Author: Julie

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 666 and Mark Of the Bedeviled

Signs, signifiers and semiotics are a pastime and also a professional obligation, so naturally I’m excited to have arrived at day six hundred and sixty six (666) of writing every single day.

While I’d like to think it’s been a positive experience, shadow work tells me a little bit of the devil is as surely responsible as my better angels for this project. So I might as well mark the occasion.

While I enjoy a wide range of woo woo pastimes (white girls love Tarot) I cannot say that end times Biblical fire and brimstone is my jam. But I presume just about everyone in America is vaguely aware of 666 as a signifier for end times Book of Revelations full on evil. 666 is the mark of the beast.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Revelations 13:18 King James Version

I’m not much for millenarian prophesies, despite being a card carrying doomer, so I can’t really interpret why the Mark of the Beast means diddly squat. Even though I enjoy a Ronald Emmerich piece of disaster porn, I cannot claim to have done more than skim the Book of Revelations. I once spent an entire quarter reading the Old Testament in Aramaic which is surely enough to put even ardent scholars off their Bible study for a bit.

But I have been revisiting Yeats’ Second Coming lately so perhaps I’ve been exposed to the general energy of revelations. Ben Hunt of Epison Theory has written most eloquently about the Widening Gyre of moment. Anxieties and disagreements have frozen some of us and unleashed the worst passions in others. It feels right for the moment.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats “Second Coming”

It’s hard not to recognize the Widening Gyre in our moment. But perhaps it has been ever so for humanity. We search for signs and signals and find them because we want to. We see evil all around us and perhaps we should be grateful for it as it’s surely saved our ancestors from being eaten.

So it’s hard not to look around when a culturally significant number like 666 crosses your transom. What rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? I wonder if Yeats had a particular vision for the end of the world. And I wonder how much it matches mine.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 665 and Solar

One of the projects we’ve been prioritizing for our Montana homestead is installing a solar array and a battery back up system. Having secondary power systems in case of an emergency seems sensible. As electricity and gas prices rise, and power grids look less stable, solar becomes less of a nice-to-have and more of a must-have for a resilient home.

I will admit I’ve got little technical talent and even less enthusiasm for gadgets and tinkering, so this project has been entirely directed by my husband Alex. But I thought it was worth documenting here even if I can take little credit for the project beyond insisting it get done immediately.

Digging a trench in our pasture to connect the future solar array to the house.

We had considered panels for our roof but we have a front pasture with more sunlight year round so Alex opted for a 13.92 Kw ground mount array made of 32 panels. They are bifacial panels so they pick up the solar radiation that bounces off the ground (eg from snow) on a tiltable grid so we can optimize the angle based on time of year – from 20 degrees in the summer to 60-70 in the winter.

Alex in the hole being dug for the wrest.

The array is expected to generate about 21 Mwh/year and fully offset our electricity usage. We will also be adding 20-30kwh of battery storage soon since you can’t expect it to be sunny every day.

Putting in wires and protecting bits & bobs

We’ve got a ways to go but I will say I have been extremely impressed with how quickly we were able to find a solar vendor and get the process going. We’ve got advantages in that we don’t need any permitting as we are in the country. We’ve got to think of the aesthetics for our neighbors (we will be hiding the array from road view with an aspen copse) but in general we can do what we like within reason. If you’ve been considering solar for environmental or preparedness reasons I’d get on it as soon as is feasible.

Categories
Politics

Day 664 and Political Disabilty

I did not watch the Pennsylvania senatorial candidate debate between Democratic Lt. Governor John Fetterman and Republican tv personality Dr. Mehmet Oz because I live in Montana. Why the fuck would I do that? But I have caught the discourse surrounding it and I do not like it.

If you are not following this saga, Fetterman had a stroke a few days before the primary in May. He is recovering but but is still having trouble with speech. People who are not familiar with neurological recovery processes (otherwise known as 99% of normal humans including me) are freaking the fuck out about what it means that his speech is impaired. It looks particularly egregious when compared to Dr Oz who is professionally competent at communicating clearly on television because that is his job.

Naturally we are seeing the absolute worst possible response to Fetterman’s current disability from just about everyone. Supporters of Fetterman are insisting that there is no evidence of mental degeneration or acuity issues. Which might be true but I don’t know. But the general sense I get from supporters is one cannot even suggest that there might be processing issues because doing so would you an awful ableist human being. Neat!

On the flip side, Republicans and other opponents are insisting Fetterman isn’t fit to hold office as he is not capable of speaking clearly. The Republican position seems to be that a speech impediment is a clear sign of mental decay and electing him is maybe a diverity and inclusion policy so wrong it should insult us all. Also extremely neat!

I’d say naturally both positions are ridiculous but I’m not sure this is natural to anyone. Ableism, or discrimination against the disabled, is an exciting new front in the culture wars. Being being disabled is a hot new identity marker despite the fact that a quarter of Americans have some form of disability. It’s not that unique or cool to be disabled. But modern medicine is a miracle so we can’t rely on Darwin anymore to keep us damned cripples out of sight anymore making light eugenics kind of a popular position. I don’t love it.

I am someone with a modest disability. I have a spinal condition called ankylosing spondylitis which is basically arthritis in my spine. So I don’t find any of the commentary surrounding Fetterman’s disability status encouraging. I don’t love that the basic assumption is being less than abled bodied is disqualifying for work. It depends! This shouldn’t be a whole fucking thing.

A disability doesn’t mean you can’t work like a “normal” person but it does mean you have some limitations to work around. This doesn’t make you better or worse as a person. Being disabled has no moral valence. Alas we tend to valorize suffering and demonize perceived weakness. Neat!

My position is most disabilities are sort of a modest inconvenience that on balance forces you to hone other abilities to be competitive. This is my super hero theory of disability and might be a contributing factor to the side that valorizes disability. How cool is it to be an X-Men? Extremely! But I don’t overweight this position as I largely think a market economy fixes by forcing us to all to compete and find our niche.

If this is scandalous to you, I’d say everyone has something that is a struggle to overcome even if most people’s thing is just being kind of an idiot. Half of us are by definition below average. But imagine if I thought you being stupider than me was disqualifying for holding political office.

My whole point in this long ramble is that the Democrats are being ridiculous in insisting we cannot look at the strengths and weaknesses that come with bodies being sick. We are on year three of the pandemic so that ship has sailed. The Republicans are being ridiculous insisting that speech impediments are disqualifying. Tump didn’t even have the benefit of a stroke to blame for his speech patterns.

It isn’t ridiculous to ask someone to be transparent about recovery and abilities. I’ve got no idea if Fetterman has slower thinking after the strike or if it’s just slower speaking. I don’t really care to be honest. Not my senator.

But if we all keep insisting on physical and mental perfection from our elected officials we might not have any politicians left. Which actually on second thought might be ok.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 663 and Bad Sleep

I realize I’ve had several days of “well shit seems bad” posting. The outside world is a bit kooky but my world is basically fine. It’s snowy and I’m cozy and I’ve got friends visiting so you’d think I’d be in a terrific mood. But I’ve had two nights of absolutely horrible sleep.

I have been tossing and turning. I’m in more pain than I’d prefer. My heart rate is up. And my recovery has been for shit. At 6am this morning I just fully gave up on sleeping and trudged up to the kitchen for coffee. According to my Whoop I’d been awake since 1am. The same thing had happened the night before too.

I have reasonably good sleep hygiene. Dark quiet cold room. I take magnesium. I have a wind down routine. I’ve got a good mattress. And crucially if I am particularly fucked up I’ve got a prescription for a downer or two.

None of that appears to have mattered. Not even drugs were able to keep me asleep. And it’s bumming me the fuck out. At a certain point I’ve got to assume I’ll simply be so tired that I’ve got to sleep through the night right?

I told myself that was true yesterday when I feel asleep within a few minutes of my head hitting the pillow. But a few hours later I was awake and in pain. I’ve tried to be extra active today in the hopes that I won’t repeat it tonight.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 662 and Immobility & Gender

Americans are incapable of getting things done. Such is the popular sentiment of the moment. We are immobilized in some form of national endocrine collapse brought about by too many years of chaos and accelerating change. Our problems aren’t getting fixed and we are all too demoralized to do anything seems to be a popular consensus.

Some folks blame democracy. Some blame the degradation of the balance of power as our executive branch overtakes the legislative. Much ink and chatter is being dedicated to the upwelling of populism and it’s charismatic authoritarians as the solution to our stagnation and immobility globally. Or maybe it’s because we cannot imagine a better future.

I’m chewing on a new theory. What if it’s got nothing to do with democracy or a return to monarchy, or even lie inability to cope with chaos at all? What if history isn’t repeating but rather history has come to a crossroads and women are smack in the middle.

What if we can’t get anything done, because we’ve not come to terms with what power and authority women wield? What if this is mostly a reactionary period about what to do with women? What if the crisis of men is actually a crisis about women? What if all of the insecurities about modernity boil down to we changed gender dynamics quite a bit in the last century?

Populists and neo-monarchists are fucking themselves because they aren’t quite sure how to deal with the middle ground in which they find women. Women are neither fully in charge of the home, hearth and children (single earner households having become unaffordable) nor are they treated as equal actors in the public stage. The answer the throwbacks give is we should return to traditional gender roles. Except that’s not actually an option even if it would help.

Powerful women are at best mediocre ciphers (Liz Truss comes to mind) or one in a million talents (Indra Noyi for instance) such that gender is far beside the point. The middle ground of most American women is a mess of confusion about demographic collapse, loneliness, and the good life.

The Dominionists, Christian Nationalists and various flavors of neo-patriarchal traditionalists believe the solution is simple. Bring women back into the home and to the elbow of their menfolk. Men are obligated to the public sphere unlike their women for whom it shouldn’t be a concern at all. Which seems like a strange approach to problem solving. Return to only half the planet having authority.

This is a bit like putting the genie back in the bottle as we’ve got a full century of women’s suffrage under our belt and two generations of women working outside the home. Capitalism in particular loves women workers.

Combine that with the degradation of men in modernity and you start to see some of the challenges. All of our status markers suggest it is better to be unmarried as a woman than married to a loser. That didn’t used to be true but birth control and third wave feminism probably made it so. And in late stage capitalism most men are being framed as losers, lacking the soft skills to navigate corporate politics and higher education.

I frankly haven’t the slightest idea what anyone is supposed to do about this. Accordingly to the viral Female Delusion Calculator (funny how there isn’t a reverse option) my husband doesn’t exist at all demographically. But then neither do I.

So one can’t really be looking to some globalist asshole white Americans to solve this problem. We are the problem according to a large swathe of people. Unless we are the ones capable of overcoming immobility as we’ve got the spare capacity. But I think rich folks running the show been the default state for most of history so fuck if I know. But I do think I’m onto something with gender being at the center of a lot of our issues.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 661 and Existential Immobility

If everything is an existential fight, well I hate to break it to you, nothing is an existential fight. As the Russian war in Ukraine spirals out and the American midterm elections edge closer, I am having “existential” threat fatigue.

You’ve got generals making claims that if Ukraine falls the international order falls. You’ve got Republicans insisting that if the Democrats remain in control it’s the end of America. You’ve got Democrats insisting that Republicans are an existential threat to American democracy. That one might actually be true but that’s just my bias. Turns out we all think democracy is under threat we just don’t agree why. The varying degrees of panic are so palpable it’s impossible to untangle which chicken little is correct.

Our wood burning stove merrily making a start at our many cords of wood.

We’ve got a gorgeous snowstorm in Montana and I’m snuggly inside with a roaring fire, a roast chicken and friends. But if I do so much as look at the internet, I am quickly reminded entire world is falling apart. It is a persistent threat to my central nervous system. But I’m beginning to think that the real existential thread is how immobile everyone feels.

A roast chicken with potatoes in a cast iron skillet on top of a stove.

If the world is indeed on the precipice clearly we need more photos of roast chickens and warm fires. But that does feel like the existent it is possible to positively contribute. The deer in headlights feeling is slowly claiming us all like the Nothing in from the Neverending Story. And like Bastian I’m unsure if I should “do what you wish” or continue the search for meaning.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 660 and When Extremely Online Goes Terminal

I committed one of the cardinal sins of the extremely online yesterday. So much discourse was happening I overwhelmed myself. Just like an endless stream of stuff was hitting my hind brain and like an idiot I just kept drinking from the firehose of engagement. I stayed up till 1am.

I’m typically careful about how much central nervous system stress I’m willing to tolerate. It’s a hazard of the job when being visibly online and searching for investments is mostly virtual. Purposely consuming a significant amount of bad news or scrolling the deep cuts of the dark corners of the message boards is meant to be done in small doses. I have no need to push my endocrine system into permanent fight or flight. No one does. It’s very counterproductive.

Going into a sympathetic nervous response is a part of life though. Some stress is good. I have an entire routine for soothing an overstimulated vagus nerve. I take adaptogens. I meditate. I live in Montana with plenty of open spaces and fresh air. I am skilled in discerning agitprop from all corners of the information wars. When I dive into the dopamine river I do so responsibly with the right tools. Don’t try this at home kids.

But that doesn’t mean I’m immune from drowning in the dopamine drip. I just have a good chance of pulling myself out before it’s too late. Around 9pm or so it became clear that even after a quiet dinner, some CBD and THC gummies, and relaxing television with my husband that I was in fact still very much in sympathetic response.

I panicked a little bit as hour after hour passed and I continued to be reactive. I’d started a negative flywheel. I took an Ativan fully expecting the steroid of the mind to knock me out. It did not. And so giving in to all my worst impulses stayed on Twitter. Fuck it if the good rare drugs weren’t doing it. I said “let ‘er rip!” I had recently finished the Bear.

Today I undid the damage. I slept until my body decided it was time to wake up. I followed my supplement routine carefully. For the TMI readers I had about a dozen orgasms. I slept some more. I stretched and took a walk. I took a long leisurely shower with every possibly form of exfoliating and conditioning I could imagine. And now at the end of the day I think I might have pushed my case of terminally online back to a place of merely extremely online. Let that be a lesson to everyone.

Categories
Aesthetics Startups

Day 659 and E-commerce Returns

It’s been a minute since I posted about the mild annoyances of shopping to outfit a new house. Because we have upgraded the amount of space we live in by two or three times and we are hoping to use some of the space for hospitality we’ve bought a lot of shit recently.

I have shopped a large assortment of direct to consumer retail brands. Included in the list is Brooklinen, Havenly, Italic and Merit in the last month or so. And the varied state of quality and service in the venture funded retail space is such a mixed bag. The most pleasant experiences have been from older brands and retailers like Carharrt, Ariat and Sephora.

I would entirely recommend Havenly as an intermediary service for both design and furniture shopping as the returns are relatively simple and they consolidate a ton of retailers into the interface. But they are so good at their jobs you mostly don’t need to return stuff. We bought a cheap fake antler chandelier to see if it could be pulled off (against the advice of the designer) and were promptly told by everyone to return it. Which lets be honest was good advice all around. We did have to dismantle it which I’m told was quite the IKEA style effort.

A fake antler chandelier acquired from Wayfare. It was still $500 so we returned it.

I cannot say I have the same praise for direct to consumer brands that are still attempting to make margins happen in the middle market. I’ve had some amusing fails on that front and it again reminds me of the danger consumers are beginning to feel when they shop brands with less social awareness. This is a real issue for direct to consumer brands as they fight it out with less venture dollars compared to the past. It’s going to hurt their lifetime customer values.

Merit is a much covered cosmetics brand which has some star products I liked (their foundation is terrific) but some really low rent packaging. So I wanted to return a couple items. Merit made returns so challenging I might just eat the cost of half the products that I don’t want to use. Merit’s customer care team literally wanted me to write reviews of each product I wanted to return to begin the process. Damn girl but ain’t nobody has time for that.

An assortment of Merit Cosmetics including foundation, blush, mascara and a brush. I wanted to return about half of them for being a poor value.

Ironically I had already done that on their Yotpo product review prompts a week earlier but didn’t save them (why would I) so when it came time for returns I just said fuck it as I didn’t want to retype my 500 word a piece reviews again just to return the items. It’s been sitting in my inbox for so long I’m afraid they won’t accept it. A huge and amusing fail to integrate basic customer retention tactics and your order options. I expect it will hit their lifetime customer value and require a fix soon. I literally haven’t overcome the inertia just to get my $70 back and perhaps they know that. Which is a dick move.

By far the most clever return mechanic I’ve seen is from Italic. I’ve loved their cashmere and their sheets but some of their other odds and ends were just bad fits. And it turns out they know it. They offered a 50% store credit on an item if I just gave it to a friend. Alas it is a dress that doesn’t work if you have breasts. Which is clearly a challenge to hand off to anyone.

Text messages between Alex and I about returning a dress from Italic that does not fit my upper body

The other irritant that Italic had though is that it shipped in four separate orders and insisted that we ship it back in four separate orders which is wildly wasteful even by e-commerce standards. And it has the unexpected effect of me accidentally returning a pair of cashmere pants I didn’t even try on as I forgot I bought two different cuts and ended up returning both as they came in separate orders over the space of a week. Oops! That’s $150 they won’t get from me. I frantically texted my Alex asking if he had them still but nope I might try to rebuy them but now I don’t trust I’ll be able to even figure it out.

Shopping is going to get extremely weird over this holiday season as brands have significant depths to overcome come past supply chain issues. But as the economy struggles with inflation I’d expect to see more tricks like Merit on the negative end and clever loyalty gambits like Italic on the positive. So keep that in mind as Black Friday approaches.

Categories
Chronic Disease Politics

Day 658 and Time Perception

I don’t know about you, but my sense of time has never really recovered from the pandemic. Time got distended and warped in ways that were hard to appreciate at the time. I struggle to tell if I’m making progress or if I’m standing still.

If I’m really honest with myself, I started losing the thread on time when Trump got elected. I was one of those people for whom that fractured my reality a little. Not because I couldn’t conceive of him winning but because I could. That was my first moment where I felt like I was beginning to split from shared reality as I was so sure he would win and so desperately wanted him to lose.

Somewhere midway through Trump’s term, my health got fucked up. My sense of reality fracturing combined with my first taste of time being distended was when my health went sideways. As I stopped working somewhere in 2018 but it’s hazy. As I spent more and more time in hospitals, doctors offices and in bed, and less time at the office, the usual ways I used to tell time degraded further. Reality had already shattered so no reason not to let time shard too.

So I can’t entirely blame my sense of displacement from time on the pandemic. My sense of instability absolutely predates it by several years. By now much I couldn’t exactly tell you. Between my health and Trump I ended up a step or two off of consensus reality.

This did end up being lucky. As the pandemic was inbound I was prepared before it hit. I had tied myself so effectively into the immune system of the information environment I knew it was coming in December.

But I wasn’t entirely prepared for how much I’d up end my life as the second order effects of the pandemic kicked in. We did the first few months in an apartment, the first summer in a vacation house on the Hudson River and then decamped for my home state of Colorado.

It’s only just as we’ve decided to commit to Montana that my sense of unreality is easing a bit. We’ve got a home that we own and a set of preparations that makes it stable through some gnarly potential futures. So why isn’t the time dilation is easing? Why does it always feel like there is never enough time and also far too much time all at once? If anyone has the answer I am listening.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 657 and Introvert Season

Montana has been having an extended Indian Summer. I’m not entirely sure if we are allowed to say that anymore but the alternative term Second Summer seems less apt to the actual weather.

We’ve barely had a first frost and one needs a First Fall to have a Second Summer presumably. Farmer’s Almanac suggests you need a killing frost to have a true Indian Summer which I don’t think we’ve had. Either way, it’s been a pleasant mid sixties for six weeks and before that it was fully summer weather. Nary a chill to be had.

But this weekend there are rumors of some snowfall. Not much more than a few inches but enough that I’m excitedly organizing my sweaters. The hints of fall I was thrilled by in September might actually be coming to pass.

I don’t know why I’m so excited for cold weather as it’s been beautiful in the Gallatin Valley but I do love being cuddled up next to a fire with a warm drink and a heavy book. There is less pressure to be doing things like go out and socialize in cold weather. I myself am always more productive in the winter. Winter is introvert weather.