Tag: Culture Wars

Day 1507 and Apocalypse Narcissism

Post author By Julie
Post date February 16, 2025
No Comments on Day 1507 and Apocalypse Narcissism

I’ve been very wrapped up in my own problems of late. I have plenty of good reasons to be focused inward. When you feel as if you are fighting for survival, physical or otherwise, you can’t see anything else.

As I’ve looked up from my issues, I am seeing countless others caught in their own reactive spirals. Many of them are even directionally correct in their diagnosis of the problems facing them and the world as we know it.

The apocalyptic bent is especially strong in America at the moment. From politics to artificial intelligence to cultural wars, Americans are on the edge of change.

If your world is ending you probably can’t see beyond the horizon of the issues bringing about its end. Your view is myopic. Let’s call this phenomenon “apocalypse narcissism.”

It’s understandable to be wrapped up in fear when faced with all kinds of mortality. Your life, your nation, your culture, your planet and even your species all face world ending questions at some point. Sometimes change is so great we can’t see it as anything but death. Even if something better rises from the ashes.

Tags Aesthetics, Chaotic, Confidence, Control, Culture, Culture Wars, Disaster, Elite, Emotions, Extremely Online, Fear, Geopolitics, Health, Life, Media, Prepared, Prepper, Religion, Safety, Stream of Consciousnesses, Stress, Trauma

Culture Media

Day 1505 and Warping Reality

Post author By Julie
Post date February 14, 2025

We are all avoiding reality to some measure. Be grateful that our egos can cushion the horrors of the world at all. I’m unsure how removed one can be from reality anymore but as an American I’ll probably one of the last to find out.

Rationalist and all-around Twitter in-group personality Aella went on a podcast called “whatever” which I’d wrongly believed was a marketing funnel for OnlyFans creators.

It turns out the host is some sort of debater Christian and this is a popular podcast for feeling better about the state of the gender wars. In some of the ensuing debate Kim Ono (I’ve lost the link) said something very insightful.

The whole business model is warping reality to comfort the fearful

Whether it is dim men dunking on sex workers, panicked liberal women on MSNBC, or Fox Blondes screaming at Boomers, our entire media environment is about making sure you can’t see what’s real while simultaneously pandering that your fear is justified. Nervous systems be damned!

I find reality to be plenty terrifying but I try to avoid needing my own version of reality to cope with it. Not to say I don’t have my own biases and priors (and I’ve written about them at left) but the world is such a jumble at the moment I very much need to confidently act in the face of warped realities.

Tags Aesthetics, Attention, Chaotic, Culture, Culture Wars, Elite, Emotions, Fear, Media, Memes, Religion, Social Media, Stream of Consciousnesses, Trauma

Media Politics

Day 1496 and Maneuver Warfare

Post author By Julie
Post date February 5, 2025

One of my Twitter friends John Konrad is a merchant marine captain and the owner of trade publication called Maritime News. I’m a nerd for a dozen different topics in his areas of expertise so I enjoy his perspective.

I’ve discussed my own theories of media like Thursday Styles Problem. Experienced media professionals know how narratives will play.

John has a long thread on how the media ecosystem creates and digests a news cycle and he mirrors a similar military command process.

I am called in as a subject matter expert so I found his specificity in reconstructing this process to ring true to my experience.

There is no media agenda as imagined in conspiracy theories. There is simply a consensus that emerges on what is happening and why. That consensus is malleable to certain incentives, which means it can be changed to fit different desired outcomes.

John discusses using maneuver warfare as the means of surviving in over saturated information environment. You must be prepared to intake and act on information to stay ahead. Close loops of information and action. What can look like chaos is actually swift well prepared action. Being in motion is the advantage.

And if it looks like we are in pitched battle over raw power it’s probably because we are seeing growing concern over the America’s debt, monetary policy and inflation, and the changes required for us to continue as a nation.

Eisenhower himself warned of the dangers in a private and public economy being intertwined. Plenty of Americans concerned about their future might reasonably wonder how it works and if we could improve it.

I’d hope no one wants to destroy an institution if it could be reformed. The future of how we use our existing American institutional power and how we decide who it serves seems salient to all of us. No wonder it feels like war trying to keep up.

Tags Chaotic, Culture, Culture Wars, Democracy, Elite, Extremely Online, Fear, Information Overload, Media, Press, Public Relations, Startups, Stream of Consciousnesses, Systems Thinking

Medical Politics

Day 1495 and Respiratory Training & Divide and Conquer

Post author By Julie
Post date February 4, 2025

I’ve been involved in a few conversations about how some startups (alas deemed the Tech Right) have found themselves aligned with a very unexpected coalition of people.

Whatever is happening it looks like a coalition of people who have lost institutional trust in the American ruling class has emerged as the majority. And naturally there is a lot of tension in the big tent as many of us have sincere reservations about the Trump administration.

The Biden era of Chokepoint 2.0 and censorship policies, a hostile M&A position, and threats to tax unrealized capital gains have left “little tech” from crypto to artificial intelligence to Figma employees fearful.

I am concerned that propaganda being what it is has manynarratives designed to weaken the resolve of this Americans majority.

In other topics, I am trying a Pr02 device to work on respiratory strength. It has shown promise in improving your V02 max by training your respiratory pressure through inspiratory muscle training. So I’ll be playing around with that as I’ve got 8 weeks of regular use before improvements show.

Tags Chronic Disease, Culture Wars, Democracy, Medical, Public Relations, Routine, Semiotics, Silicon Valley, Stamina, Stream of Consciousnesses

Media Politics Preparedness

Day 1492 and The Blob in The West

Post author By Julie
Post date February 1, 2025

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.

Tags Anger, Chaotic, Class, Competence, Control, Culture, Culture Wars, Democracy, Extremely Online, Forced Metaphor, Media, Prepared, Prepper, Press, Safety, Social Capital, Stress, Work

Media Politics Preparedness

Day 1489 and Foggy Frosty

Post author By Julie
Post date January 29, 2025

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.

Aesthetics Internet Culture Preparedness

Day 1483 and If You Die In The Matrix

Post author By Julie
Post date January 22, 2025
1 Comment on 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.

Tags Anger, Chaotic, Control, Culture, Culture Wars, Disaster, Extremely Online, Fear, Happiness, Illness, Media, Memes, Pain, Semiotics, Social Media, Violence, Zoomers

Aesthetics Community Politics

Day 1482 and Freedom, Responsibility and License

Post author By Julie
Post date January 21, 2025

A Twitter Mutual who goes my the handle Vivid Void began a discussion about the challenge of having a friendship with someone whose highest value is freedom.

Now in the corner of Twitter where we discuss shared values and personal mutuality, there is an array of anonymous, pseudonymous and real name characters.

These accounts bring their experiences to the understanding of current civilizational values to life across many mediums beyond Twitter. Our wojack would be the epistemology enjoooyer but most of the memes have a darkness to them.

I happen to prefer the Twitter discourse and felt a pull to VividVoid’s thread on friendship with those who have freedom as the highest value speaks to my own conviction that freedom only exists within a broad set of personal responsibilities.

To think otherwise is to presume you have license which is claim for yourself of presuming a kind of irresponsibility that means you don’t suffer the consideration of others affected by your actions.

I don’t think it’s freedom as a value that is the problem. It’s the lack of realization that to truly maximize freedom, one must attend to many things (health, relationships, self knowledge, work, etc) which temporarily feel constricting – cowtongue

Freedom ultimately means responsibility to the choices you made and the people who are affected by them.

Libertarians in particular should most sincerely believe in the bedrock of responsibility in ensuring freedom.

Without that way shared way of knowing and understanding freedom we have juvenile behavior and culture. Those seeking to defer responsibility to others seem to seek a license for facing no consequences. It’s poison to any political system.

that it’s child-like to think of freedom as a thing you can have, a thing that exists, in the absence of responsibilities – forthwriter

There is no freedom absent responsibility. That’s an expensive view so I understand why people would prefer license to avoid that heavy burden.

I’d wager the biggest complaint of feminism is women who claim the agency of freedom but run to license when overwhelmed by the very real mutual responsibilities that bind us.

That is no less true of men. To claim freedom to act as a man has always meant bearing the responsibility of that power.

When men only wish for the freedoms of power without the responsibilities undergirding your claim to your own freedom it can be maddening.

Both genders wish for less license and much more responsibility in the freedom to build a thriving society of mutuality. And you might ask how to I know this?

Tags Community, Competence, Culture, Culture Wars, Epistemology, Extremely Online, Family, Libertarian, Safety, Stream of Consciousnesses, Twitter

Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1468 and Going HBOT

I was extremely frustrated with an autoimmune reaction that got out of hand over New Year’s. I don’t care for taking corticosteroids as their side effects are quite severe even if they can be the only option when an immune response refuses to calm down.

To repair the damage, I went to a holistic clinic that offers a range of services like infrared saunas, IV therapies, cryotherapy and hyperbaric chambers.

I’d heard good things about using HBOT therapy for autoimmune responses, particularly ones that are rheumatoid in nature. I’ve done two sessions so far and I have seen a remarkably swift improvement in inflammation and pain.

I’ve got 8 more ahead of me along with some glutathione and vitamin IV drips so I’m hoping to be ship shape soon.

News and Sundries

The Chinese venture ecosystem has funds engaging in some suboptimal behaviors. They are clawing back personal assets, banning them from services and putting founders on no fly lists. Which is needless to say not the best way to encourage innovation.

Mark Zuckerberg is taking a new tack with speech at Meta. The company employing content moderators for what is true is out and enabling Twitter style community notes are in.

Many moons ago Antonio Garcia Martinez warned that Facebook shouldn’t be involved in policing and censoring speech as it would lead down a dark path.

Much To Consider

Is most memetic self help that propagates well online now predatory in nature? A tweet thread to consider for those looking to have emotions or control them.

Tags Biohacking, Culture, Culture Wars, Disability, Emotions, Extremely Online, Health, Illness, Medical, Routine, Silicon Valley, Social Media, Stream of Consciousnesses, Stress, Venture Capital, Woo

Chronicle

Day 1461 and 2024 Year in Review Posts

Post author By Julie
Post date December 31, 2024

And so my fourth year of writing every single day in public comes to a close. I choose to comb through each post by hand to give a round up. I could employ artificial intelligence to give a synopsis and I have run my writing through several AI models.

Still I find it helpful to do the rote work myself. You can see my 2023 round up here. If you’d like further back here is my 2022 round up. And my first year round up is 2021

I felt as if my writing this year was more variable in length, depth & insight but that’s more feeling than fact. It don’t know if I feel like I did my best work this year.

And yet I still found narrowing it down to 50-60 odd posts to be a challenge. I can’t tell if that means I need a new format, a change of pace, or a change in expectations. Maybe it’s fine to keep going and see what happens. As we head to into 2025 feel free to have a look at my 2024. Let me know if you like what you see.

Emotional Work

Day 1449 and Self Deception

Day 1416 and Lagom

Day 1381 and Radical Responsibility

Day 1236 and Art of Accomplishment

Day 1197 and Experiencing Excellence

Day 1149 and Time to Get Offline?

Day 1119 and Capacity for Presence

Day 1107 and Happy Birthday to Matt

Subcultures & Cultural Commentary

Day 1448 and LARPing Ourselves to Death

Day 1441 and The Circuit of Power