Categories
Politics

Day 801 and Not Today

It’s been a rocky few days watching the crisis unfolding around Silicon Valley Bank and what would happen to its depositors. We’ve received our answer. After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution […]

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Finance Politics Preparedness

Day 800 and Small Potatoes

It’s nice when a round number crops up in my daily journey of writing every single day. It’s even better when it’s colliding with the wider narratives of humans. If you aren’t paying attention to the news, Silicon Valley bank had a run on Thursday and was taken over by FDIC on Friday. Now the […]

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Politics Preparedness Startups

Day 799 and Black Friday

I suppose it’s now quite clear why I felt like I was driving through a snowblind yesterday. For someone who spent the year telling everyone to watch Margin Call you’d think I’d be pretty prepared for the inevitability of pricing affecting risk. I am, of course, discussing the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. We’d discussed […]

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 750 and Interstitial

If you have ever stayed in an airport hotel or a particularly standardized corporate hotel, you’ve encountered the grand global homogeneity of acceptable hospitality. This aesthetic owes a debt to Silicon Valley and the way we’ve sanded off peculiar edges and smoothed over individual characters to make the real world’s brand book as consistent as […]

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Biohacking

Day 734 and Personal Maintenance

The culture of planned obsolescence in Silicon Valley is a pernicious mentality. A policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials If you’ve ever bought an Apple product you are familiar […]

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Internet Culture

Day 709 and Stan Armies

I think I might be living and participating in corporate and cultural warfare. Which is the most cyperpunk dystopian thing I can imagine. Which automatically makes it a little bit cool. But I really do think we are being drafted as a stan army of useful idiots in the culture war that has hijacked the […]

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Aesthetics

Day 705 and Impressed

I haven’t bought a new handbag for nearly a decade. While I like fashion I have never been a hardcore accessories person. One generally been of the mind that those are anchor pieces that you keep for years and years. I didn’t see much point in acquiring trends as it just seemed so expensive. I […]

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Emotional Work Finance

Day 680 and History Repeating

I found myself crying my eyes out to my therapist this morning. Just full on sobbing. Nothing bad actually even happened to me during this week’s chaos. In fact, I’ve spent the last year or so preparing Alex and I for a downturn. I wouldn’t be much of a doomer if I didn’t swing into […]

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Finance Internet Culture

Day 654 and Inappropriate Language

As much as I love to joke about getting cancelled on Twitter, I’ve never actually worried about getting dinged. I resisted getting a Blue Check and otherwise pursuing the trappings of being a power user as I was confident that my real world connections would overcome any algorithmic nonsense. Digital power still resides on a […]

Categories
Startups

Day 398 and Experienced

I spent a part of my day gossiping with a friend of mine who is from the same cofounder cohort as I am. We’ve got a lot of common interests beyond having both been founders at the same time and I won’t list them as I don’t want to give them any hassle. But the […]