The last forty eight hours or so have just been nonstop for me. Of course, that’s been true for the last week, the last month, the last quarter, the last year and the last decade.
The “nothing ever happens” bros might simply have made different life choices as from where I stand everyday is packed with happening.
I’ll grant the meme having originated as a geopolitical joke means it’s a little contextually inappropriate to apply to individuals and their own lives.
But what if “nothing ever happens” is just another way of justifying one’s own lack of agency? “Nothing ever happens” is admitting you are comfortable with being an NPC in the great game of life. Even if you are sure you are a bit player of little consequence you can rewrite your own programming.
Maybe we can look to another 4chan /pol meme “It’s Happening” for inspiration. Believe in your own capacity to have agency even when it’s small.
Maybe world changing systemic change is beyond reach for most of us. That’s ok. But we can have a lot more happening with a few changes. You can play your own games and decide on your own rewards. I have. And it’s all happening for me and mine.
I don’t swim very much as an adult but I grew up in an era with mandatory swimming tests (even at university).
I was lucky enough to not only learn to swim in the Pacific Ocean but in Colorado I spent a lot of time in our many creek, rivers and lakes. Freshwater has its own appeal and I’ve seen the tides work on the Great Lakes. But little is as magical as the buoyancy of seawater.
But today I was able to take a swim. I put on a bathing suit and was able to casually swim with just enough force applied to steady myself in a comfortable place against the increasingly forceful tide coming in. I felt like I’d won even if it was just for thirty minutes. I enjoyed a nice healthful thing in between the chaos of a very busy moment.
I’m not much of a Fitzgerald fan and but the joy of finding the limitations in one’s life as you mature is the relatability of feeling the weight of a one’s years as you push against the tides.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past
So many decisions cannot be undone and yet we steady ourselves against forces much bigger than we are. Pushing against some of the vastness of a sea while relaxing into its much bigger whole is quietly humbling
I feel good about pushing against the vastness but also not being so sure about my own place in much larger forces. It’s no wonder man yearns for the horizon.
I took a shower and immediately went back to work. But it was nice to be a human doing a human thing while all of this is going on around me. I held my own against the tides. And I intend to keep doing.
Americans aren’t showing the loyalty we used to be known for these days. It’s embarrassing to see the big games we talk from politics to Wall Street. If it’s all big talk then of course the world laughs when we fail to be steadfast.
Maybe that’s why we have such a glorious oeuvre of “ride or die” art. From literature and cinema to Lana Del Ray we want people who commit even when the risks are unquestionably large and success isn’t assured.
From her Blue Jeans lyrics it sure looks like she’s seen her share of bullshitters caught up in the game.
I stayed up waitin’, anticipatin’ and pacin’ But he was chasing paper “Caught up in the game, ” that was the last I heard
And maybe that’s the point of America’s love of the ride or die. The risks are clear. But the reward for loyalty knows a deeper satisfaction than those who get caught up in the game. Don’t chase the paper and expect the game to care. Only people care. And we should all aspire to loyalty beyond reproach.
It was a bad bill that lacked the necessary clarity and focus to even begin the task of regulating the nascent field of artificial intelligence.
We can and will do better in finding regulatory frameworks for safety and competitiveness but this bill wasn’t it. It was especially concerning as they say so goes California so goes the world.
I have been banging on about the #FreedomToCompute and math’s crucial role in our constitutional right to free speech in America. This must be considered in all future attempts at regulation in America.
Math and computing power are as essential as speech. In today’s world, they ARE speech. We may speak in natural language, but the way we extend ourselves, build things, and grow as a species is through our tools. Computation is a tool.
We’ve made an astonishing amount of progress in the last hundred years. We’ve gone from thousands of computations per second in the 1940s to 200 quadrillion calculations per second with modern super computers.
Alas, as tools get more powerful the powerful get nervous. This isn’t the first bad artificial intelligence bill we’ve seen. We have Europe to thank for that. And it likely won’t be the last.
But defeating SB-1047 is a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation not only in California but across the world as the entire compute space came together to make its voice heard. And Gavin Newsom listened.
We should celebrate this rare consensus as we look towards better policy in our future.
The dead internet theory (or conspiracy theory if you must) supposes that machine generated content outweighs human contributions.
I don’t think we are there just yet but I am betting that artificial intelligence speeds up the process of replacing human content in areas where it’s unnecessary. Machines can act on their own and it’s good thing potentially too.
Being able to determine what is human intelligence versus machine intelligence may well be mitigated through trust-less cryptographic systems we take for granted. Handshake protocols for humans and machines.
Some content and transactions are just fine coming from artificial intelligence but others have to demonstrate a human identity. This may even require compute on human’s behalf
Looking forward, the ability to access compute at scale will likely parallel the right to transact. Identity will be layered and lending credibility and capital will look different. Who has credit and credibility?
As nations navigate their own risks, network state behaviors on the individual level will become more prevalent, driven by the need for secure, decentralized transactions that ensure autonomy in an increasingly unpredictable world.
The internet isn’t dying. It’s being reborn to serve the next stage of credible actors on our world.
Instead of Benadryl it was diphenhydramine. For a headache we used ibuprofen not Advil. Acetaminophen was the proper name not Tylenol.
She taught me what went into popular brand name medication like DayQuil and I learned the ratios of guaiphenesin to dextromethorphan. Always take the minimum viable dose she’d say. And if I only had a cough I didn’t a fever reducer.
America is lucky to have a thriving generic medicine market. If you are a Costco shopper you can buy thousands of tablets of every crucial over the counter medication at just a few cents per dose.
Take the time to read more on the issues as it’s been forty years of struggle for access and safety and we are experiencing shortages and supply chain risk that is unprecedented.
For a woman raised in the Rockies and settled down in Montana, you’d think I’d be more outdoorsy. And yet I can spend days at a time in just one room with little trouble and even enjoyment.
Even with that wholesome “National Parks” backdrop, I was always a bookish and imaginative child. I was once derisively described as having “a particularly pictorial interiority” by a babysitter.
I don’t have the energy I once did as a girl when I’d spend my time at the barn and loved camping & hiking with my Outward Bound going army surplus shopping Eagle Scout achieving band of hippie environmental teens.
Setting aside the humor of a toking Austrian anthroposophy student projecting onto an elementary student, I am a long winded introvert who writes a lot. They really nailed me.
When the pandemic forced us all inside I had no problem with being home. I did a full three months without setting foot outside the apartment.
As a choice I make for health & preference, it’s a far cry from cultures where women are forced indoors. I’d prefer to be outside more when circumstances allow. They haven’t for quite a few days. But it’s ok, I like being an indoor cat.
It seems to be an absolutely awful week on Planet Earth. War, natural disasters, and human venality are on full display. It’s hard to even read the news, political or otherwise.
In contrast, I am myself in a good news place. I have a few leftover health issues as I leave behind the bout of respiratory issues (Covid’s legacy) but am otherwise full steam ahead.
Because I am so busy I find myself offline and missing things. It’s all good news in my world. And then I come back online to check feeds and it’s just all bad news.
I feel the privilege of it but I am also proud to have this stability. We made choices so our lives could be this way. We value preparedness and the calm that comes from planning.
I wish more people could live this way. Focus shouldn’t be reserved for a select few who can make good big life choices. That can be luck of the draw.
I do believe however it’s possible for many more of us to narrow focus so we can let small good choices compound. It’s good to appreciate the value of limiting your attention to your own priorities.
There is an argument to be made that only once you have steadied your own life can you look outside. Given how crazy the outside world can be give yourself the chance to have good news in your life. There will always be bad news.
I am in a good vibes places right now. I am a bit tired from some whirlwind pacing but feeling very good about how a number of projects are playing out from an amusing purchase to more serious matters of fundraising and deal management.
I do feel the fatigue that comes with running at full speed. I have been hitting it hard in writing and at work this week and it’s only Tuesday (not that I am one for weekends).
It’s the end of my workday as I’m on European time and I still have a few miles to go before I can be done so I’ll keep the post short. If you want to see where my head is at check the links as I did some good work this week.
On a housekeeping note, I’ll be in New York the second week of October and in Miami the last week of October if anyone is either city would like to meet up. I’ll be prioritizing LPs for chaotic as we are raising along with founders and weirdos of all stripes. Just hit me up on DM on Twitter. Or email me but I’m more likely to respond to DM.
I came of age in the blogging era, where we got writing like Joel on Software. I learned to build thanks to other builders sharing their craft and discussing it on forums & personal sites. I had access to the insights of builders like DHH and Alex Payne. Their commitment to publishing accessibility helped onboard millions of normies like me.
In some ways, startups and the software giants of FAANG are a victim of our own success. We onboarded the world to our efficiency.
And now with AI coding software (incidentally trained by Stack Overflow data & GitHub repositories built by my community) we are experiencing a Cambrian explosion level of coding access.
And it’s not Zapier hacks or snide remarks about Rust anymore. Anyone who can think critically about a product feature can build it with clear thinking and natural language.
If history is any indication the growth curve in app building is just getting started. Much awful nonsense will be built and sold, but imagine how it enables those with taste and opinions to make new solutions to our problems.
Ironic a critic of software like MKNDH should play such a role in reminding us of just how hard it is to make something good. Making money though can have a much lower bar.
