Tag: Competence

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Startups Travel

Day 1244 and Twenty Four Hours To Go

Discussing travel mishaps has become something of a national pastime for Americans.

Memorial Day Weekend is the official kick off to summer and I had the good fortune of doing a transcontinental flight. And by and large it went smoothly and enjoyably. It was a record breaking day for travel.

I was on a route I’d never done before flying Munich to Houston. I was on my way to my favorite crypto convention Consensus.

Despite the record breaking number of travelers, I had a pleasant United flight. The westward flights can be tricky for sleep as it’s not an overnight.

The logistics of this worked out as I slept 6 hours before a 4am wake up for the positioning flight and then on my flat lay got nearly a very decent four plus hours.

Munich to Houston is 10 hours & I slept well

My RHR was pretty high from the stress of flying but I was quite impressed that I got restorative sleep and REM. Those flat lays on Polaris really are worth it.

Once I landed in Houston I had a short layover where I was lucky enough to enjoy a sit down meal in the Polaris Lounge. I only wish I’d had more time to enjoy it but clearing customs, going back through security and rechecking luggage takes time.

United Polaris Lounge menu in Houston

After all this incredibly pleasant travel there has to be something right? I had a half mile walk to the E gates for my Austin flight. Americans don’t queue well so I arrived at the beginning of boarding. The entire plane boarded only for us to realize we had a serious mechanical issue.

We then deplaned and walked from the end of E gates to the very end of the C gates (about 22 minutes as the New Yorker walks and a mile and a half) to get to the new plane.

The crew was in danger of timing out while catering needed to do a supply for a down line flight. Someone’s executive decision worked in our favor as we got into the air without getting ice for whoever had the airplane next.

What is a two hour drive turned into a five hour ordeal but I made it in one piece and passed out much later than I intended after a full twenty four hours in transit.

Finally asleep at my hotel in Austin after a 4 hour mechanical failure & airplane change for a 30 minute fly time

If you are in Austin and interested in discussing the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence I’d love to hear from you. I might need a bit more sleep first though.

A 10,000 step day is pretty good when most of it is sitting on airplanes.
Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1236 and Artists All Around

I was listening to Joe Hudson’s Art of Accomplishment Master Class preparation series today.

I’d previously remarked how I found the name “Art of Accomplishment” to be a bit off putting even as I was very impressed with the results of the work.

I’ve perhaps found essence of truth on the name that wasn’t available to me earlier. In listening to this particular conversation I heard the personal meaning instead of the cultural projection. The meaning is literally finding the artistry of doing things with meaning in your own life.


“When you’re self-aware, it means there is a full expression of you happening. It’s why with the great artists, you see their full expression. And they can only get to that self-expression, they can only get to that level of ease, by having more and more self-awareness.”

Art of Accomplishment

To have an art of an accomplishment you believe there is an art inherent. An artist makes. Accomplishing things is a byproduct of the flow of doing things. To make and to build m, or otherwise enable the process of accomplishing, is itself its own art. “To do” is an art.

I’ve come to love the work of startups and building companies as they are for me a team sport of accomplishing together. Artisans of all kinds are coming together to build a thing or a tool that serves someone else. It is a beautiful process for me

I feel my own flow in the competencies in which I have my own most clear artisanal pride. I do these things for the love of the work and the outcomes of them are simply a byproduct of doing them. I have several areas where the love of the craft is its own motive.

There are artists everywhere. You may well have many areas where you apply an artist’s mindset. Your self awareness gives you a vision of what you want to accomplish. You can be a mechanic or a publicist and still practice an art. Making a salad, fixing the hydraulics, or orchestrating a magazine cover are all accomplishments.

Categories
Culture

Day 1234 and Intelligence

I’m reasonably intelligent as far as humans go. I’m probably in the top quartile or so of reasoning, processing & other measures of cognition. Not being insecure about my intelligence, I feel perfectly comfortable admitting that I’m an idiot. I’m only human.

Humans just aren’t a terribly bright species. But we are a curious one. We’ve built tools that extend our capabilities significantly. And each new upgrade in our tools helps us achieve more with our meager intelligence. L

We can quibble over whether intelligence is different than achievement but analytical, creative and practical capabilities are things you want to cultivate. We want to cultivate in ourselves and ideally we will want to cultivate in the things we build.

Two men are on a bus on a mountainside side. An sad anxious looking man is staring at the rock face on dark side of the bus side with a thought bubble “the AI took my job” while a smiling happy man on the bright side overlooks scenic views with a thought bubble “the AI took my job.”

Sure we as a species have fought these advances but eventually the benefits of developing ways to pass on and improve intelligence outweighs other fears. Material progress is good.

If you afraid of intelligence greater than your own I realize I have no way to talk you out of that fear. I can argue impartially about the benefits that intelligence has brought us in the past but humans are feeling animals not reasoning animals. The best I can hope for is to coax you to consider the bright side of the bus. Imagine feeling awesome about an AI taking your job. Go ahead and see if your curiosity can consider it.

Categories
Preparedness Travel

Day 1207 and Joy of Preparing

Yesterday I wrote about how I’d come to enjoy the complicated game of speaking to others about yourself through appearance. I had been packing some travel bags and had a lot of different context switching to account for what I needed in my suitcase.

Preparedness is somewhere between a neurosis and a hobby for myself and a number of my friends. My husband and I are definitely who you email if you want get into preparedness.

We have fun. I have a group chat where our favorite topic is how we like to stage and prepare different types of bags for life and travel. Everything from which medications should be or the ideal toiletries is in the box.

It can nice to have fun with considering resilience. It’s normal to do wilderness first responder training or to have a go-bag in case of a fire evacuation in Montana. It’s a norm now rural or not to to be prepared.

Everywhere has a risk. Fires, hurricanes, flooding, tornados, earthquakes are new normal of everyone lives. The joy of preparedness is worth embracing. Think of it as kind of anti-Marie Kondo approach to thriving in a more chaotic world.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1206 and Appearances

I have come to enjoy the logistics of self presentation. I used to resent the extent of the labor that could go into cosmetics & fashion when I worked in the industry. Now I can enjoy having put in the long hours to have acquired my skills.

I’ve put a lot of thought into how best to pack a bag. Handbags are a sort of Boy Scout style training for young women in that “be prepared” has come to mean having all the tools of the trade of femininity neatly stowed away in a stylish purse.

These obsessions with what we have in our bags runs from the Queen’s Marmalade sandwiches to whole cultural industries producing #WhatsInMyBag as identity politics. Men do it too but “go bag” sounds tactical and thus somehow more serious. It’s not.

I’ve written extensively about my mixed feelings on packing & travel in the past, so it’s nice to have enjoyed that struggle and be able to now aside if I so desire. Packing a bag well has become a thing in which I am expert and that’s a lovely feeling.

The pleasure of negotiating the logistics of appearance can be a game to me now in a way that simply wasn’t when I was younger and struggling. Now when I don’t need to be perceived in a positive way to survive, I can enjoy the problem of optimizing for a giant game of “what am I saying without words” and more importantly “to whom?”

I’ve come to enjoy packing as the self soothing experience in a rapidly changing world. I can control some aspect of what I show to the world. It becomes a design problem. The three bag cascade is now a savvy way to manage airline chaos. The labels on my packing cubes become a pleasurable prayer ritual as I not so neatly write in cursive “black sleeve tee-shirt.”

I like the challenge of imagining the multiple social, professional, cultural and geographic flows I might navigate. Will I be able to manage the many different ways in which I might encounter other humans while they also live through the same set of fears & uncertainties of 2024? It can be terrifying (personal safety is a factor) and yet it’s absolutely a skills issue to navigate these things.

And so I ask “do technical fabric wrap dresses send the right message” or would I be better suited in cotton or silk if I’m in a desert? How about adding in semi-tropical humidity as a potential variable?

Every decision in how I pack a bag can represent a small marker in my perception by others as we manage this ridiculous system we inhabit together. It is a social game and everyone is playing. You might enjoy learning some of the rules too.

Categories
Emotional Work

1189 and The Expense of Choice

One of my most American traits is how much I prioritize making my own choices. I am not contrarian for its own sake, but I prefer to freely align myself with what I value. I don’t make a secret of my revealed preferences and I am not afraid to associate with people who have different values.

We’ve had a lot more freedom of choice introduced into our lives during the Great Dislocation. Past narratives around family and work are beginning to feel more options. Paul Millard’s Pathless Path took off as work from home introduced significantly more flexibility into professional life.

Internet take-have Matthew Yglesia’s framed the problem of too much freedom around work as a Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor situation. Having a job that structures your life is a benevolent authoritarianism that people aren’t brave enough to admit they prefer.

I think this is a kind of snobbery that elites like to pretend is subversive. I’ve met many types of people from all kinds of classes, backgrounds, and competencies who thrive with more agency.

I am being exposed more often to people now who struggle to self regulate and take responsibility for their life but mostly I spend time with competent people.

This isn’t to say that structure is unimportant nor that work doesn’t provide some of it. I personally value routines and rhythms in my personal life because I’ve chosen to do more independent work outside of larger organizations. My work has to be held on course by my choices.

I won’t say it’s easy as none of my day to day choices matters in the same way that making the big yearly calls right does. I know I have to take the time to invest in myself so I can make those calls. I don’t have a wider organization setting the direction of my life or my day. So the only benevolent authoritarian is myself.

Categories
Homesteading

Day 1178 and Be Labor

Much of my work is very abstracted from the real world as I am a network state Silicon Disapora type. But I grew up with much more concrete labor in the real world. And I see how people can fear picking up skills if they haven’t had so much as a shop class.

We keep some of those skills fresh living on our own land in Montana. It’s never as much as I hope but everything from hydroponics lettuce to pickling your own vegetables open source home automation and Bitcoin mining off our solar grid is on the table when you want a project.

It’s good to tinker. Even skilled labor like electrician work and plumbing can become a hobby with help from friends and the wealth of instruction on YouTube and Reddit. And you will have opportunities to pass it along to others which builds up your community and skills.

It has become harder and harder find people who are hands on with tradecraft. A friend is building a new outbuilding on his property and an electrician quoted him $7,000 to run 30’ to a new 60a subpanel and a few circuits.

Fortunately, Montana is a state that allows homeowners to pull their own permits and do their own electrical work. So for an $80 permit fee and with some help from Alex, he can do the entire job himself for the cost of materials, about $1,500.

And isn’t that a wonderful pro-social way to learn, build and make things with others? Be the labor you want to see in the world.

Categories
Startups

Day 1163 and Women in Tech

A lot of emotional energy has been directed at the “problem” of “women in technology” in the last decade or two. Stupid campaigns get run with degrees of condescension in which it’s insinuated the only way women could see the value in crypto is if we make a perfume. It’s the rankest form of sexism and extremely effective. And I’ve proudly worked in cosmetics. Chemistry is cool.

So today on International Women’s Day I’d like to remind myself that I’ve l been “in tech” since the moment I fell in love with a personal computer as a young teen. I’m on that edge of elder millennial that did things in the real world as children but had access to the virtual early.

Plenty of men mistakenly assume that because I worked in fashion, beauty and ecommerce. I was early before the ease of hosted Shopify accounts or even Heroku instances for an app. It was a lot more roll your own.

And yet some think my experience doesn’t count. Despite it being a clearly sign of capital markets having underpricing occasionally. Ifs a good thing. You go where market rewards you and you learn to learn skills along the way.

I think so much less about my gender now. Almost resent ever having been talked into it. You do it right then you, like an anyone else in the market, can benefit when someone misallocates.

If you are lucky enough to steward your own capital, then get to be part of the investor bases to build the next generation. I do that now. I am still a woman.

I’m proud to use the resources I have to invest in what I believe in based on my experiences and the thesis I invest under. Not as some smoothed over marketing narrative with a gender hook. No I price like an actor you can do business with. I am willing to show my revealed preference.

I learned in previous eras so I may serve the generation that is coming up. And I’m happy to invest in the ares I believe in most. I am happy as a woman to invest in men as I am in women.

The focus I see in founders I have invested in across energy, artificial intelligence and crypto are ones I believe in. I believe in them as people. I believe in them as founders. I believe in them as men.

I am lucky to be seen as an individual with capital and insights that can help them carry a better future forward. I hope all founders are seen as individuals.

Technology innovation has been the driver of improved human life. Material prosperity is good for women. It’s good for men. So I’ll celebrate doing stuff for the boys on international women’s day.

Alex Miller visiting with me at one of our favorite portfolio company Valar Atomics. I believe in Isiah and his team.
Categories
Politics

Day 1159 and Oligopistos

I had the most positive experience with someone who works in the government today. I had reason to call Congressional constituent services and I wasn’t all that optimistic I’d ever hear back at all.

“Oh ye of little faith”

Maybe Montana folks are just built different or maybe I just got lucky. I was so surprised to get a kind, timely and personal response I could barely get my point across. I was treated with grace.

When did it become normal to have so little faith in the workings of the world and our neighbors in it? How has I become one with little faith?

Oligopistos – Little-faith. 

Maybe it’s time for me to revisit Pistis.

In Greek mythology, Pistis (/ˈpɪstɪs/; Ancient Greek: Πίστις) was the personification of good faith, trust and reliability. In Christianity and in the New Testament, pistis is typically translated as “faith”

Wikipedia Pistis

I have faith in many things. The government hasn’t traditionally been one. I have had faith in people. Maybe good faith, trust and reliability can be found again in the civic polity.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1096 and Year Four

The persistence of my daily writing habit has helped anchor a sense of self that I have enjoyed cultivating. I am the sort of person who sticks with things.

I’ve been in the process of excavating and rebuilding my sense of self over the last few years. Many others have gone through similar journeys during the pandemic years. I feel lucky to have captured some of mine in writing. I like who I have become as a result of it.

I like seeing that I have reinforced positive and optimistic aspirations for myself year over year. I hope it shows who I am to other people through my revealed preferences. My actions speak louder than my words even if some of my actions are shown through words.

I do not have any New Year’s resolutions for 2024 that I didn’t already have for myself in 2023. I’d like to keep the good things in my life, pray for willingness to improve upon the bad things, and remain steadfast in the commitments I have.