Tag: Emotions

Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1481 and smh

When I got started with my daily writing project I knew there would be days when I did not want to write. Today is one of them.

I actually expected “ugh no want to write” days to be more frequent than turned out to be true. I’ve bitched about it 51 times which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.

I knew I’d find a way to force the issue just as I had made other habits a part of my life. You really can make almost anything a habit if you are so inclined. But I rarely have to force habit. I just do the thing till it’s either a habit or it’s clear it’s not for me. They say it’s 21 days but I’d give it more like 100 to be safe.

Things I just do every day include applying facial moisturizer, brushing my teeth, squatting (no not just on the toilet I mean the full body compound exercise), taking my vitamins, Tweeting, playing a stupid pay to play Chinese mobile game, telling my husband I love him and opening up my mobile content management app to write this post.

And yet I am in a real “smh” place today with my attempts to find meaning in any of my habits. I’m disappointed in more than a few things. It’s all very Cthulhu and Antarctic cold vibes for me today. Sure it’s -20 in Montana but it’s very sunny so it’s cheery dread.

Anyways, the interregnum is over, we have a new President who is an old President and everything that is new is old and everything old is new again.

The entire Arnault family showed up for the inauguration so Dior’s New Look is back. Does that make this a post war moment? Did we live through a cultural revolution and not even notice? Smh.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical Uncategorized

Day 1476 and Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

I’m thrilled to see that the very week I began my hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy that we’ve had multiple experiments and data come in.

Bryan Johnson helped answer a few questions in my set up so I was delighted to see he himself was just wrapping up a major experiment with HBOT.

Step into my hyperbaric chamber courtesy of Bryan Johnson’s Twitter

Earlier in the week Harvard professor David Sinclair tweeted a thread on with links to the newest scientific literature on treatment. Stuff with names like Activation of SIRT1 by hyperbaric oxygenation promotes recovery of motor dysfunction in spinal cord injury rats

Esssays

A lovely meditation on what happens when you write 11,000 blog posts. In this case startup blogging. I’m written an order of magnitude less so hopefully I can avoid some of the negative consequences and enjoy the lessons.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1475 and Equalizing Pressure

I scared someone really badly today. As I was being locked into the hard shell for my eighth hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy session, I realized I had forgotten my chewing gum.

At 2 atmospheres of pressure it can be a real challenge to keep your ears from getting painfully congested. Even with yawning and blowing oxygen out your nose, it’s like going into an airplane with a sinus trouble. It’s uncomfortable but it can also be dangerous.

Careful. Equalize the pressure in your ears. If you feel your ears stuffy, equalize the pressure in the following ways. 1. Yawn 2. Swallow saliva. 3. Close mouth, pinch the nose, out of breath, blow the nose (all spelling mistakes theirs)

I got a little panicked as I was trying to stop the clinic technician from finishing the sealing process as I wasn’t sure if they could stop it once it was sealed or if I would need a full decompression cycle.

I was texting frantically “I forgot my gum can this be stopped ASAP so I can get it?”

I was tapping the window on the hardshell with a worried look and showing the text. I kept trying to make the font bigger and be clearer. FORGOT GUM OPEN?!

But it was confusing enough that everyone in the room thought something was seriously wrong. Which it would have been without the gum as I can’t do a full hour at 2 atmosphere without the help of the chewing. All the yawning, blowing out through the nose and other techniques aren’t quite enough.

It wasn’t yet an emergency. If it was I would have hit the big red button. But everyone seemed to think it was. After 2-3 minutes of frantic miscommunication it turned out that it was fine to open it up but we’d need to restart the seal and pressurize it again. I got the gum. And look who was on the TV screen.

Just don’t die while inside the chamber

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1474 and Process over Outcome

It’s hard to trust, well, anything. The uncertainty of the near future looks like the uncertainty of the far future right now.

It feels as if one is in a fog so thick that you can’t see your own hand reaching out to touch something at arm’s length let alone glimpse gjr far horizon

How do we set goals and work towards outcomes in that kind of world? I find it unsettling despite having years to prepare for a more chaotic world.

I am learning to let go of grasping for specific outcomes and lean on process to bring me to outcomes. I work the problems in front of me. I maintain the protocols that work for me. When they cease to yield results I change as rapidly as I am able.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1470 and Disappointing Biomarkers

After my anaphylactic adventures over New Year’s, I decided it was time for a fresh round of bloodwork to see just how my inflammatory responses were doing.

I got them back and it shows exactly what you’d imagine from a patient with an active autoimmune condition. My sed rate, or erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) made a significant jump from last measurement.

I’d been on the high end of normal for almost two years and this set returned with doubling of the previous number. This biomarker is used in conjunction with C-reactive protein (CRP) test to determine overall inflammatory responses. That test came back modestly elevated but not atrocious. I also have elevated IgA levels, also known hypergammaglobulimia so that’s a bummer.

It would seem that my relatively well controlled autoimmune disorders (psoriatic arthritis and ankylosis) are moving to an active phase.

Given my use of IL-17 inhibitor injections along with a pain management protocol, lifestyle and nutrition management and a focus on holistic interventions, these results are obviously quite disappointing to me.

It would seem 2024 was harder on me than I’d have preferred and 2025 will be a year of doubling down on holistic therapeutics. Red light, infrared sauna, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers oxygenation, and any other anti-inflammatory treatment I can throw at it. Not that I’m looking forward to trying get another round of elimination diets but needs must.

I’ve not changed my the cornerstone therapy secukinumab since the pandemic, so it may be time to see other options like Janus Kinase (JAK) Inhibitors.

I’ve tried Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) Inhibitors as well as methotrexate (otherwise known as chemotherapy) and none of those treatments (Humira, Embrel) helped much and dosing on and off of biological injections is a long process. It can take up to six months to see results and changing a treatment that has been working comes with significant risks.

I’m lucky that even with these biomarkers I am still functional. I am able to work semi-normal hours and am able to groom and exercise. I have no personal life to speak of nor do I have hobbies beyond my work (unless reading counts) so I’m lucky to love my family and work enough to have it provide enough meaning to keep going.

Much of my success in treating this chronic complex case has been made easier with the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

Even as my physicians have retired and my care team rotates, I am able to progress and learn more thanks to large language models and search tools like Perplexity. I’m confident I will find a way to get back to remission quickly with little disruption.

Nothing provides me as much motivation to work as disease. I see how I and other patients like me suffer and I double down.

The progress we’ve made on autoimmune conditions in the wake of Covid and the rapid progression of protein discoveries as more AI tooling comes online. A chaotic world with a chaotic body drives my investing. We can do better as I see so much progress.

Categories
Community Preparedness

Day 1469 and Prayers and Hope

My in-laws live on the west side of Los Angeles as well as one of my portfolio founders, significant extended family and many dear friends including one of my closest and best friends. I am afraid for all them as the fires in Pacific Palisades has rapidly spread.

Please pray for the city of Los Angeles and her people as these fires rage. A dry year with little rain and unpredictable Santa Ana winds have led to a precarious situation.

Officials warned of devastating losses as the main blaze raced through the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The fast-moving fire spread across nearly 3,000 acres and was still 0% contained early Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department –WSJ

A professional colleague known well to the venture community Mark Suster is quoted in this WSJ piece as he and his family were evacuated. I fear many more may be in his position. I pray their homes are not lost.

I have an especially strong emotional reaction to these types of rapid urban firestorms after living through Boulder’s Marshall Fire two years ago. Over three thousand homes were lost. It was devastating to my hometown and it is still rebuilding three years later.

I advocate for preparedness as both an individual and a community. I have lots of posts and media on the top if you are interested. When these tragedies strike, show up for your neighbors and your family by preparing so that when the worst happens you can be at your best for people.

Categories
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.

Categories
Medical

Day 1465 and Biohacking Help Request

I’m having a bit of trouble with an autoimmune flare so I’ll keep the narrative but short.

Essays

Everything is About Sex. Femininity is About Power

Shopping

I am going to take a course with a Twitter mutual on building an AI life coach for myself. It’s an exercise in accountability for my playtime & learning.

Considering buying this Hooli vagus nerve stimulator.

Tweets

Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths in the Memetic Of Woke

Medical

I’m looking for my next step in my medical care. If you’ve been watching the blog over the last few years you’ve seen my struggles with chronic health issues and the work I do to be well enough to pursue my work.

But I’m at an impasse and I know we must have more solutions than what I’ve got. Looking for a doctor or research group that may have protocols or care capacity for the autoimmune buffet of nonsense that plagues so many. I have ankylosis & psoriatic arthritis, joint pain & anaphylactic allergy issues along with migraines.

I’ve worked with woo, lifestyle and nutrition changes, supplements, osteopathy, injections and IVs, longevity science & expensive biologics to pursue the functionality I have now to work. But I long to work the hours of my youth and I don’t believe science has progressed so little that arthritis and migraines should be so painful and exhausting. So please feel free to DM on Twitter with recommendations for clinics and physicians.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 1464 and Which Information Island?

It would be helpful for most media readers to understand the history of the news business and its relationship to war and finance.

For all the standards and ethics and best practices we expect from professional newsrooms (and they do have conduct standards), the history of media isn’t a clean narrative America went to war thanks to Yellow Journalism in the Spanish American War. If you think the Pulitzer is a badge of merit wait till you learn its history and financing.

You have probably lived through multiple media scandals. Millennials remember the neoconservative “weapons of mass destruction” story thanks to notably terrible editorial decision at the New York Times.

When someone says you are in a media bubble or on an information island, recall that these systems made up of people with varied interests, ambitions and aims.

News

American Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warning on Alcohol

TechCrunch grudgingly says the AI Bloomers beat the delusional AI Doomers

Essays

An Nvidia researcher Jim Fan tweeted about blog post from the late Felix Hill on 200B weights of responsibility inside the work of building AI. The stress of knowing the billions of weights and bias that make up artificial intelligence that will bend our lives for both good and ill is no small thing. The thread has many beautiful comments.

Vinay the founder of Loom is in the thick of figuring life out after success and it’s brave of him to share.

Applications and Services

AskNews has an interesting set of display options for news types and bias and sentiment I’m considering purchasing and testing.

Categories
Chronicle Emotional Work

Day 1462 and Year Five Begins

“We aren’t quitters” could be a tagline from a sports movie, a speech about the American people or your parent’s family philosophy.

Fortune favors those with fortitude. Grit sums up entire pedagogies of successful education and institutional cultures.

And here I am, one day at a time, continuing to log my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them on this public journal.

When I first began I thought the experiment to write every single day I thought would last a month. Then I thought maybe I could make it to a full year. Now I’m unsure if I will ever want to stop. I’m not even sure I know how to stop?

I’m less sure the narrative aspects of this log are as crucial to me as when I first started . I wanted to improve my capacity to write regularly so I set out to practice that creative process.

Having achieved my goal to write and publish each day, it may be time to evolve this narrative into a more traditional blog format from the past.

We used to include links, asides, and unrelated tidbits alongside narratives and storytelling in old school weblogs. I may try to try to include tidbits of what I am seeing each day as a way of sharing my context and inference process.

If the mood stokes for essays (as is my usual habit) that’s fine and if the mood strikes for a log of influences that is fine too. Year five has permission to be whatever it likes.

Current Reading

A gift link to a New York Times article on the China craze and the fifth and likely final generation that carried a dish set through a century only to find the status symbol it once represented is long gone.

Hannu Rajaniemi an entrepreneur and science fiction author has a new book Darkome about a world where with a corporate giant who invented a mRNA vaccine wearable and an underground of biohackers working to keep those vaccines and edits available online not available in America but thankfully I got a copy in Europe.

Interested in the “Don’t Die” movement? Time to learn all the ways cells die.

A history of learning how cells die

Why do we know so little history? Bogus airport bestsellers are one culprit. Or a bestseller anyone who took an AP history course “A World Lit Only By Fire” is mostly bunk. Turns out that’s common.

“Style is a magic wand; everything it touches turns to gold.”

– Logan Pearsall Smith