Tag: Culture

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 534 and Never Go Home

They say you can never go home. I never took the saying to heart as I didn’t have a consistent childhood home for more than a few years at a time. We moved once every two years till I went off to college. And it only got worse from there as I wandered from dorm rooms to illegal sublets over a decade or so of instability. Probably why I’m so excited to be buying a house. For me there was no childhood home where I could return.

But the one place I considered home was Boulder Colorado. I lived in three separate houses in Boulder across five separate moves. The math involved my parents divorce and going off to boarding school for a bit. Yes it’s complicated.

But Boulder as a place has felt more like home to me than any other place. Even New York City where I lived the longest (over fifteen years if you don’t count the occasional breaks to San Francisco) never laid claim to being my hometown.

So I’m feeling a bit bittersweet about the prospect of leaving Boulder. I was running errands today and kept coming across Deadheads at every stop. Dead & Co, the name of the current not Phish, but not not the Grateful Dead, is doing two nights at Folsom Field this weekend. The town is filled with happy hippies. And also John Meyer.

A blonde woman walked into my coffee shop this morning without shoes and no one blinked an eye. Camper vans with Dead decals are parked all across town. I saw a man brushing his teeth in the Target parking lot wearing a tie-dyed shirt. The dispensary was completely out of my particular edibles. The concert crowds had cleaned them out.

It makes me feel a bit nostalgic for how I remember the town as a kid. Boulder was a town filled with folk music and weirdos. We were a hippie town and proud of the heritage. As I came over the hill into town coming back from my raw milk pickup I felt like I could never leave. Look at me doing hippie shit like being in a dairy cooperative. Boulder is still weird I said to myself. But I’m sure I’ll come to feel the same way about Bozeman in time.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 533 and On My Own

It’s funny how marriage shapes your routines. Before the pandemic, and before my health struggles, my husband and I were apart regularly. We traveled and socialized on our own often.

Now it’s quite rare for us to be apart. With work from home and our new adventures awaiting us in Montana, our lives will remain close. We even tend to speak at the same conferences. Our work travel since the pandemic has coincided almost entirely. It’s a good thing we really like each other’s company as we’ve very much opted into a life together. It’s good advice to marry your best friend.

We have to deliberately take time apart. I even took a trip to Europe in March so we could remember what it was like to have a bit more space. We can’t let ourselves give in to little habits that encourage codependency. A little independence goes a long way. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Whatever aphorism you prefer really.

The only downside the our attempts to regain a little space is that it’s easy to forget how much the other person does in your life. I will neglect entirely to to eat lunch without Alex. I have been known to mix a bunch of protein powder and supplements into a glass of water. By the time dinner rolls in I’ll be starving and not entirely lucid. It turns out it takes a bit of remembering to bring back ones old skills and capacity. Marriage allows you find new independence and competence together. But it’s nice to remember you were whole and capable on your own before as well.

Categories
Aesthetics Startups Travel

Day 526 and Out of Practice Yuppie

A well dressed, tall, friendly looking white gentleman tried to join me on an otherwise empty blue velvet couch that I had deliberately planted myself in the middle of to avoid socializing. All that was missing was a “closed for business” sign around my neck.

I had attempted to tell him “no actually this seat is taken.” I was confused he didn’t immediately pick up on my body language. I had spread my entire body across the couch and had intensely “don’t come here” body language. I had my purse down to take up more space. I laid my hand with my wedding ring on my knee so it’s instantly visible. He didn’t pick up a single visual cue. I tried verbal. I literally shouted at him that no he wasn’t welcome to join me. “This seat is taken!” Didn’t make a difference.

I don’t think he could hear me as he sat down and tried to strike up a conversation despite his obvious discomfort clinging to the edge of the couch with half a butt cheek in mid air. He tried a few lines of conversation as I doggedly ignored him. I started a tweet and angled my phone screen towards him so he could see me typing complaints. Didn’t help at all.

I really had done everything I could to claim this space as my own. The couch was directly beneath an air vent trying to push cooler air into the crowded house bar. It was as hot inside the bar as it was outside but this one area had modestly more airflow making the summer heat at least breathable.

Which is to say it was over 100 degrees inside the old house. The Rainey Street bars in Austin are all converted old historical houses with wide open full floor windows and open doors to allow people to enjoy backyards with twinkling lights and hipster backyard games. These bars are a cultural treasure in March for SXSW when everyone enjoys the mild 70 degree early spring. In June during a heatwave they are a hellscape for yuppies who have simply forgotten how to socialize like normal human beings.

I was engaging in some incredibly rude behavior yes, but the bar has no other visible seating near an air vent and even the 5 degrees of lowered temperature and the moving air helped a little. I was wearing loose comfortable clothing but it was still intolerable. I regretted not sourcing a wheelchair for the week but then again none of these houses are accessible anyway. It was the only spot in the entire bar where I could even attempt to mitigate the effects of my invisible disability.

I could feel my spine starting to swell within minutes. Ankylosis is a winter disease. Heat and humidity swell the spine and that pain will radiate out to a kind of ambient full body throbbing intensity that cannot easily be ignored.

Actually, pain is just like the heat in that way. It overtakes your willpower slowly but inexorably. Quietly it makes itself known like the stillness of Joseph Conrad’s Jungle.

“And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”

Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”

The amount of determination you have to play mind-over-matter games is simply a fight against time. Eventually you get tired from the effort. You pray you don’t let it take you to the dark places it took Kurtz. But you know one day it could take you too.

Eventually my husband came back. He’d been searching for a bathroom and our hosts for the evening. The yuppie next to me pretended to ignore him. He sat for another two minutes or so just to give the impression he’s weirdly close proximity to me was on purpose as a resting place and not at all an attempt to strike up a conversation with a woman who did not want to talk. A tactic we’ve all used once or twice to conceal a social faux we didn’t mean to commit.

Alex and I used to attend parties like this all the time. We were aggressively on the circuit for both tech and media events for well over a decade. He used to produce TechCrunch Disrupt in a long distant past before he transitioned into being an operator at early stage startups. Then those startups matured to established companies. And now it’s become clear we are established professionals.

We no longer need the social circuit. Networking has lost its payouts. More people want to meet us and ask for things than the other way around. We’ve made it. And it’s a good thing too as the social contract is breaking down all around us. Yuppies have forgotten their manners as we are all out of practice with the basic niceties of the social season. Everything from how we approach someone to begin a conversation to whom we may invite to a private event is now fraught. Hell I can’t even remember how to apply professional makeup anymore so I can’t look down on a man looking to chat. We’ve all lost some of our humanity over the pandemic.

And I find myself mumbling “the horror, the horror” as I walk myself back to the hotel because the streets won’t allow taxis in the downtown core. The transition from soft times to whatever comes next is full of unexpected surprises.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 521 and Lots of Words

Today is the second day in #1000WordsofSummer. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a program run by Jami Attenberg. I am not using my daily writing exercise to “count” for it as they are separate experiences in my mind. So now I suppose I’ve really opted myself into a very prolific two weeks of writing.

I wanted to begin on my story when I first woke up. I had ideas for plot points and details running through my head. But I had some other work that is due on Monday so I put my head down and pushed through everything else so I could get to my science fiction.

I considered writing the thousand words first but I don’t like the idea of using writing to procrastinate for some reason. I’d prefer to get the main tasks down and out of the way. Then my fun writing gets it be a treat and serve as a carrot to get other deliverables done.

So I got my power point done and then I went straight into my short story. I did an edit pass and that somehow added in an additional 700 or so words as different parts got more fully realized. I sketched out some plot points and areas I wanted to explore. That was another 300. It was much easier going for second try than the first. W

hich is a very good argument for just doing something and not judging it. By the time you come round for the second try, you will have learned some tiny sliver of something. And that little something slowly over time makes it all easier. The struggle is the work.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 520 and A Thousand Words

I’ve done a lot of writing that isn’t for this blog recently. And it’s mostly been about DAOs and corporate governance. My talk for Consensus involved a fair amount of original writing and research. If you want a preview of it it just went up today. To be honest I was tempted to just repost here to count for today as it’s very good. I hope you will read it.

And then this morning I decided why not jump into Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsofSummer. It’s a two week community exercise in putting the proverbial pen to paper. I’ve been wanting to play around with writing science fiction as it’s my favorite genre.

I got down a thousand words about a a woman who is a sentiment analyst for a a bunch of DAOs in the 2070s. I wanted to explore what an alternative corporate governance structure fork from hierarchical limited liability corporations into decentralized autonomous organizations might look like practically. I’m not sure if it’s any good but I had fun with laying out some thought experiments.

She was probably stuck with low yield yoga and step side quests which wouldn’t do much to make up for the loss of her analyst pay. Investment DAOs paid better than scientific ones. Anyone that contributed to price discovery remained well remunerated. That had been true in her grandma’s day too.

My protagonist is trying to take a break from her workload but still needs to earn some side hustle to make up for the shortfall. I take you through her thought process on what to do. It’s mostly an excuse to riff on how we will sell different kinds of our personal data but maybe also get more in return. Lots of theory of labor value goofing off that I hopefully find a way to put into an enjoyable narrative structure.

It seems a bit crazy to take on an additional writing experiment when I already opt into writing every single day. But this blog has really evolved into a personal space to explore how I feel and what I’m working on. It doesn’t really build on itself in a natural narrative fashion. So I’ll keep poking away at a thousand words of fiction and see what happens. I can’t promise I’ll publish it but I may just put it out there for fun.

Categories
Media

516 and Shoot the Puck

There is a Canadian comedy called Letterkenney that has absolutely won my heart. It has snappy writing that shines through characters that are given real depth over multiple seasons. It’s funny as shit and absolutely vulgar. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. It’s about a small town living and being a hick, but that’s almost besides the point.

The show had an ancillary character, Shoresy, played by the creator of the series Jared Keeso ,who is a foul mouthed hockey player. Shoresy was spun out into its own series and recently premiered. I binged it over the long weekend with my husband. I won’t spoiler any of the plot, it except to say it’s got one of the strongest season endings I’ve ever watched.

What started as a truly disgusting bit of scatalogical humor ends up being the basis for a show with real heart. I found myself getting teary eyed as a story of teamwork unfolded. There is some classic underdog (literally the team is called the Bulldogs), tropes but you genuinely don’t mind. The emotional journey still works.

I’m a startup person so I’ve got a soft spot for watching something messy come together. And nothing is messier than a team that is dysfunctional. You root for them. As teams coalesce and a sense of identity forms, you cannot help but root for the improvement.

I’ve got a theory that the emotional rollercoaster of that process makes you prone to latching into aphorisms and simple wisdom. Its got something to do with the humility that comes from learning shit and being being bad at that shut. I suspect because everything is so chaotic when it’s new. The process of “becoming” so simply do mind shattering that koans and just-so story pearls of wisdom have added weight. They anchor you in the chop of uncertainty.

For Shoresy, the aphorism that tugged most on my heart strings was “you can’t score a goal if you don’t shoot the puck.” A simple sports metaphor so evocative you probably saw it on Naval’s Twitter account. Well ok maybe in just in second stringer venture capitalist sincere post. Clearly Ted Lasso isn’t the only sports sitcom show that can teach us something about becoming our most best empathetic selves.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 514 and Get Your Mind Right

Back when I was in my twenties Gawker was at the height of its power to anoint local stars in New York City. There was one personality I just thought was the funniest and most incisive judge of the human condition. She was woman whose slogan was “Girl, Get Your Mind Right!”

Tiona Smalls had a column on Gawker and eventually turned it into a burgeoning self help empire with tv shows and books. It looks like she is now a realtor so maybe internet game is fickle. I didn’t see any of her later pop culture work. But I did read her Gawker column religiously. I liked her no nonsense attitude.

The premise of her first book, which landed her the Gawker column, was that you’ve got to stop doing shit that isn’t getting you what you want. Hence “girl, get your mind right.” It was nominally a dating advice book. I mostly took it as a basic kind of self help.

I feel like I could use Tionna right now. I’m just emotionally so fucked by the last month. Granted I’ve made some pretty major life decisions in the last thirty days but it doesn’t feel like I should be so wrecked. I am absolutely blaming the flu for kicking up chronic inflammatory shit. Watch out for long Covid folks! Viruses have a weird tendency to go latent. But like really being sick isn’t an excuse to have a bad mental state. I’m practically professionally sick so this shouldn’t phase me.

I’m thinking of maybe going to Europe for a bit. Enjoy that the turmoil in the markets means things are a bit slow for work. While everyone figures out how much to freak out about a recession I might as well reset my central nervous system with some down time. But whatever happens I’ve got to get my mind right.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 512 and Not So Glamorous

Remember that respite I had yesterday from the flu? Yeah me neither! I barely crawled out of bed this morning after some pretty gnarly dreams. My subconscious was going through it.

I had a three hour session of biofeedback yesterday working through some of my self limiting beliefs. It’s truly wild how you will just perpetrate the worst emotional violence on the people we love the most. Alex and I in particular love acting out various O’Henry stories in our marriage. Gift of the Magi is a particularly favorite where we will actively sacrifice something we love for the other only to discover we’ve destroyed the very thing that our partner loved. It’s a super fun cycle and every time I think we’ve found a way out of the cycle we manage to do it all over again. The problem is the glue.

So I was a bit frazzled today from working through all the emotional stuff. I need to stop giving Alex power by letting him take care of me. He needs to drop care taking me. You know standard marriage stuff. I can write whole love letters about it. Anyway I digress.

I was a bit fried today as I was recovering from pushing yesterday. I happened to have a friend that wanted to talk about how I was doing. I think he was expecting a more glamorous even sexy answer. People often think I’ve got a more interesting life than I do. Which is funny as I feel like I write about the mundane details of chronic disease with some frequency. But today I was not swanning about in Europe or writing love letters. I was in a dark cold room fighting off a migraine and some spinal pain. Because sometimes life just isn’t all that glamorous. And honestly that’s ok.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 510 and Lifeline

Many people used social media as a lifeline to connect with others during the pandemic. The Zoom family dinners or the video hangout Happy Hours were a staple personally and professionally. We livestreamed religious gatherings and conversational societies. We set up Discord servers for our favorite topics and Telegram groups for group chats. As it turns out the metaverse is already here and we migrated there during the pandemic years.

The trouble with expanding your subjective reality to include virtual spaces, is that you have massively expanded the surface area of your life. Your world becomes much larger when it’s virtual. Living in the metaverse opens up your neighborhood to the global village.

When you are confined to physical reality as your living space, your subjective reality remains the people you encounter in your daily routine. At most this might be a cosmopolitan city, but for most of us it’s a parochial circle of work, children and basic goods and services. Dunbar’s number suggests we top out at about 150 people.

Most people are awkwardly straddling some middle ground these days. News media expands our subjective reality a bit, and we Americans almost all participate in some online virtual community. If you are creative class it is a professional obligation. But largely we live a real life in our physical communities. We know what is going on in the outside world but we mostly live insular lives.

That is until a tragedy occurs. And at the rate we are going these days that means once every week or so. Suddenly the entire world is focused on one singular horror. Even if it isn’t your own horror in your own physical community your subjective virtual reality feels as if it did.

And this can really suck if the metaverse is a big part of your life. Especially if the metaverse is where most of your social contact happens. The lifeline to virtual communities is no longer expanding your world but merely expanding the surface area of grief during a shared public tragedy.

I am skeptical there is a solution for this problem of shared surface area during a tragedy. Bearing witness is a human instinct deeply coded into our cultures. The desire to be bound together is for better or worse, our reality as social animals. Taking our communities online just takes our culture with us.

Categories
Internet Culture Startups

Day 509 and History Lesson

I’ve been working on a talk for Coindesk’s Consensus in June. I’m doing a talk for their Big Ideas stage that Alex cleverly named the InDAOstrial Revolution. I’m pretty excited about the topic as it’s science fiction & finance history and social organization. It’s basically all my favorites. A

The invention of corporations was a transformative innovation for human organizing, driving the growth of the industrial revolution. Can DAOs drive an equally explosive innovation cycle? Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, offer us a shift towards open and inclusionary entities for marshaling resources and energy. This session dives into their potential futures, including open web public goods, the end of doomer capitalism, techno-optimism collectives, and the possibility of a networked nation state. Come for the sci-fi vibes, stay for the boomer neoliberal skepticism and get a pleasant dose of economic history in the process.

I’ve been doing a little bit of deep diving into the history of the corporation and it’s role in American history in particular. And when I was procrastinating during my flu I watched Gilded Age. Just so you’ve got an idea of my mind set. And honestly it’s been a mind fuck.

I’m not a historian but I think you can make the case that America had corporate governance before we had a functional state or federal government. In fact, this History of the Corporate Form from Fordham Law showed me the wildest fact I’ve ever seen. In America the corporation came before the state.

Other notable “joint-stock” companies, such as the Virginia Company, helped expand British control of North America. In fact, the Virginia Company established the General Assembly, which was the first legislature in North America.

The idea that some monarchy set a corporate charter up to extract commodities and that corporate organization led to a three hundred year experiment in self governance is astonishing. You really never can tell about an event’s downstream ripples. Our entire political way of life was downstream of property rights.

Of course, the reason I point this out is that how we organize and govern our resources and at what scale is what defines history. The ability to trust your goals and your investment will be executed, even if you are not personal overseeing it, is as it turns out a key innovation catalyst for all other technologies. The more efficient we are at at marshaling and deploying resources the further we get as a civilization.

The case I would like to make is that DAOs could help us unlock more sophisticated financing that enables ever further scale and coordination. If the corporation created American, can the DAO led other new nation states?

I can imagine a network state made up of sub-DAOs that provide interlocking economies. Some DAOs are responsible for infrastructure. Others are for services. Maybe we share some key responsibilities across one oligopoly for key social services like health care. The more something needs scale to succeed the more large scale collaborative behavior gets rewarded. I don’t doubt we can create some truly dystopian shit but also maybe it finally gets us to Mars.