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Media Politics Preparedness

Day 1492 and The Blob in The West

I am unsure how to feel about some of the shock and awe tactics being used in American politics. Well, it’s happening globally but I care more about how it happens here.

Being from the American West, and in particular being a townie of one of the land grant university towns, I have found we have two orientations to federal power in “real America” that can be contradictory.

There is extreme skepticism of how Washington inserts itself into everything fron local land issues to education & regulatory policy. Taylor Sheridan has made a whole cinematic universe out of these issues. The West doesn’t want the long arm of the law reaching onto our land.

But the West also has its own power base. We are tied to the wider industrial and defense power run by the blob by supplying manpower and resources. Land grant universities like CU-Boulder have trained a cadre of science and engineering workers who run important programs like NIST and NOAA.

Federal scientists and their work runs everything from the atomic clock to tide reports. This doesn’t even account for the Air Force Academy and Cheyenne Mountain. The military industrial complex and its funding of the sciences is well integrated into the American west.

It makes for some interesting politics as the land grant towns. They owe some of their wealth and economic base to the training delivered by a university system that is local and regionally powerful.

And yet funding for its surrounding apparatus relies on a complex set of funding arrangements from the Blob from science grants to defense contacts.

If the money is under threat I’d expect regular people are going to have a bumpy ride. And systems will certainly break. Maybe all the burbling in the Blob as it recognizes this threat an opportunity for the western states to assert their own independence. That is a more optimistic outcome than many expect.

Categories
Media Politics Preparedness

Day 1489 and Foggy Frosty

I felt it was very important to get off the internet and soak in some restorative aesthetics. We are in a shock and awe moment almost anywhere you look from national politics to geopolitical technology competition. And everyone is jangling for narrative.

We’ve been a fog of informational war so long we forget we are all subject of multiple intersecting and independent actors who want your attention to be on their issues and their terms. We are living in context collapse hell.

Ans it’s not going to get any better. Many independent minded citizens are arising in these challenging times and they all operate with mindful caution. We have to invent our way out of the most challenging information environment of our lives.

Americans don’t realize we are subject to political and industrial competition and it plays out across social media. Don’t think because you know it is being done that you aren’t heavily affected. America has foreign enemies and quite a few domestic ones.

Extremism exist in some very weird bubbles. I am concerned seeing rationalist singularity cultists. But I’m also concerned about high frequency hedge funders who manipulate markets. We are in a great power competition and I’m sure we all have totally sensible opinions about open source artificial intelligence models. Right?

It’s all very cyperpunk. Manipulation of financial markets is as grey zone a tactic as sniping the telecoms pipeline from Helsinki to Tallinn. And we should be concerned about being competitive. We’ve been snowblind before

It’s a nuisance as neither you nor I have a clear line of view. Some of us maybe have a few months heads up. The lead feels less and less even as I am as much a part of shaping narratives as anyone. I was using DeepSeek in the fall.

When I was in fashion we had this website called “don’t believe the hypebeast” to mog those overly concerned with cool. Don’t get mogged. The same principle applies here. Don’t try to figure it all out.

Go read something with soul, listen to some Bach, and be with your family. Be frosty in the fog and exist in the real while you still can.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1484 and Montana’s Right to Compute Bill

The one thing that really unites the American west, but in particular the Rocky Mountain West, is our independent streak. We take our rights seriously.

We don’t like being told what to do by the government. I hope to contribute to this tradition in my own efforts as a citizen. I’m pleased to support a bill that guarantees Montanan’s right to compute.

It shouldn’t be up to the government how you decide to access compute or what you do with it. Don’t be fooled by jargon or think tanks with fancy experts, computing is just math. We must secure our freedom to compute and Montana is leading the pack on this issue.

So what does this bill do? I’m cribbing a Tweet from Tanner Avery with a terrific synopsis but you can read the full bill here when you’ve got extra time.

Sen. Daniel Zolnikov has officially introduced SB 212, the Right To Compute Act, to the #mtleg.

This bill will ensure Montanans’ rights to free expression and property are protected in the 21st century, in addition to helping position Montana as a world-class destination for AI and Data Center investment.

Here’s what it does:

1: Establish the Right to Compute: The legislature makes it clear that privately owning or making use of computational technologies for lawful purposes is protected as an aspect of fundamental rights to free expression and use of property.

2: Create a New Policy Framework: Restrictions on the ability to privately own or use computational resources must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling state interest in public health or safety.

3: Balance Interests: Provides mechanisms for policymakers to address real harms to public health and safety posed by the application of new computational technologies, while also ensuring that regulations do not excessively burden the Right to Compute.

I feel like I’ve been discussing this issue forever but in reality we are in the first innings of how artificial intelligence will change our lives. And it has real possibilities for making many aspects of our very human lives better.

I don’t want this technology (which is again just math) being restricted by the federal government or dominated by a handful of corporate behemoths who can comply with endless regulations. Compute is for the people.

The last best place to compute
Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Preparedness

Day 1483 and If You Die In The Matrix

Twitter has become an unmonitored Wild West of content. This is mostly good for those of us looking to understand the world “as it is” and not as we wish it to be, but requires a certain cognitive security not everyone is prepared to engage in. What was once kept to the dark corners of 4Chan splutters up.

We witness more violence than we did during its “trust and safety” years. Thanks to algorithmic chaos quite a bit of gore, pornography and death will regularly hit main feeds.

A friend of mine (whose line of work would put her in a position to know) has a theory that Zoomers will cross into physical world violence more easily than past generations. We have long debated as to why and how it will manifest but it’s already begun.

Being raised in digital always- online mobile environments means their reality is more malleable. And yes the internet is real life. We live, we love, we hate, we play and we work online. But what of violence? Are we prepared for that crossover?

Digital life has given them an immense sense of freedom to act without consequences because the virtual world is still sequestered from some consequences. And unlike millennials, whose sense of The Real and the Matrix, was anchored by a physical consensus reality, I’m not convinced this will be true for all Zoomers.

If you die in the Matrix you die in real life

We have already seen the maturation of bringing Internet identities to our regular life physical world. Violence has always been there lurking, but it is now bursting forth and I believe it will only become more prevalent.

Today I read news stories of two separate incidents of violence that I can only read as Zoomer Internet Identity Violence. Be warned they are both upsetting and confusing for non-internet natives.

A German math Olympiad transwoman on an H1B visa was killed in a shootout with a border patrol agent in Vermont. A shooting in Nashville involved a full Google document FAQ on a flavor of soyjack I didn’t even know existed and will not type here.

If you die in the real world perhaps you live on in the Matrix of the infinite internet. But this is not an end that we should wish for our civilization or for our Zoomers. Be prepared to see more of this.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1481 and smh

When I got started with my daily writing project I knew there would be days when I did not want to write. Today is one of them.

I actually expected “ugh no want to write” days to be more frequent than turned out to be true. I’ve bitched about it 51 times which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.

I knew I’d find a way to force the issue just as I had made other habits a part of my life. You really can make almost anything a habit if you are so inclined. But I rarely have to force habit. I just do the thing till it’s either a habit or it’s clear it’s not for me. They say it’s 21 days but I’d give it more like 100 to be safe.

Things I just do every day include applying facial moisturizer, brushing my teeth, squatting (no not just on the toilet I mean the full body compound exercise), taking my vitamins, Tweeting, playing a stupid pay to play Chinese mobile game, telling my husband I love him and opening up my mobile content management app to write this post.

And yet I am in a real “smh” place today with my attempts to find meaning in any of my habits. I’m disappointed in more than a few things. It’s all very Cthulhu and Antarctic cold vibes for me today. Sure it’s -20 in Montana but it’s very sunny so it’s cheery dread.

Anyways, the interregnum is over, we have a new President who is an old President and everything that is new is old and everything old is new again.

The entire Arnault family showed up for the inauguration so Dior’s New Look is back. Does that make this a post war moment? Did we live through a cultural revolution and not even notice? Smh.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1475 and Equalizing Pressure

I scared someone really badly today. As I was being locked into the hard shell for my eighth hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy session, I realized I had forgotten my chewing gum.

At 2 atmospheres of pressure it can be a real challenge to keep your ears from getting painfully congested. Even with yawning and blowing oxygen out your nose, it’s like going into an airplane with a sinus trouble. It’s uncomfortable but it can also be dangerous.

Careful. Equalize the pressure in your ears. If you feel your ears stuffy, equalize the pressure in the following ways. 1. Yawn 2. Swallow saliva. 3. Close mouth, pinch the nose, out of breath, blow the nose (all spelling mistakes theirs)

I got a little panicked as I was trying to stop the clinic technician from finishing the sealing process as I wasn’t sure if they could stop it once it was sealed or if I would need a full decompression cycle.

I was texting frantically “I forgot my gum can this be stopped ASAP so I can get it?”

I was tapping the window on the hardshell with a worried look and showing the text. I kept trying to make the font bigger and be clearer. FORGOT GUM OPEN?!

But it was confusing enough that everyone in the room thought something was seriously wrong. Which it would have been without the gum as I can’t do a full hour at 2 atmosphere without the help of the chewing. All the yawning, blowing out through the nose and other techniques aren’t quite enough.

It wasn’t yet an emergency. If it was I would have hit the big red button. But everyone seemed to think it was. After 2-3 minutes of frantic miscommunication it turned out that it was fine to open it up but we’d need to restart the seal and pressurize it again. I got the gum. And look who was on the TV screen.

Just don’t die while inside the chamber

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1474 and Process over Outcome

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.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 1464 and Which Information Island?

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.

News

American Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warning on Alcohol

TechCrunch grudgingly says the AI Bloomers beat the delusional AI Doomers

Essays

An Nvidia researcher Jim Fan tweeted about blog post from the late Felix Hill on 200B weights of responsibility inside the work of building AI. The stress of knowing the billions of weights and bias that make up artificial intelligence that will bend our lives for both good and ill is no small thing. The thread has many beautiful comments.

Vinay the founder of Loom is in the thick of figuring life out after success and it’s brave of him to share.

Applications and Services

AskNews has an interesting set of display options for news types and bias and sentiment I’m considering purchasing and testing.

Categories
Community Politics

Day 1458 and Ingroup Preference

“one day you’re in, the next you’re out”

Heidi Klum – Project Runway

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.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

1452 and Bone Deep Weather

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.