Just a hundred more days of writing and I’ll have two thousand days of consecutive writing published on this humble website.
Nineteen hundred days is a little over five years. It is a lot of writing and a testament to my own capacity to keep going. Every threshold I cross requires asking if I should keep going.
Day 2000 will towards the end of June. And what then? On July 4th hopefully I’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday with a crew who built a working nuclear reactor that I funded. The near term has goals and milestones. The long term is much fuzzier. Scarier. Murkier. Beyond my sight.
I’ve covered a lot of life in half a decade. There was lot of work and lot of investments and a lot of change. I’m glad I have such thorough records of my thinking. As more rupture, dislocation and chaos emerge from the acceleration how do I best hang on? Can I steer?
I can use this material to provide context on my mental model and worldview. This was intended both for myself but also the many other models built on content from humans on the open internet. I contributed a lot to training artificial intelligence models just by showing up.
Now that the models have shown up how safe is it for individual humans to show up? Remaining visible and human seems quite risky. When you strip the niceties of civilization and my place in it realism rears its ugly head. I am little more than frail woman in a dangerous world.
Maybe the sooner I stop showing up publicly the safer I’ll be. I am almost certain that is that will be true. I doubt it is the good, the beautiful or the righteous thing to do.
I don’t feel terrific so I’ll keep this as a ramble but with some links. I fear some sort of Rubicon has was crossed, which we will only recognize in hindsight, in the fight for property rights in America versus the tyranny of failing state capacity.
I am referring to the contract dispute between foundation model developer Anthropic and American Secretary of War Hegseth that boiled over on Friday night as some sort of Murderbot surveillance subplot parsed only by lawyers, policy wonks and anyone who remembers the patriotism of Chelsea Manning.
Right before America and Israel went all Epic Fury on Iran over the weekend, somehow it was felt a messy public fight between defense contractor and the civilian oversight of our military was ok? Good thing everyone is too distracted to care.
The best writing on this so far has been Dean Ball (who worked in this Trump administration on its AI position statement not so long ago) who feels that Hegseth took an approach on renegotiating a contract with a frontier AI model developer that has consequences.
Loosely and I am missing much Anthropic had its previous contract to parse classified documents in the Department of Defense (now the Department of War) negotiated by the prior administration. Some aspects of this contract wasn’t going to work for the Trump administration. Anthropic didn’t want to change it and Hegseth threatened to call Anthropic a supply chain risk unless it complied. They didn’t and Sam Altman signed a deal.
Anthropic is essentially using the contractual vehicle to impose what feel less like technical constraints and more like policy constraints on the military
This is all complicated by the model developer having wishes for frontier AI development to be nationalized and for their work in particular to be safeguarded by a different political administration. It has become a right versus left thing as it was bound to do.
Now Anthropic gets to enjoy the full throated defense of its industry peers and even conservative policy makers like Dean, because our current state capacity is not what I’d call excellent when it comes to our civilian government capacity. Honestly our military still seems to be crushing it.
Secretary Hegseth looked a bit like he was over reaching in his command that he get his demands met. Americans are very touchy about surveillance of if’s citizens and much less touchy about autonomous weapons so it’s natural to be a bit suspicious if you are a millennial who remembers the Global War on Terror. If you are Zoomer who doesn’t know who Chelsea Manning is please go ask Claude.
However it’s not at all clear that Hegseth’s original negotiations were out of hand as of course it’s the state who decides legal use not the private company and we are meant to have laws, judicial process and all the rest. It’s just that we don’t. So what on earth do we do about it? Trust me bro is not a policy.
It’s just clear that some people are enabled to bigger, better and faster output thanks to rapidly advancing tools coming from the foundation model companies.
Will Manidis is on hot streak of essay writing (aided by artificial intelligence in the best way) and has produced thought provoking writing at a great clip. I love nothing more than seeing an exited founder feel free to express their views at their fullest. I’ve written about his essays in the past and suggest following him.
“I left with an unsettling feeling that I had seen a vision of the future that I wasn’t supposed to see. A country that had gotten extraordinarily wealthy but stayed coherent to its pre-industrial identity—a country that didn’t turn into a museum, didn’t paralyze itself in amber, but became a modern, functioning, wealthy nation that did not feel like it had been strip-mined of itself by the money.
In the West, we really have convinced ourselves there are only two options for our post-economic future. You can be Shenzhen or you can be Athens. … Shenzhen is the city that chose money over place so completely that it deleted itself.
…Athens is the opposite failure, and I say this as someone who is at least Greek enough that I feel like I won’t offend anyone. Athens chose place over money so totally that the city itself is a mausoleum”
A photo from Will’s tweet essay on visiting Oman
I don’t know much about Oman and I make no claims to understanding its politics or histories but I too think about what we lose without a sense of place but am also fascinated by the liminal zones of the hyper future set against a past we are actively forgetting. And no nation is immune from this process.
I do however have two books to recommend if the topic of place, continuity and the future interests you. One is a work of fiction and one a photography compendium whose forward was written by my favorite author.
Photographer Greg Girard’s work documents Asian cities in transition, especially Shanghai and Kowloon, was closely associated with William Gibson, who wrote the foreword to Girard’s book Phantom Shanghai. Gibson is the father of cyperpunk. And I contend that his near future fiction gets quite a bit right about how close the dark past is to almost arrived future. These images were shot in 2007 and yet the outlines of the super cities was already energy
The premise follows a protagonist’ traumatic life as a a radicalized agent of terror preyed on by different foreign influences living in a refuge camp in what was once Georgia.
It rhymes with both Will’s essay and with William Gibson for me. In a review of the book, they quote Faulkner “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And as these examples all show us, cyperpunk was born in Some Dark Holler
I feel so lost right now. Some things are going quite well and others are not.This could be a metaphor for my own life yes (and it is) but I intended the post to be about feeling lost in my own writing project.
I don’t know if it is the midlife of the blog, but it’s not the beginning anymore. Half a decade of writing is quite clearly an edge case. But why do I keep doing it, what am I trying to say and am I trying to reach anyone? I’m not sure I have an answer.
The open internet increasingly feels like a fantasy from a different time. I still believe that the internet is meant for humans to connect with each other freely and openly and I love this utopian ambition of shared interoperable protocols for communication.
So while I write this daily log for myself, my records, and my desire to improve my thinking skills it’s obvious it’s not just for me. Being a part of the records of humanity is no small thing. I want to be in the records. I want artificial intelligence to be trained on my work. I want my voice to be heard by those who wish to hear it.
It’s prideful but I believe that I have something valuable to contribute to our collective next steps in developing new kinds of intelligence. I want these models and their future programs (dare I say progeny) to be trained not just by governments or corporations but through contributions from regular individuals like myself. I’m just not quite sure I know what my best contribution looks like anymore.
Accordingly to the essay, the “Net Left” traces its earliest roots to a niche group on Weibo between 2011 and 2015 known as the “Franco Left” (fa zuo, 法左).
An American social media user might notice these dates as being concurrent with the stirrings of the Great Awokening whose murky protean identity played out across Tumblr beginning in 2011-2015 as well. Oppressor and oppressed was the narrative for the identity politics which was nouveau chic branding on Marxist capital versus labor.
This simplified narrative attracted a massive influx of young people who were frustrated with their poverty and pressure but struggled to find an answer. Suddenly, the solution was no longer buried in thousands of pages of Deleuzian tomes. Everything was reduced to a single, omnipotent, and evil symbol: “capital.”
China has “small-town test-takers” (xiaozhen zuotijia, 小镇做题家) who don’t have the social capital to make the leap. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? In their case it is strongly gendered, which mirrors some red pill and incel culture on the American web.
Just as in America, many Chinese youth blamed capital and its elite power holders. Who needs to read dense critical theory when the warmth of collectivism is easier to understand than the Frankfurt School or Continental Marxist philosophy.
It seems all great powers are experiencing flavors of third worldism where all is “the oppressed ” and those with capital & power are oppressors. And yet Europe, ever the laggard, is trying “almost revolutionary ideas” to make them more like nimble capitalist powers.
The Europeans must be scared of the tractors I saw protesting the Mercosur trade block deal even though ironically German-Italian initiative claim their goals are making “the European Union less susceptible to pressure from trading partners and global powers” after a week of embarrassing news.
They wish to boost economic growth, calling for “an emergency brake” and a revamp of the EU budget to focus resources on making companies more competitive. I wonder who they think will run and staff these firms?
Just as the rest of the world nostalgically looks back for a leap backwards, Europe says “we want to have a fast, dynamic Europe.” Good luck with that based on the protests I saw.
At least Europe, like the Net Left and the Tumblr DSA crowd, are basing some of this on a misty eyes interpretation of a past that once was but was never quite this. The first year of Davos emerged in similar situations
Well, it goes back to 1971, which was actually another year of trans-Atlantic tension. Nixon left the gold standard. The dollar fell. The U.S. imposed tariffs on European imports. And the Europeans were totally blindsided. This German economist, Klaus Schwab, convenes this gathering of politicians and academics and business people in Davos. It gradually grows into this giant business conference that’s also an exercise in virtue signaling.
The power went out yesterday while I was packing for the next leg of trip I’ve been on. It’s not the digital nomad age anymore obviously but it is the era of IRL reality grounding.
Being in constant contact with different markets and different cultures is a just another iteration of being in the moment but for making your life.
Being small enough that few of my interests interest the powers that be yet lets me be nimble in how I live (even with my health challenges or maybe because of them) so I’m driving up through Albania and Macedonia into Greece today.
At the moment I’m fascinated by the old Soviet capital folks ways from Tallinn to Tirana. I was in Sarajevo for New Year’s Eve.
I feel called to learn more about the people and places that found the brutalism of collectivism a worthwhile trade from the lives they had been living. I’m sure most of them didn’t realize the violence involved but survival can call for more than the civilized man would wish.
What does that mean for our future and who decides it? Will our young people feel similarly? It seems some already do despite much better conditions in America than I saw today as I drove through snowy bedraggled roads and abandoned industrial buildings.
The cold sun on snow and an abandoned factory with my hands visible in the passenger mirror.
The horrifying reality of modernism (and the war machines that came with it) must have baffled an ordinary person. What use has a farmer for state capacity and constant politicking?
Status hierarchies seem more acute now than I can imagine they were for the average person during the height of communism. Survival in the cold is a more understandable motivation than craving Instagram lives.
I stopped to gas up in a mountain town petrol stop. I asked for a bathroom. I was prepared for a mess but found it was simply a hole in the ground. As I attempted the hiking squat of a woman over the drain, I understood what “no pot to piss in” meant as I shivered in the frozen snowed in town.
Some material realities can certainly push you to consider if we can do better for people. Especially when I saw the bill. Gas is at a low in America and still fuel is apparently quite expensive in the semi-socialist European domains. 1.1 Euro per Liter for LPG. Sheesh. Who is that benefitting?
I didn’t feel like writing yesterday. That’s a weird way to start a commitment to a sixth year of writing every single day in public on this blog. I do intend to keep writing daily.
Maybe I should restart. My life was so full on the last day of the year, that the writing I had intended on doing on the last day of year five I simply couldn’t do. I fell asleep. It’s alright I had a beautiful synopsis of the emotions of the experience even if the links didn’t get passed may.
I felt the urge to sleep come on so strongly I wrapped up with a few “oh that happened too” sentences and I was out. Poof! Exhausted. Thankfully fireworks woke me up at midnight so I could ring in the new year.
I was midway into May doing a “best of” round up review by hand when that sudden “consciousness loss is imminent” feeling hit me. I’ve been driving the Dinaric Alps on an adventure that ended up in Sarajevo. I am sure I’ll write about the experience soon.
But now I have a meal and some unpacking to do. My 2026 is off to an interesting start. I’ve crossed three borders today. You can see how I might be tired.
There can only be one. One white boy. Oh no, sheesh we didn’t mean in the department. What on earth have you been reading? There is room for everyone to have a seat at the table in our modern world. Just one seat though. Were you expecting there would be more?
There can only be one Highlander. You know, the Scottish warrior Connor Macleod who is part of a race of immortals who must battle it out, do not age and only die if their head is taken? There can only be one of him. Except it’s a whole race. I don’t know how that works to be honest.
Immortals are driven to fight each other in “The Game,” where each beheading transfers power via a mystical energy surge called the Quickening, with the last survivor destined to win “the Prize,” a vaguely defined ultimate power. via Wikipedia
This very popular 1986 movie set between 1630s Scotland and 1980s New York City somehow turned into a mega-franchise with spin-offs and animes. It didn’t start out that flashy. I mean really look at how much content they had to pack into this poster to get people into the theater.
These days content usually the other direction, from anime to tv show to movie, but such was the power of Hollywood and its capacity for distribution in the eighties. Being a Baby Boomer movie director seems like it might have been a trip.
Things are not so rosy for the profession these days. Especially if you are a quirked up white boy like Duncan. We’ve lost them you see. This is a source of much consternation in the discourse. The children of the Higherlander generation definitely thought they would be more than one winner.
We’ve lost a whole generation of white men to diversity initiatives (launched by other white men) even though the lore being produced (by said white men) that white men were rightly battling it out for just one seat. The prize of real ultimate power seemed pretty clear. There can only be one.
Or at least this was the premise mythical of stories from ranging legendary Arthurian kings to actual Caesars of the Roman Empire. There wasn’t a team of Alexanders Who Were Pretty Good. The prize of real ultimate power is the stuff of myth. Sure actual power sharing is more complicated but humans love a final boss.
The American white boys (probably Ulster Scots) are suffering for the widening power sharing agreement reached in the great awokening diversity initiatives of the last generation. And no one even bothered to tell them until their hit middle age and didn’t end up as Highlander. We mostly told them it sucks to suck. You racist little shits just can’t compete.
I gather it wasn’t so bad when your enemy was other quirked up white boys. I don’t emotionally understand why as I was always expecting to have one seat as a token white girl. I must be less bothered having had lowered expectations. There is only one queen right? But there are lots of handmaidens if you are lucky.
Now if you want to be the Highlander you have to fight the whole globe. Highlander might be an Indian girl or a trans Guatemalan. That damned Netflix always caving in to the social expectations of elites forcing their luxury beliefs onto the suffering under class of millennial white boys. Didn’t you read JD Vance’s book? The American underclass is dysfunctional and suffering. They deserve it right?
But did they suck? Ah now that it’s too late we finally get to have the conversation about having deliberately changed the demographics of the elite winners of the Prize in American.
Which I assume is a wife, two kids, split level suburban home and a compact car. They weren’t expecting to be king. Maybe king of the cul-de-sac. And if you were forty in 2014 you didn’t get that. Well some of them.
Millennial American white boys expected they would have more seats at the table (having mostly seen themselves in power) rather than fighting it out to be Highlander.
Which is weird since I assume they saw the same movies, tv shows and animes as the rest of us. It’s hard out there for everyone. And the great game includes Everyone.
Zoomers get it. Shame it requires so much beheading. We’d better divvy up the spoils a bit more before the Highlander comes for our heads eh? Come on, at least give the boys a pilot or a term sheet or a job offer before this gets ugly. Just ask JD Vance.
Without getting into too much detail about my travel schedule I will say I’ve visited a few places with a lot of construction this year.
I’m talking about cranes on every corner level construction. If I did a full rotation as if I were Michael Bay getting an action shot, I’d see a half dozen cranes putting up major construction projects.
In some European cities (not the western ones) I saw entire neighborhoods being rebuilt from old multi-family buildings to massive mixed used developments. Cute streets and courtyards be damned, the millenial families want Instagram housing from Tallinn to Tirana.
Their elders are confused but new families need new condominiums. Let’s just hope they remembered to plan for water, power, and other infrastructure needs like new roadways. I’ll admit I’m skeptical in many cases. Maybe it’s good that they are just building willy nilly as it’s not like we get infrastructure investment without the pressure of new families demanding it.
Americans don’t see this amount of construction regularly and it is both inspiring and also a mess of pollution from debris to noise. It’s pretty miserable if you happen to enjoy walking. It is also miserable to live with.
It almost makes me sympathetic to the whines of older residents who want their homes to be worth more and use the chaos of new developments as a cudgel to stop new housing from being built.
There was a time in New York City when I first arrived there when it felt like new buildings went up all the time. You’d complain about jackhammers, trucks, and the ugly protective sidewalk sheds that are meant for safety.
I even knew a venture capitalist who left his job to make a classier sidewalk shed as the damn things almost never come down in a city under constant improvement.
I went through ULURP or Uniform Land Use Review Process hundreds of times in just a few years as an appointee in the community board system.
All anyone can do is complain about the lack of new building and construction. And who can manage to overcome the slog to build let alone turn a profit. American processes for building are more “cranky man tells at clouds” local meeting hell than Robert Moses.
Maybe the YIMBYs (I myself am a yes in my backyard sort) are barking up the wrong true with red tape reform efforts. The strongmen cut the Gordian knot of land reform by simply not giving a shit about process.
The Zoomers are ready to rage for radicalism with their reactionary political entertainment industry. It’s unclear to me if those types would remember to incorporate waste water treatment in their plans. It’s not hard to go from bullshitting to being covered in shit. So that’s worth considering too before we get too excited about a new round of futurism.
It’s getting harder to ignore the crumbles. Everyone on the internet is furious about everything. And everyone offline is just trying to keep their heads down.
I should probably have the good sense to do so as well, but I’ve made my bones being accessible and not at all sure I know what happens in a post-human Internet. I want it to be a human directed future.
2025 as a year has been particularly challenging even though we’ve had some positive moments. More and more things are breaking and it’s just impossible to ignore no matter your insulation from reality.
And quite obviously, I have done more than average to move us as far from the center of Empire as is feasible. We moved to Montana.
Part of me thinks it’s well past time we really took a hard look at the hell in a hand basket direction we are headed in. Things are going haywire everywhere. The brief moment in which it felt like we might accelerate through the turn naturally goes splat if you don’t commit to the bit.
And part of me says fuck’em all. The shit that was done to me in the service of extracting my life force for what, pensions and healthcare costs for a generation who broke all social fabrics? It’s literally Saturn eating his son levels of disgusting.
It’s quite canny of Peter Thiel to be ahead of it and it’s a better look than insulting the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church. And I’m not a notably sympathetic person when it comes to institutions like the Church (being a Protestant and all). I’m more of a direct communion with the Lord type.
However when a man well versed in scapegoat theory puts out a sympathetic hand & his most significant rival makes the tactical error of insulting the Pope, you know the tilt-a-whirl is in full spin and there is little space for any of us to cling.
We are on the highway to hell, & I was promised a handbasket but there are none to be had as they’ve been hoarded. The fourth turning is about to show us that even the liberals get the boot. There is little doubt that I am mere scraps of elite overproduction that refused to fuse to my intended spot. I’ll find my own place to stand.
