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Chronicle Media Politics

Silicon Valley Isn’t Modern and That’s Why It’s Good

My favorite genre of essay is elites discovering the system is fucked. The latest to catch my eye is ostensibly about a mother for whom the medical system failed her child and who then like Alice in Wonderland has to completely reset her expectations of reality. It’s a spectacular piece of writing in Tablet Mag […]

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Community Startups

Day 854 and Silicon Diaspora

Silicon Valley is a place in Northern California. It’s also accurate to say that Silicon Valley is also a mindset that knows no geographic boundaries. If you will indulge me I’ve coined a term for this syncretic network state. I’m calling it the Silicon Diaspora. While my family is from Boulder Colorado and I was […]

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Politics Travel

Day 491 and Uncanny Valley

If you’ve been following along this week you might have noticed I’m in Bozeman Montana with some friends. I’m hoping to find a homestead. My father loves to call Montana the last best place. He moved up to Whitefish a few years ago for retirement from Boulder Colorado. Our boomers know the score. He knows […]

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Biohacking Reading

Day 1168 and Inner Monologue

Some chunk of the population doesn’t have an inner monologue. A fascinating video of a young woman describing her lack of an inner monologue caught my attention today. I’d describe her experience as literal shape rotation with what is a “memory palace” visualization of the world. I can’t imagine not having inner monologue. I have […]

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Culture

Day 1152 and Sunsetting The Boomers

The Fourth Turning has become something like accepted elite discourse canon for generational analysis and grand theories of history. William Strauss and Neil Howe’s theory is probably familiar to you but I’ll cite it for my own edification. The Strauss–Howe generational theory, devised by William Strauss and Neil Howe, describes a theorized recurring generationcycle in American history and Western history. According to the […]

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Emotional Work

Day 1149 and Human Nature

I am experiencing a waning in my desire to be online. Not because I don’t wish to be in the thick of things, but because I simply don’t have as much I want to contribute when I am myself under stress. And it’s all stress now unless you simply stop caring. And I still care. […]

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Biohacking

Day 1135 and In The Red But Climbing

I’d love to know if this happens to anyone else. I find I’m easily influenced by the data that my fitness trackers share with me. Sometimes it will even affect my mood negatively. A green recovery can make me feel more optimistic. I’m a user of both a Whoop and an Apple Watch. I’ve got […]

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Chronicle

Day 1095 and 2023 Round Up

I’ve been sick for the last week and a half or so, so this round-up is coming on the last day of 2023. As you may have gathered from my title schema, I have been writing every single day for 1095 straight days. That means I’ve been doing this for three years which is a […]

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Community

Day 1085 and Openness

I make a living pricing risk. I do that through investment but also a few highly specialized skills I deploy on behalf of founders of startups. The shortest articulation is that I am very good at spotting subcultures and helping them come into the mainstream and find a market that will pay them. Not all […]

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Politics

Day 1076 and The Encryption Wars

I’ve been exploring historical American attempts at regulation of computing as part of my #FreedomToCompute effort. We have an excellent example from the Clinton era which are colloquially called the Encryption Wars. This campaign might be instructive as we decide what kind of regulatory climate might best foster machine learning and artificial intelligence innovation globally […]