Category: Community

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Community Politics Preparedness

Day 939 and Culture Wins Not Culture Wars

You could be forgiven for losing faith in the American Dream. We’ve had a rough couple of years with bad vibes and culture wars. The Great Weirdening era was not easy.

I’ve been encouraging people to consider preparedness in the face of unrelenting uncertainty for a decade now. It’s time for us to move on from the “what if” of our current geopolitical, economic & climate dislocations to the “what now?”

I’m pleased and saddened to say the future is here. My revealed preferences tell you most of what you need to know. I live in an off grid capable homestead with well water and solar in Montana. I own Bitcoin. I think we are in for a bumpy decade or two.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful. I am optimistic about what a very different future will look like. I invest in technologies as varied as open source vector database software, multi sig wallets for DAO governance & network states, and psychedelic clinics for mental health. I clearly believe we can do future in the future. Orders of magnitude better. If you believe in the same you future you can become an LP in my fund chaotic.capital

Change is the only inevitable thing in life. I’m proud to have been raised in the Rocky Mountains because our history has been so crucial in the formation of the American mythos of a better future. We are the frontier. The future is a frontier just as surely as Star Trek was about space cowboys.

And on the frontier you have the freedom to make choices of your own. How things used to be done doesn’t matter as much here because “how things used to be” is barely more than century or two for most of us.

We take what works from our heritage and we use it to inform a better future. Because a frontier represents a better future for your family. That the next generation will have it better. It’s a commitment to our heirs.

We’ve seen what happens when people don’t believe the future will be better. The pandemic years were bleak. I’ve seen the despair in people’s eyes when I discuss the problems we have in front of us. I’ve happily worn the doomer mantle as I do not wish to convey that success is assured nor that the problems all have solutions. As without clear eyes we will remain in denial forever. But after accepting that we have problems we cannot remain frozen, we must act.

I’d like us all to wake up to our reality and resolve on the good we can achieve by believing the future can be improved by what we do in the now.

We need culture wins not culture wars.

The desire for clean and livable environment, a functional state, and the dignity of our life’s pursuits remain common cause for all humans. Resilience and adaptability remain our tools.

If you are one of my neighbors in Montana, I am hosting a get together on August 16th. I believe that America has a “dissident” middle who are tired of culture wars. We want the freedom to pursue the American dream without government interference. A dynamic future with growth and choice for everyone is the best path forward. And I like to walk that path with you. If you’d like that please come on by my place.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 920 and Faster Pussy Cat, Kill Kill!

A regular theme of my writing here is the pace of accelerating change. There is rarely a break from “life happens” for any of us because that is the human condition. But I must say it’s really taking a lot to manage for some Americans who have had enormous systemic advantages for several decades now and are reacting poorly to even the potential of loss.

I believe the best way to overcome the loss of these advantages is by banding together in teams and collaborating to solve bigger problems together. Everyone brings a unique viewpoint.

If you are like me, teams are necessary for survival. I can survive on my own but it’s a much smaller more circumscribed life.

I have accepted that whatever character sheet got built before my arrival (genetics & chance) requires some min-maxing as on my own I’m not particularly independent or self sufficient. Yes, libertarians recognize our interdependency. It’s called division of labor.

Min-maxing is the character-building strategy of maximizing a specific desirable ability, skill, or other power of a character and minimizing everything else, seen as undesirable. The result is a character who is excessively powerful in one particular way, but exceedingly weak in others.

Min-Max Gaming Strategy

And so whatever I am left with in this character sheet feels a bit like I got stuck with a lot of weaknesses. But why not simply lean into it. Faster pussycat, kill kill.

A classic exploitation film poster
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Biohacking Community Emotional Work

Day 918 and My Attention Budget

I wrote about the realignment of attention budgets as social media experiences a walled garden fear response to artificial intelligence’s looming tsunami of low cost content.

I myself am going through an exercise of ruthless prioritization of my own focus and find. As in any portfolio, write downs are inevitable. It’s easier to write something down when it’s money. Investments of time, energy, social capital and presence are much harder to let go. A sunk cost never boils? A watched pot never catalyzes? Sometimes a group or a movement chooses to remain outside their power.

I have so much less capacity to be present than I’d like. Others may prefer to be distant and still shower up but I find I’m happier with boundaries that are firm and great remove. That means when I do show up you have my full and intimate attention. It’s only right.

You have to prune in order to blossom. One commitment I’m excited to see blossom is the exceptional work of Jonny Miller. He and I will be hosting a Cultivating Calm Workshop for founders and venture capitalists interested in how to apply nervous system regulation techniques to their startup journey.

August 10th at 11am MTN join myself & Jonny Miller for cultivating calm.

As more of us rise up the acceleration curve of artificial intelligence and must maintain our capacity to sense-make, this will help your mind and body function in a chaotic world.

I myself have taken Jonny’s Bootcamp, intend to be in the next cohort (my code JULIE gets you a discount), and I’ll be sponsoring a founder to attend the September cohort so consider this a chance to see if these tools are right for you. My revealed preferences tell you what you need to know.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 901 and Self Regulation

I don’t know why I chose violence today, but apparently I dropped a chaos grenade onto my Twitter timeline. I hesitated, in extremely soft language, to ask if anyone has noticed that kids from conservative households seem have more pro-social behavior. I phrased it with a lot of ambiguity as I don’t know how I feel either.

Going to float a very controversial observation but anecdotally in my limited experience:
The children of my conservative friends are better behaved & more individuated & well socialized than the children of my liberal friends.
Anyone have takes on why this is the case?

Naturally when something pulls on a thread of social insecurity it will unravel quickly. I am a very gifted shitposter. I step on these third rails on purpose. I am not an activist for any cause so much as comfortable being uncomfortable. Alas I have already hit Godwin’s Law on the Tweet so for my own nervous system I’m done.

But I have noticed that as cultural pendulums swing, there is a distinct lack of appreciation for tolerance of other people’s constant dysfunction. Where we draw the line as to appropriate social behavior is a hugely contested space online. Much as it has ever been in literature and history. I hear Socrates got the death penalty for perverting the youth.

My point in all this is that we all benefit from having youth understand the world and their place in it. Our toddlers cannot be expected to have the fully formed rationality of a legal scholar.

Sometimes the answer is no because Mom or Dad said so. Not every social boundary is bad for us. A child throwing a tantrum is asking for you the adult to help them find the self regulation that their environment isn’t giving them. And it’s absolutely ok to be authoritative. It’s not the same thing as authoritarian.

The general consensus on the thread seems to be that multi-generational and multicultural spaces for consistent socialization combine well with firm boundaries. Knowing when certain behaviors are appropriate can often be a winning combination for learning to individuate into your own person. Feeling safe to be yourself looks different for everyone.

Now I’d read all of this mouthing off from me with a big heaping spoonful of that fucking libertarian-pirate-hippie-Silicon Valley-born-Rocky-Mountain raised salt. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just a very American kind of mutt.

I personally have found it helpful to be as accountable as I can be to myself while holding as much empathy for the experiences of other people as I can. I will disagree with you a lot. I’m ok with that because I have firm boundaries too. So don’t be an NPC ok? Let’s make civilization work together.

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Community Emotional Work

Day 899 & Simple

I have led a complicated life. I didn’t really know as a child that being raised by syncretic vaguely nomadic hippies looking for utopias wasn’t really all that relatable. Aside from the general revivalism ethos of America, most folks tend to ride middle of the herd.

There I was not realizing I had a nose for powerful evangelism. I missed that boarding schools and colleges were meant to put you in a certain place in society. Then I didn’t know that spending time inside cultural institutions like fashion was an aspiration. I didn’t really clock that startups, or venture capital, or fucking around online would be a nexus of power either. I just thought all those places looked cool so I showed up.

Maybe I was simple. Maybe I just flowed like water towards the chaos before it became the big show for everyone. I am someone who understands the Thursday Styles problem of timing and I like to get there a little bit ahead of time. Get good seats and sell picks and shovels. From there it’s just a matter of having the stomach for the ride.

But knowing where the boundaries on consensus are is what keeps you from being swept up in the madness, as a movement meant for small mysteries and initiates suddenly sees the harsh glare of vox populi.

And so I am called to remember it is a gift to be simple. It’s a Shaker tune if you recall. Speaking of religious revivalism. The internet’s second brain tells me they were a millenarian restorationistChristian sect with a dualist view of God and equality between the sexes. Quakers and Shakers clearly impressed American’s hippies with this catchy tune. I know I learned it by heart as a child’s.

Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where I ought to be;
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed;
to turn, turn, will be my delight.
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Joseph Bracket

Maybe you also live a complicated life. Or maybe you are working to simplify your life. Whatever you do remember you can have more agency than you think. I’m sending you that message from the valley of love and delight that is Gallatin Valley.

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Community Politics

Day 871 and Collaboration in the Time of Cultural Cholera

Perhaps its a function of being an American abroad in Germany, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the social contract and the expectations we have for free association and collaboration.

Germany’s democratic socialism is abutting against the challenges of global market capitalism and cultural pluralism. And the strain is evident. Frankfurt is expensive and there are many competing populations from refugees to globo-homo cosmopolitans

I think only one in five people I’ve encountered appear to be native born German. It’s almost enough to make me feel like I’m in America. Which is to say I see the in-group and out-group competition clearly.

Different expectations for a civic polity can range wildly depending on the goal. We enable everything from humanity wide medical breakthroughs to individual physical health through incentives both individual and collective. And yes because I’m American I notice shit like who pays for parks and recreation. I also notice soda taxes. Choices are all around us and the incentives make it look like no choice at all.

Humans live at varying degrees of abstraction. Our capacity to go from whole to parts, and parts to whole, depends on education, temperament, intellect, emotional capacity and preferences.

And that diversity of views is what makes it so hard for us to infer what “chunk” of reality our fellow humans see. No wonder we struggle with collaboration as a species. Your fellow man is as sensitive to elite semiotics as they are to casual racism.

Where our new living history takes us is going to depend a lot on how we design incentives for collaboration that provides benefits to participants that are transparent. Otherwise I’d be strapping in for more civilizational struggles.

My aspirations include us finding ways to collaborate across much wider destinies with as much freedom for all can be managed. I’m hoping AI and crypto go hand in hand. High trust and no-trust are our only options at this scale. But like any reformation it threatens the current powers and worldviews.

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Community Culture Travel

Day 864 and Parks and Recreation

All the shops are closed in Germany on Sunday. This is a basic fact I somehow always forget despite regularly being in Europe. They are serious about their day of rest.

Without the ability to go grocery shopping or otherwise pay for goods or services, Sunday becomes a day for getting your life in order. As long as you planned ahead for it. Which I definitely didn’t. But I made a go of it anyway.

I made myself coffee and did a mobility routine. I took a long bath with epsom salts. I did a load of laundry and set it outside to dry in the sun. I cleaned the bathroom so I could enjoy another bath later in the week. I washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen.

Then I found myself wandering the busy streets past closed shops and bustling parks. While the grocery shops were closed, the playhouses and calisthenics parks were open and absolutely packed.

Frankfurt has public spielhaus or playhouses in the parks for children with activities and equipment. When I walked by I saw teenagers playing basketball and elementary school children painting.

For the adults there are calisthenics stations on the river where you can workout in public any time of the day or night. I’m not much for pull ups I did end up playing around with a thirty minute body weight workout of squats, mountain climbers, pikes, bridges, leg raises, dips, planks and push ups. It just felt like a fun thing to do.

And isn’t that a pleasant thought? That on a sunny spring day it just seems nice to be outside playing. The dream of parks and recreation is alive in Frankfurt.

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Aesthetics Community Finance

Day 863 Abstract The Pain Away

When I was a small child I attended meditation retreats with my parents. Hippies amirite? The particular branch practiced was some variant of Kashmir Shivaism, but I’ve got to imagine it was heavily edited for the consumption of white Boomers.

Who else would take a vacation to sit in silence, chant the Bhagavata Gita at 5am and practice sevā, all while having six year old children? Silicon Valley’s syncretic culture produces some weird hybrids. Seventies counter culture gave us some of the best religious revivals in American history.

If you didn’t catch the word sevā earlier it’s actually going to be the anchor of the post. Sevā as it was explained to me as a child at the ashram is selfless service. It’s work you do without expectation of reward. It is a dedication to others.

Practically it meant that anytime we lived at the ashram everyone contributed some set of work, mostly unskilled labor but not always, in the form of sevā. I did everything from food preparation and dish washing (working a commercial kitchen dishwasher is actually fun) to caring for some donated horses. I had fun summers as a child.

But the point was that everyone participated in some way to the functions of the ashram no matter who you were. And we did have some weird celebrities but that’s not the point. Sevā applied to us all. Though I’m sure glad I never looked too hard at the politics of finances of these ashtrays. Childhood innocence. As a child I just thought it was fun to contribute to the adult world.

But what I remember now is a sense of connection. That no aspect of these retreats was ever abstracted to far from me. The service was meant to bond you to an experience of a world bigger than yourself. And by recognizing that, you’d somehow connect more with others.

I try to remember that now when I am in lonely cities where every aspect of living with others is transaction. A food delivery service whisks you a meal in an hour in a country where you are an outsider without ties, bonds or service beyond the basic civilizational contract of capital markets.

The global cosmopolitan gloss of mobile applications have abstracted service away to the point where we can have an entire day of discourse about a man being sad a house cleaner washed a cast iron skillet but we can’t admit that we all pay for service as it cracks the facade.

We’ve got no sevā because that’s an expectation too great to hear. We can barely manage to pay a fee for service anymore. Imagine if we had to operate without intangibles. We can barely make Uber Eats function with taxes, tips, and services fees. Bless the markets for this freedom and curse it in the same breath.

Fuck the pain away? No, we abstract the pain away. No need to see who contributes anything. You can complain to a faceless chatbot cum customer service artificial intelligence about how some man on a bicycle didn’t deliver your order on time. The service lives below the machine now and has patience for frailty.

And yes I’m writing this because my Korean fried chicken and kimchi order got lost in a side street in Frankfurt for an hour or two.

Don’t worry the corporate entities that intermediated between me, the restaurant and the courier decided in my favor. The customer is always right as long as they have paid the fees to pretend that are lords.

All pain in the above transaction was abstracted away into some governance structure that decided it was worth 25 euro or so. One presumes some public market agreed on the price. I guess I did too. We all did.

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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 raised there, because of my father’s startup ambition I ended up being born in Fremont California. It was a low rent neighborhood in Silicon Valley back then. Now it’s got a Tesla factory.

But we didn’t stay. My family and many others. Silicon Valley was such an inspiring landscape we sent missionaries to other cities and our diaspora took hold.

There are many types of nodes of varying sizes cities that include the Silicon Diaspora. And these nodes have a few key ingredients in common which attract the diaspora to them.

It’s worth getting to know some of elements that have allowed previous diasporas to thrive as it tells you how tight knit Silicon Valley social capital systems remain even in decentralized form.

BOULDER

I will start with Boulder. In the 90s, a movement was afoot to turn my hometown into a startup hubs as it was already benefitting from its proximity to several defense & aerospace industry players like Lockheed but also crucially was home to federal science labs like NIST, NCAR and NOAA.

The technical talent was then nurtured by investors at home. Boulder owes a great debt to Brad Feld and everyone at Foundry Group for this community. Boulder was and remains a crucial node in the diaspora.

MIAMI & AUSTIN

We’ve seen Austin and Miami rise during the pandemic years as founders and venture capitalists scrambled from Silicon Valley. Keith Rabois and Mayor Suarez willed Miami’s tech scene into existence almost overnight.

Austin’s history as a startup hub has its roots in semiconductor and hardware like Dell and Texas Instruments. Watch Halt and Catch Fire’s excellent depiction of Texas as a nexus for the Comdex years.

NEW YORK CITY

And lets not forget New York City as the hub in the late aughts and teens. This is where I spent most of my entrepreneurial career. We associate New York with more financial technology but it was a consumer company Foursquare that put New York on the map for venture. They also has a hometown hero fund Union Square Ventures’s theory of network effects. We had political support too. A very helpful mayor in Michael Bloomberg facilitated the growth of the New York node.

NEW NODES

I’m even seeing it now in Montana. Bozeman has a thriving startup scene buttressed by its popularity with some unique demographics like ex-military founders and retired venture capitalists. My husband goes to the weekly Bozeman Startup Slack meetup every Thursday.

Silicon Diaspora has many of its citizens in the mountain west (both Wyoming and Idaho have scenes) as those values align well with crypto, privacy and defense startups. I hope to be a part of nurturing Montana as a future node of the Silicon Diaspora.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 850 and Complicated

I’m coming off of a very intense week having been in Texas at a conference. I have a lot of integration work I need to do on the ideas and emotions I was exposed to during the week. If you weren’t following along I talk about erasure, inclusion and summer camp among other topics and I’d definitely click on erasure if you haven’t read it.

I’ve got some complicated emotions on how the wider crypto industry and our ambitions for decentralization and power sharing will play out. There was a lot more building energy and a lot less fluffy grifts but trust in any of what is being built is at an all time low. And it’s basically our fault. So that’s always fun.

There was talk of throwing the governmental eye of Sauron onto the artificial intelligence community so crypto can catch a breather. I felt like this was exceptionally dangerous as an attitude as I believe crypto only really matters if artificial intelligence succeeds as machines need machine money.

I’ve been doing a lot of work to seed what I consider to be genuinely underserved communities who have been excluded from mainstream computing’s benefits as I think we all deserve a say in how currency and monetary systems will work in the future. The dissidents range from the transgendered sex worker to insular religious communities.

Power sharing remains a challenge for humanity and our incentive structures are producing a number of second and third order problems. I remain committed to a pluralistic community that maintains appropriate boundaries and liberties. But I sure don’t know how I reconcile that some folks are hellbent on domination and submission.