I must have taken fairy tales and “just so” stories quite seriously as a small child as I have deep faith in process, repetition, and routine. J
Just keep at it. Practice makes perfect. Chop wood and carry water. To be worthy of the opportunities that might present themselves in your life you must live each day moving forward your intentions with your habits.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. If you maintain the course of your life by consistently apply skills and focus, you may find even the most esoteric and specific dreams of your childhood becoming a reality.
Just yesterday I was invited to participate in something that I had dreamed of being worthy of being included in since my teenage years. I kept the interests my whole life and now out of the blue I was being recognized. I could not be happier.
I had aspired to be a certain kind of person as one of my childhood dreams and here I was finding that I had indeed become worthy of my own aspirations. All it took was going in the right direction, keeping a consistent interest in learning more, and being present in public with those skills. I am so happy that years of simple regular action and interest had indeed yielded fruit.
Ten years ago when I was struggling in my role as CEO of a startup I’d cofounded, I was introduced to a classic business book called Leadership and Self Deception. I read it in one setting on an airplane. It was that good. Or I was that bad. Probably both.
The research explored how we end up creating and sustaining problems we don’t know we are causing, and how and why people resist helpful solutions. They discovered the clear and surprising way that people begin to evade responsibility without thinking that they are doing so, and therefore end up blaming others or circumstances they, themselves, are helping to create
It’s worth the read even if you are the type who prefers a synopsis. I believe most business books could have been a blog post personally. That’s how strongly I recommend the book.
Self aware leaders enable personal responsibility in themselves and their teams. And yet we all lie to ourselves in our personal and professional lives to evade taking responsibility for who we are and what we want.
It’s easier to evade responsibility. Things happen to us and we let others direct the course of our lives. This is not however a path to effective leadership and it’s a miserable way to become a victim of everyone and everything.
There are many frameworks for overcoming the self deception our ego generates. We are not doomed to self sabotage and evade seeing ourselves clearly.
Leadership and Self Deception is just one option I recommend. The Art of Accomplishment’s VIEW methodology for connected communication is another I found beneficial. Even Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous offer frameworks for overcoming the lies we tell ourselves.
It’s going to be so tempting to bullshit ourselves as the next era of politics unfolds and a whole new generation of technology is adopted with artificial intelligence. Do yourself a favor and tune up on spotting your own bullshit.
I’m running on fumes and would really like to say “fuck it” to both the year and my daily habits but as that’s not an option I’ll kvetch about it instead.
As optimistic as I am about 2025 (I know this isn’t a widely held view), I’ve never felt like I needed a break more than I do now.
Clearly I’m not alone. Germany’s Chancellor Scholz lost a no confidence vote setting the stage for snap elections. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stepped down today further weakening Justin Trudeau’s government.
And that’s just today’s news. The world’s institutions are in a state of transition and regular people like me could use just a few weeks to catch our breath.
Remember when we had “two weeks to stop the spread?” Maybe we need that for whatever the heck is going on now. Two weeks to calm your tits?
There are plenty of people screaming for a pause in artificial intelligence but I think they have it all backwards. I’d like a pause in all the politics of the world and press on towards a future where we have more insight into the world. Accelerate the future but please let me have a break from the current moment just for a bit.
But you have to be wary of the stories and advice that litter Reddit and Twitter. Not everyone doling out advice actually wants you to succeed. Some of them look like they are actively undermining their peers.
The manosphere seems determined to turn young men into fearful controlling oafs while the radfem/femcel/tradwife axis of influencers is a mess of undermining advice stoking the neuroses of young women.
In the battle of the sexes, a favored tactic is sabotage. Evolutionary psychologists would probably say what we are seeing on social media is intrasexual competition run amok
Giving bad advice undermines your sexual competition. And if you sell advice or attention, keeping people coming back for more bad takes while keeping them miserable (and single) is the whole game. The hot takers build attention and clout.
I woke up at 4am with my racing heart. I looked at my Whoop biometrics and my resting heart rate was abnormally high. I’m talking 110bpm at the peak of my REM cycle. I obviously has a nightmare.
I figured that nothing could be that scary so I took my temperature. Sure enough I was running a light fever.
The last few days have been a particularly gruesome one the internet. Rapid change, institutional distrust, and chaos have led us to blood. And instead of sorrow it’s all cheers and memes.
I hope it passes quickly. Both my own fever and the one gripping the timelines. I feel in need of some time off from the world. It’s been an intense year. I pray for more introspection through advent.
Americans are in pain. Literally and emotionally. How that happened isn’t my focus. We are in the middle of a national conversation about the failures of institutional medicine and its relationship to our government. We are treading in deep water and it’s best not to get swept away.
There are many communities that have emerged on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, GoodReads and elsewhere dedicated to the many paths available to go about fixing the problems in your life. There millions of strong communities of interests, hobbies, courses, and network knowledge that can enable you.
One of those communities is called TPOT. What is TPOT, who is in TPOT, what are its values and what does it believe are all involved and sometimes contentious questions. Being illegible is a big thing.
We mostly agree it stands for “this particular corner of Twitter” which is a loose network of nodes of people interested in applying knowledge they learn across our networked multimedia to their real life.
The experimental “you can just do things” attitude is a big tent. You see DIY projects, tutorials, reading lists, artificial intelligence and coding discussions, fitness and biohacking experiments, nutrition and cooking, meditation and nervous system research, pain management, psychology and emotional wellness and much more. You also see more far out woo woo topics like psychedelics, evolutionary psychology, and many flavors of rationalism and epistemology.
One of the most qualified voices to speak on TPOT might be Brook Bowman of Vibe Camp. In my understanding of her interpretation, TPOT is a memetic virus and once you touch it you are in the topology of TPOT for good.
tpot is this crazy memetic virus where the term itself means so little and is so contagious that you kind of become part of it just by hearing about it
Brooke
This is protective and makes it resilient. The network is bigger than any node and this is a good thing
So TPOT is best understood as a network composed of many interoperable nodes of interests and many layers of engagement. A memetic complex that you become part of on contact. If you read my blog it’s likely have many clear lines to TPOT.
If you like fitness, coding, rationalism, nutrition, or even home improvement well congratulations you are one or two nodes away from “just do things” as a life philosophy yourself and might be a member of TPOT yourself if you talk about it on Twitter.
And this is now some very dangerous semiotic territory as we cope with the gaping wound that is American health and murder. And I am concerned the narratives are going to be heavily fought over territory.
Because it’s easy to dislike a techbro right now. It’s pretty easy to dismiss the group. I can see it now. “Are your friends into this weird sounding acronym TPOT? Have you heard someone say “you can just do things?” If so you need to alert the authorities!”
Of course this sounds funny and histrionic. It’s totally normal to take responsibility for what you can in your life and try out ways of improving your life somewhat.
Everyone is dealing with pain (chronic or otherwise). Being an adult is a set of emotional challenges to manage and most of us do so by making the shocking decision to take action and do something. That doesn’t mean this world is is dangerous. It certainly doesn’t mean murder. It means doing something in your day life like lifting some weights, shipping some code, checking your biometric data, and trying to be a friend to lessen the pain most of us are in.
I marvel every time I fly. My life rests on miracles and small issues like repair delays and malfunctioning climate systems can make the miracle feel too much like magic and not enough like good process.
I’m happy to be home in Montana after a couple weeks on the road. Financial markets are happy with certainty. So business is looking good and optimism is emerging in all sorts of corners.
And yet we are in the worst Cyperpunk moment of my life. I think about other uniquely connected moments and it’s got nothing on this.
I expect turbulence to continue. Both when I’m flying and in the wider environment. I feel as prepared as it’s possible to be with edge positions across the board and some distance from the center of the empire. I’m glad I’m back home.
I was preparing to head out for a lunch meeting when I got a blaring alert on my phone. I’d been putting on cosmetics in the bathroom while my phone charged in the other room. Initially I thought it was an amber alert.
The National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning. A series of powerful waves and strong currents may impact coasts near you. You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now. Keep away from the coastal waters until local officials say it safe to return.
My blaring alarm was not for a personal family tragedy but a warning for the entire Bay Area. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake had been registered offshore.
Naturally Twitter lit up almost instantly as a number of older established users remain in the area. When San Francisco has weather or news it tends to dominate the instant chronological feed.
Thankfully organizations like the U.S Geological Survey and other relevant public service accounts spread information quickly.
I could feel my cortisol spike as one after another meetings canceled and texts came in from friends in the city (and those who knew I was in town) checking up on each other. We quickly learned it was a large earthquake and its proximity to the coast automatically meant a tsunami warning.
We are staying in a hilly neighborhood so it was easy to calculate we were 100 feet above sea level. It seemed we us an hour till any expected wave was due in San Francisco at 12:10.
An hour of warning seemed like a lot for filling up tubs with water and doing a few frantic preparations like washing socks in case we were looking at a disaster. We wondered if SFO might be impacted given how low lying it is relative to other neighborhoods.
A friend headed over as the park was high ground so we figured why not watch if something happens and catch up together.
As Twitter churned it was mentioned in some coverage that “this was a strike-slip fault, as opposed to a subduction fault, so it’s less likely to cause tsunamis.”
As other areas closer to the epicenter did not see waves, we soon got the automated cancellation of the warning. 12:10 cane and went without a disaster. The cortisol wave I was riding crashed. Everyday there is some new chaotic thing that gets integrated into one’s world as just another day. Yesterday it was corporate assassinations. Today it was tsunamis. Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer.
I’ve heard this multiple times across enough demographics in the wider “startup” ecosystem that I’m afraid I’ll have to accept it is happening. People are faking being weird. In some cases they are faking being autistic.
I find this to be an almost laughably unlikely thing to want to imitate. And yet I’ve heard it three times in the last week. The new poser is faking being a neurodivergent weirdo.
We regularly joke that at chaotic.capital a part of our deal sourcing relies on “Julie being professionally weird on the internet.” My pinned tweet from three years ago is a ramble on this ethos as it’s been true for decades. Unique fixations often undergird problem solving.
Being weird, or more specifically autistic, has now taken on a specific connotation of an intelligent but socially strange or oblivious character who sees the world differently. This means you are special somehow and can be forgiven for being a dick (that’s a lie be nice).
It was probably a source of pain for many millennial kids who were awkward the more oblivious you are the less it bothers you. Marching to the beat of your own drum. We’ve got a whole set of social tropes around smart nerds in popular media and most of them were negatively coded.
Despite this history, revenge of the nerds occurred. The power and dominance of technology (and its cousin nerd) culture means the spergy truth telling autist has cachet. We live in a post Sheldon Cooper world. Once something involves capital it collects social capital as well.
I have clearly underestimated how much this affects Zoomer behavior and incentives. Millennials experienced this archetype negatively but in a softer “everyone is special” culture your quirks can lead you to money and prestige. So there is now an incentive to act like a weird asshole to fake being weird and a little socially anxious.
If autism can have stolen valor then we might be in that era. It seems to greatly annoy the actually autistic (a tag on social media used by many poorly socialized entirely normal people) to have the symptoms of autism faked.
Authenticity is actually quite hard to fake and anyone with a decent social radar can usually spot it. Whether all autists have that capacity to read social cues is up for debate. It’s probably why anyone tries to fake being a genuine weirdo.
I’m inclined to say skills issue as the internet has made class, manners, and social cues much more accessible to everyone. And good news being every social class values being chill, real, and passionate. So there is no need to fake anything. Just vibe. Be cool.
In 2024 I’m still optimistic (albeit cautiously) as I have the similar amounts of health and acceptance keeping me above the waterline of our chaotic reality.
I am thankful the incredible amount of progress I’ve made in my work this year. We’ve done so well with our first fund at chaotic I have little fear that we will continue building it even as the markets remain a challenge.
I’m thankful for our founders who made it possible for me to make a go of investing in weirdos.
I’m thankful for my marriage. Alex and I have made it to our second decade together. I highly recommend marriage if you get the chance.
I’m grateful for so much this year that listing it out seems a bit overwhelming at 8pm at the end of the day.
But if you have the chance to be grateful in writing it’s worth doing. Looking backwards on your gratitude enables you to look forward with optimism.
