Tag: Commitment

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Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1752 and Too Much Protestant Work Ethic

I am pouring far too much autistic enthusiasm into my pet beauty shopping column that has a roughly half and half ration “theory of appearance culture in Protestantism” and half “specific routines at different price points” but I am enjoying it.

The heavier lift is going to be the work I am putting into the individual routines for the founding subscribers who have paid good money for help and I intend to give them my absolute all. I admit I’ve put way more thought than is probably necessary into each one but it’s a joy to track down specific products and geographic needs. It’s a shame that market editor was never a well paid enough job at a fashion magazine as I am pretty good at it.

Like, of course, I have opinions on the German drugstore market and its cost effective actives lines versus the old school naturals brands and where to acquire them. I don’t have quite as extensive a sample library of the market staples on hand but you know I spent hours browsing the grocery and retail shops when I was living in Frankfurt.

And on that note I’m going to bed early as I’m healing from my various biohacking experiments and I’m exhausted even with all the effort I’m putting into wound healing it still takes a certain about of rest to actually knit things together no matter how much time I spend with HBOT or what peptide stack I’m taking (it’s a spicy boy on the way in I’ll say that much).

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work Medical

Day 1749 and Some The Worse For Wear

Every time life gets intense I wonder to myself why am I speeding into the turn? And then I look back at the last almost half decade (which is easier than I’d expected as I’ve written every day) and I feel the achingly slow pace at which we tackle the challenges of our lives.

We’ve had really big wins and really glass chewing teeth grinding bloody inch by inch progress that barely feels like a win at all.

It’s easy to focus on the bruises when they aren’t a metaphor like yesterday’s adventures in scalpel driven hormone treatment. But the the wounds that are more emotional are just as easy to spot.

Some pain has given me relief and some has been so heartbreaking it crushes me that it’s beyond my control. Bodies and borders are often beyond the control of mortals.

So I’m just rushing headlong into fun things like shopping columns and biohacking and my portfolio companies and my political engagement and hopefully we find the money and solutions to all the bottlenecks which range from family and pain to visas. And yes the bruise on my butt is literal.

Categories
Chronicle Travel

Day 1743 and Noticing Anarcho-Tyranny Through Habits

I’m coming up on the 5-year mark of writing every single day. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been at it that long, if I’m honest with myself. When you commit to doing a basic task as a daily habit, you don’t expect it to change your life.

I’m not actually sure that writing every day has changed my life, though I think I’ve gotten better at the process of writing and the habit of finding space to think, organize, and get my thoughts together. That is a positive change.

When I first started, there were a number of goals I had in my life that seemed a lot more achievable than half a decade of writing.

Once you’ve achieved such consistency, you notice how little gets done in other areas when you regularly do things for yourself. One of my goals that I’ve had almost as long as this blog was a visa for family friends so they could travel freely to America to see me just as I see them. Pandemics and problematic presidents sure slowed that down and now I despair it will ever happy.

I honestly had no idea that the United States was so broken in its state capacity that granting a travel visas would consume more time than blogging and I’d achieve much less working to obtain a visa for years as its functionally impossible to get a legal visa.

Here I am with all of this writing (fantastic training date for an artificial intelligence) and yet I’d still have failed at obtaining a travel visa for family friends. We have so much power and yet not quite enough to get around America’s failures.

Maybe this is why projects like the Network State appealed to me. I’ve worked on policy like the Right to Compute which has taken on more and more meaning as I go through my life.

I can’t believe I was able to pass a bill into law before I could get the state department to do its job. And government workers wonder why some of us wouldn’t mind if they got fired.

I know I can rely on my own skills, my capacity to use the hardware and software at my disposal, and that the currencies of the web will happily engage with me in trustless and transparent manners.

This is not something I can guarantee when working with the United States and our State Department. It’s a hard thing to look at straight on as it traps me and my family into a kind of anarcho-tyranny where because we follow the law to the letter we are discriminated against while others brazenly broke laws.

High trust people who display their commitment daily are worn down by this bitterly painful reality that what we put in doesn’t guarantee us all that much when the state is concerned. We move fast and keep at it. The American state department moves slow and failed at every step of the way.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1727 and A Happy Fluke or Compounding Effects

Maybe it was all of the crying, rending of clothing and gnashing of teeth I’ve been doing as I stare grief in the face.

Maybe it was taking a Fluconazole after my doctor notice some tearing “downstairs” at my annual physical when he was checking out my surgical scar from July.

Maybe it’s that I am on my seventh session of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy and the results starting to compound. Protocols say it takes about ten to feel a difference and my full protocol will be sixty so I’ve got a ways to go.

Maybe it’s just the absolutely gorgeous fall weather filtering in the perfect amount of light for that ideal temperate middle ground of low heat and humidity that makes being outside a joy.

Maybe it’s just a fluke. But today I feel almost human again.

I felt joy in being the adult responsible for running the household today. I managed loads of laundry, housekeeping, a proper grooming session of my own body, a grocery run into town, a decent workout, and of course, time in the hyperbaric chamber.

My husband is still struggling mightily with whatever combination of infections, stress, and post-viral damage is ripping up his immune response. He is usually the one caring for me. But today I was able to care for us both.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1724 and Being A Villain For Someone That Needs It

Being a victim in your own life is a choice. We get dealt a hand of cards and we have a say in how we play it even if it’s a crappy hand. The odds being what they are you probably got dealt some bad cards.

I’ve learned the most about empathy from the men in my life. It’s not always true for women but being raised to accommodate is part of being the weaker sex. One need not always accommodate in life though. Sometimes their problems just not about you at all. And that is ultimately alright. Everyone hurts including you.

I thought this captured the spirit of trying to give people the space to be hurt.

Of course it’s unwise to reinforce a victim mindset in people, but sometimes people actually just have been victimized, sometimes repeatedly and brutally, and lasering in on their small slice of responsibility just reinforces their pervasive sense of being totally alone. At some point you hope they look at their patterns and see if change is possible. But if they’re going to get there, it’s going to be because someone was kind enough to sit with them, believe them and hold space for them until they were ready. VividVoid

Letting someone see you in the way that they need to see you has its purpose. It’s a beautiful thing to sit quietly and let someone really blame you. Be disliked. Letting someone who has genuinely got shit going on just be furious at you is a form of empathy. Be their villain.

I’m learning to sit comfortably while being someone’s villain. If that’s what they need in their hardest hour I can be that. It’s not something you should give too freely but this is where boundaries are a blessing.

I’ve seen more men than women be capable of handling this kind of rejection. The empathy of not engaging. Let them be hurt. You can suck if they need it. I believe it’s a strength to cultivate comfort being the bad guy

Every parent learns to do it, anyone with responsibility for making a goal or a bottom line or a budget work knows that sometimes you just have to be the bad guy to make it work.

The parameters of all of that is hard and we are reworking our way through helping people overcome their hurt. We’ve let cultural expectations dictate so much.

Everyone is fighting their own hardest battle and if you let them be mad at you and don’t take it personally you just might help.

Categories
Politics Startups

Day 1721 and Valar, Inference dot Net and Policy for The Future

There has been such a bleak mood on the timelines as Americans are once again locked into a cycle of agitation and propaganda driven by hyper persuasion A/B testing of rage bate as tragedy turns on the opportunism machines. So I’d like to share bits and bobs of good news in my corner of the world today.

Valar Atomics is one of my proudest true first check investments. I knew Isaiah was special from the moment I met him. But I didn’t like the company he was pursuing with someone. I said I’d back him in something else so long as he was the CEO. I’m so glad I told the straight truth as Isaiah let me in on his true dream of an energy abundant nuclear future and I was able to be there from day before zero.

Valar is audacious, ingenious and the kind of hard technical work I’d never seen anyone raise from his position as self taught young man. But what a challenge right? I was in. I believe in him. And boy do I look smart now.

The Valar Atomics and Kiewit announced a groundbreaking at the San Rafael Energy Research Center for Ward250, their very first reactor! It is a major step on their mission to answer the President’s call for three advanced reactors on American soil by July 4, 2026.

If you want to watch an inspiring video with a Blackhawk click through. Kiewit is America’s 2nd largest power plant builder, with more active nuclear construction projects than any other company in North America. Utah deserved a win like this today.

Valar is incredibly grateful to the State of Utah, especially Governor Spencer Cox, DNR Executive Director Joel Ferry, EOD Director Emy Lesofski, USREL Director Jaron Wallace, and all our local partners in beautiful Emery County.

Chaotic portfolio founder, and once and future Montana guy, Sam Hogan has a good synopsis of CogSec 101 in times of tension that I thought I’d share as a teaser for introducing his fantastic compute company Inference.Net

He gives good being online advice and his company Inference.net (yes disclosure investor) just started sponsoring a new podcast about the culture of San Francisco.

It’s called Member of the Technical Staff. It’s a fun hang with perennial grist for the social mills topics like where are the girlies in San Francisco. It’s a hang for a subcultural issues relevant to understanding living in a boomtown while building.

In local Montana news, we have had national influence with our work supporting the Frontier Institute and its indefatigable leader Kendall Cotton. Must be something about this Rocky Mountain boys that we love. He’s proving you can just do things.


I’m thrilled to report that two model bills that we’ve pioneered in Montana were officially adopted as ALEC model policy. This means that state legislators from across the country who look to ALEC for ideas will be prompted to introduce their state’s own Right to Compute Act (recognized as the gold standard for state tech regulation) or Private Property Protection Act (a cutting edge approach to zoning reform focused on housing affordability). 

We’ve officially become a national policy leader – a big deal! We’re a small state, and a small team here at Frontier Institute, but we’re making a huge impact thanks to supporters like you.

And that supporter like you? Heck yeah those supporters are me and Alex. .

You two can just do things as our boys Isaiah, Sam and Kendall have shown. You can build nuclear reactors, run decentralized inference compute markets and create new models, and even change your state’s policy with better laws that become models for the entire nation.

Categories
Culture Media Startups

Day 1709 and Love is Blind UK and Better Late Than Single Failures as Global Cultural Mirror

It’s no secret I have come to love the sub-genre of reality dating shows about new ways of dating in the social media era.

I’ve watched every single episode of Love is Blind including the international versions as well as the matching shows that range from religious matching to cultural affinities and disabilities.

I am having a rough week what with my own chronic health challenges and the death of my father over the long weekend. My husband is also brutally ill with the flu. So it’s just generally 2025 on maximum. All brakes and no gas.

So I took a break from reality. to watch the reunion for Season Two of Love is Blind: UK aka the working class multicultural Manchester season as well as test out a South Korean dating show for forever singles or motae-solos in Korean called Better Late Than Single.

Now I’m a middle aged elder millennial who turned over into her forties with ten years of marriage so keep that in my mind. My husband and I met through a mutual friend and now I wonder if we were on the last helicopter out of Saigon.

We worked in the nascent New York startup scene. Over the course of two birthdays, a year apart, for that same friend, we got our act together (ok I did) and began dating.

A few weeks before we got engaged, that same friend showed us this new dating app called Tinder. We laughed at the bare bones profiles as were used to involved questionnaires from OKCupid.

Many of our friends had worked for the dating holding company juggernaut of Barry Diller’s called IAC. The founders of the OKCupid subleased space from Alex’s startup. Dating app culture was part of New York startup culture.

It’s clear that these applications have left a cavernous void in the culture of mating and dating not only in America but across the world. From Raya to AMANDA (a very judgmental Korean dating app) we’ve found all the ways to maximize for the most superficial aspects and signifiers of a person.

Some cultures seem to have taken this to extremes. On rainbow coalition class coded Manchester season of Love is Blind: UK we had Indian posh girls dating down class half Pakistani guys and Albanian girls falling for Lebanese guys. It was a clusterfuck. I won’t spoiler anything but the disposable attitudes clearly came from long habit you associate with dating application culture.

Meanwhile the forever singles have taken the opposite approach. Rather than sweetly autistic singles being helped along as Love on the Spectrum does, social media personalities roast painfully awkwardly awful members of the opposite sex fail to listen to each other. Holding eye contact and grossly insulting someone via misunderstanding was the tone.

If those media pieces show anything it’s the utter lack of tenacity being displayed by everyone involved. Sure, someone willingly going on a reality show is extreme. But the deep desire to be seen and loved goes beyond any culture or awkward social technologies. We’d all do with learning to fight more for love and family.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1700 and The Passage Become Who You Are

I have been writing every single day for seventeen hundred days. 1700 days is approximately 4.66 years or 4 years and 7ish months. Not bad right?

This is quite a bit longer than I anticipated when I first began writing daily with the relatively modest ambition to write once a day for a month.

I had done daily journaling in private for ten days and was interested in seeing if I could write in public every day for some period.

I wanted to create to synthesize what I consumed across the media landscape as I tried to make sense of a world deep in the throes of Covid.

This experiment was my second sustained blogging project as I had kept a WordPress blog in the glory years of 2005-2008 or so. Other social media was easier but I’d always liked the format of public long form writing.

I had a secret silent ambition to take the daily habit to one year. It seemed doable. I fantasized about making it to 1000 days, even from the start, but that seemed bigger and more likely to fail. But if Scheherazade could make it to One Thousand and One Nights maybe I could as well?

I set out with realistic expectations but big ambitions. And now here on a random August Wednesday I am deep into the depths of a daily habit that shows no sign of stopping.

I nurtured my early ambition by saying I’d take it one day at a time, while never pressuring myself into achieving it. A journey of a thousand miles (or in my case days) starts with a single step.

I don’t care for pressure. I never have. I believe those who are truly ambitious about themselves set their own standards. You make your own life.

I will do things in my own time and at my own pace. I have never been a quitter so it’s never been a problem that I go at my own pace. Life is about results not effort.

My tenacity remains a force in my life because I am comfortable tending to my will daily. We only make progress by nurturing the seed of a thing.

Not every day is a good day. We don’t always win. I have many days where I lose. But as Allen Iverson said “it’s practice” and you never miss practice. And practice adds up. I’ve done amazing things in the last almost half decade.

I hope that this aspect of my character is as clear to others as it is to me. If I sent out on a journey I will do what I can to make it. If I fail (and I might) it is because I couldn’t.

Maybe the timing isn’t always right or my mind or body isn’t right or the market isn’t right or I am not right. Full stop. But I’ll never let myself fail because I didn’t make an honest effort. And you make the effort every single day.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1694 and Every Last Bacteria

It’s been a strange summer. It has been 41 days since I had surgery to drain an abscess that has become a deep tissue infection.

American medicine failed me but Istanbul has excellent medical if you are motivated enough to travel to fix intractable problems. And I most surely am motivated.

Add in the daily guidance of consumer grade LLMs taking input from myself and my family doctor and I managed a pretty miraculous recovery. Yes the bots are friendly but my physician agrees. It’s a very successful clinical outcome.

That’s Perplexity if you are curious. I like their mobile application and model choice options. Though pity any poor hacker who gets in as they are going to see some gnarly pictures if they make that bad decision.

Alas I am noticing the folliculitis troubles flaring again just as I’ve begun a fitness recovery protocol. Which you will notice in the image if you read the above image closely.

Alas progress is never a straight line. The flare up is bad enough I’ve opted to start another round of antibiotics (my fifth in this process) so any remaining bugs of the MSSA varietal cannot manage any retrenchment.

I’m showering with the scrub up washes surgeons use, I’m swabbing my nasal cavities with muciprin, and I’ll do a Cephalexin course.

Having fully passed through the onboarding loading dose regimen of Bimzelx with significant side effects, I need to see if it stabilizes. All this suffering will be for nothing if I give up now. But I must get to a place where I’m not constantly fighting infection and it can maintain lower inflammatory biomarkers. How this goes is anyone’s guess.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1692 and Your Wellness Isn’t A Demonstration of Moral Integrity

I am enjoying the adaptive training program prompt managed by an artificial intelligence which I’ve amended around my chronic health conditions as well as my considerable slate of biometrics.

I’ve been using it for a week now as I needed a recovery plan for the fitness losses that came with a month of bed rest recovery after my surgery in July.

Not to suggest I was in terrific shape before the surgery as it discovered a deep tissue infection that went so deep and so rogue I’d likely been suffering from it for sometime despite my attempts at preventative care.

It’s upsetting seeing your resting heart rate go from mid 80s to mid 60s. Realizing your high resting heart rate isn’t because you are a lazy fattybombalatty who doesn’t do enough cardio (real thing a physical therapist has said to me) but because you have a chronic deep tissue antibiotic resistant bacterial infection. Ain’t chronic disease a trip?

Anyways, I’m healing and trying not to overdo things in the process as I’m a bit stupid when it comes to wellness. More is always better has been my mental orientation for much of my life and it’s a hard habit to kick.

Workaholics Anonymous needs a subgroup for those of us who can find ways to over do literally everything. And I do mean everything. I did a stretching and mobility routine last night that had my heart rate at 150BPM doing seated spinal twists. Did I stop? Nope. I finished the 30 minute program. My adaptive training programs response?

Complete rest – no negotiations

And who am I to negotiate with an AI who has no emotions involved in the process of putting together a recovery training regimen. It’s not going to moralize at me.