For as exciting as the last few weeks have been it’s hard to feel like as it’s the dead of winter. I’ve not gone outside in several days as we are in -20 land which probably contributes to fatigue. Thankfully it’s bright and sunny.
I don’t have anything useful to say as being in the middle of multiple health projects is a time suck. Any excess energy goes to work as there really is no way of stopping progress. I wish I could keep up as it’s exciting.
Partially because things are so “out of bounds” I can feel more comfortable prioritizing long term gains and changes. I think I can achieve a health level up and fixing it now prepares me for strain later.
I take this approach on everything now. The short term has been set by decisions in the past and the medium term is highly uncertain. Steer correctly now so future you is set up to succeed.
You have to work the problem in front of you. Fixating on past problems or potential future problems does not fix the problem in front of you.
Bottlenecks are such a useful construct as most humans have experienced their all of their progress being stymied by one single obstacle. Be it a fallen tree in the road, a bureaucracy or a health problem, the bottleneck stops you.
Alas I find myself with multiple health projects that have to be project managed with timelines, budgets, and externalities on each other.
We’d been planning to start a new care protocol with an updated biologic but the discovery of mold in the master bathroom is a bottleneck.
We need to decide if starting new immune suppressants is safe in the house before remediation. Mycotoxins at a load marked as unsafe for autoimmune conditions makes me nervous.
Sure we are staying upstairs but is it removed enough to be a sensible move? Can we isolate me and begin treatment? Do we wait the multiple weeks remediation will take? How an we run parallel paths. It’s crazy to project manage one’s personal life like this but it’s also necessary.
This excitement has also slowed down movement on acquiring a hyperbaric chamber. I’d love to offer it as a service locally as there isn’t a single available one for off label use in the entire state.
I really do think this would feel unmanageable if we didn’t have new tools at our disposable. In particular the new ChatGPT’s Deep Research has made it much easier to find different bits of information to reach an actionable conclusion. Because I want to clear these blockers.
I have a hazy memory of my mother introducing me to 80s girlfriend the Bangles when the played a concert at Disneyland.
We’d play the song in the car when I was little but it seemed improbable that this actually happened. But sure enough they did play at Disneyland so maybe the memory really did happen.
Reality is so tenuous when it comes against the frailties of memory. How can we be sure of anything even with meticulously kept records.
We are finding out some of the limits of record keeping and we can unearth the secrets of the universe by total recall these past two years of consumer artificial intelligence.
I have been taking a few weeks to reset some of my health protocols. Being empowered with better tools for finding opportunities makes me more inclined to take action. There are new pharmaceutical options. We can piece together
I had a round of bad bloodwork and within days I was able to take action. It’s only been a few weeks but got back a fresh set today and am feeling more optimistic that the hazy shades of winter are being well used on improvements.
Somewhere in this blog there is a date error. It’s probably easy to find. I noticed the day I did it (I believe I was ill and got confused) and then time streamed on and now it barely matters.
Oddly I only care to mention it because I notice more when things are done in day by day format. We have 10 day retreats, month long sprints, quarterly focuses, if you are large enough to have yearly plans good luck to you.
We asked for acceleration and we got it. Timelines are so preposterously fast we can count them in shorter bursts. The Wall Street Journal has an administration day count for Trump. Today is day 21. Which is a light day involving golf with Tiger Woods and going to the Super Bowl.
I’m not inclined to dramatic pronouncements about the future (ok maybe a little). Humans don’t change too quickly their hard learned ways. But we are getting so much more information at such rapid pace right now that if you are inclined to count the days maybe set some goals for them.
I enjoy my daily writing as it forces me to put my sensory apparatus to work at summarizing the inputs on my systems for the day. Being a human, my processing is laggy.
I came across this graphic from Hinterland’s Twitter. They created it show compression of the our body’s sensory inputs. A lot hits our mind and very little of it gets to conscious thought.
The human body sends 11 million bits per second to the brain for processing, yet the conscious mind seems to be able to process only 50 bits per second. – Britannica “Information Theory”
It seems to me we are not prepared for this moment of unprecedented complexity given the hardware we are working with.
Some of us may have slightly different software so it’s not all hopeless. It just seems like as a species the complexity of our environment relative to our baseline physiology is looking a little iffy.
I have a kind of optimism that we will find a way to meet the moment. Right up until we can’t?
I’m am looking to do whatever upgrades I can to hear the signal in the noise. But maybe a booming voice from the sky is easy to hear than the endless chatter of our world. Or maybe we have to find another way to achieve resonance and hear.
Maybe this is typical for mid-winter but it sure seems like everyone is doing poorly.
We’ve been pretty socked in weather wise in Montana for the last week so it was easy to get lost in the usual winter issues of snow accumulating and cold temperatures. It’s beautiful but isolating.
Adirondack chairs peeping out of the snow
But it’s not just Montana feeling the winter. We’ve got storm systems all across America. Seems like snowstorms and ice storms are hitting hard. Extreme weather patterns remain the norm for us all.
Influenza-A is having a second surge. When someone gets a cold or even the flu they usually describe symptoms. When it’s bad enough that you finally go to a doctor and get a test then you start to hear about the Influenza A diagnoses. And I’ve heard dozens of cases over the past two weeks.
I feel pretty poorly myself but it’s not influenza-A. I wish it were so simple. I’m not sure what’s going on but we’ve got doctors on the case.
At least our chickens are dug out of the snow. We’ve had so much accumulation over the last few days that our normal tractor plowing of the drive is inadequate. We need paths dug out to other areas too. Alex took out the small walkway snowblower and made a path around.
Our third and smallest snowblower barely up to the task of digging out the chickens
One of my Twitter friends John Konrad is a merchant marine captain and the owner of trade publication called Maritime News. I’m a nerd for a dozen different topics in his areas of expertise so I enjoy his perspective.
I’ve discussed my own theories of media like Thursday Styles Problem. Experienced media professionals know how narratives will play.
There is no media agenda as imagined in conspiracy theories. There is simply a consensus that emerges on what is happening and why. That consensus is malleable to certain incentives, which means it can be changed to fit different desired outcomes.
And if it looks like we are in pitched battle over raw power it’s probably because we are seeing growing concern over the America’s debt, monetary policy and inflation, and the changes required for us to continue as a nation.
I’d hope no one wants to destroy an institution if it could be reformed. The future of how we use our existing American institutional power and how we decide who it serves seems salient to all of us. No wonder it feels like war trying to keep up.
It was a busy week. I felt physically well through most of it, but yesterday and today I am struggling. I’m in bed with a migraine that I think I accidentally kicked off by enjoying a quiet walk on sunny snowpack.
Amusing that people think we don’t get enough sun for solar power
While I prefer to have illness strike on a weekend, I feel irritated that I often get my personal time used up by health issues. I very much prioritize using my good hours for work.
Which on that note, I’d love for folks to check out a bill in Montana to secure a right to compute. What started as an idea has now officially been introduced into the legislative process. It’s a big victory to have this under consideration.
I let myself get a little shook up by some poor health news early in the month. I’ve been pushing it physically all through 2024 as let’s be real it’s an exciting time. To fully capitalize on that acceleration we are all more focused on improving our health.
I’m taking action and optimistic about where we are headed with improvements in healthcare. I was able to rapidly iterate through options and set up surprisingly effective new treatments.
As we’ve work through the significant impact of the pandemic on our understanding of post viral illness and autoimmunity, we’ve had a more systems driven approach to testing interventions beyond pharmaceuticals reach more people.
Not that all pharmaceutical interventions are bad obviously as I’m lucky to have interleukin inhibitors in my life. I was able to find a new option with my doctor thanks to help from Claude and Perplexity.
And this progress is happening across all areas of medicine. I am also incredibly bullish on the benefits of GLP-1 inhibitors and their next generations. Inflammation and metabolism are intertwined in ways we can control barely articulate beyond “mind body connection” and yet we are developing the vocabulary.
The problems I am solving for myself teach me how we will allocate resources across many industries. The energy required to power artificial intelligence and the chips required to run those models will be pulled forward by our desire for solutions to living healthy lives
Twitter has become an unmonitored Wild West of content. This is mostly good for those of us looking to understand the world “as it is” and not as we wish it to be, but requires a certain cognitive security not everyone is prepared to engage in. What was once kept to the dark corners of 4Chan splutters up.
We witness more violence than we did during its “trust and safety” years. Thanks to algorithmic chaos quite a bit of gore, pornography and death will regularly hit main feeds.
A friend of mine (whose line of work would put her in a position to know) has a theory that Zoomers will cross into physical world violence more easily than past generations. We have long debated as to why and how it will manifest but it’s already begun.
Being raised in digital always- online mobile environments means their reality is more malleable. And yes the internet is real life. We live, we love, we hate, we play and we work online. But what of violence? Are we prepared for that crossover?
Digital life has given them an immense sense of freedom to act without consequences because the virtual world is still sequestered from some consequences. And unlike millennials, whose sense of The Real and the Matrix, was anchored by a physical consensus reality, I’m not convinced this will be true for all Zoomers.
If you die in the Matrix you die in real life
We have already seen the maturation of bringing Internet identities to our regular life physical world. Violence has always been there lurking, but it is now bursting forth and I believe it will only become more prevalent.
Today I read news stories of two separate incidents of violence that I can only read as Zoomer Internet Identity Violence. Be warned they are both upsetting and confusing for non-internet natives.
If you die in the real world perhaps you live on in the Matrix of the infinite internet. But this is not an end that we should wish for our civilization or for our Zoomers. Be prepared to see more of this.
