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.
We both like to tinker with new artificial intelligence features and I have got a large training set with lots of tagging.
The synopsis it kicked out of two chatting AI hosts makes it sound like I have written a New York Times bestseller on the cultural and emotional adaption in the Great Weirdening.
So naturally instead of sharing those wins with you I’ll show the emotional underbelly. He asked it to generate my blind spots and boy did the AI read me the riot act.
Beware the AI knows you better than you know yourself
I don’t know if I am blind to these as I see them as faults. I can easily go down rabbit holes and overextend myself. I worry about my physical capacity constantly. That’s why it’s such a clear theme in my writing.
I definitely recommend this as an exercise if you have enough personal content to feed into the generator. Seeing clearly into your blind spots gives you a chance see around the corners of your own life. It’s not quite the same thing as therapy but maybe just as useful.
I am always shocked when people say they read anything I write. This isn’t because I don’t think I’m worth listening to but because I know attention is such a scarce commodity.
It’s so valuable we have entire industries dedicated to grabbing your attention. We don’t need to keep it necessarily we just need you to get distracted.
We downplay how well we know what works by indulging people who think they are immune to such things. Of course marketing on works on fools we sagely nod.
Of course we don’t want you to know how effectively we can move your attention let alone your opinion! You thinks anyone wants you to know propaganda works? Dunk on Jaguars new futura font. Scoff at those bot accounts.
Just know that most of marketing is Cocomelon, slot machines and dopamine hits. You can’t fight that without developing discipline which isn’t an infinite commodity. Most people don’t have much of it and aren’t even encouraged to develop. Good luck out there.
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 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.
We have arrived at Election Eve in America. It’s a bit tense online and in the media, but there is a palpable feeling of relief that the day is finally upon us.
That relief dissipates as rapidly as morning mist on a sunny day as the one contemplates the range of possibilities. No one has any idea how things will turn out even the most informed political analysts.
As we go to the ballot tomorrow I’ve got a William Shakespeare’s play Henry V on my mind as I rally myself to the effort. We’ve sacrificed so much to arrive at this moment as a nation.
Once more unto the breach!
The moral burden weighing on Henry seems an apt metaphor for the burden of self governance placed on Americans.
As Henry walked among his men to find out what they really thought of his leadership so too we wander social media in hopes of understanding our fellow citizens. What do they think? Will be come together?
I’ll admit much of my interest in Shakespeare comes not from any particular love of the Bard (schooling forces it upon you which can sour a child) but from my exposure the most memorable speeches reinterpreted in popular culture.
Culture is beautiful like that. The stories we tell ourselves are rewritten endlessly as we live through our own history. What might we gain or lose tomorrow? Will it be just? Will our decisions lead to wars or resolve us to peace? No one knows. And yet once more to the ballot we go.
If you asked 2016 Julie for her political opinions I’d have no problem going into depth on my dislike of government interference, my commitment to free trade and belief in American competitiveness.
I was open about my willingness to support Hillary Clinton on those grounds. If you asked 2020 Julie you’d have gotten a similar answer probably with an additional set of concerns around immigration reform as it became more challenging to get visas for talented international workers.
2024 Julie still dislikes government interference, believes in free trade and Americans competitiveness. I like American Dynamism and nascent efforts to reindustrialize as well as efforts to secure Freedom to Compute and Little Tech.
But I am fearful we have an elite class who either can’t or won’t do a damn thing. The immigration issue has become almost shockingly worse. We’ve arrived in a bizarro world place where legal immigration has become functionally impossible. I’ve been working on a single visa for almost the entirety of the Biden administration.
Even more perversely by trying to make our system more humane the Biden administration has allowed in only the most desperate border crossers and asylum seekers who have no other choice but to try their hand at illegal pathways.
I do not feel as if we have any representation on the ballot for anyone serious about fixing this issue. It’s a choice between hostility and incompetence.
I feeling shakier on our capacity to be exceptional because our politicians either can’t or won’t commit to reform. And that’s not through any fault of the American people.
I believe in American exceptionalism. If we could get Washington D.C. to prioritize solutions over partisan infighting there would be no way anyone could bet against America. 2024 Julie is unsure of my vote even down to the wire. I’m sure that’s too legible to please anyone.
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
Opting into someone else’s personal metrics is a misery. When you dump a group of powerful or influential groups with adjacent but not aligned values you find status competition with in-group and inter-group.
I find this to be a little bit of a breach of decorum. People who pursue different goals don’t want other people’s rules applied to them.
So you find fearful politeness if you are unsure of inter-group norms. Everyone is interesting but not everyone has the same incentive sets or motivation.
The harder it is to feel safe within your in-group the less openness you will have with outsiders. Finding a way to ease the competitions for status only improves relationships between the allied groups. Find what you value and value the people who share those values.
