Tag: Finance

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Internet Culture Medical

Day 1439 and Landshark’s Prophecy

I don’t like to write too much about developing news especially when it is an emotional topic like murder. The assassination of United Health Care insurance group CEO Brian Thompson last week was horrific. Today’s news that the manhunt found a person of interest Luigi Mangione is exploding into chaotic narratives.

The fog that surrounds violence leads to reactivity and it’s very easy to get things wrong. And the narratives surrounding this young man are both surprising and yet easily spun to cater to a number of simple biases.

One of those biases that I suspect will be warped across the news cycles is so easy to believe it’s making me suspicious.

The young man has easily accessible social media accounts some of which were still up when the news broke. I followed him on Twitter myself to see. What I found made me a little suspicious.

A centrist Penn shredded HuberBro Thiel tweeting TPOT moots futurism policy aesthetic gearporn guy adding maximum anarchy into the system as the UHC murderer does not feel right.

@almostmedia

His GoodReads account shows a man who read a lot of health optimizations literature including quite a bit on back pain and psychedelics. His follows on Twitter were almost uncomfortably midwit thoughtfluencer types but hardly any outside the Overton window.

The Twitter profile of the suspect.

Frankly if I wanted to make make a narrative about disgruntled dangers of TechBro philosophy I’d be trying to steer this conversation into an Uncle Ted speed run to reinforce hostility towards these ideas. It’s easy to see the dark side of the agency discourse & “just do things” set of values if someone kills.

If I found medical system skepticism and Silicon Valley threatening to my interests I’d be latching onto this story as fast as I could to explain why it’s dangerous craziness and the world view should be pitchforked.

There are also very already easy narrative explanations for how an attractive man with an elite institution set of credentials could have snapped. The suspect is so normie in background and so bleak in worldview and he had back surgery and took shrooms. An iconic tweet from Landshark about ayahuasca seems prescient

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 1425 and Doorknockers

Yesterday I had one of those Lyft driver experiences where your life changes from what you learned. While driving to the airport, our very chill Zoomer driver explained the different financial incentives he got for ground game political canvassing in the Montana Senate race.

He mostly canvassed for the Sheehy campaign working for two different political action committees. It was a record breaking race for political spending in Montana.

As our driver explained it, Sheehy (the Republican candidate) paid fewer people more ($22/hr) than Tester (The Democratic candidate) with more flexibility and a higher number of hours, but more aggressive requirements (20 doors/hr) for success.

Naturally the young man being ambitious and motivated to earn (he clarified he was an independent politically) he chose being on the Sheehy teams as it rewarded his desire to make money. Though he did pick up some hours for Tester it just wasn’t much.

That’s the difference in the ground game in a nutshell. Ambition from a young man was rewarded and he aligned with those incentives. And the candidate won.

Im certain he was a terrific door knocker. He has the easy social graces of a local. He felt PacWest Missoula than over the divisive to plains kid but still as Montana as they come. He was white boy with face tattoos & piercings in the way of Zoomers.

His whole energy seemed to be aligning to vibes. He told us he came in to run ride shares for the big football game in Bozeman. It was a busy night and he ran out of hours (Uber tops you at 12). He was media savvy. Theo Von had just played Missoula and he was sad to miss it. Kendrick Lamar played on Spotify.

His attitude was so positive. He liked Uber, Lyft and Dashing for the flexibility. He said it didn’t feel like work because you are helping with the daily life of people. Helping others be responsible appealed to him. It’s nice to get someone who shouldn’t be behind the wheel home safely.

He used to make prosthetics but this paid better & was more social. It was fascinating learning how he picked up Uber & Lyft regionally in Montana and decided to run longer shifts for events. His attunement to supply and demand was keen. He seemed determined to maximize his time as it was his preferred lifestyle. He noticed incentives and it moves him.

If he ever see this “Hi Jacob!” It was great ride. Seeing viscerally how Montana’s senate race played out across the waves of rational economic actors living their American lives.

Categories
Startups Travel

Day 1424 and California Dreaming

We’ve just had a beautiful snowfall in Bozeman. If you are back up on the mountains at the edge of the valley you are enjoying a mystical winter wonderland.

Alas I am not long for cosplaying Frozen (blessed) as I am headed west. No, I am heading not to Seattle the most important city of the 90s. I am headed to Joan Dideon land. I’ll be in California.

I’ll be in Los Angeles for the week or so if you happen to be on the west side. I’ll then be headed up to San Francisco.

It will be a little whirlwind of family, friends and hopefully some useful business. I’ll be visiting start ups. Going to YC Demo day which I have not done in person. Meeting up with anyone who might want to be a node in our network.

I am game to meet up with folks working on weird shit and are looking to build it. I am also looking for LPs in our next fund so we can keep funding the weirdos who build things.

The virtuous cycle of techno capital starts long before an opportunity is clear. If you have something chaotic in your heart send me a DM

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Internet Culture Startups

Day 1421 and Culture Clashes

I sit in between half a dozen different community nodes thanks to my interests in open source software, decentralization, crypto, and autonomous systems technology.

This set of interest covers a lot of ground from ecosystem level collaboration in financial organizations like DAOs and to player versus AI agents coordination to peripheral control of drones and machinery.

Many different demographics are attracted to these frontiers for different reasons. Hackers have a very different mentality than mercenary technologists looking for maximum margin.

Open source has traditionally struggled more from a lack of financialization than from an obsession with it. Which seems less true in the crypto era than in previous more academic and defense oriented eras.

There are classic open source business models and anyone with age and experience in startups has some opinions which I leave as an exercise to the reader. They occasionally fail and an open core loses more than they’d like to professional services. I am writing on WordPress.

One strange aspect of what drives these frontier spaces to interact is that depending on how much leverage you find in building a network you may have different incentives than other builders and users. Expanding out to scaled use may drive a lot more value than the resources required. How the surplus gets divided is always contentious.

For some, the most crucial cultural goals is expanding access to automation and ripping away as many of the services and middle men as is feasible.

Decentralized systems make it harder for middle men to maintain monopolies. Thats its own goal for true believers. For others the goal massive financialization that drives network connectivity is the benefit. Self interest driving common goals is perfectly acceptable.

As I watch the current season of hyper self interested memecoin cryptomania engage with the academic utopian open source artificial intelligence community, I am reminded of so many of the classic issues we have in financing and sharing in the spoils of common infrastructure. Who benefits is a question we should all be asking more regularly

Categories
Medical Politics

Day 1411 and Fever Dreams

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.

Categories
Politics

Day 1406 and Relief

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.

I did my normal natural disaster preparation routine of stocking groceries, doing laundry, and washing up. In preparedness communities, we always recommend facing a storm with clean clothes.

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.

Categories
Politics

Day 1390 and Rage Against The Machine

As we are getting down to the finish line of the American election season I don’t know how we will do it. It’s all exhausting even though it’s filled with comedy.

I fear another interregnum as the transition from Trump to Biden was an anxious time. I doubt this will be better given the polling is a dead heat and no one knows what to believe.

I’m old enough to remember the Brook’s Brothers riots and hanging chads of 2000. I had just started my own chronicles here on January 6th such that I didn’t even name it as Day 6th. It’s been a long four years.

Being caught up in the concerns of great powers is a little silly when you are just a bystander. I work on my local issues here in Montana and I vouch for issues where I feel I have particular expertise like compute.

What I thought I knew in 2000 and what I think I know now in 2024 feels like a chasm. I enjoyed Rage Against the Machine as a teen and now I find that Caesar Chavez granddaughter is running an establishment political campaign. I don’t know what to make of anything. Maybe the only through line has been my skepticism of central banks.

Categories
Finance Startups

Day 1376 and Q3 2024 Investor Update & Market Analysis for Chaotic Capital

Welcome to the Q3 2024 update for chaotic.capital LPs. I’m choosing to post a selection of our reporting publicly so prospective founders and LPs can see our thinking.

You may be invested in chaotic.capital because we invest in ideas that adapt humanity to our new chaotic era.

Enabling resilience in the face of unexpected & rapid change is our lodestar. It’s a simple heuristic that yields a complex thesis: that technology is a tool for increasing leverage. 

In addition to these investor letters, you can always visit jfredrickson.com, where I write every single day about whatever I’m thinking about. You are also welcome to DM me on Twitter @AlmostMedia or text me on Signal any time.

Q3 was another strong quarter for chaotic.capital. Our ability to identify and back founders early remains core to our success and we’re seeing it both with the inbound flow from founders (as seen in the two new deals we did this quarter) as well as the progress from our existing portfolio, with four new markups this quarter and substantial business progress on those and others.

The markets are increasingly focused on power and compute. What was once a contrarian focus on energy, infrastructure, crypto, and artificial intelligence has now become a core narrative among informed investors.

We believe the future of compute—particularly in relation to crypto and AI—will increasingly be viewed as a basic right, not a privilege, as these technologies scale to mass adoption. 

As governments grow more cautious about debt and monetary risk, individuals and organizations will turn to trustless systems to ensure secure transactions and autonomy.

This is why we focus our investments in the space on foundational layers that will power the next generation of applications.

With portfolio companies like Squads providing on-chain economy tooling, Kuzco reducing reliance on intermediaries while creating an open market, SFCompute pricing compute and creating spot markets, and Chroma becoming the go-to choice for open source vector databases, we see the intersection of crypto and AI creating secure, scalable systems for individuals and organizations alike.

Access to compute is quickly becoming synonymous with freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom to transact. 

These open trustless systems enable efficient transactions and verification, a crucial development as geopolitical multipolarity continues to rise, and more people need to ensure their interactions are secure without reliance on the state.

While Americans might not yet fully appreciate this, we’re seeing growing demand for these alternative systems and open models from those who are navigating increasing regulatory pressures and instability.

Europeans, whose governments are deploying strict limits on AI models are beginning to understand, those from countries facing geopolitical uncertainty (e.g., Israel, Ukraine), live it already, and those in countries with unreliable currencies and legal systems have been navigating anarcho-tyranny for decades.

But it can be precarious in the US as well, in California it was only the intervention of a veto from Gavin Newsom that prevented SB-1047 from restricting compute and hobbling the development of open source models.

Looking forward, this ability to access compute at scale may well parallel the right to transact. As nations confront their own risks, network state behaviors will become more prevalent, driven by the need for secure, decentralized systems that ensure autonomy in an increasingly unpredictable world.

We’re excited about the future of chaotic.capital and the opportunities ahead. As always, I’d love to talk about any of this with your discussions with you, so feel free to reach out. We’re just getting started, and there’s much more to come.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1369 and California SB-1047 Vetoed

Last night I received a push alert and then a flurry of excited text messages and phone calls. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the controversial SB-1047 artificial intelligence bill.

Gavin Newsom vetoes California’s contentious AI “safety” bill SB-1047

Twitter lit up with joyful streams of relief and praise for this decision. Everyone from politicians, economists, researchers, academic luminaries, open source collectives, founders and venture capitalists.

It was a bad bill that lacked the necessary clarity and focus to even begin the task of regulating the nascent field of artificial intelligence.

We can and will do better in finding regulatory frameworks for safety and competitiveness but this bill wasn’t it. It was especially concerning as they say so goes California so goes the world.

I have been banging on about the #FreedomToCompute and math’s crucial role in our constitutional right to free speech in America. This must be considered in all future attempts at regulation in America.

Math and computing power are as essential as speech. In today’s world, they ARE speech. We may speak in natural language, but the way we extend ourselves, build things, and grow as a species is through our tools. Computation is a tool.

These tools are extensions of the human mind. Consider that the first computers were just regular humans counting. We may have started with our fingers and toes as our first tools. And it wasn’t quick progress as the evolution from the abacus to modern computing took us nearly 4,000 years.

We’ve made an astonishing amount of progress in the last hundred years. We’ve gone from thousands of computations per second in the 1940s to 200 quadrillion calculations per second with modern super computers.

Consumer devices are better too. The computer I’m using to write this post has more power than the computers we used to send man to the moon. It’s 100,000 times faster with seven million times more memory.

Alas, as tools get more powerful the powerful get nervous. This isn’t the first bad artificial intelligence bill we’ve seen. We have Europe to thank for that. And it likely won’t be the last.

But defeating SB-1047 is a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation not only in California but across the world as the entire compute space came together to make its voice heard. And Gavin Newsom listened.

We should celebrate this rare consensus as we look towards better policy in our future.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics Preparedness

Day 1362 and Hilux Drip

The right to repair movement is a worthy effort fighting the banal evil of planned obsolescence.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, it’s an economic and industrial design strategy to deliberately make products with shorter functional lives to “shorten the replacement cycle” aka make you buy a new one.

If you are a user of Apple products (as I am) then you are probably familiar with its reputation for degrading service. They are paying out to the tune of 500m for the practice.

But right to repair issues and planned obsolescence doesn’t just happen in electronics. It’s a problem in auto repair and home appliances too. Repairing a broken part can be more expensive than buying a new item.

And it’s getting worse. Computer chips are now in everything from your refrigerators and dishwasher to your car. Consumers reasonably loathe the increased complexity and challenges of repairing major purchases when everything is “smart.”

At this point I’m willing to pay more money for appliances with zero smart features and physical controls for everything. @ Kelsey Hightower

And I fear most of our regulatory climate is dedicated to making this problem worse. When Japanese automakers first come to the United States their vehicles had longer lifespans so American carmakers were forced to respond by building more durable products. That was a positive thing.

But geopolitical tensions being what they are the, U.S. Commerce Department proposed a national security ban on certain Chinese and Russian-made car parts from U.S. roads The motive is to protect American consumers from digital surveillance and hijacking. But who knows what gets caught up in the effort as we could be allowing in parts that make it easier to repair our own cars.

If we learned anything from Japanese cars it’s that allowing competition was an unalloyed good. There are cars I wish we had in America like the iconic Toyota Hilux. Here is a synopsis from Perplexity on why the Toyota Hilux is considered to be so durable. It’s got a robust chassis, a simple design that is easy to repair, minimal electronics and high quality components.

But you can’t own a Hilux in America. Why? The “Chicken Tax,” a tariff on light trucks, was imposed by the United States in retaliation for tariffs placed by other countries on American chickens.

But maybe it’s good we Americans can’t have a light truck that is easy to repair and designed to last. The internet has a long lore of memes dedicated to the car’s use in revolutions. You certainly wouldn’t want Americans getting any ideas about that.

A viral parody meme about why the Hilux is the choice for insurgents