It’s hard to trust, well, anything. The uncertainty of the near future looks like the uncertainty of the far future right now.
It feels as if one is in a fog so thick that you can’t see your own hand reaching out to touch something at arm’s length let alone glimpse gjr far horizon
How do we set goals and work towards outcomes in that kind of world? I find it unsettling despite having years to prepare for a more chaotic world.
I am learning to let go of grasping for specific outcomes and lean on process to bring me to outcomes. I work the problems in front of me. I maintain the protocols that work for me. When they cease to yield results I change as rapidly as I am able.
It would be helpful for most media readers to understand the history of the news business and its relationship to war and finance.
For all the standards and ethics and best practices we expect from professional newsrooms (and they do have conduct standards), the history of media isn’t a clean narrative America went to war thanks to Yellow Journalism in the Spanish American War. If you think the Pulitzer is a badge of merit wait till you learn its history and financing.
You have probably lived through multiple media scandals. Millennials remember the neoconservative “weapons of mass destruction” story thanks to notably terrible editorial decision at the New York Times.
When someone says you are in a media bubble or on an information island, recall that these systems made up of people with varied interests, ambitions and aims.
Twitter is in the middle of a multi-day long information war ostensibly over foreign worker visas in America. It’s about visas in the same way that Gamergate was about “ethics in journalism” if you catch my drift.
The similarities are interesting. It’s a fight over who’s interests are included and prioritized in a lucrative space. If gaming makes money and had that much vitriol involved imagine how much worse it is at the scale of a nation. All power struggles become culture war online.
American, being the aging but dominant geopolitical entity on the planet, is a popular place to be. So naturally the fight for who benefits from America is gnarly as fuck and has a lot of racism.
Who has rights and who benefits from them sounds much grander than video games or fashion but who decides what is “in-group” is existential.
As we experience the Great Reshuffle over the next decade or two, the question of who is protected in a nation state couldn’t be more potent. And human nature means we are viewing it with as much sense as a gaggle of fashion editors. Being part of the in group in America is as ugly a business as any.
When the weather begins a shift to wet, cold or otherwise stormy, I feel it like some poor grandmother in a folktale.
My joints begin to ache, I feel swelling across my fascia and my ankylosis pain intensifies. Why do joints hurt when a storm system moves in? We’ve got a couple plausible explanations for all too common phenomena.
Barometric Pressure Changes: Before a rainstorm, barometric pressure (the weight of the air) typically drops. This decrease in external pressure can allow tissues surrounding the joints to expand.
Humidity and Inflammation: Rainy weather often brings high humidity, which may worsen inflammation in joints, particularly for those with conditions like arthritis.
Thanks to Perplexity the bone deep discomfort of a storm front becomes much easier to understand.
Cold conditions can stiffen joints by thickening the synovial fluid that lubricates them. Reduced blood circulation may also contribute. Changes in weather can make nerves more sensitive which amplifying pain signals.
The remedies for these changes are pretty basic. Stay warm, get your blood flowing with some light exercise, stay hydrated, stretch and take anti-inflammatory medications like NSAIDs to mitigate discomfort.
I asked Grok to draw me as a cyborg granny out in front of a storm
Prompted Grok to draw me as an arthritic cyborg granny in a rocking chair waiting and watching as a storm comes in.
I must have taken fairy tales and “just so” stories quite seriously as a small child as I have deep faith in process, repetition, and routine. J
Just keep at it. Practice makes perfect. Chop wood and carry water. To be worthy of the opportunities that might present themselves in your life you must live each day moving forward your intentions with your habits.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. If you maintain the course of your life by consistently apply skills and focus, you may find even the most esoteric and specific dreams of your childhood becoming a reality.
Just yesterday I was invited to participate in something that I had dreamed of being worthy of being included in since my teenage years. I kept the interests my whole life and now out of the blue I was being recognized. I could not be happier.
I had aspired to be a certain kind of person as one of my childhood dreams and here I was finding that I had indeed become worthy of my own aspirations. All it took was going in the right direction, keeping a consistent interest in learning more, and being present in public with those skills. I am so happy that years of simple regular action and interest had indeed yielded fruit.
I’m running on fumes and would really like to say “fuck it” to both the year and my daily habits but as that’s not an option I’ll kvetch about it instead.
As optimistic as I am about 2025 (I know this isn’t a widely held view), I’ve never felt like I needed a break more than I do now.
Clearly I’m not alone. Germany’s Chancellor Scholz lost a no confidence vote setting the stage for snap elections. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stepped down today further weakening Justin Trudeau’s government.
And that’s just today’s news. The world’s institutions are in a state of transition and regular people like me could use just a few weeks to catch our breath.
Remember when we had “two weeks to stop the spread?” Maybe we need that for whatever the heck is going on now. Two weeks to calm your tits?
There are plenty of people screaming for a pause in artificial intelligence but I think they have it all backwards. I’d like a pause in all the politics of the world and press on towards a future where we have more insight into the world. Accelerate the future but please let me have a break from the current moment just for a bit.
Cool is as scarce as a resource as our species has ever encountered. We plunder and horde cool like the spice in Dune even though absolutely anyone is capable of becoming cool.
I know you probably want to argue but Julie I’ve never been cool or no one I know is cool. Well I’m sorry but that’s actually a skills issue and you can be a part of culture.
Anyone can become cool by not giving too many fucks about the rules. Notice I didn’t say “no fucks” as obviously there are rules and gatekeepers and all kinds of ways to modulate what I’ll call cultural capital.
It’s not too hard to become a polite participant in the unwritten rules of culture. If you are additive to any of ways we create, propagate and monetize culture you will be welcomed in once you learn to contribute.
Looking for a toehold? One of the ways we decide on who and what is cool is simply by showing up to the various nodes of wealth and power I’ll call the circuit. An artist mutual of mine calls it the city with legs.
If you are curious and want to participate the the circuit roughly encapsulates the vacation and social calendars of our global elite class. And it’s quite public and often reasonable accessible if you are curious enough to research. Read the styles section and you notice the repetition.
It’s a more diverse group than you might think. It’s certainly more open to than when society was run by a hereditary aristocracy. Yet it’s still contained enough that anyone on the circuit jokes it’s the same old thing.
Sometimes folks complain that you never meet anyone new on the circuit and it’s true you encounter the same people over and over again. You will probably see me from time to time. Power likes cool because cool is a powerful determinant of wealth and status.
If you attend the main fashion weeks, the world economic forum, the Met Gala, Art Basel, Formula 1 races, the awards seasons, or the main conferences you have encountered the circuit. If you have met someone who winters or summers somewhere then you have seen the circuit.
Maybe just as a townie but you’ve seen it. Even a cat can look at a king. If you’d like to hop on the circuit be sure to bring something to the table. The thing about culture is we are always looking for new faces. You too can try out being cool just for fun. Break a few rules but maybe ask someone on it which ones they follow to get a feel for it first.
I was preparing to head out for a lunch meeting when I got a blaring alert on my phone. I’d been putting on cosmetics in the bathroom while my phone charged in the other room. Initially I thought it was an amber alert.
The National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning. A series of powerful waves and strong currents may impact coasts near you. You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now. Keep away from the coastal waters until local officials say it safe to return.
My blaring alarm was not for a personal family tragedy but a warning for the entire Bay Area. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake had been registered offshore.
Naturally Twitter lit up almost instantly as a number of older established users remain in the area. When San Francisco has weather or news it tends to dominate the instant chronological feed.
Thankfully organizations like the U.S Geological Survey and other relevant public service accounts spread information quickly.
I could feel my cortisol spike as one after another meetings canceled and texts came in from friends in the city (and those who knew I was in town) checking up on each other. We quickly learned it was a large earthquake and its proximity to the coast automatically meant a tsunami warning.
We are staying in a hilly neighborhood so it was easy to calculate we were 100 feet above sea level. It seemed we us an hour till any expected wave was due in San Francisco at 12:10.
An hour of warning seemed like a lot for filling up tubs with water and doing a few frantic preparations like washing socks in case we were looking at a disaster. We wondered if SFO might be impacted given how low lying it is relative to other neighborhoods.
A friend headed over as the park was high ground so we figured why not watch if something happens and catch up together.
As Twitter churned it was mentioned in some coverage that “this was a strike-slip fault, as opposed to a subduction fault, so it’s less likely to cause tsunamis.”
As other areas closer to the epicenter did not see waves, we soon got the automated cancellation of the warning. 12:10 cane and went without a disaster. The cortisol wave I was riding crashed. Everyday there is some new chaotic thing that gets integrated into one’s world as just another day. Yesterday it was corporate assassinations. Today it was tsunamis. Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer.
I feel like I’m in some sort of slapstick comedy with our city pratfalls. I’m in Los Angeles for the holidays which has been somewhat pleasant except for the modest signs of barely contained emergent chaos.
Which I frankly don’t expect to see we are staying in a very bougie neighborhood called Marina Del Rey. I figured the wealth that holds it together would make it more navigable. Lol.
There is something extremely funny about leaving your cozy Montana home with its backup solar power and multiple heating systems only to find yourself in an large apartment building on a rickety grid in an enormous city over which you have no control.
Last night around 11pm there was massive power outage affecting much of Marina Del Rey. Alex was already asleep having had a busy day so when the power dropped I didn’t want to wake him.
I went to fill up containers with water just in case we needed to flush the toilets as we are on an upper floor. I took a few pictures and went to bed with earplugs in and an eye mask figuring it would resolve itself.
The view from our Airbnb and the next set of low rises without power. What seemed to be edge of the outrage from the Airbnb two or three blocks out.
Alex woke up at 6am and the power was still out. He had been working so nothing was charged and we had no WiFi. It was dark out as he started his work day on east Coast hours
It turned out the outrages were larger than just the complex around us. Twitter had some estimates for who was without power but we weren’t the only family members without power or water in the neighborhood.
Mind you this is the beachfront south of Santa Monica so a pretty upscale area populated by Silicon Beach types. It is unincorporated community in Los Angeles county which complicates its infrastructure.
The outage stretched on into mid morning. The car we had rented was trapped in the garage with the power out. The elevators were obviously not working and we were quite a few floors up. We couldn’t shower or wash up. Thankfully I had water for the toilets to flush.
It all felt a little dramatic for what should be a pretty normal day. Imagine if there had been an actual storm or an earthquake. Complaining about it on Twitter was made humorous given our friends know we are the types to do preparedness planning. We are all at the mercy of a blown transformer. So make sure you keep extra water on hand.
I am a capitalist. I like markets. I like people having the freedom and individual capacity to choose the course their life will take. We enable that freedom by letting people choose to improve their material conditions.
So how do we include more people in those improvements? How does America continue to do that? I’ve been trying to get my head around what inclusion means in a pluralistic democracy of our size.
Who decides what material conditions matter? Do we agree that we improving our conditions? What are those material conditions? I think making life better does involving improving our material conditions.
I just don’t think we improve those conditions from the top down. I maintain a firm belief in the coordination value of free markets. We make improvements by making our own choices. How do we include more people in making choices where we all benefit?
Some take for granted that diversity improves material circumstances. Certainly empires benefited from breadth and scale in the past. But we’ve seen nationalism and homogeneity work quite well for some endeavors.
I’ve been so fatigued by organizing my life around my identity and not my choices. My choices are obviously enabled and constrained by my identity. I’ve dwelled on gender and disability quite enough.
I’d prefer my conditions be more enabling than constraining which is why I believe so firmly in technology. We enable coordination to individual benefit through building systems that connect each other.
I believe the choices that benefit me can also benefit others just as surely as I believe in the golden rule. Do unto others. Applying that from nation state to neighborhoods to companies and collectives is a process. I’d like more of us to have a say in improving it.
