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Internet Culture Media

Day 1605 and No Blackpilling

We get regular reminders of how chaotic things are in our new hypersphere networked world that we have entire memes categories and full influence campaigns dedicated to blackpilling people into nihilism.

No blackpilling meme

The fatalism and determinism expressed on the internet is the experiences reality for plenty of people and it’s probably not limited to a few radicals. The presumption that any of these pills are limited to incels misogynists racist cranks is comforting but incorrect.

I’ve written about blackpilling before as it’s a common theme in overcoming the exhaustion of an unsettled era. Chaos is emotionally and physically debilitating because of our biological experience of it.

She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”

Dissident Fringe

I also believe it’s a deliberate strategy by virtually every player in the great games of power and influence to make us feel nuts. Everything is a conspiracy. Everyone is a villain except your in-group. Except it’s not.

It’s always crazy in Philadelphia
Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1604 and First Weekend of the Season

It is so beautiful today in Bozeman it almost doesn’t feel real. It’s warm but not hot. It’s sunny but we have fluffy clouds breaking up intensity. Cool breezes waft in and out without ever really turning to wind. I hope our entire summer has this weather.

Because of the holiday weekend the town has fully switched into “seasonal” mode from daily New York flights to way more availability at restaurants and service. One of Alex’s friends from college is headed into Yellowstone with his whole family from grandparents to kids.

Mountain towns make as much money in the summer as they do in the winter so you always wish for fluffy snow and cool clear summers.

The snowpack is smelting, the grass is green and the sky is oh so blue

While Yellowstone is worth the travel, I appreciate being able to work and hike all flavors of public trails from city to state in Bozeman.

On days like today I want to fully throw myself into a Bryan Johnson super adherence biohacker as I want to be able to enjoy as much of our summer as I can outside.

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Emotional Work Uncategorized

Day 1603 and Seasonal Ambitions

In a past life I worked in marketing for the luxury gym Equinox I could go on about the fascinating complexities involved in selling a future that actually requires you to do more work than most just buying it. But I digress.

Some businesses are seasonal and fitness an easy example of this phenomena with its January resolution sales.

The lesser appreciated but no less important bump was always May. People believe this is the summer where they really get into their bodies.

You’d think people would join gyms at non prime-times but they don’t. Humans like that change is possible at every seasonal juncture.

And we are not wrong to have those aspirations. It’s beautiful to think this is the time I’ll really do it. This turn of the wheel will be the one.

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Homesteading Internet Culture

Day 1602 and Greenfields

As part of the unfortunate adjustment to constant chaos, I find myself considering the balance of assets and skills we have at our disposal and how best to deploy it.

I increasingly feel the limiting factor being time, which makes one reconsider the investment one makes into your body. If we have green fields of possibility as information automation begins its march across the first world what should we be doing? If the Industrial Revolution knows less change than the Intelligence Revolution I’d be surprised.

I continue to think it’s mostly a game of energy, compute and property rights with a sprinkling of physical safety (this will get weird). How many people gain power is up for grabs. I think we’ve got the potential for a great elevating of talent.

I personally feel empowered as someone who has contributed to the training data. The internet was built by me and my kind.

The weirdos who write wikis. The experts who give away their insights on Twitter like pearls before swine. Bloggers who write on WordPress have a taxonomy advantage as a standard of the open web.

Having written so much of ourselves into artificial intelligence I shudder to think what we’ve done it wrong but I see the good people bring to virtual communities and I think people being people has always been this way. Those opportunities are perennial.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1599 and Sadly Cold

I would love to have something to say today. I have a migraine. My circulation seems odd. I’ve got on 2 pairs of wool socks on, two layers on top and I’m underneath two down blanks. And I’m still cold.

Complaining about one’s body is such an unappealing habit and yet when the pain comes for your attention it has the gravity of a black hole.

I don’t want to be a bore. I fear every time I am trapped in a bad bodily cycle I am boring myself and others. It’s been six years since I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and so much of it has been chronicled here.

And yet no matter how much I throw at health and wellness I still find myself cold, sad, hurting and without any kind of cure.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1598 and Routine in Chaos

I have been contemplating “an ideal routine” as soon as I felt the pressure of showing up for first grade. How to manage the energy the outside world requires from you while making sure you have done everything possible to manage your body to produce adequate energy.

Morning routines, what’s in her bag, every day carry, and optimal packing strategies all derive from a need to see how others are coping with the demands of life. You can aspire to various ideals of fitness, nutrition, style and parenting if you could just get the right routine with the right tools. Right?

I’m aspiring to restart learning new toolsets for building …everything. From design to marketing software to muscles to my hormonal profile. Building the life you want is deceptively close if you can manage yourself.

Life feels malleable at the moment. And who is going to stop me? Maybe I accidentally fix a problem for myself and find I’ve got a tool or insight that might benefit you. The chaos of old ways fall apart means new routines and folkways must be built.

I don’t want to betray myself by overreaching and pushing as I am so often finding hard limits the hard way. I like to go hard and rest. But reality has become so much less reliable that I wonder if I must compensate even more for the chaos with steadying flows of my own.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1597 and Heaven Banned is a Place on Earth

We had a rainy couple of days in Montana which is naturally all anyone can talk about. On our side of the continental divide it’s dry and sunny more than not. We are used to fluffy snow and full sun and screw the in-between. Mud season sucks.

Weather is of course the common ground of embodied society. People who live in their heads that don’t notice the weather must live someplace without seasons or manage to live somehow beyond its effects. Which isn’t how I want to live. I enjoy some of friction of seasons. More of winter than summer but it’s nice to have variance.

Pop songs have a lot to say about love being heaven on earth. I also happen to think heaven is definitely is a place on earth at the right time. For me it is full winter and full summer in the Rocky Mountains. A little mud is a fine tradeoff.

Nevertheless we have seasons such that outdoor furniture takes quite a beating so best to not put out fragile stuff till the season changes. It’s just not meant for the in-between.

Today was a fine sunny day and Alex brought out a new piece of furniture acquired from Costco. It is a giant umbrella that required sandbag filling and water and was a giant production requiring a second man in good shape to get it set up. But it was worth it.

Being outside and doing some reading and some internet (I’m online it’s a material condition) while underneath a very sturdy umbrella is a lovely afternoon. We had sun and a sudden thunderstorm that left us so quickly we had rain shine. Best to enjoy the high fidelity version of reality when you can.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1594 and The Creek Don’t Rise

I’m not sure where my mother picked up the slang “God willing and the creek don’t rise” but I had it regularly to suggest a thing shall come to pass a “if nature and God” are willing.

It’s it’s got a hint of Appalachia in its origin story and then tumbles over into a Johnny Cash cover of a Jerry Reed country tune (probably where my mother learned it as she loves Cash) before settling into a Spike Lee documentary about the water engineering challenges that have brought such misery to New Orleans.

It’s been pouring in Gallatin County all day. Our already high rivers are looking like they may cause troubles. Friends who fish were concerned the muddy headwaters weeks ago when I was caught in other unexpected spring showers in Colorado.

I am afraid the moisture is kicking up mold in our house. We’ve spent months remediating the problem so it weighs on me to consider the possibility. I woke up covered in hives and eczema.

I took antibiotics and Benadryl and it kept getting worse. I showered with nothing but unscented Castile soap hoping to mitigate the outbreak. That did more.

I have an event I’d like to attend this evening along with a houseguest who I very enjoy much enjoy so it frustrates me when the creek sees fit to rise against the banks that contain the river of my life.

Categories
Culture

Day 1591 and Pick Up The Phone

My husband’s most Boomer coded preference is how much he likes phone calls. I think it’s crazy but he will just pick up the phone and call people. Someone will text, email or message him and if he has the time & expertise he will write back “just call me now” as if it were nothing.

Now I grant that being available to get on the phone has plenty of social dynamics at play. If you have power and the luxury of time, availability, and energy “just call me” is quite a flex. I almost never have the energy though I can make time when it’s critical.

I had a funny moment today where the delivery driver for the flowers I sent to my mother for Mother’s Day just could not figure out that I was not the recipient. He declined a voice call with me though seemed to struggle with texting.

I’d laid out what I thought were clear instructions. I was sending flowers to a location that was not my location (I have an account with this very popular delivery service) as this was a gift intended for someone.

I left instructions to ring the doorbell and if no one answers leave the flowers on the porch. If they must call I left my phone number and her phone number saying to call her as she was the receipt.

Now the delivery service had a pin with GPS for the location. I figured literally millions of people order flowers for their mother today so I didn’t think it would be complicated or even unexpected that flowers were meant for someone’s mother.

Now for a quick aside. I did not tell my mother I was doing this. Our family has a fairly strict “don’t gift unless you feel moved” preference so it’s not implied we gift on every holiday. I was raised with the ideal that gifts are most meaningful when someone finds an item we think the other will like and is moved in the moment to get it. Rather than wait for a holiday, we send it then.

I felt moved by some seeing flowers yesterday in my grocery shopping. Spring is coming in and I wanted to send some to her. Now I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for my mother by saying wait at this hour for a delivery. Delight is important.

So back to “getting on the phone” as a forced metaphor. It’s Mother’s Day and I’m literally sending roses so I figured again it was obvious the items were going to my mother. That the flowers were not for me was implied but who knows. I wrote it out in the delivery instructions anyway.

This poor delivery man kept texting me asking where I was and where he should go. I text back the address and note that he should knock on the door to deliver it there.

He keeps asking me to come out. I get an automated call from the service threatening to cancel the order if I don’t respond to the driver who is trying to contact me. Sure. I’m trying to contact him but go off big corporation.

I call my mother. She is in the middle of cooking lunch. I happened to also be eating my own lunch when this kicked off but whatever. I cut her off feeling rude with “pleasantries in a moment, go outside right now there is a delivery man for you.”

She rushed out and successfully retrieves the roses! I hear some background talk as I’m still on the line but I can’t quite make it out. I hear a male voice. My mom gets back on the line. She says I’ve got stuff boiling over on the stove but I am so sorry I didn’t hear a knock.

I try to explain I I know the delivery man was confused so I just decided to pick up the phone. This isn’t your fault.. I didn’t mean to interrupt as it was meant to be a surprise. No need to chat please get back to stove. Admittedly a funny thing to say to one’s mother on Mother’s Day. And that was that. A quick phone call fixed the problem.

So maybe my husband has a point about just getting on the phone. I don’t know if I would have been able to help the flower delivery guy with a call but I could get to my mother even if it was disruptive. So if the spirit moves you maybe call someone. And yes she liked the roses.

Categories
Culture Internet Culture Politics

Day 1588 and American Pope

I am not a Catholic (though I am a Christian) so participating in the ambient excitement of welcoming the newly chosen Pontiff feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. Not my pope, not my Conclave right?

And yet I’m I am drawn in by the enthusiasm, the general spirit of joy and welcome, and, yes, the memes about ushering in the Pontiff.

As soon as the white smoke had been sent up, my group chats, media notifications and social streams went wild as we collectively learned more about the new Pontiff and his history. It was announced that Cardinal Robert Prevost would be named Pope Leo XIV.


Pope Leo XIV appears on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after being chosen the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, at the Vatican, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The details came quickly. And boy did the internet have questions (and a few answers). American Pope?! A Pope from Chicago?!

We soon learned he was a man who ministered to the poor in Peru for most of his life. He studied mathematics at Villanova. He went to seminary nearby my old university.

Blues Brothers Jokes were made as the Vatican must finish the work Francis had set in motion to modernize Vatican finances. A set financial troubles that has remained unfinished and is crucial for the pensions of the clergy.

Naturally many asked if the new Pontiff might be a basketball fan? A Knicks fan? Did he hoop himself?

Did he like Chicago pizza? He has eaten a hotdog at Weiner Circle according to Latin on their newly update sign.

The new Pontiff has a Twitter account. And boy does he Retweet some spicy stuff.

One of my girlfriends drove to see his childhood parish which is nearby her home. Chicago raised Catholics saving church finances so elderly clergy can retire in their home? I feel like I’ve seen this movie and loved it.

The symbolism of the Catholic Church and its representatives are clearly the stuff of which regular observers and semiotics scholars alike can read. Which made for an exciting day for everyone.

In the uncertain modernity we exist in the the Latin mass reassures many traditionalists but for everyone else a holy father who is relatable in interests, origin and culture brings even us Protestants a little closer to Rome.