Tag: Disaster

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Finance

Day 389 and Bear Down for Midterms

I used to be something of a perma-bear. I was always somewhat convinced that bad shit was just around the corner. I guess you can see that in my persistent interest in doomer culture. But as the world continues to experience “the crumbles” I’ve softened my general stance on everything is awful.

Crypto is arguably responsible for much of my stance. For all the bitching about Web3’s lack of decentralization and heady “takes” on how this has all been done before, I actaully do this think is the next wave. Do I think we are due for a lot of crashing and failures and unrealized promise? Also yes.

So when the market decided to do a January bubble bursting I was surprised at how sanguine I was. I kind of didn’t believe it was going to turn into a full blown recession rout. Now this is not to say I don’t think stuff is frothy, as I clearly do. But I think the weirding has so confused markets that who knows when contagion bubble popping is going to hit for real. I don’t think we are there yet.

And indeed I started this post in the morning and by market close stuff kinda bounced. Maybe a dead cat bounce. But who even knows is my point. I don’t think we will see a genuine correction till a real market leader like Facebook or Microsoft pulls a Worldcom or an Enron. I wouldn’t be shocked if it was Tesla but I ain’t playing that short. I think it’s more likely that “Meta” fucks itself in the transition to the metaverse or whatever and then we get a real systemic crash. Right now no one gives a single fuck if all of crypto goes to zero. We need much bigger game to drive a recession. Systemic Lehman brother shit.

Which is long way of me making an elaborate Community joke. That TV show with the Talk Soup guy. They had a plot where someone misspoke or made a bad joke and the theme at their community college dance was “Bear Down for Midterms” and no it isn’t a real phrase. My basic feeling on a recession is that the Fed will toss us a couple rate hikes to deal with inflation. But half of America is convinced the pandemic isn’t over. Congress could be talked into more stimulus since the midterms are bearing down on us and well the Democrats are going to lose. The exponential age, the end of American empire and global weirding means no one knows what is going on. The next real marker on our calendar is the midterms. So bear down for midterms. I’ll be wash trading to get some actual cost basis losses till then.

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Preparedness

Day 385 and Jinx

I’ve been on the hunt for a homestead. My husband and I are keen to own a resilient home. That’s meant a lot of house hunting and general effort being put into finding land. We also would like to maintain a home in Colorado even though we don’t believe long term the climate and water issues will extend our time here beyond a decade.

We thought we’d found a mountain house that furthered our home ownership goals. We’ve been dancing around an offer and had put in all the effort to move money, set up inspections and otherwise prepare to close at the end of the month. I thought for sure we can discuss this at least a little. Maybe share it with family and get excited about it on Twitter to friends.

Well that was a mistake. A structural engineer we brought to check the building found deal killer issues. It’s quite literally sliding off a mountain. There is no cheap way to fix it. It’s a quarter million dollar problem.

So we jinxed it. The house is untenable. No deal. And I suspect I’ve learned a lesson on counting my chickens before they have hatched. Housing in America is expensive and messy even when you’ve got money and free cash. No wonder we’ve got a housing crisis.

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Preparedness

Day 381 and Homestead Shopping

I just got back from a whirlwind week driving across Montana. I’ve been researching homestead properties for the last year or two but I hadn’t done much scouting outside of Colorado. The Marshall Fire that burned down two entire towns in Boulder County about 5 miles from my house had shook me. My husband and I decided it was time to begin more seriously looking for a safer place to live as climate change continues. So we got in the car and headed north.

Ironically this week we are also closing on a mountain house in Colorado. And yes I realize it’s a bit contradictory to panic about an urban wildfire and then buy a home in the mountains. It was a bit unexpected but we made an offer on a home in a town I happen to love about twenty minutes and an additional 3,000 feet up from Boulder. So basically prime fire country. And strangely I’m ok with the risk as it won’t be our only residence (at least not long term). I decided the desire to live in the mountains was worth pursuing now while we still had the chance. Who knows if in ten years Colorado Rockies will be considered insurable. It’s now or never.

Our current thinking is to use the mountain as our winter home and rent it out during the spring and summer high season. While it’s rented out we will decamp to work on a homestead property in Montana. We know it will take time to fully develop the kind of resilient off grid home we want. It’s a long term project that we suspect will take a decade or more. Frankly we need to make a commitment to buying something while rates are low, we have the free cash, and before inflation gets worse. So we’ve gone from never owning a home to deciding we will own two! It’s great feeling decisive.

Our focus in Montana was finding what areas we liked and where we could see ourselves investing in significant acreage. We want a homestead that has the capacity to get through disasters both natural and man made. That means buying land we can cultivate for both farming and ranching. Well the gentleman farmer style.

Quite frankly I can’t manage the heat in Colorado in the summers anymore so going north was a priority for climate change. Montana is increasingly being viewed as the new Colorado for folks who grew up in a rural Colorado and miss it. But we still want the amenities of a well developed town within half an hour or so. We want Boulder but the kind from 20 years ago that had less climate risk and fewer people. Naturally we checked out both Bozeman and Missoula. I don’t know where we will land but we had a good time exploring. We figured if we could tolerate Montana in January then the nicer months will be a breeze. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the homestead and preparedness journey. And in the meantime if you want to rent a really nice mountain house in the summer drop me an email.

Categories
Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 380 and Decisive

I’ve felt decisive recently. I’ve been confronting significant and life changing decisions the last few weeks and sailing through them. I’ve never felt more at ease making commitments in my life.

It’s not that I’m particularly prone to paralysis by analysis. Generally I’ve been able to move quickly and without undue agony over my choices. But I think within the last two months I’ve simply got my limit with taking the safe course. Maybe it’s a Covid thing and now that I’ve both been vaccinated and had an infection I no longer feel like I can continue with the same safety practices that the early pandemic did. With the election over and the existential threats of insurrections and instability now existing as a permanent worry, I just put off major decisions. I can’t wait for better times or more information. I need to live adaptability now.

So I bought a house. I committed to the process of buying land in another state for a long term resilience based homestead. I’ve planned trips travel. And not nearby regions like travel. I’m going international. I’m meeting people I haven’t seen for years. In some cases I’m meeting people I’ve only ever known online because socializing has been entirely remote for going on three years. That’s an inhumane way to live for extended periods. Even the most introverted person still needs connections. I’ve started making decisions to live my life. I need to live like a future exists or I will never ever escape. As soon as I made the decision to believe in a future again decisions flowed easily.

Categories
Politics

Day 379 and Red vs Blue Poverty

I’ve been scouting for homesteads so I have been making forays further from the city enclaves and blue liberal towns that are my normal haunts and out into rural America. Poverty in the context of blue cities has generally meant homelessness and panhandling. But poverty in rural america looks different.

NIMBY (not in our neighborhood) cities won’t let you just pull up a double wide on the outskirts of town. That brings down property values. I mean theoretically so does tent cities, but that’s an argument for another day. But I haven’t really seen a lot of RVs or mobile homes simply because I’ve lived in yuppie Boomer cities. NIMBY land has “standards” and if you can’t meet them we’d rather you be unhoused than accommodate uglier but more humane options.

As I’ve driven through industrial western cities I’ve seen a fuck ton more rural poverty than I expected. Which is naive and stupid of me. I’m aware of median American incomes. Not everyone can afford suburban townhouses and most developers aren’t interested in building that kind of housing outside of well gentrified places.

As I’ve gone further afield to towns that rely on commodity products like oil or minerals or cattle, I’ve noticed a reliance on temporary or low cost housing. You see a lot of decent well maintained working trucks. But a lot of the housing is as bare bones as you can imagine. And it’s ugly as sin to the NIMBY eye but at least it’s fucking housing. I’ve seen a lot of trailers in various states of decay but I’ve got to imagine it’s better than a tent.

I don’t have a real point here other than to say that America is hurting. No one can afford inflation and if we’ve got stagnating opportunities it’s going to blow up in our faces. Blue cities should be embarrassed as fuck by allowing massive unhoused populations when we’ve got prefabricated options. But the American crumbling is bad in any form.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 377 and Fucked

I was having a conversation with a colleague today. I didn’t know them well so I was amused and surprised when our conversation took a left turn into “everything is fucked!”

It’s not that I disagree. If anything I strongly agree shit is fucked. But I’m not used to a normie getting apocalyptic on me. I didn’t know them well enough that they would have had much insight into my politics or views on systemic collapse. Rather it was two work related people discussing just how uncomfortable daily living is right now. We laughed about how the massive wildfires that burned two Colorado suburbs was already last week’s crisis. And it’s not funny since it was my town’s crisis.

There is an unsettling realization among regular people that life isn’t getting back to normal ever again. That some rubicon has been crossed and even the most normal among us senses that something is wrong.

Have we all become doomers this last year? Has every little crisis finally piled up high enough that it breaches the preoccupation with daily needs and obligations. I don’t like that it’s now common knowledge that shit is fucked. I’m unsettled we agree that life is on a hard left turn. I miss optimism being common knowledge.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 376 and Unnormal

I’ve been going about my life as if everything were normal this past week. I had meetings. I did long term strategic planning for various business interests. I went to a doctor’s appointment. I went grocery shopping. I went house hunting for a mountain house. I was living life.

But absolutely nothing is normal. The doctors appointments needed extra planning as old of the offices burned. Going to the grocery store was particularly emotional as I was so sure we’d lost it in the Marshal Fire that completely devastated two entire towns in Boulder County. Much of my planning meetings incorporated issues related to uncertainty on government interventions and the concern of regulatory overreach.

It feels totally normal to be concerned about political uncertainty and incorporating the aftermath of a climate disaster into errands. It is absolutely “unnormal” to use a term I heard on the “It Could Happen Here” podcast. Shit is just getting weirder and weirder. And there is absolutely no evidence to suggest we should expect life to ever return to some kind of normal. There is no “before times” normal I’ll ever see again in my life.

I say this as someone who is investing time and money into finding a homestead that I wish to be resilient against the background of an uncertain world. I believe things will get worse. And I’m actively taking steps to make my life more livable and productive even in worse conditions.

Because I don’t want another wildfire close call. I don’t want to be totally dependent on supply chains that have natural vulnerability to disease or weather. On Reddit this week our local sub had 200 comments on an empty milk refrigerator at Whole Foods. The discussion couldn’t decide if the issue was the wildfires that destroyed other area groceries leaning to increased demand, that the rival chain was having a strike labor action so more people were shopping Whole Foods to avoid crossing a picket line, or that too many Covid cases hit the trucking company that does Amazon’s logistic legs meaning goods never made it to the store. And what’s wild is no one seemed that worried that even on of those issues would have been viewed as a national crisis a few years ago. This was just all part of living our new unnormal.

Categories
Chronic Disease Preparedness

Day 373 and Picking Up Signals

I missed a signal from my body today. I promised myself I’d rest this weekend as I was feeling the exertion from the week. Which is exciting and great that life is having good energy but you’ve got to make sure to restore and preserve.

But this morning I learned that the Costco that burned in the Marshall Fire was reopening. We’d briefly thought we’d lost it during the chaos of the fires. But somehow they had managed to get it cleaned up and opened within a week. I was running low on groceries because of our own Omicron cases and the after math of the fires kept us at home. I immediately felt like we needed to go to the Costco. Emotionally I needed the Costco run. We needed groceries but I needed to see that it was still standing. That it survived.

Physically it was a mistake. Driving past the new burn scars was surreal. Seeing the remains of Old Town Superior as nothing but rubble was upsetting. But it wasn’t nearly as upsetting as turning into a giant box store parking lot and doing chores in the aftermath of a fire. Like nothing had ever happened.

We bought a bunch of shit in completely apocalyptic settings. Traffic lights were still off but a bunch of chain stores has big signs that said “we are open!” The Costco was running heaters on generators. The HVAC system has smoke damage so it couldn’t be run. But it’s freezing and we just had two large snowstorms so they needed to do something to warm up the warehouse. Life goes on.

I was relieved our Costco was still there. Glad for my bulk raspberries and chai as much as the security of seeing something made it. But fuck did I feel terrible afterwards. My entire body hurt. I’m not sure if it was emotional or physical but I was hurting. I still am hurting. I could barely write this down. I wasn’t listening to my own signals. That maybe I needed rest. That maybe I shouldn’t have gone to Costco. We’ve got to be gentle as we navigate the chaos of our current moment. You never know when you will find a trigger point.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 369 and Reeeee!!!

Maybe it’s human nature to be a bit catastrophic. We are so self centered we thought the sun revolved around us. Took centuries of science for someone to propose another framework. Completely revolutionized science by thinking hey what if what we think is true isn’t?

Narcissistic thinking is our vibe. But also Jesus fuck it feels like the world is going to hell. What if I am living in uniquely bad times? Maybe this is just old person thinking and I need to accept I can’t see reality with sparkling clarity. Or at least the most optimistic permutations of reality. Time isn’t linear and all.

I’m simultaneously planning for an incredibly positive future while I’m also freaking the fuck out. It’s straight up Dickensian. Best of times worse of times. On the one hand I have never been more excited about where technology is headed. Web 3 really might move forward a freer more open market capitalism for everyone. But also my county is on fire and a thousand homes were destroyed in a fire brought on by drought and heat and bad land use.

It’s just extremely jarring to be living a positive optimistic life where I’m excited to buy a home and invest in new founders while also incorporating risk from climate change and political instability. And I won’t even get into whether we need to give a fuck about the pandemic anymore

Pepe frog in a rage in red background

It’s enough to make you go REEEEEEE. Which is a meme that I think should freak me out a little as it bubbled up in kek rare pepe memes on 4chan. Which have filtered into some safe uses but are still tightly wound to meme magic alt-right. But that’s part of why everything is so scary today! Am I a Nazi fascist for using this meme? Who knows! Reeeeeee!! Cancel me daddy!

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 367 and Flat Out Grossings

December was a pretty gnarly month for me. I tore a ligament. I got Covid. A fire burned down two entire towns. I’m emotionally burnt out right now and letting myself feel it because tomorrow I go back to work. So apologies if this is even more stream of consciousness than usual.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a reporter. So I talked my way into an internship at our local television station Channel 8. I loved it. I got to be the assistant for such glamorous events as city council land use meetings. Which is how I happen to have the misfortune of knowing how Boulder became surrounded by suburban sprawl. I don’t have a grand unified theory. I just witness a lot of little decisions that compounded into unspeakable disaster no one could have predicted. Except we did.

There used to be a crappy mall in Boulder. It had a Macy’s and a Foley’s but it couldn’t sustain its anchor tenant department stores even in the late 90s and early aughts. Now big developers and chain stores knew that Boulder was fast becoming a wealthy town and wanted in. Maybe we could upgrade from middle market to premium retail. But Boulder is run by a bunch of hippies and wanted no part of upgrading big box stores. City council meeting turned into an endless parade of “no” to various folks coming in attempting to take over the mall on 28th street. It languished for years.

Eventually the developers gave up. Decided to construct a mall outside of the open space belt outside of the city. You see Boulder is the prototype for NIMBYS. We literally bought up a bunch of land that the town owns and can never ever be developed so no one could sprawl the town. It’s gorgeous and amazing and expensive to maintain and makes Boulder a haven for its natives and an impossibly expensive place if you didn’t buy real estate in the 60s. But I digress. This is about the mall.

The developers called the new mall out on the prairie beyond the town’s open space Flatiron Crossing. It’s an homage to Boulder’s signature feature the flatiron mountains. And the views from up town highway 36 into town driving back from the mall are amazing.

And Boulder honestly felt like it won. The ugly box stores went up around it. Our town was saved from Costco and Chuckee Cheese and Ann Taylor. We all snobbishly called it Flat Out Grossings. We thought it was a nasty money grab. It was wise we let them develop outside the open space band and protected the town.

Except that mall and all the box stores turned into the anchor for all the surrounding towns. We called them the L towns. Well that and Superior. And that’s where the growth happened. That’s what enabled Colorado to thrive. And that’s exactly how an urban fire that was started on Boulder open space ended up destroying so many homes. We pushed out the development thinking we’d done a good thing.

I actually have to stop writing this as I can’t make the point I want to which is that Boulder brought much of this misery on itself. We wouldn’t let the land be developed in town. So someone else did outside of town. And now that land got wiped out from a fire in our open space. And everyone is going to be snide and awful but our policies have consequences and by pushing out our development to Flat Out Grossing the law of unintended consequences has taken over. And I’m sick to my stomach knowing the well intentioned hippies ended up doing so much more damage.