Categories
Chronicle Preparedness Travel

Day 1584 and Sunday Chores

I missed spring cleaning due to some unexpected travels. Part of that was by design, as a gnarly mold issue required mediation that we decided was best missed by my annoyingly fragile immune system.

You wouldn’t think galavanting across Alexander’s Empire by car would be a reasonable way to avoid mycotoxins and you’d be right but I also like to learn what’s happening in the markets in a visceral manner.

No finer way to come to grips with the breakdown of trade and empire than racing across a continent to understand a supply chain amirite?

In January we began the process of acquiring a hyperbaric chamber for personal use and a medical spa. We figured we were well ahead of the process and like many folks who buy products made in other countries we figured better to get it done before another trade was kicks off.

And then the tariffs came. Whenever you were ordering or transiting goods you were scrambling. I’m scrambling now at home to make sure the household is set up for whatever empty shelves and shortages are ahead but it’s hard to predict.

And so I spend my day planning and cleaning and running errands and generally cleaning up. I hope the mold issue managed as I’m certainly being exposed now. As you might imagine I’m trying to keep windows open and as dry as possible.

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Chronicle

Day 1579 and Marking The Days

Everyone has their own zero day for something. I’ve been writing for one thousand five hundred and seventy nine days in a row. It is 2025 Anno Domini aka the year of our Lord. It has been 100 days since Trump was sworn back into office as President.

I’m sure someone is celebrating 100 days of sobriety. I’m sure there is a couple celebrating 10 years of marriage today. A totally ordinary day in the spring likely had any number of events big and small being noted today.

We seem to like marking the passage of time quite a bit. For Aristotle fans memory is key to the cultivation of techne. We mark events in order to remember them so that they may be handed down to the next generation. We repeat so we remember.

Categories
Chronicle Emotional Work

Day 1462 and Year Five Begins

We aren’t quitters” could be a tagline from a sports movie, a speech about the American people or your parent’s family philosophy.

Fortune favors those with fortitude. Grit sums up entire pedagogies of successful education and institutional cultures.

And here I am, one day at a time, continuing to log my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them on this public journal.

When I first began I thought the experiment to write every single day I thought would last a month. Then I thought maybe I could make it to a full year. Now I’m unsure if I will ever want to stop. I’m not even sure I know how to stop?

I’m less sure the narrative aspects of this log are as crucial to me as when I first started . I wanted to improve my capacity to write regularly so I set out to practice that creative process.

Having achieved my goal to write and publish each day, it may be time to evolve this narrative into a more traditional blog format from the past.

We used to include links, asides, and unrelated tidbits alongside narratives and storytelling in old school weblogs. I may try to try to include tidbits of what I am seeing each day as a way of sharing my context and inference process.

If the mood stokes for essays (as is my usual habit) that’s fine and if the mood strikes for a log of influences that is fine too. Year five has permission to be whatever it likes.

Current Reading

A gift link to a New York Times article on the China craze and the fifth and likely final generation that carried a dish set through a century only to find the status symbol it once represented is long gone.

Hannu Rajaniemi an entrepreneur and science fiction author has a new book Darkome about a world where with a corporate giant who invented a mRNA vaccine wearable and an underground of biohackers working to keep those vaccines and edits available online not available in America but thankfully I got a copy in Europe.

Interested in the “Don’t Die” movement? Time to learn all the ways cells die.

A history of learning how cells die

Why do we know so little history? Bogus airport bestsellers are one culprit. Or a bestseller anyone who took an AP history course “A World Lit Only By Fire” is mostly bunk. Turns out that’s common.

“Style is a magic wand; everything it touches turns to gold.”

– Logan Pearsall Smith

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1461 and 2024 Year in Review Posts

And so my fourth year of writing every single day in public comes to a close. I choose to comb through each post by hand to give a round up. I could employ artificial intelligence to give a synopsis and I have run my writing through several AI models.

Still I find it helpful to do the rote work myself. You can see my 2023 round up here. If you’d like further back here is my 2022 round up. And my first year round up is 2021

I felt as if my writing this year was more variable in length, depth & insight but that’s more feeling than fact. It don’t know if I feel like I did my best work this year.

And yet I still found narrowing it down to 50-60 odd posts to be a challenge. I can’t tell if that means I need a new format, a change of pace, or a change in expectations. Maybe it’s fine to keep going and see what happens. As we head to into 2025 feel free to have a look at my 2024. Let me know if you like what you see.

Emotional Work

Day 1449 and Self Deception

Day 1416 and Lagom

Day 1381 and Radical Responsibility

Day 1236 and Art of Accomplishment

Day 1197 and Experiencing Excellence

Day 1149 and Time to Get Offline?

Day 1119 and Capacity for Presence

Day 1107 and Happy Birthday to Matt

Subcultures & Cultural Commentary

Day 1448 and LARPing Ourselves to Death

Day 1441 and The Circuit of Power

Day 1431 and Faking Autism for Clout

Day 1410 and Luxury Content After Institutional Failure

Day 1341 and Class Consciousness

Day 1328 and Weebs as Social Elite

Day 1259 and Cooler Than Me

1232 and Millennial Crab Bucket

1176 and Verner Vinge’s Legacy

Day 1121 and Changing Political Alignments in Young Men

Chaos Energy

Day 1427 and Friction in The Systems

Day 1421 and When Crypto Clashes with Open Source Artificial Intelligence

Day 1417 and Pareto Optimal Skincare

Day 1398 and Overstimulated Nerds

Day 1393 and Babylonian Memetic Death Cults

Day 1386 and Goatse Singularity (safe to click) and Day 1391 Hyper Object Lesson and Day 1387 Singularity Lore

Day 1303 and Toaster Fucker Problem

Day 1297 and Crypto Libertarians in the Age of Anarcho-Tyranny

Day 1173 and Autism Services

Politics

Day 1425 and Doorknockers & Montana’s Senate Race

Day 1405 and America is Speaking

Day 1403 and Legible Political Opinions

Day 1415 and Sliding off The Board

Day 1422 and Material Conditions

Day 1356 and Sick Sad World

Day 1322 and You Can Just Do Things

Day 1315 and Ratfucking Season

Day 1291 and Political Violence

Day 1212 and Being One of Many

Day 1152 and Sunsetting The Boomers

Day 1142 and Come See The Violence Inherent in The System

Day 1103 and Don’t Talk Yourself into Regression

Biohacking

Day 1409 and Red Lights

Day 1290 and Covid Experiment with Nicotine

Day 1168 and Inner Monologue & Meditation

Day 1114 and Zoomers Aging Faster

Day 1107 and Polar Vortex

Goods and Services

Day 1388 and Take Good Care

Day 1362 and Hilux Drip

Day 1342 and SKU Bloat ZIRP

Day 1289 and The Discontinued Pant

Day 1263 and Hoe-flation

Day 1228 and Cotton

Day 1123 and Zombie Media

Day 1118 and Becoming a Distrustful Shopper

Startups

Day 1376 and Q324 Investor Update

Day 1363 and Landfill Apps & 10xing Code

Day 1347 and Economic Paternalism

Day 1320 and Becoming “You-er”

Day 1296 and H1 Investor Update

Day 1251 and Other People’s Labor

Day 1245 and AI Tooling

Day 1230 and Alignment is Consensus

Day 1172 and Inference is Up

Day 1145 and Founder Vitality

Categories
Chronicle Travel

Day 1364 and Full Speed Ahead

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.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1327 and Circling

I feel like I’m going backwards with my daily project of writing every single day. Maybe backwards isn’t the right direction so much as in circling round into comfortable spaces. No one wants to find themselves floating in solipsism.

I’ve given myself a lot of flexibility in capturing a mood or a tidbit or a theme from the day and running with it. Interiority is a perfectly acceptable vantage for personal writing but I want to connect to a wider perspective with it.

But I don’t know if I’m progressing in any real direction with this experiment as of late.

I could be speaking from the August doldrums (it’s more August exhaustion as I’ve been working a lot). It’s possible I will have a streak of great essays just around the bend. But it’s safe to say that day isn’t today.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1233 and Heat

I have been enjoying the mild weather of May. I’ve not had any extremes which is a sort of pleasant surprise. Climate and weather intersect poorly too often these days.

I was explaining to a mutual how we’d settled on Montana to buy land and much of the calculation was about the pleasures of a cold, dry and mountainous climate. It’s sunny without much in the way of humidity which makes for enjoyable winters even when it gets cold.

I am not much of a fan of humidity. It hurts my joints and reminds me of my ankylosis. I’m much more prone to trouble with inflammation when it’s damp.

Whenever I encounter a coastal climate I struggle a bit. Others may love a riviera but I’ve never found one I liked. I’ve been to a reasonably diverse array from San Francisco to coastal Mediterranean and I can do without.

The weather is however about to change. Soon it will be the season of air conditioning. I’ll be going through Texas for a conference at the end of May. I’m not looking forward to the heat.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1218 and Start Stop

When you have to “make the most of something” you’ve already done some calculus of personal expectations. I know I will have try to pack as much into a trip to balance out the various costs of travel. It’s not always financial as time, emotions, and focus all have value in your life.

If you have too much variability across these costs or can be hard to justify against your personal expectations. I’ve been known to run as fast as I can once I’m in motion because I believe acceleration is more expensive than stasis. That’s not always true obviously as staying in the same place can be very expensive.

So when I stop-start through life I hope I’m not making the ride more uncomfortable simply because I can’t manage the fuel calculations. Being fueled to make the best of a situation means being prepared.

In other news, I didn’t eat lunch before I ran some errands and I regret it because everything always takes longer than you expect.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1200 and Nice Round Numbers

Even after twelve hundred days of writing every single day I still get great pleasure from seeing a nice round number when it comes around. I don’t have anything grand to say this far into the experiment except that it’s good to have consistent habits.

There is a category of the extremely online that subscribes to “nothing ever happens” but you find if you journal long enough that quite a bit happens all the time. It’s not so much that “it’s happening” but rather that life continues to find a way.

Things fall apart but so do they come together. The round numbers of consistency are m simply reminder to myself that taking action is what makes your life come together.

Categories
Aesthetics Chronicle Travel

Day 1138 and Novel New Experiences

I’ve been straining my capacity to absorb new experiences. The privilege of relative material security lets me do the work of actively seeking out more variance and novelty.

I was reading up on the basics of neuro plasticity on Perplexity and learned that we think of plasticity in a few ways. Neurogenesis is the growth of new neurons.

But the type we mostly mean when saying neuro plasticity (or learning new things) is from “synaptic cells plasticity” forming new neural connections.

Without that adaptability we couldn’t change in response to new environmental conditions or in response to injury or disease or other stresses.

I’m am inside a few new high variance experiences right now which I hope will yield new neural connections. I find it to be a bit stressful as it’s a lot of novel inputs in a short period of time.

Some experiences translate as shared reality which has the same rules anywhere there are humans. But adjusting to new social mores is always jarring.

I’ll only briefly mention it, but this is the first time I’ve been somewhere that the call to prayer is a normal prominent feature of daily life. It’s rewriting synaptic ritual time for me. I like it more than I would have imagined.