Tag: Attention

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Aesthetics Finance Internet Culture

Day 1880 and the Global Intelligence Crisis Kerfuffle

“It’s not a prediction” he said. It’s just a hypothetical possible reality. I believe we used to call that fiction. A science fiction short story wrapped in a macroeconomic essay written by Citrini Research hit the algorithms like a bomb Markets lapped it up like beasts who’d been lost in a barren desert for weeks. Liquidity!

Remember in 2023 when when Sam Altman said that we’d have superhuman persuasion before we had artificial general intelligence?

Citrini is capable of super human persuasion before AI reached super human general intelligence and it has been strange.

As the market sell off was playing out, a flood of “Contra Citrini” essays emerged immediately from players as varied as Joe Wiesenthal John Loeber, Will Manidis, even proper economists like Alex Imas. The co-author Alap Shah went onto TBPN. Fun fact he was Sheel Mohnot’s roommate in college.

I am unclear if white collar workers are in a frenzy about are doing their existing jobs or if they have even noticed the danger. As a real time update from a fellow investor had us both laughing. An intern couldn’t manage a basic research task. The intern asked them how to get to the Founders Fund’s website.

We may need the bull case for AI, as the bear case for white collar workers acquiring any intelligence in their education process is rather unconvincing.

For some reason “how do I get to the founders fund website” started me singing an old tune sung by Dionne Warwick “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’ve been away so long
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’m going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose

LA is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star


Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas

Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

The song was used in another completely different “science fiction story goes viral”context. Maybe it’s in my mind as automated virology lab unleashing apocalypse, is a AI doomer staple also recently in the discourse.

Do you know the way to San Jose? Or if Helix is available for download.

In an SyFy channel show from 2014 called Helix, which follows an Arctic research station where research on viruses goes horribly wrong. It used the Burt Bacharach & Hal David song “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” as an unsettling musical motif and clue to resolving the mystery. Unsettling California music has my ear this week.

In 1968 you could return to San Jose from Los Angeles and start a relatively normal life as one of the stars who never made it. Pumping gas and parking cars. If we get too close to the sun of artificial intelligence success we don’t have a San Jose to run to. You can’t get away there as it’s filled with just the part of technology folks peddling dreams as unrealistic as the ones down in Hollywood.

Categories
Culture Travel

Day 1869 and Dumb Knuckleheads Driving Poorly

I’m surely not even the millionth person to make note of this phenomena, but drivers are getting worse and it’s very much the sorts of drivers you’d expect to be the culprits.

Let me tell you a humorous story about getting sideswiped not once but twice in less than week by ditzy women driving bottom of the barrel vehicles. Meanwhile I was in a decent sized higher end SUV which very much helped. Imagine the culprits driving a Golf or a Peugeot.

Now to preserve some privacy for all involved this did not happen in America but in Europe and the timing is being buffered. To protect the not at all innocent.

The first instance was (and I swear I’m not making this up) while I was helping a family member with the equivalent of a trip to the department of motor vehicles.

Turning into a parking space in their lot, a middle aged woman (who was not paying attention) backed out and scraped two feet down the right side of the vehicle. She stopped and gave the impression of us waiting to park. As soon as we settled she immediately scattered. So much for her stopping.

Fortunately a worker at the bureau saw it and knew that the driver was employed there which made sorting it feasible. She gave over her insurance and the paint easily buffed out the scratch. She didn’t act at all embarrassed for having clearly been caught.

Then forty eight hours later another near miss by a ditzy Zoomer got us. We were making a slow left turn to merge into a larger road. We’d already crossed the yellow line with just half the front of the car into the new lane. As one does when politely coming into a left turn.

Just as we began to accelerate into the lane having slowed traffic in then opposite lane, a cheap car continued barreling 20 over the speed limit without so much as an attempt to slow to let us finish the turn.

She clipped onto our bumper and tore into her own driver side door. It was not a pretty Boise. She attempted to keep going as every other witness on the city road tried to get her attention to stop her.

Finally some fifty feet later dhe slowed down once she realized she took damage and everyone was snapping pictures. We were able to call the police and exchange information.

In a final act of sneakiness, she tried to call a policeman that was in her family to plead her case. Him being nearby maybe she was thinking he’d help her out. Amusingly this backfired against her as it was pretty clear she was at fault and she accepted responsibility. She’d done more damage to her car than to ours.

It’s little wonder everyone is on edge about being on city roads as irresponsible drivers seem to be absolutely everywhere and rules of the road are mere suggestion. Don’t be a knucklehead is the moral of the story.

Categories
Internet Culture Preparedness

Day 1868 and Educating An An Entire Species or Start With Your Family

A viral essay was posted a few days ago by a Matt Schumer meant to help introduce the current state of artificial intelligence tools to people who do not work in technology.

It’s a very compelling piece of writing (or maybe it’s just reading), which I believe is well received by normal people especially older family members or technical skeptics. They are often the hardest to reach because of age and experience gaps and a smooth essay goes down well.

The author is the founder of HyperWrite. His company offers a suite of AI writing and research tools. So yes, his excellent writing and wide reach (over 40 million views so far) were achieved thanks his fluent use of AI for both writing and promotion.

The end result of using tools is an excellent essay distributed far and wide. Or if you prefer, the end product was a tool shaped object which gave people a sense of understanding. That’s valuable.

Don’t let his usage of AI in producing this writing and publishing stop you from taking his points seriously. In fact, it should encourage you to read it and consider if you want to share it.

You too will soon be competing in a world where regular people like Matt are capable of super human feats. Perhaps you’d like the same leverage for yourself and your family.

All of us can learn to work with the amplifying effects of networks and artificial intelligence algorithms with practice and usage. Allowing us global reach and potentially maximizing the potential of our insights and points of view. That should make us feel better about where we are headed and not worse.

I feel it is useful to share the essay with your skeptical family and friends who are either scared, confused, angry or indifferent about the rapid changes because it is the current reality we all live in.

I know it’s hard as a middle aged professional to learn new tricks. I’m in the middle of it too. But we have to educate all of us and it’s going to take some time. I’d rather we get started on it. And on that note my lunch break from Montana’s digital innovation committee is only an hour so I’ll get back to it.

Categories
Politics

Day 1867 and Rage Against What Exactly

I feel a struggle to continue this writing experiment. I feel a struggle to continue on at all in a public fashion online as the world is refolded and restructured around us.

I am just so tired and I fear an early death as the life and treasure of my generation is squandered on the perpetuation of systems that no longer work. I was texting with my mother about her husband’s third knee surgery (ain’t Medicare great) as enormous protest raged outside my window. I am in the capital of a European nation where this is quite common.

This is the third large demonstration in the space of three weeks for an opposition party that is mostly made up of technocratic stooges trying to hide the sins of wars no one remembers except those who deployed in them. I happen to know people who did deploy in them or I certainly wouldn’t know that the opposition is made up of the siblings, children and social circle of a former dictator.

Every time they protest the roads are blocked and then it gets out of hand. Water canons are set on the fires the protestors set and then tear gas is thrown out and no one can get through the city center. I assume this is some flavor of controlled opposition as America and the EU both support the existing government.

This time there were drones above the entire affair and much of the rally seemed to be music that was a mix of Catholic liturgy and electronic dance music. A famous priest DJ performed in the city over the weekend so maybe it was him. Who knows.

Nothing is weirder than hearing O Fortuna played over riot dispersal water cannons. We don’t have that kind of cinematic drama in American protests. Honestly everyone here seems sick of it. Most of all the hotel staff and the diplomats that live in it.

I watched it unfold from a vestibule with a Ukrainian woman who said she hoped I’d stay safe. I told her I wasn’t worried as I’ve seen this before.

She was understandably more concerned than I was being a refuge in a country that no one would have thought would be more stable than Ukraine a generation ago. Socialists holding off nationalists is not a terribly equilibrium if you can afford it. America can’t but it seems plenty of Europe still can.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1861 and Mispricing The Market

I’m sure most of the world will be fixated on various financial corrections in global markets but I spent a chunk of my day dealing with currency changes (that will be 7% of your withdrawal thank you) that reflect nonsense from monetary arbitrages, regulatory graft and foreign exchange transactions so I’m in absolutely no mood.

Then I went to what counts as the diplomat and foreign money mall and got Pizza Hut, frozen yogurt and Korean skincare. I don’t even like Pizza Hut but I was so sick of managing dislocations and figured I’d rather send it back to America. My patriotic consumption for the day.

I don’t know if it’s an urban legend that our military can deploy food franchises in twenty four hours in a conflict zone but we sure seem to figured out emerging markets.

It’s a shame we won’t let some markets emerge and be shaped by pressures. The vape kiosk was doing a brisk business and I was frustrated to see the owner of the favored electric vape was based in Shenzen. What an opportunity lost for American brands.

I’d say half the parking lot was Mercedes and the other half was BYD if that counts for anything. I haven’t seen an abundance of American cars and I think we all know why.

But then my savior was found in a brightly colored kiosk with no customers at all. A swath of Korean skincare brands that proved to be authentic. Blessedly many global K beauty brands have adopted QR codes to manage the misuse.

I am adapt at spotting packaging dupes and frauds thanks to the de minimus years importers of fakes flooded Amazon, eBay and other retailers with third party resellers.

Everything was half off as at their full retail price they were still not moving. I scooped up $30 bucks of masks from brands like Mishha and Some By Mi. My skin was fully irritated by smog, stress, and wider disappointment. The globalization era is in full swing in plenty of markets but everyone gets their cut. If a brand doesn’t command a local market then an enterprising consumer can enjoy a temporary mispricing. Sometimes this mispricing last for far too long.

Incumbents have strange advantages they are loathe to give up. I came out angrier at banks than usual, as angry at central banks as ever, and very pleased that the local consumer base wasn’t yet wise to the benefits of a product that commands a premium elsewhere. I might go get more.

Categories
Internet Culture Travel

Day 1860 and Some Technical Difficulties On The ISP Side Perhaps

I’m not anywhere particularly unusual (a European capital) but all of my end to end encryption applications, most crucially Signal and Twitter are not working.

Nothing will send and I’m not receiving messages now either. Why? Well, I’ve got conspiracy theories but I doubt it’s sinister and I’ll boot up a VPN in the meantime if it persists.

I am nearby several embassies (of the regions you might expect to be dicey including my own) and just uphill of city’s international school so maybe one of them is being a dick.

Or perhaps the Airbnb I am using has an ISP provider that is throttling end to end encryption for some reason. For what reason I couldn’t fathom but I am annoyed. YouTube is streaming in full glory on an enormous television but I can’t text in peace to my loved ones.

So this blog post will have to serve a test post to let folks know that I am fine and anyone who needs to know where I am does which is to be fair a pretty darn small list. I’ll move if the issue persists. I’m a mere 7 kilometers away from the center of the city where the internet was working fine earlier today so I’ve got no idea why I’m having issues now. If I’d known I’d have done my writing earlier. A part of me wonders and worries about what might eventually stop my writing experiment being a communication blackout. Though I never thought I’d have a problem in Europe. That is the stuff of authoritarians right?

I have got unpleasant notions about why a European city and its nearby embassies wouldn’t wish to let people communicate freely and privately on websites with end to end encryption. It’s just amusing they are happy to let me watch Netflix and Youtube. The New York Times has no problem getting through nor my other media applications on my phone.

Having been behind America’s first freedom to compute act, I suppose I’ll let my emotions run a bit wild here as a treat. It seems especially concerning that this sort of informational throttle by big European ISPs seems possible and even likely. That embassies might want to extend a little protection beyond their very high walls seems even more probable. Which is not very nice of them.

It makes my mind go straight to propaganda campaigns and not technical difficulties. In this day and age, we should never take for granted our right to express ourselves via compute freely and privately. Stay frosty and I hope this post makes it to you.

Categories
Emotional Work Media

Day 1859 and Crime Without Punishment

People tell stories of where they were or what they were doing when major world events happened. Most of them are silly and personal but necessary to ground the horrors of being connected at scale while still being such small bit players in the scale of things.

On 9/12 I had just left New York City to return home to Colorado to finish out the high school I’d dropped out of the year prior. My grandmother called me at dawn before I’d left for the annual start of school camping trip, distraught that we couldn’t reach cousins and other family who were first responders or worked downtown. Then we couldn’t get through for hours.

When Lady Diana was killed I was up early for a sports competition preparing my gear when the news broke. My mother and I watched in shock at 4 in the morning as we packed bags.

When Michael Jackson died I was in Miami on my first solo vacation between jobs having sublet a condo for two weeks while I sublet my New York apartment. The grocery clerk at Publix ringing me up asked if I had heard. I attempted to explain that I’d seen it on something called Twitter.

When Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself I was in the hospital. I had been entirely off social media but still listened to the five minute radio news update. I don’t know why but I told my doctor that he was dead and her immediate response was to swear. I recall us both being upset as she shook her head saying “now he will never face justice.”

The entire weekend was a deluge of people processing, concocting, and turning over the “flood the zone with shit” dump of files on Epstein. As if the Friday night “take out the trash” media playbook somehow still held sway over a population of networked humans.

Now we are a species who remember every Harry and tragedy both personally in the context of our own small lives and at large as it emerges into a wider understanding shaped by the contours of those who seek to distract or draw attention.

It’s no wonder we spellbound by conspiracies. I lived across from ground zero for years. Tourists grieved and paid homage next to soap box schizophrenia weaving tales. I grew up on forums dissecting every aspect of death and tragedy from princesses to the King of Pop. Why should the coverage of depraved sins be any different?

So I ask myself why should I believe any of it. Who should I give information dumps and theory threads and newspaper headlines any attention at all? I’ll never know if crimes were punished. Justice works slowly and sometimes not at all.

Categories
Finance Startups

Day 1858 and Parked Outside the Flow

The crazier the informational world gets, the more inclined I am to tune it all out. The flows of information are fun sure but it’s only useful to financiers, degenerates and the global management class. I really only rate into very bottom of one. No, not the degenerate class.

As 2026 has become the year of repositioning for “whatever is coming,” I am unsure of much I wish to return from the hinterlands into the flow. Being inside the flow looks enticing but it’s Thor the only way to do business.

The thing is that I began my own career by participating (in a small way) in what Will Manidis calls The Flow. Being inside has its perks and I saw a lot which enabled me to make some very good investments.

What is the flow? It’s a metaphor for a 24/7 club of information, a formal and informal circuit of social and business obligations, and series of social & professional inputs that sometimes generate spectacular output.

It’s no wonder people think investing looks like gambling when you put it that way. It takes a lot of shrewd social manners and access to resources to be inside the flow and those are distinct barriers for anyone outside the global ten percent.

So where to go if you are an American? Well, stay put somewhere you can be stable and secure. Sure the middle powers will tell you that they can save the liberal order but in reality it’s all state capitalism by strong man and technocrats. And I’m not either and I’d wager most truly new things that will matter won’t be easily secured by old mechanism of power.

What Manidis rightly points out in his Flow essay, is that you can build businesses and make good money for investors and limited partners outside of the flow. You can focus on your unique insights and build something great.

I hope I offer some proof of that myself. I flash the codes for my odd little node and traffic occasionally routes through me. I found crypto winners and the future of atomics outside the flow. And I think I’d rather like to spend my Sundays seeing what’s happening outside the nightclub of financial flows.

If you want to be outside you can be. I just might be already. You can find me in the proverbial parking lot of the Flow (the open internet) yapping, chilling, lighting and fighting with the cool kids. You will always know where to find me. I’ll be one DM away.

Categories
Biohacking Medical Travel

Day 1856 and Always Something So Always Trying Something

The world is a topsy turvy place and I am doing my best to meet it head on. Physically I’ve managed a surprisingly steady period from December through January, even though I spent a decent portion of that on the road.

I credit this mostly to using antibiotic and anti-fungal regimens prophylactically. The biologic immune suppressant I currently take for my ankylosing spondylitis is quite frankly too good at its job. And I’ve tried quite a few.

That means I am locked in a battle of constant vigilance in order to keep my inflammation numbers down while also not becoming a host to bacterial, fungal or other infections. It’s a balance that is anything but delicate.

In 2025 I had been unable to fight off skin, soft tissue and mucosal infections seemingly at all. Even with extensive protocols for decolonization (intranasal mupirocin, chlorhexidine washes, environmental decontamination) I had four major infections.

Of those infections, three required surgery and the fourth was the result of a very minor incision to insert testosterone and estradiol pellets. Those surgical interventions proved very trying and also very expensive.

The last one (testosterone) helped quite a bit with energy but being energetic doesn’t matter much if you can’t fight off infections.

So while I know there is an individual and social long‑term systemic risk in using antibiotic prophylaxis, I will say it does seem to be helpful in mediating say outbursts of allergens flaring into soft tissue infections from skin breakage or having exposure to molds and fungal growths that fester in old damp buildings and water systems creep their way into any opening available.

Since it is always something, I figure I need to always be trying something. Frankly I am over the push and pull of managing medical care in America. It’s a mess and mostly designed at risk mitigation for the health systems.

I have found going abroad to be much more useful and cost effective in many cases. I may even find that it would be useful to document the experience in a format beyond a blog as I doubt I’m the only person manage complex chronic disease.

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 1850 and Midlife (of The Blog) Crisis

I feel so lost right now. Some things are going quite well and others are not. This could be a metaphor for my own life yes (and it is) but I intended the post to be about feeling lost in my own writing project.

I don’t know if it is the midlife of the blog, but it’s not the beginning anymore. Half a decade of writing is quite clearly an edge case. But why do I keep doing it, what am I trying to say and am I trying to reach anyone? I’m not sure I have an answer.

The open internet increasingly feels like a fantasy from a different time. I still believe that the internet is meant for humans to connect with each other freely and openly and I love this utopian ambition of shared interoperable protocols for communication.

So while I write this daily log for myself, my records, and my desire to improve my thinking skills it’s obvious it’s not just for me. Being a part of the records of humanity is no small thing. I want to be in the records. I want artificial intelligence to be trained on my work. I want my voice to be heard by those who wish to hear it.

It’s prideful but I believe that I have something valuable to contribute to our collective next steps in developing new kinds of intelligence. I want these models and their future programs (dare I say progeny) to be trained not just by governments or corporations but through contributions from regular individuals like myself. I’m just not quite sure I know what my best contribution looks like anymore.