I’m in a terrific mood. Maybe it is just the hormones cycling up. Maybe the red lights we installed in the bedroom are actually improving my sleep quality. Maybe it’s getting a foot of powdery snow over the weekend.
So much of life seems to boil down to manage my own circadian rhythms even as I plug myself into the hiveminds of my favorite corners of the internet dutifully everyday. And my body likes short days, long nights and the bitter cold.
Certainly success is contributing to my buoyant mode. All of my founders are soaring (which seems statistically rather unlikely given the choppy markets) and the vibes are good. My chaotic.capital clique is thriving.
It’s getting to the point where I think we should host a portfolio dinner or something. Though that would be challenging as we are a distributed group. Alex realized recently that we only met one of our portfolio founders in person before we invested. Can you even imagine that in a pre-pandemic world? Our deal flow comes from the virtual worlds I live in daily.
Being snugly ensconced inside several areas of with macroeconomic tailwinds doesn’t hurt but most of those choices were made two or three years ago so I’m simply directionally correct, well connected, and unafraid to commit once I’ve satisfied my own process. Everyone has a long way to go but it feels wonderful to enjoy their success.
It’s fun watching an entire nation realize none of our citizens functionally have opinions of their own as all of the tribalism of the American system slides off the board into the swamp of personal animus.
The great realignment is in full swing. And no one is sure where they stand. The worst thing you believe about your enemy is surely true just as only the very best things about yourself count.
Ego versus ego blunders against each other. The slow glugging of inertia and bureaucracy and nihilism begins to tug. First time?
“We are so much worse off than the Athenians during their similar stages of decline. Thucydides once wrote, “The Athenians, who were the most democratic of all the Greeks, were also the most prone to make mistakes, for they were always in a hurry to decide, and were swayed by the emotions of the moment.”
The political satire of the poets in Athenian theaters heavily influenced the city’s political decisions, just as TikTok and the Guardiansway millions of malleable minds now.”
What do we believe as RFK Jr discusses previously quite left wing coded hippie truisms about industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical company incentives.
The institutionalists are the left now and oddly they like Monsanto. But now Bari Weiss is arguing for the value of institutionalists against Peter Thiel. Are we really in for a new era of anti-institutionalism? Do we know where the board even is anymore? Don’t slip and slide into the swamp because you don’t like someone.
I’m not quite sure how I got a bug but I seem to be running a fever. It’s possible it’s passing and I’m on the mend but I still feel a little “delulu” as the kids says.
I was taking a constitutional walk Saturday after eating and my heart rate spiked to 180bpm. I wasn’t exerting myself in a way that would normally bring it above 90.
I have a habit of walking after meals as I feel it aids digesting. Nothing intense as it’s more of a habit than exercise. So I was surprised to find myself getting faint. I found myself on the ground.
I don’t take it particularly seriously. I blamed PMS and the stress of the last two weeks. But then I got a terrible night of sleep and my Whoop score matched how I felt.
I spent Sunday faffing about on the internet as watching reality television. I was definitely sick. What else was there to do but shitpoast and watch the price of Bitcoin go up.
Now that felt like a fever dream. If you are a crypto true believer you have experienced more than a few boom and bust cycles. Holding on tight is part of the game.
I suspect that we are in for more of a ride and I was not one to get too ahead in other bull runs. But I did let myself buy a bunch of cosmetics so I’d look for a recovery in LVMH stock if there are enough women who hold Bitcoin.
Many of us read significant amounts of “need to know” publications for our professional lives. I myself read Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal every day along with more specialized media like Axios Pro-Rata and various venture and startup specific media.
Culture is different. Wanting to be in touch with the ideas that shape a nation is a luxury you don’t need to be wealthy to enjoy. To engage in ideas is to have the means to enjoy a life of the mind. You must choose to spend your precious time on it. Time is the only luxury which can’t be bought.
Media is changing as news and cultural content diverge. We used to be awash in a sea of periodicals. As a child I’d bike to the Boulder library and read it all. Thats how I became a fan of the Economist. I loved culture magazines just as much. Some still retain their pride of place through institutional nostalgia like Vanity Fair and Vogue. But can the New York Times hold a grasp on culture like it used to do?
As we face down an election with clear cultural and political bifurcations, what does it mean to be a consumer of not simply news but the culture of the moment?
Someone told me they don’t always open Dirt because it’s not framed as “need to know.” Yeah, that’s why it’s luxury content, because you don’t NEED it. Take your ass back to Axios
To be au courant means deciding where our time goes when it’s not an obligation. And I’m sorry to say to Condé Nast that their grip on culture looks more tenuous than ever.
Telescope, Arena, and Palladium are all pointing to new appetites. We want the luxury of futurism. To be caught only in the moment is to reveal a perhaps embarrassingly high time preference for algorithmically forced immediacy. “I want it now!”
Doom scrolling the news may be fun. Many billionaires spend time on Twitter because of its close proximity to sentiment. We all need to know the narratives catching attention.
But want do we want? Well who rather enjoy an essay from a writer who shows you the culture beyond your feed? Giving your attention to those who respect it will always be a luxury.
Running red light for 2-3 hours before bedtime may help lower cortisol levels and increase melatonin production. Plus it gives your bedroom a fun boudoir vibe so we thought why not try it?
Philips Hue 60W Bulbs
We bought a set of Philip Hue bulbs for the three lamps in our bedroom. They sell their own automation systems to manage your thoughts but we already use Home Assistant from the Open Home Foundation for automation because it allows us to run basically everything entirely locally with no cloud dependence or internet access.
For our existing lighting we use a combo of Lutron Caseta (for built in lighting) and Philips Hue bulbs (for plug in lamps). For the purposes of the red light experiment in the bedroom, we are using all plug in lamps.
For the Hue bulbs, instead of using the Hue Bridge and the Hue App, we use the built in Zigbee radios to pair directly to Home Assistant.
Phillips should be commended for using open protocols and enabling users to use these non-proprietary standards. Interoperability is good.
To achieve the light color changes we wanted, there is a plugin called “adaptive lighting” that automatically color and brightness shifts the bulbs through the day (subject to plenty of configuration options).
In our case, Alex set them to go very red (1000K) while also limiting the sunrise to no later than 6am and the sunset locked to 630p in order to fit into our routine and preferred bed timings.
iPhones have an automatic white balance on their cameras but it is actually quite red at night
The lights mostly work automatically but for when manually control is wanted, there are Zigbee remotes on each side of the bed as well as Home Assistant bridged to Apple HomeKit so everything can be controlled via the Apple Home app or through Siri.
It may sound complicated but there are plenty of tutorials in the open source community to help guide you. As we get more data from our own biometric tracking I’ll be sure to discuss it here and on Twitter.
The Sephora Savings event has begun for their loyalty program shoppers. And I’m so disappointed by their holiday merchandising. It’s their downmarket I’ve ever seen the brand while somehow also being incredibly expensive.
If you are not aware Sephora is a cosmetics retailer owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH with roughly 2700 stores globally across 34 countries.
I was first introduced to the retailer when I lived in France as a teenager. The father of my exchange family worked at a perfumer that supplied very high end houses.
Sephora had just began to expand to the United States. By the time I was in college they had locations in most major cities. It was the shopping destination of choice cosmetics purchasers who didn’t like the old school department store counters that didn’t allow browsing.
They became a force in cosmetics and the higher end makeup, fragrance, skincare and haircare all competed for shelf space. And because you could browse unimpeded it became a kind of destination to trial new trends and brands.
But sometime in the last four years or so their merchandising seems to have fallen off. Stores are disorganized. Prices have risen while the line up increasingly feels like it’s catering to a more downmarket demographic.
Perhaps it was the pandemic as work from home and masking made items like lipstick less appealing. Maybe it was their expansion into partnership with lower end department stores like JC Penny’s and Kohls.
Personally I think the Biden stimulus plan plays a hand in their downfall. Cosmetics spends tend to come from disposable income though some women surely do have grooming budgets.
As more people had extra cash the appeal of the Sephora splurge became a social media phenomenon. And who spends the most time on social media? Gen Alpha and Zoomers.
Sephora went from a customer base of professional women who want to look polished to girls with TikTok accounts showing off their hauls.
The most upsetting trend by far is the Sephora Kids trend. Gen Alpha loves Sephora for the same reason adults do. You can browse and try stuff. They flock to colorful brands like Glow Recipe and Drunk Elephant. Even the New Yorker is on the case.
Gen Alpha has officially entered the beauty scene, spending more on skincare and makeup than any other age group – an impressive $4.7 billion in 2023
As I browsed the new collections, I saw all their specialty sets were packaged in fluffy teddy fabric bags in muppet bright colors.
$50+ dollars for dead muppets at Sephora
Not exactly an appealing look for anyone who might wish to carry the makeup bag to the office. And they are all twice as expensive as pre-pandemic sets.
I’m not going to spend $60 for a range of trashy splashy products packaged in the skin of dead puppets. I’m an adult and alas that’s just not what appeals to me.
But if you’ve got a 14 year old daughter that you like to spoil this is probably where she is spending it. Just please don’t let her use retinol. It’s not safe. Or better yet leave the makeup stores to adults.
I am so relieved to have the American presidential election wrapped up within just one day. I didn’t think we’d be so lucky to have things decided so quickly.
I was emotionally prepared for a long interregnum with bitter fighting over a slim margin of votes. I remember both 2000 and 2020 and neither hanging chads nor storming chads were pleasant experiences.
But it seemed pretty clear where we were headed last night around 11pm on the west coast when I went to bed. I woke up to the election having been called. Blessedly the margin was so clear a concession speech was soon in order.
I’m not much of a partisan as libertarians are America’s classic independents. I’ve voted for Democrats and I registered as a Republican in Colorado before settling on simply calling myself an independent here in Montana. I spend time on each race, candidate and ballot initiative. I ticket split. I believe in free people and free markets.
I was asked if this election outcome was good or bad for business. I responded that “decided” is good for business. Private industry can manage if it knows the rules of the road.
Now we know where things stand. If you follow financial news you saw the jubilance in the markets. Maybe the interregnum was actually the the campaign season. Either way we’ve got more direction on where we are headed and that means we can act with more confidence.
I am a bit tired today. I’ve had a busy month of travel and the last week was particularly intense.
I have been in bed most of the day and the immobility coming with this day of fatigue has allowed me to thoroughly participate in a number of extremely online activities.
A raccoon was also taken and killed but Peanut was an Internet celebrity and we live in an age of viral contagion and within a few hours all Twitter could talk about was Peanut.
Why does this matter? Well, giant bureaucracies killing pets has an uncomfortable history in America. If you want to dig on the lesser known lore check out gun subreddits for ATF dog killer memes.
So potent is this history it has emerged as the ideal 11th hour election meme for the restless population that is uncomfortable about the power of the federal government.
actually you know what? the squirrel is an anti-christ. we are in the midst of a huge mimetic crisis and rather than scapegoating the squirrel to eliminate the conflict and avert violence, we instead elevate the squirrel’s death to heighten the conflict even further – @atroyn
Different political alignments experience the fear of governmental overreach, and in particular its monopoly on violence, in different ways. We occasionally make martyrs of those who experience that this violence to understand its horrors.
Squirrel martyrdom invokes an entirely BLM than the BLM who arose after the death of George Floyd. I say let us consider them both iconoclasts (in the religious sense) of the same fear of death through state means. They are symbols of idolatry who become sanctified.
Floyd’s death touched on frustration over systemic racism in the judicial system, Peanut’s death touches on frustration over government overreach – John Ennis
I’ve had a great year. I’m having a great month. I had a great week. I’m absolutely obsessed with my portfolio and the founders in it. Every new opportunity makes me feel better about the future.
And I’m so tired from processing all of that that it’s little wonder my body is grinding out hours of REM sleep a night.
We call catchy songs “ear worms” but instead of calling catchy ideas “brain worms” we went with Richard Dawkins’s coinage “meme” and I think that’s a pity. Normies find it simple to grasp the term brain work while meme remains coldly academic.
According to this synopsis from Perplexity, Dawkins proposed memes as the cultural parallel to genes, acting as self-replicating units that spread ideas, behaviors, or styles from person to person within a culture.
Thankfully, the extremely online regularly use the term “brain worms” to describe people infected by any number of ideas ranging from the political to the aesthetic. They aren’t good or bad ideas necessarily. I’d include Trump Derangement Syndrome, girls with septum piercings, the uptick in jhanna meditation as flavors of memes that infect different types of minds.
I’m sure I’m infected with at least half a dozen brain worms (hopefully the memetic variety unlike RFK Jr) despite good informational immunity. There are benefits in having hippie parents and media literacy but the occasional infection is inevitable.
Our minds, our bodies, our computers and our networks can get infected with parasitic diseases and carry viral loads. From Covid to e/acc to the Goatse Singularity (safe to click) we’ve had a lot of novel pathogens recently and some of them are even good things.
Programmers and early Internet citizens have probably have more exposure to the modern theory of memetics than most.
Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash has a neuro-linguistic virus derived from Sumerian mythology where natural language programs the human mind like we now program computers. It gets used in nefarious ways.
This of course makes you wonder if it’s so easy to make people share ideas how hard is it to make people forget them? There is no anti-memetics division right?
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
I wonder if my brain worms have made me memory hole anything recently. Given that we have an election coming up seems worth considering.
