.

So to the “rationalists” pissed at the New York Times I want to say you are not fighting a righteous enemy. You are fighting bitchy queens who are better at this narrative thing than you. It’s the fucking styles section for Christ’s sake. It’s normally used to skewer ugly clothing and idiot bourgeoisie real estate trends. Yes, it’s often the source of the most incisive cultural commentaries and the best writers are often housed there. So by all means fear it. Actually you should fear it as if one mean queen has it in for you they can do a lot of damage as they are really good at it. Just understand that it’s also a petty mean clique run by the same people that probably tortured you in high school (or for some of you that you bullied so sorry turn about is fair play).

There’s plenty of good reason to be mad at the New York Times or Washington Post right now. They are owned by plutocrats. Their operations are opaque. But so are the companies where you probably work. And I bet you think they do shady shit now and again you’d like someone to bring to light. Human institutions fail because they are run by humans. And no matter how smart you are you can never be free of bias. You can barely be less wrong. But the alternative of having no 4th estate is pretty bleak. So be careful what you wish for as you just might get it.

Categories
Aesthetics Chronicle Media

Day 43 and The Freeze

I’ve been watching the television adaption of Snowpiercer. So I’m delighted to have the polar vortex collapse that is chilling most of American dovetail so well with my current media aesthetics. I’ve always loved the cold.

Colorado has been in the single digits all day and will be below freezing for the weekend. I had to drive out to a doctor’s office for some treatments and was terrified I’d slip off the road at every intersection. As the sun slipped behind the flatirons a gloomy grey quickly turned into a pitch back snowstorm.

The aesthetics of disaster and apocalypse generally lean more towards heat and explosions but the subgenre of extreme cold holds our attention. Day After to Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, The Revenant, The Thing, The Grey and many other freezing fear movies capture an aesthetic.

The natural fear of cold isn’t just about freezing to death. Much of the claustrophobic feeling of cold crisis movies comes from isolation, loneliness and it’s resulting paranoia. It’s why the genre does so well when mixed with horror or action. Game of Thrones regularly intoned the threat of winter.

Freezes typically operate on bleak but wide open spaces like arctic tundra or within the confines of a station or refuge that quickly closes in on its people. Scenes of mayhem and violence come out of close quarters that are supposed to guard you from the even more fearsome freeze right outside your door.

All of this conditioning from film and television makes a weather condition like a polar vortex collapse take on a bit of an edge. I indulged in my pre-storm prepping shopping to make sure we has enough beef for stew and chickens for roasting. But that’s partially ritual. A sacrifice to the gods that says I am worthy to survive the bitter cold that is coming. It’s almost superstitious. But it’s also joyful. Humanity against the odds of Mother Nature. We’ve developed rituals and technology to live in the worst conditions.

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 42 & Audio Engagement

When a new social media application hits the J curve, it’s the most exciting feeling in the world. The magic of network effects kicking in to make each day on the app more valuable than the next for its users.

It’s also stressful as hell for teams because everyone is watching and has opinions. So I feel a little bad that today I’m going to talk about live audio talk radio app Clubhouse, but it’s on my mind and I made a commitment to myself to hit publish every single day, so here I am.

First some disclaimers. I didn’t join the beta in the spring because early users do the bulk of culture building and I didn’t think I had it in me. Several female friends of mine had negative experiences and I didn’t want to be on clean up duty. Toxicity compounds and I get plenty of it having significant visibility on Twitter. I’ve been doxxed, stalked, harassed (my favorite story is about Glamour Magazine’s attempt to do a crowd sourced Dos and Don’t section), and canceled by Gawker. So I’m inclined to steer clear of being an early adopter these days as I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to build positive communities that I’m not getting paid to build. This is not a commentary on whether I think Clubhouse is a good or bad place so much as a personal preference I have.

So I’ve only been on Clubhouse since it hit exponential. That means most of my feedback reflects the experience of the app hitting popular consciousness and not it’s early Silicon Valley FOMO insider days.

Audio is a wonderful medium that carries emotional depth. It connects you more intimately and is exceptional at narrative. It’s also much slower as an informational conveyer than writing and an attention resource consumption hog when you pay attention (some people like background noise, I personally do not). These two factors are the driving tension in the Clubhouse product. You feel connected listening to other humans, but your attention quickly lags as your brain works faster than the content.

Unlike in photo feeds, or a mixture of image and written content, you cannot scroll out of a lull. And unlike in precorded podcasts you cannot play it at 2x speed or rewind for something you missed. So you get stuck in boring rooms in Clubhouse but feel bad that other nice humans bores you. People are on a stage in Clubhouse “rooms” so you tune out, as unless you jump on stage there is no way to improve the engagement. And in large rooms you aren’t getting on stage.

But you shouldn’t feel bad that you’re bored because it actually is usually pretty boring in Clubhouse. People don’t naturally talk in consistently engaging ways without significant production and preparation. No one is always concise and engaging. Literally being “interesting” means to hold interest. And no one, not even A list actors or television hosts, are interesting all the time. Even though they have entire teams dedicated to making it seem like they are.

So what does this mean?

First, Clubhouse is going to need to elevate influencers that have experience in the kind of production work that works in audio. That probably means talking product cues from talk radio like call screening, cueing the audience what is coming next, having prepared topics and set time frames and giving audio stitchers to drive attention. TikTok is the gold standard in narrative tool enabling creation and might be a good source for product inspiration on what tools to give those on stage.

Clubhouse is also going to need to decide if they want to be more conversation driven. A stage and an audience naturally begets status anxiety and a one-to-many dynamic. But that means you can’t drive the same massive numbers as a one-to-one or many-to-many social space. Maybe they will be content to have a smaller influencer driven creative pool that brings in audiences but they will be forced to adapt their tools to that reality. In that way it looks more like Spotify. People use Spotify because the talent is there and it happens to have some social feature. I believe Clubhouse could pull this off as it certainly has the money for it and there is clearly an appetite for produced audio. Rush Limbaugh is a very rich and influential man (disclaimer I worked at 77WABC as an EA and did stints on his show) and there is room for more types of voices.

I’d personally prefer a conversational platform as a user. I was a rabid fan of the first iteration of Anchor before it became a podcast product. It was call and response “voice messages” initially. It was enormous fun to talk into the ether and get messages back. I still talk to friends that I made on it. To call back to my opener, it was a magical time as the app grew quickly around a massive influx. They eventually pivoted and sold to Spotify for what was clearly a better business, but I look back on those few months as some of the best time I’ve ever spent on social media. The magic of asynchronous audio messages made me feel in control as a user. There something I don’t feel I have yet on Clubhouse which has given me a sense of being overstimulated and even anxious. Timing choice is a significant part of social media scale for users as not everyone can be extremely online.

Clubhouse’s product choices in the next few months will determine how long they can keep that magic going and for how many people. Their team has captured something special for a lot of people and and they some of the best institutional backing in venture capital. I’d personally love if they went in a more conversational less status audience driven direction. But it’s not my startup so all I can do is comment from the sidelines and wish them the best.

Categories
Politics

Day 41 and January 6th

Thirty five days ago feels like a long time. I was only on the sixth day of my daily writing experiment. I was entirely unprepared to have to live through a traumatic national moment let alone speak to it.

Obviously none of this is incisive political commentary. It’s barely coherent. It’s the emotional rambling of a woman who was born into a stable functioning democracy who believed it would be there for her entire life. Our system of government was a given for me. I believed in the American dream.

But as we get further from the moment and I become used to regular writing I see that some core of the moment did get rendered for posterity. I was born into a stable functioning democracy.

Watching the impeachment proceedings has done nothing to make me more confident our democracy will remain stable or functional. The Republicans appear to be in a state of either venial denialism or opportunistic fascism. I don’t know which one I think I worse. And the Democrats are somehow still operating under the delusion that the right gives a shit about rules and parliamentary niceties.

I’ve got some doomer predictions about how this plays out about which I sorely hope I’m wrong. How horrible to be the generation that allows the great American experiment to fail. How embarrassing to get it wrong just as much of the rest of the world is finally getting it right. American exceptionalism on its ass.

I’m not entirely sure that what comes next is bad so much as just “is” what will come. History isn’t reversible. And we are in for a wild ride of institutional chaos as we adapt to new norms. I believe there is a way to ride on top of chaos even succeed because of it. I even think it is possible to thrive as it forces us to solve for more problems more quickly. At least for some of us.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle

Day 40 and Forgetting

When I first committed to writing “something” every single day I didn’t have a lot on my schedule. I was busy with routines for my recovery (I’ve been busting my ass to overcome an autoimmune issue that presents in my spine) but most of those obligations didn’t require coordination with anyone but myself and my doctors. It can be a full time job between medicines, supplements, treatments, testing, and insurance. But it wasn’t hard for me to find time to write something. Hasn’t always been polished but I’ve always got “something” out the door.

Today is the first day since that commitment to write pushed up against a building set of obligations to other people and projects. My medical stuff felt easy and part of a natural routine. And I didn’t take any downtown for recovery between obligations. I used to buffer my obligations with naps or even whole days of rest. Increasingly I have the capacity to do big blocks without any breaks. Which is how I find myself at 9pm without having set out a quiet block to write my thoughts.

I cannot tell you how exciting it is to have a productive day of work and healthy habits and find myself thinking well huh 15 hours have gone by since I woke up and yet I found no time to write? I look back and see no there really wasn’t an hour or two where I was in bed on my phone. That’s a first for me in quite sometime. I don’t feel exhausted or depleted. I feel if anything pleasantly energetic. Like I need to begin my bedtime routine to let myself come down. And I cannot wait to pick back up what I didn’t accomplish today first thing in the morning.

My human capacity to forget is kicking in. I’m forgetting what it was like to be unable to walk. I’m forgetting what it was like to be in so much pain I couldn’t think clearly. I’m forgetting the soul crushing exhaustion that took all but the most basic activities from me. I wouldn’t mind forgetting the bad parts to be honest. If I could just remember the emotional depths and new strengths I discovered I’d be pleased. I’m sure I’ll have a flare soon and become newly intimate with the ways pain overtakes all life. But I enjoyed forgetting it today. And maybe if I’m lucky I’ll have more time to keep forgetting.