Tag: Elite

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Finance Startups

Day 1858 and Parked Outside the Flow

The crazier the informational world gets, the more inclined I am to tune it all out. The flows of information are fun sure but it’s only useful to financiers, degenerates and the global management class. I really only rate into very bottom of one. No, not the degenerate class.

As 2026 has become the year of repositioning for “whatever is coming,” I am unsure of much I wish to return from the hinterlands into the flow. Being inside the flow looks enticing but it’s Thor the only way to do business.

The thing is that I began my own career by participating (in a small way) in what Will Manidis calls The Flow. Being inside has its perks and I saw a lot which enabled me to make some very good investments.

What is the flow? It’s a metaphor for a 24/7 club of information, a formal and informal circuit of social and business obligations, and series of social & professional inputs that sometimes generate spectacular output.

It’s no wonder people think investing looks like gambling when you put it that way. It takes a lot of shrewd social manners and access to resources to be inside the flow and those are distinct barriers for anyone outside the global ten percent.

So where to go if you are an American? Well, stay put somewhere you can be stable and secure. Sure the middle powers will tell you that they can save the liberal order but in reality it’s all state capitalism by strong man and technocrats. And I’m not either and I’d wager most truly new things that will matter won’t be easily secured by old mechanism of power.

What Manidis rightly points out in his Flow essay, is that you can build businesses and make good money for investors and limited partners outside of the flow. You can focus on your unique insights and build something great.

I hope I offer some proof of that myself. I flash the codes for my odd little node and traffic occasionally routes through me. I found crypto winners and the future of atomics outside the flow. And I think I’d rather like to spend my Sundays seeing what’s happening outside the nightclub of financial flows.

If you want to be outside you can be. I just might be already. You can find me in the proverbial parking lot of the Flow (the open internet) yapping, chilling, lighting and fighting with the cool kids. You will always know where to find me. I’ll be one DM away.

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Finance Politics

Day 1857 and We’ve Got to Talk About Kevin

My husband was joking with me that he’d been arguing, in the way that men do, about what the state is or is not obliged (or allowed) to do about the movement of the capital class and where they keep their resources.

Capital flight and asset diversification are not just individual decisions but increasingly society ones as well. And it’s not just the wealthy who are worried.

This discourse emerged in the middle of the intense upswings in gold & silver prices subsequent profit taking and draw downs.

• Gold ran to roughly 5,600 USD/oz before sliding 7–10% in a day, still leaving it massively higher on the month.
• Silver briefly traded above 120 USD/oz, then fell 15–20% and is now back under the 100–110 area, which technically puts it in a short‑term bear move after a parabolic rise

These actions were stirred up by debate on Federal Reserve independence (ameliorated somewhat by the new chair Kevin Warsh over Kevin Hassett), China’s buying patterns (both official & wealthy retail) in precious metals and what these two interconnected news items might mean geopolitically for regular people. See this on buying in Australia and on China’s flows for more context.

From remittances to capital controls, the debate is particularly spicy as the dollar has been made to trade deliberately lower for the export agenda, rising remittance dollars (and debate on what’s missing in tracking them) has upset many Americans, and the money printing of the Biden years has raised awareness of inflation and national debt.

Obviously it has been a combustible mix. And thus we see renewed interest in decentralized assets and hard commodities. And then, of course, there has been the trial balloon floating in California of a wealth tax. What should we do about our most moneyed citizens and what do they owe. We tax income not wealth and that change is likely to have huge repercussions.

It seems perfectly sensible that anyone who has dollar denominated assets might be concerned about where that currency is headed, who is benefiting from the changes, and what on earth the Chinese are up to both as a people but also as a nation with unclear monetary goals and tensions between its leader and its military.

Ultimately though this is an incident about the dollar, its long term value, who will oversee it (and which Kevin was meant to have the gig) and where wealth can and cannot go to deploy itself in an era where the rules based order and Bretton Woods are no longer a given.

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Uncategorized

Day 1849 and The Great Look Backward

The ChinaTalk Substack has an excellent analysis of the “Net Left” (wang zuo, 网左). A group of young Chinese yearn for the cultural revolution era.

Accordingly to the essay, the “Net Left” traces its earliest roots to a niche group on Weibo between 2011 and 2015 known as the “Franco Left” (fa zuo, 法左).

An American social media user might notice these dates as being concurrent with the stirrings of the Great Awokening whose murky protean identity played out across Tumblr beginning in 2011-2015 as well. Oppressor and oppressed was the narrative for the identity politics which was nouveau chic branding on Marxist capital versus labor.

This simplified narrative attracted a massive influx of young people who were frustrated with their poverty and pressure but struggled to find an answer. Suddenly, the solution was no longer buried in thousands of pages of Deleuzian tomes. Everything was reduced to a single, omnipotent, and evil symbol: “capital.”

Longing for the Cultural Revolution

Even the struggles of Chinese youth sound like American Gen Z’s struggles. American youth were once pushed toward upward class mobility by The Sort.

Now they critique the high costs of that expensive competitive credentialist systems who put them in debt. Youngsters just starting out see its current failure as a mechanism for training and selecting talent and are opting for new solutions.

China has “small-town test-takers” (xiaozhen zuotijia, 小镇做题家) who don’t have the social capital to make the leap. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? In their case it is strongly gendered, which mirrors some red pill and incel culture on the American web.

Just as in America, many Chinese youth blamed capital and its elite power holders. Who needs to read dense critical theory when the warmth of collectivism is easier to understand than the Frankfurt School or Continental Marxist philosophy.

It seems all great powers are experiencing flavors of third worldism where all is “the oppressed ” and those with capital & power are oppressors. And yet Europe, ever the laggard, is trying “almost revolutionary ideas” to make them more like nimble capitalist powers.

The Europeans must be scared of the tractors I saw protesting the Mercosur trade block deal even though ironically German-Italian initiative claim their goals are making “the European Union less susceptible to pressure from trading partners and global powers” after a week of embarrassing news.

They wish to boost economic growth, calling for “an emergency brake” and a revamp of the EU budget to focus resources on making companies more competitive. I wonder who they think will run and staff these firms?

Just as the rest of the world nostalgically looks back for a leap backwards, Europe says “we want to have a fast, dynamic Europe.” Good luck with that based on the protests I saw.

At least Europe, like the Net Left and the Tumblr DSA crowd, are basing some of this on a misty eyes interpretation of a past that once was but was never quite this. The first year of Davos emerged in similar situations

Well, it goes back to 1971, which was actually another year of trans-Atlantic tension. Nixon left the gold standard. The dollar fell. The U.S. imposed tariffs on European imports. And the Europeans were totally blindsided. This German economist, Klaus Schwab, convenes this gathering of politicians and academics and business people in Davos. It gradually grows into this giant business conference that’s also an exercise in virtue signaling.

– Peter Goodman New York Times “Davos Stops Pretending

Categories
Biohacking Medical Travel

Day 1846 and Doctor’s Orders

I have had a lot of experience with doctors over the last few years. A chronic autoimmune condition isn’t the sort of illness that gets “better” like a virus. It can only be managed.

I have come up with endless ways of collaborating with people who far too often believe they are more informed, powerful and intelligent than me.

Sometimes they are even right about that perception. It’s a frustrating fact of life that doctors value their status occasionally more than their patients.

Today I went to a tourist hospital renowned for its extensive offerings and professionalism. My usual interpreter (it’s in a foreign country as many nations from Mexico to Turkey to South Korea serve American patients) had a number of procedures and visits organized for me. I felt confident I’d learn a lot and maybe find new pathways to healthcare management.

I happened to have an aesthetic elective treatment first. A plastic surgeon met with me to refresh some Botox. That seemed excessive given a nurse does my light work back in Montana but why not get a professional opinion while you have the chance.

I’d intended to spend the afternoon at the hospital doing a number of more productive activities than smoothing my fine lines. I’d set up rheumatology and immunology lines of questioning and I was excited to get some holistic work done including ozone and an IV infusion of vitamins and minerals.

Alas I was stopped in my tracks by a physician who simply would not approve the IV I had set up, the ozone work, nor would she approve the alternatives I suggested (an intramuscular B vitamin shot). I made my case with the interpreter and my AI.

The doctor wouldn’t budge. She even obfuscated suggesting that glutathione was illegal though backed down when it turned out to be a malpractice issue related to compounding pharmacies.

I very much wanted to buff up my immune system, especially having chosen something elective to go first, and I could not make progress. It shut down my whole afternoon. All that was left was tests and waiting.

There was no order the doctor was willing to give for short term immune improvements unless I committed to five weeks of procedures which given it was a tourist hospital seemed a little ironic.

I am demoralized but doctors will be doctors. I never seem to manage to convince them when I really need it. Doctor’s orders are not always for the benefit of the patient. Maybe no one wanted a woman sitting around hooked up to a vitamin infusion. Who knows. I probably would have skipped the Botox though.

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Community Politics Travel

Day 1840 and Firm Planning Over An Abstract Constantinople

A friend of mine James Pogue published an opinion piece long in the making about a new kind of Democratic. He deeply investigates the subtly misunderstood Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

I was really moved by his sincere engagement with a new kind of Democrat who is really an old kind of Democrat who spoke to America s who lived closer to the land and took pride in a type of communal and conservative stewardship of our country.

I felt it very deeply as someone between two worlds. I sense the grief and loss I carry everyday. If the nation had chose a different path, I wouldn’t have been shunted up and out in The Sort.

Maybe I’d have married to my high school sweetheart. He’s an EMT, didnt go so far from home and is a passionate outdoorsman. We were on different paths as is clear from where I landed but my respect for the life he leads endures.

I live an amazing life with a loving dedicated husband with whom I pursue a deeply aligned set of life goals. The blessings that have been showered on me by the Sort have been substantial. We we have almost maximum freedom to pursue our lives while.

I thank God that despite the changes that have ravaged much of the America, I grew up in most of what I know is incredible agency and comfort.

But there are other Americas who are not so lucky. I hold that William Gibson saw Cyperpunk as science fiction rooted in Appalachia. I see how he writes the near future and it’s one where the past still exists but some of us have been sent forward to the future.

In his almost present maybe I’d have in-laws I grew up with and maybe I’d have my parents nearby because we’d never have lost the house in Boulder and staying close would have made economic sense. Hippies really did want that world.

Maybe a world where “right to repair” has been enshrined would have allowed me to build and own the work I could do on the farms that surrounded our defense industrial focused land grant university. It’s hard to imagine what I would do in that other America.

I’d manage the organic school farm I worked to gain permits for that my mother built from the first year. It mostly existed to produced fruits and vegetables for those who worked it. Itd a fantastical idea that has little basis in economic reality but it’s a life that would make sense to almost anyone.

But instead I was off to acquire an enormous debt that was hard for me and my family to fathom to take huge gambles that I’d be a winner. And I was.

But I’ll never have my family, childhood house, or my town back. That America is gone. And when I wanted the pickup truck of the past I had to import it from the fucking Balkans. It’s expensive to be able to repair what you’ve got.

I’m writing this from a hotel in a trade capital where Alex and I are working while doing our yearly “firm” planning for the family because it was the best place to meet up based on his travel and mine as we run the ancient trade lines that have always ruled the world. That we can plan is a dream.

We aren’t aristocracy but agents of them. And if they ever tried to take our trucks or our guns what else would we have left but being “in service” and tut tutting over a lie of moral superiority for having achieved high rank by serving our betters.

I’ve never felt more America than in this moment, even though I’ll never ever get back the American whose logic forced me into achieving a bigger life than I’d ever imagined.

I just happen to know that it was achieved at the expense of my home and my family and a future that would have also been a life of beauty and meaning close to the land and a town that has benefited from an American government that worked a little bit more for the people around me.

Just because I have thrived doesn’t mean the cost wasn’t great. That would be a dismissal of the material reality that I know to be true. But isn’t it nice that I will be treated as a respected trader representing capital interests in some great capital. It’s freedom most certainly, but not the freedom that America promised. That one might be a little less grand. It’s a little bit firmer. And I am in the realm of the abstract.

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Aesthetics Startups Travel

Day 1839 and Take A Load Off Fanny

I pulled into Nazareth was feelin’ about half past dead. I’m not actually in Nazareth, but I am feeling the weight of my travel and I do feel half past dead.

Laying in bed I’ve got The Weight’s classic on repeat along with remixes and algorithm recommendations. For what it’s worth Buffalo Springing is a mood that leads to Jefferson Airplane for me.

So I quote my way through today and encourage feeling my moods as I try to come down. There’s something happening here but what it is ain’t entirely clear. It was true then and it’s true now and I know it’s hard.

You can put the load back on me and go ask Alice if you need. But if you go chasing rabbits and you know you are going to fall, remember what the dormouse said. Feed your head.

The playlists of my parents and of the Silicon Valley counter cultural era can help guide by turning to the past to make sense of the present. And if it starts for you well, as I said go ask Alice what the dormouse said.

Logic and proportion have indeed fallen sloppy dead. And I am working to feed my head. But maybe Alice would encourage feeding my heart if any of us had thought to ask. So I am taking a load off. And I’ll put the load right on you. We can make it if we all stick together.

Categories
Culture Travel

Day 1837 and No Pot To Piss In

The power went out yesterday while I was packing for the next leg of trip I’ve been on. It’s not the digital nomad age anymore obviously but it is the era of IRL reality grounding.

Being in constant contact with different markets and different cultures is a just another iteration of being in the moment but for making your life.

Being small enough that few of my interests interest the powers that be yet lets me be nimble in how I live (even with my health challenges or maybe because of them) so I’m driving up through Albania and Macedonia into Greece today.

At the moment I’m fascinated by the old Soviet capital folks ways from Tallinn to Tirana. I was in Sarajevo for New Year’s Eve.

I feel called to learn more about the people and places that found the brutalism of collectivism a worthwhile trade from the lives they had been living. I’m sure most of them didn’t realize the violence involved but survival can call for more than the civilized man would wish.

What does that mean for our future and who decides it? Will our young people feel similarly? It seems some already do despite much better conditions in America than I saw today as I drove through snowy bedraggled roads and abandoned industrial buildings.

The cold sun on snow and an abandoned factory with my hands visible in the passenger mirror.

The horrifying reality of modernism (and the war machines that came with it) must have baffled an ordinary person. What use has a farmer for state capacity and constant politicking?

Status hierarchies seem more acute now than I can imagine they were for the average person during the height of communism. Survival in the cold is a more understandable motivation than craving Instagram lives.

I stopped to gas up in a mountain town petrol stop. I asked for a bathroom. I was prepared for a mess but found it was simply a hole in the ground. As I attempted the hiking squat of a woman over the drain, I understood what “no pot to piss in” meant as I shivered in the frozen snowed in town.

Some material realities can certainly push you to consider if we can do better for people. Especially when I saw the bill. Gas is at a low in America and still fuel is apparently quite expensive in the semi-socialist European domains. 1.1 Euro per Liter for LPG. Sheesh. Who is that benefitting?

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Culture Politics

Day 1834 and Oops All Reactionaries

A running joke personal joke I have when frustrated by humanity is that every movement compelling enough to reach any scale reveals itself eventually to be “oops all reactionaries” The bigger the thing or the deeper down you go and eventually with fractal consistency “oops, all reactionaries!”

Anytime I have really hard contact with reality this turns out to be true. Reality has been particularly harsh over the last couple decades insofar as materialism has gone for the species.

I have been shielded from reality by the gracious people of the United States of America. And even then if you look too closely “oops all reactionaries!”

I think “oops, all reactionaries” turns out to be a decent lens for assessing our past, present and probably future. If it’s any good it has a core that should concern if you take it too literally. You then have to decide how seriously to take their literalism. If you get it wrong you might wake up dead.

Which I don’t love. Most people just want to go along to get along. Which isn’t to say that getting along in America is easy. We are a surprisingly competitive place for the richest nation state to have ever existed among a bizarre republic of slowly expanded frontiers and boomtowns. So we’ve got plenty of pockets where reality has always been all reactionaries.

We’ve hit our limits a million times and still have shockingly low density. Being an industrious people who enjoy markets this has worked out relatively well for the “empire” and it’s people.

America! It’s not bad and I recommend it even if we do functionally have feudal lords in the form of capital, labor and land managers at various levels of public and private parcels. But being civilized people trying to make a buck we really don’t like it when the shock troops are deployed at home.

We do seem to be ambivalent about it being deployed abroad. This has been my Ted Talk on homeland security. Really though beware the politics of wealthy heiresses.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1833 and Noriega 2 Maduro Boogaloo

We’ve had a couple of market trading days to adjust to the new world order being “absolutely no order” and it mostly seems fine. American can capture cartel leaders/heads of state that she dislikes. Weird but so far fine.

The only metaphors are crude puns (see what I did there) and Marco Rubio does every job memes. From the Golden Era of Iran-Contra to Manuel Noriega, it’s never been a better time to have an opinion on the Monroe Doctrine or a LatAm portfolio. Did you know Ollie North married his former secretary this summer? Fun!

I myself have none of this knowledge so the best I can do is imitate Mickey Rooney’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s character saying, “Donroe Doctrine.” Not very funny I know.

Yellow face being racist, perverting the Monroe Doctrine into a pan-Asian accent inflected Capote character is definitely cancel worthy but if you can’t imagine it I’m sure generative AI would oblige.

What’s worse is that my stupid inner monologue mimicry made me I wonder if Xi Jinping has enough of an accent when speaking English for Donroe Doctrine to be amusing. Americans never know these things. Neither does Reddit

Being profoundly American, this is all upsetting except where it is amusing, because the chaos era is firmly here and it’s hard to make any predictions, first derivative included.

That the world is chaos is now such common knowledge that it’s the stuff of moderate Substack consensus intellectuals.

I used to do more victory laps about how my own investment thesis is predicated on increasing chaos. Now I’m just reminded of how much I didn’t want to be right about my own thesis when I started.

Hopefully that hasn’t affected my capacity to stay ahead of the game. The numbers look good but the final score remains to be seen.Because as they say, “hate the game, not the player.” I’m playing to win.

As if we don’t win at making better technologies that stabilize our world then we all lose. I am a progressive when it comes to investing in new technologies that improve material conditions.

We won’t look at Uncle Yud as fondly as Uncle Ted when it’s time for eulogies. We will conclude that Chesterton’s Fence included a bit too much in the enclosure even if strong fences make for good neighbors.

Being a reluctant conservative makes it worse that I love being first. I am a hipster in an era without use for hipsters except the knowledge of what is about to make money. Hipsters are a useless bunch except as fashion editors or as capital stewards.

I happen to own the domain chaotic.capital. You’d think this would be proof positive of being a progenitor or originator of this investment thesis, but it’s such a common sense worldview now it’s about as useful as an NFT after the 2022 crashes.

I have bragging rights and my own metrics page inside AngelList. Which isn’t nearly as much fun as I expected it to be. It’s not bad having some financial flexibility from making good calls, but my primary problems remain health not talent so it’s less enjoyable than I presumed. Thankfully that means I will continue at it based on my own pace and instincts. Good luck out there!

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Reading

Day 1831 and A Stenographer For Everyone

I hate to use a dictation software to write a piece that I typically write with my own two hands and ten fingers but I’m not entirely sure that I see the difference between typing out a hundred words a minute on a mobile phone versus saying something a little more slowly to a stenographer application. I use Wispr Flow

I’m sure if you are a Paul Kingsnorth type, you would be happy to remind us that we’ve lost the “steno-pools” filled with women whose job was knowing just how to speed their notes to keep the dictation flowing. Those jobs are gone as the personal computer made its debut.

I don’t mind writing as I can write just a little bit faster than I can talk. And I often find that my dictation is less pulled together than my writing. But isn’t it funny that we should have reached this point so many centuries later? Yeah.