Tag: Class

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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 powers that be decide our fates. On day 800 we wait to see if anything has changed about capitalism.

I’m small potatoes so I’m scrambling for survival as much as anyone. But I’ve got a reasonably good head on me and I’ve seen this movie before. Literally. I watched Margin Call a dozen times this year. My family also went bankrupt in the 2001 crash and I was working in startup land during the 2008 crash. So this isn’t exactly my first ride on the roller coaster. I still get sick to my stomach though.

I think we are all about to have a significant conversation in America about trust and who is looking out for whom. I have my theories on how it plays out and over what time horizon. Very few of those scenarios and involves actually letting the american economy implode. But some heads will need to roll it’s just going to depend on the fates.

I really don’t feel like writing through some of this as it’s both personally traumatic because I’m a human being but also because I don’t know where this lands any more than you do. A lot depends on who blinks and who we want to scapegoat and how much we want to tolerate the unpleasant realities of who matters most. Not to be dramatic but every empire rests on a pile of skulls. It’s the degree to which this is literally true that changes over the years.

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Culture Internet Culture

Day 794 and Willful Ignorace

I had a little burst of energy this morning that I decided to use being indignant on the internet. It’s usually a hobby that I find energizing. I realize this makes me kind of asshole but who amongst us hasn’t enjoyed the occasional outburst of righteous indignation.

Perhaps it’s a sign of me getting old but I absolutely letting rip on someone for being stupid. I think the internet is sadly a real pressure release for society as we’ve got fewer and fewer spaces in which it’s appropriate to be even modestly rude to the willfully ignorant. So now you’ve got the occasional Battle Royale on Twitter.

It’s probably it not as effective as throwing a punch but maybe still helps cover up some of the pain of an atomized society. Like a Tylenol over a bone break, it’s only dulling the pain a little. But sorry we’ve decided that oxycodone is too dangerous because we’ve got a nanny state of neoliberals and no one is allowed to do anything dangerous anymore. So now you get Tylenol and Advil and you can tell at someone on the internet.

I got annoyed because some commenter called me casually racist. Which isn’t to say that I’m not racist. Everyone is a little bit racist. But in the instance she was insinuating something that required a gross misreading of my original text.

I’d said it is easier to perform the skill set of being pretty if you are rich and white. This is apparently now racist. Except you dumb ignorant midwit I actually read my critical theory texts. Let me give you a tasting. Go read some fucking Foucault you absolutely lazy slob. Read a good damn book.

I am saying that [pretty is a skill set] because of the racism of our classist, not fully decolonized, system of oppression, it makes it much easier for white cis female faces to be classed and coded as pretty. This is a function of how distorted “pretty” as a concept is, as it’s simply a set of skills we perform to adhere to an ever shifting set of conditional whiteness over layers of financial and social inequality. It’s a fairly basic gatekeeping of the female body to keep the standards of the white colonial bodies.

Me

Look I read the texts. I believe that this is actually happening. But you cannot go throwing shit around being stupid when the actual power wants you to be blind to it. Read a god damn book children. People been fighting longer than you’ve been alive and woke.

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Aesthetics

Day 793 and Pretty Skills

My mother has always had a gift for aphorisms. I am grateful she has this talent as I’ve been able to simply repackage her wisdom and look much more talented than I actually am at delivering pull quotes. Brevity is the soul of wit and my mother is very witty.

One of the pithy witticisms I believe I learned from her is a classic take on beauty and class being more fungible than we are led to believe.

Pretty is a skill set

Me and/or my mother

If you’ve ever hung out with a bunch of rich girls and wondered why they are all hot consider the dilemma solved. It’s a skill that is cultivated. Like any skill you cultivate or with time but also money. And if you are rich and white the path to beauty is a lot shorter than you might realize. It’s pretty fucked.

I’ve been lucky enough to cultivate this skill set over time. I’ve come to rely on it as part of my arsenal. But I’ve also got a bit of a cranky body so I’ve not always been able to consistently practice the various skills required.

And sometimes life just gets in the way. I look like a fucking mess today. After a week cooped up in an air conditioned room in Mexico with trips outside for slightly traumatic family emotional bonding, I look like shit.

My hair is unsettled and popping off static electricity. I’ve got small pimples all across my forehead. I’ve got patches of eczema on my right chin. I do not appear to have the skill set for pretty today.

Normally I do my best to hide in these circumstances. Especially if I don’t trust someone. I don’t like looking like I lack skill when it comes to presentation. And it is often a sign of respect to look well groomed and beautiful.

In fact, today we’ve got a houseguest that normally I’d feel required to be at full skill set capacity around. And I just didn’t feel like it was necessary. And that’s a skill set worth cultivating too.

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 787 and Feeling Rich

I accidentally shattered the glass on a social phenomenon that my husband hadn’t consciously noticed till I brought it up. There is a fondness among rich white wealthy countries for taking vacations in places where they feel richer. It’s not good enough to be middle class in a wealthy country, the goal is feeling wealthier in a poorer one.

The British have Thailand, the Americans have Mexico, and apparently the Germans have Mallorca but you could probably spend half an hour naming places in which first world white populations like to go on vacation to feel richer than they actually are in their home country.

It’s just particularly acute with Americans, especially our Boomer class elders. The American middle class loves to feel rich. And we are rich comparatively. We are in the global 10% every last one of us. The poorest American is almost astonishingly better off.

It’s a part of the God given inherent manifest destiny of our mythos that all Americans are rich and it checks out when you compare us to other economies. But what happens when you don’t feel rich at home?

Apparently you go abroad because being rich and living in luxury aren’t the same thing. Plenty of Americans don’t feel rich. It’s a source of intense insecurity and much of our national politics reflects the desire of Americans wanting “being rich” to mean living in luxury in comparison to someone else.

I don’t fully understand it or even like it but I’m experiencing it in Mexico right now and it’s not an entirely comfortable existential experience.

Categories
Chronic Disease Travel

Day 786 and Snow Birds

I woke up at 5am this morning to begin my journey from Bozeman to Puerto Vallarta. My father’s 80th birthday celebration is taking place in the appropriately warm tropical conditions so favored by retired snow birds. And it’s his party so he gets to chose his favorite location for us to gather to celebrate him.

Both my father and I live in Montana, but he tends to prefer travel more than me by a wide margin. I travel mostly for work and family obligations. I don’t find travel to be fun or an enjoyable luxury. Vacations aren’t my thing. Especially when it involves travel to somewhere hot. I would have been happy to celebrate in the -20 in Glacier personally.

Most of dislike of travel comes down to not caring for hot weather because of how much it hurts my body. It makes my spine swell. Humidity and heat are my enemy. I live in Montana partially for health reasons as anything above about 75 kicks in some of my inflammation issues.

Add in the additional strain on the spine of sitting in uncomfortable seats for hours and I’m currently struggling mightily not to wail uncontrollably from the pain. I desperately want to lay flat to ease some of the tension that has built up from needing to hold my body still and upright in uncomfortable airplane seats. I don’t want anyone to see that I’m barely holding back tears because the pain is so bad.

Alex got tisked by the flight attendant for trying to retrieve some of medication as we’ve got one of those useless bulkhead seats. It’s a terrible choice for even a modest disability as all the things that keep me functional in my travel bag were immediately whisked into overhead compartments. We didn’t do it fast enough and the attendant hovered asking that we hurry it up.

I haven’t done short haul flights in a while as most of my travel has been flat lay seats on international overnights. I wasn’t prepared for how much sitting up in a tight domestic airline seat would hurt. All I want to do is lay flat on a bed for 24 hours after this.

I’m on an airplane packed to the gills with Lily Pulitzer knock off wearing Boomer blondes and their salmon shirt wearing deeply tanned husbands. They all seem cheerful and excited to be headed to Mexico. Snowbirds are a colorful species. An exotic and hopefully endangered species that will eventually give way to more local and regional appreciation as the next generation of travelers pursues less Jimmy Buffet stylings.

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Homesteading Politics Preparedness Uncategorized

Day 783 and The Alliance

Yesterday was a bit of a busy day for me. A splashy wandering “state of culture in America” piece in a glossy cultural firmament like Vanity Fair is the ultimate validation of one’s thesis. I am taking a little bit of a bow on it. I’ve been on about this chaotic future and here are my receipts.

And it’s potentially a good thing that so many people are seeing the alignment that a muddy middle ground of chaos means “the rest of us” have to get on with building whatever the chaotic future looks like. We’ve got families, jobs, and health problems. Life goes on even during times of contested authority. Honestly it’s usually where fortunes are made.

Because it’s a surprisingly large cultural alliance. It has a key truly America things in common. That thing? It’s the most American a shared value as I can imagine. We believe the frontier can be tamed and that civilization is a good thing. Americans have always had a pragmatic streak to them thanks to our Protestant work ethic fetish.

“Preppers, techies, hippies, and yuppies are converging on the American West, the safest place to “exit” a society gone haywire.”

The Dissident Fringe

Because look, nobody asked for a million stupid cultural schisms and endless battles over basic human rights and who shares in the spoils of civilization. Just find a damn common ground. Because right now we’ve got problems to fix. Nobody is sharing in anything unless we build shit. Building shit is the beginning of shared prosperity.

If we cannot align on that fact, then yes of course we are going to continue fighting in the grey zone politics of civilizational values. Because you know what progressives have going for them? A shared legal framework on which to resolve disputes is always better than vigilance. Everyone should want that. Sorry accelerationists.

I don’t know what systems will evolve. But if we don’t start investing in them now we are in serious trouble. I’ve been investing in solutions that are venture scale for sometime. Ifyou want to join me on this journey, DM me on Twitter or join as an LP.

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Homesteading Politics Preparedness

Day 782 and Vanity Fair

I am extremely proud of being a subject in Jame’s Pogue’s new Vanity Fair piece. It is about managed decline, the death of state capacity, and whispers of a post state world. I’d say it’s a bombshell except I think there are some very sober people discussing how life in a chaotic world filled with distrust might work out. Spoiler alert, not great.

“Preppers, techies, hippies, and yuppies are converging on the American West, the safest place to “exit” a society gone haywire.”

The Dissident Fringe

I worry that the next frontier in American cultural battles will be figuring out how to stay out of our versions of “the troubles.” And I don’t like the sound of that.

I think you may find yourself agreeing with me. I don’t want a culture war and I certainly don’t want it to turn into a hot war. Apparently that makes anyone who agrees with the above premise a dissident fringe. Didn’t realize it was controversial to enjoy civilization. But I am in fact comfortable saying I don’t want any kind of war.

But I’m not sure everyone feels that way. So in a show of our seriousness we’ve decamped to the imagined demilitarized zone of the Rockies. I don’t want any chaos but I am literally betting the house on us having a bumpy ride maintaining course in America as we deal with long delayed issues from infrastructure, education, logistics and supply chains to capital markets and trade. I intend to capitalize on this uncertainty. You can do so with me if you’d like as an LP in chaotic capital.

If you are curious about how it might play out, in this nearly 9,000 word opus, every angle of how to survive in the American West in the near future is captured in empathetic detail by Pogue. It’s almost like reading William Gibson in how it shows a present that feels a bit off. Cyberpunk right before the Jackpot, but make it from a gonzo Hunter S Thompson type. I appreciate it on purely aesthetic grounds. You should read it.

But practically how do we all muddle through a greyzone war that has no agreed upon values, including whether the enlightenment & liberalism are worthwhile?

As we fight it out as a nation, most of us are just going to continue living our lives as crashing stare capacity and war over institutional norms gets in the way of raising a family and doing business. And it’s this scenario—a muddling, unhappy, middle course—that most people in this sphere tend to predict is coming. It’s not fun but it’s not the end of the world.

It is my personal belief that we are struggling to find any alignment because regardless of your personal politics, religion, or even overriding philosophy, your actual physical body is just fucking done with this bullshit. I mean it literally. We feel it in our bodies.

Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long.”

Julie Fredrickson – Vanity Fair March 2023

We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’”

It’s too much stress on the system and something is going to have to change.

If you read the piece you will see just how much trust is lost amongst all parties that make up the American experiment. The cherry on top is that our nation state distrusts our foes & but they also distrust us the citizens and their desire for more freedom. It’s a messy battle for meaning and power.

And as Americans we’ve had the exorbitant burden of the dollar being the global currency. What happens when we no longer trust any actors on the global stage? Distrust our fellow citizens, distrust our currencies, distrust our institutions, distrust our enemies? It sure gets hard to run an economy without trust.

We need to build new systems we can trust or our bodies and minds will give out. Simple as.

I don’t know what systems will evolve. But if we don’t start investing in them now we are in serious trouble. I’ve been investing in solutions that are venture scale for sometime. Ifyou want to join me on this journey, DM me on Twitter or join as an LP.

Categories
Emotional Work Politics

Day 768 and Memory

I’ve not ever read Proust in its entirety, because what am I, an eternal being who exists outside of linear time? But, thanks to Wikipedia and university survey courses, I am familiar with its basic themes of memory and it’s frustrating insufficiency.

Anyways, when not pondering madeleines, I am often confronted by how resilient the mind is in protecting us from the horrors of the world. Memory is a very funny thing. As good a reason as any to maintain diaries or engage in hagiography, is that you’d be surprised at what you forget if you don’t write it down.

A doctor asked me to get a pelvic ultrasound. I surprised myself by saying absolutely not unless it’s an emergency life or death situation, I am not doing that. And she, in sincere surprise, asked me why not.

And, because I guess therapy works, I recalled a pelvic ultrasound from maybe 10-12 years ago. I’d been referred in to a specialist as there was concern about a uterine cyst. This doctor, a gentleman over 50 in the kindly white patrician archetype, who I did not know know, proceeds to tell me this won’t hurt a bit.

But it does hurt. I am screaming bloody murder. It hurts so much I cannot stop. He tells me he will call security unless I quiet down. I cannot and I am in tears hysterically trying to convey the pain to him. I pass out.

I had utterly suppressed the memory till today. It happened to coincide with my husband mentioning a think piece in New York Magazine about women who empathized with the Clare Danes character from Fleishman Is In Trouble. There is a profoundly violating scene around reproductive health and consent that culminates in dark emotional trauma.

And of course, because it’s happening to a striving insecure aspirant white bitch, it totally doesn’t count right? The internet is not sympathetic to whining Clare Danes types. Fucking Karens. It’s super cringe to consider where the system hurts you, because, you dumb bitch, you benefit more than anyone else except the men.

So I guess I am not surprised I had banished the experience of something bad happening to me at a doctors office, but you know, it was not so bad that I am allowed to complain about it. And that is how the patriarchy perpetuates itself. Shut up you are rich. Look at the skulls upon which your empire is built you witch.

What I’m saying is that maybe you need to remember who it is that benefits from you not remembering the pain. Who benefits from forgetting? And trust me they are very scared when you realize that you remember. Even the rich striving white bitches have scares from this system.

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Internet Culture Politics

Day 764 and Natalism

There are a number of cultural streams in American life that have all aligned around being natalist. You want your country to have babies because it’s good for the economy. And presumably also good for national security.

This fairly basic insight means everyone from techno-libertarians to Catholic homesteaders believes that Americans should be having more babies. It is not just the Quiver-full types having six babies anymore, so are our wealthiest aristocratic titans of industry.

But this alliance is missing some crucial basics. Like for instance the fundamental civilization level things we need to do to make it desirable and affordable to have children. It’s expensive to be pregnant, it’s expensive to raise children, it’s expensive all around to be parents. I spent $40,000 on IVF and it ruined my health. If I counted lost wages and being forced to sell my startup I’m the total costs is seven figures.

I don’t know if you’ve looked at just the costs around having a baby but it will shock you every time you turn a new corner in the fertility space. I learned today you will spend between $100,000 to $200,000 to hire a surrogate. It’s a person’s salary and a lot of medical care so sure that seems right but damn.

I guess I am interested in the math of Natalism to see if I could afford it. I am one of those “tech elites” that thinks we have to have children to drive the innovation of tomorrow. Our future is based on an optimistic hope that maybe we can push for a better future. Humanity won’t continue without children.

But I don’t have a body that is all that healthy without medical intervention. I live a normal life now and can work full time again because I take some exceptional medicine.

But it’s not medicinal regime that can be combined with pregnancy. So if I want to carry a child I have to go off what amounts to life saving medicine. Without it I’d be on bed rest. You can imagine the math I’m doing in my head? Do I want to pour another million into having a family?

So what’s a girl like me to do? Surrogacy right? But I’ve got 10 eggs and 2 embryos so assuming a third of them make it, that’s nearly half a million dollars in surrogacy fees. To get three kids. That’s a heavy price tag on the future. If more of them take it gets even wilder.

Now ok sure I’d rather we encourage a world where younger healthy folks do things naturally but don’t we want everyone going at maximum effort for a better tomorrow? Shouldn’t we want technology to solve this? Where are my artificial wombs at?

Categories
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.

Airwave bedroom at a Marriot in Prague

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 our virtual ones. It’s called Airwave.

If you enjoyed the silky sameness of a WeWork or a perfect Airbnb or the reclaimed wood counter at a third wave coffee shop in Prague or Frankfurt, you’ve enjoyed Airwave.

If you travel enough, you find the aesthetics comforting eventually. As if your entire palette or taste profile was subtly sifted into the window of preferences set by an art director at an advertising agency in Brooklyn or Amsterdam.

Soothing sameness

Sure you seek out newness and novelty, but also you are glad for the suite at the just nice enough Marriot which delivers you a club sandwich with a request to room service. Remember when Jonny Mnemonic screamed for room service? If you are of a certain age I bet you do.

Ah the height of luxury for a data currier criminal of cyberpunk legend is now the expected outcome for the rootless cosmopolitans. Who is to stay which of us as a worse dystopia?