It’s been a bad month for me. It seems like a bad month in general. But that’s February for you right? It’s a thumbs down kind of month. I’ve enjoyed the nonstop snow but we’ve finally gone above freezing.
Icicles
As the sun melts down our power into icicles I’ll try not to dwell on the negatives.
Are you a Frankfurt School student? I certainly am. If you are, you may find John Ganz’s review of Alex Karp’s new book The Technological Republic to be an amusing read. His Substack also has some gems including this imagine of Adorno which I intend to use everywhere.
Almost two years ago I sent a Twitter DM to a young founder named Isaiah. He was intellectual, curious and humble and I was impressed by his authenticity.
He was strong enough and driven enough to ask for hard feedback. So I told him the truth when he asked. I hated his first idea, gave a prediction about how it would go and said I’d invest in him on whatever he did next.
Lucky for me that feedback turned out to be accurate. We talked for months as he worked through a plan for his true passion for abundant clean nuclear energy.
I was blessed to be put in a position where I could commit as his first investor. His progress since then been extraordinary. Their goal is to make the world’s energy by building nuclear reactors at planetary scale. Today Valar Atomics announced they raised a 19m seed round.
When I say extraordinary I really mean it.
First, we have completed the construction and pressure certification of our thermal prototype, Ward Zero, at our Los Angeles facility—the fastest in history a thermal test unit has been developed and built. Ward Zero will be unveiled next week at an exclusive event in LA. Isaiah Taylor
We are in an age of acceleration. To be able to design and test a prototype this fast is a sign that we can expect better solutions to arrive and quickly if we should so will it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are able to turn on a working reactor in the near future. If you are interested in Valar (working for them or investing in their growth) hit me up on DM.
Want to see an android art direct as if it were in the cremaster cycle? The Protoclone is a faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and 500 sensors. Clearly they are doing this just to scare us into giving them attention so here you go. I hope they don’t execute as swiftly as Valar.
I am seeing some progress in my various home and health projects. I’ve been doing my best to remain optimistic even though I was not feeling well and the sheer amount of changes required was intimidating. But I’m seeing low progress.
An industrial hygienist is coming to do an arm test tomorrow on our basement as well as the rest of the house to confirm the extent of our mold problems. Our hope is that it’s contained to the bathroom in the basement.
If we have to do a bathroom remediation that presents an opportunity to do some renovations. While exciting that is also introducing more risk. But you can’t waste a crisis right?
I want to rage against the symptoms, the system that can’t solve anything, and even my own body for being tricky. But that won’t fix anything. I’m need to give the new protocols the space to work.
So it’s one foot in front of the other. Whatever is happening out there in the real world I just need to put one foot in front of the other. Or if you prefer a meme. Just keep swimming Dory.
Just keep swimming
I’m doing my best not to get it get me down. I’m afraid of the setbacks. I am afraid of the length of recovery and the potential for things to be worse. But I’ll Dorymaxx. It’s all I’ve got in me
I’ve been very wrapped up in my own problems of late. I have plenty of good reasons to be focused inward. When you feel as if you are fighting for survival, physical or otherwise, you can’t see anything else.
As I’ve looked up from my issues, I am seeing countless others caught in their own reactive spirals. Many of them are even directionally correct in their diagnosis of the problems facing them and the world as we know it.
The apocalyptic bent is especially strong in America at the moment. From politics to artificial intelligence to cultural wars, Americans are on the edge of change.
If your world is ending you probably can’t see beyond the horizon of the issues bringing about its end. Your view is myopic. Let’s call this phenomenon “apocalypse narcissism.”
It’s understandable to be wrapped up in fear when faced with all kinds of mortality. Your life, your nation, your culture, your planet and even your species all face world ending questions at some point. Sometimes change is so great we can’t see it as anything but death. Even if something better rises from the ashes.
I am in a challenging spot at the moment with our household mold issue and my attempts to accelerate changes in my care protocol for my autoimmune condition.
When things are challenging physically I find myself in tension. I want to share and be open in my experiment to write every single day. I am afraid that I’m doing nothing but share weakness by doing so.
I don’t want to telegraph only strain, illness, and struggle. Sure things are hard at the moment, but I am more than my current local minima conditions. Things are quite good.
Just because I feel too weak to articulate all the areas of strength doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I just can’t put them front and center right now.
This frustrates and even angers me. Large long term projects and investments are thriving and rather than focus on those I am curling into the fetal position and wishing I could disappear until I’m able to advocate loudly and proudly for my wins.
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.
When things get noisy on our global commons it’s good to step back. I live in elder millennial neighborhood that is American Twitter which is a bustling place. I still manage that “by hand” as it were.
I spend time on forums and Discords but increasingly my interactions within the commons has some kind of artificial intelligence layer between me and “the noise” as the slop drowns out. What to believe and how to keep it updated to reality?
An informational reformation is part of what you could see as a wider political elite power struggle. The uni-party of Washington Consensus and prestige media are not containing the rebel information hordes at bay. Consensus is at risk. Zoomers are learning the Treasury doesn’t control the Fed. Welcome to the audit kids.
The centralized narrative window of a top editorial page or an interview on Bloomberg remains the bounds of propriety for now.
But it’s going to get weirder. Many a teenage hacker with fighting words on Discord servers is likely to be sacrificed in this war of elites as permanent Washington fends off the populist revolt. It just happens to be that some hackers under the banner of Musk are in this coalition. Crusades probably always involve baroque racism.
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
