It started snowing last night before sunset in western Montana. At first it seemed like it might be hail and sleet but soon enough fluffier condensation was coming down.
While the rest of the world is suffering under heat domes and excessive weather warnings, things are cool in the Rockies. So much so I wonder if any agriculture may suffer. Our chickens seemed no worse for wear but we didn’t plant much this year.
As I was looking at the forecast in the Apple weather app I noticed in the average table a surprising -14F below the seasonal norm.
Seeing snow on the mountains is always a relief. Dry summers lead to wildfires and no one wants that. I consider this to be a fair to pleasant state for the weather.
I have a day trip planned to the capital shortly and I’m wondering how to pack given the cool. Layering is a fair technique until you have a fierce high altitude storm sweep over the pass.
Wearing linens and light sweaters seems fine for June until a freak snow storm has you wishing you’d packed boots and a puffy coat. Whatever the forecast I hope I’ll be prepared.
I woke up feeling reasonably good this morning. I thought perhaps my prayers have been answered. I have been managinga case of Covid for over a week so I really wanted to be turning the corner on recovery.
It’s hard fully rest with an infection and this case overlapped with a lot of big things for my portfolio companies. That excitement made it even harder to stay away from working. I was joyfully working all weekend for multiple deadlines.
I’ve not been the best behaved patient though I have stayed in bed. I thought I’d at least maintained the appropriate protocols for sleep, nutrition, supplements and medication.
What I really wanted was to go outside and enjoy the weather. June in Montana is heaven. Cool bright mornings turn into sunny dry days.
I thought that a short walk in this type of environment would be healthy. I walked the property and down our dirt road. I wasn’t out for more than twenty minutes.
Walking by our little pond fed by a creek.
It was too much. By early afternoon I was exhausted, feverish and coughing. I slept but it was the fitful half conscious sleep of the sick.
I am disappointed as I want this to be over. The pushback from supposedly health giving activity like strolling in the morning sun was immediate. It isn’t over and I’ve been punished for joyful nativity. But damn it’s a beautiful day to be alive.
I have been enjoying the mild weather of May. I’ve not had any extremes which is a sort of pleasant surprise. Climate and weather intersect poorly too often these days.
I was explaining to a mutual how we’d settled on Montana to buy land and much of the calculation was about the pleasures of a cold, dry and mountainous climate. It’s sunny without much in the way of humidity which makes for enjoyable winters even when it gets cold.
I am not much of a fan of humidity. It hurts my joints and reminds me of my ankylosis. I’m much more prone to trouble with inflammation when it’s damp.
Whenever I encounter a coastal climate I struggle a bit. Others may love a riviera but I’ve never found one I liked. I’ve been to a reasonably diverse array from San Francisco to coastal Mediterranean and I can do without.
The weather is however about to change. Soon it will be the season of air conditioning. I’ll be going through Texas for a conference at the end of May. I’m not looking forward to the heat.
My husband was unreachable for the last 72 hours. So no one gets worried while I tell the story, I’ll note this was planned, nothing bad happened and he is back on the grid.
This is the first time I’ve had had no way of getting word to Alex if I wanted to do so in over decade of marriage.
This probably tells you a lot about how accessible we are to each other even when we are apart. We’ve had entire continents between us but I’ve always been able to reach him and he can always reach me. We’ve basically been in non-stop contact since our first date.
Until this weekend. For the last three days Alex was unreachable because he was on a camping (ok hunting) trip.
Many parts of Montana have so few people it’s pretty simple to go completely off grid. And he did.
If you have a decent truck, a Bureau of Land Management map and the ambition to bag a wild turkey you too can get off grid and become unreachable.
When Alex got back onto the grid he texted me.
He asked me what had happened while he had been offline. My first instinct was try to fill him in on everything. But so much had happened I found myself unable to even start.
I went back through hundreds of news stories, group chats, Twitter timelines, and emails in an attempt to sum up everything I’d seen while he’d been off grid. It was my turn to disappear. It was now me who was unreachable
Thankfully Alex stopped be before I got too far into the wild.
“If it’s really important it will get filtered up to me”
Alex Miller 4/30/24
As is often the case my husband was right. So I stopped. Please take this as a sign to not worry about getting caught up. We will filter things up to each outer.
Just when I think shit cannot get any crazier reality absolutely fucking mogs me.
“Surely” I say to myself. “It cannot get more weird, more brazen, more chaotic, more fucked up, more absolutely unreal.”
And then it absolutely fucking does.
What if I told you there was a funny movie about dysfunctional airlines?
Getting second passports is normal don’t you know? I guess us regular professional class moves to Montana because we stupidly believe in America but everyone else is splitsville.
But don’t worry Italy welcomes digital nomads. I’d personally go to Tallinn though. But if you like Riveras hit up Albania. Thank me later. Never too early to think about where you might find yourself as a refuge.
Looking for something a little more exotic? I got you. How about some drugs. No really.
Hack the planet! Hack the gut biome! Hack your cavities? It’s possible the effective altruists saving us from bad teeth with polyamorous sex parties? I learned about an experimental probiotic from a sex worked based Austin. No I am not kidding. Her name is Aella. Iff you don’t know what this means I’ll spare you. But I’ll leave you with this.
Unless you are an investor like Yishan here, the way to get it is to pay $5000 for an appointment at a clinic in Prospera, the libertarian-run ZEDE on the island of Roatan currently suing the Honduran government for a third of the countries GDP
Now to be fair this is excellent affinity marketing. Who else would know more mouth bacteria than a hooker right? Well actually you’d be more likely to get gets thrush from that sort of extracurricular which requires an anti-fungal not an antibiotic but I’m quibbling.
“You may not like it but eating a burger in the back of a casino in a strip mall in Montana while reading an economics lecture by Deidre McCloskey is actually female peak performance”
Maybe it was the positive effect of a bunch of fat and protein but I was in the zone afterwards. I was able to pull together a bunch of disparate connections on a specialty niche where I’ve had some very promising investments.
I, for a brief shining moment, realized I was almost certainly one of the most expert and well connected people on the planet for something.
So much of not getting eaten by change is simply accepting that you feel absolutely bonkers an enormous amount of time. Learning to live with it isn’t as easy as it looks
If you are lucky and smart and open minded a straight line can appear through what was other completely disparate things. It’s funny that we call putting a line through things regression right? Simplifying things is funny like that.
Learning to act when you see a through line is almost all of the battle. “Noticing things” is only useful insofar as it something you take action on.
I felt as if I had no clear path at all yesterday on anything and then today I did. I didn’t see some kind of perfect Delphic vision of the future. I just realized that work I’d set in motion three or four years ago has yielded results and if I was able to keep going with other people who saw it too then I had done what I could.
For such a libertarian state, the alcohol laws seems a bit baffling. But one of the best burgers in town can be found at the bar inside the liquor store. It feel like any sports bar that leans towards country and western tunes. America is an amazing place.
Waiting on our burgers at the bar
And because we are also yuppies we went to get groceries at the local food cooperative of which we are members. My inner hippie loves getting her Dr Bronner from the bulk bins. We went a little overboard picking out some essential oils (Alex loves bergamot and I needed more lavender) and then ground of our not butters.
All the lentils and beans you could want
Having thoroughly covered the country and hippie portions of our day I came home to do some spring cleaning.
Moving from winter to warmer clothing isn’t my favorite seasonal shift. I prefer cozy cashmere and long sleeve black tee-shirts. But I have conferences and professional obligations coming up with travel so I tried out a new paid mobile application for closest organization and packing called Style Book.
I haven’t quire got the hang of it but the basic idea is to take photos of your wardrobe, tag it, organize it into outfits and packing lists and get more visibility into your wardrobe. I’ll have a to play with or more to get it polished but it seems like it has potential.
Style books Home Screen A spring lookA conference outfit
While the Spring equinox has come to pass, we have had a couple late snowstorms this week in Montana. I am always wishing we’d get just a few more weeks of winter. It’s my favorite season here.
Of course, there are no bad seasons to be had in the Gallatin Valley if your preference is dry, crisp and bright. It’s never too wet or too dreary here. Our mountains feel close to the sun at our altitude. Maybe some of April qualify as the muddy season but the sun is our friend here.
Something about the Southwest Rocky Mountains in Montana keeps them from the unfortunate damp wetness of the rainy Pacific Northwest forests that begin closer to Missoula on towards Washington.
Alex standing in front of our solar array
The sunniness has made our solar grid in the front pasture particularly efficient for us.
Already melting into nothing
Just a few hours ago it was snowing fluffy powder. The sun is already melting it away within hours as the clouds pass over the foothills and the sun begins to shine again.
One of the joys of living up “in the country” is what you can do with the extra space. In our case, Alex decided one of those things should be chickens (despite the fact that neither one of us eats many eggs).
The bounty from the hens this week
Even with chickens not being the most cuddly animal, they have been a pleasure to “talk” with, bock-ing back and forth with them as we leave the house or return.
When the coop and run were built we knew it had to be hardened as our area abounds with predators from hawks, to coyotes, raccoons, skunks, and a particular red fox who dens near our property.
The fox in question
While we’ve long assumed the fox has taken his many prowls around the chickens and we’ve seen him on other parts of the property, this morning was the first time we actually saw him snooping the run, looking for a meal. Fortunately the defenses held and all the ladies remained safe (if not slightly perturbed by the undesired guest) until we stepped outside to shoo him away.
And of course a new recurring chore has made the list: regular checks of the security of the run. Just in case.
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Ed Note: This post was actually written by Alex. If you figured out something was off before the end, DM for a prize
“Since you’ve chosen death I must choose another path” It was a shitpost. I posted an acceleration meme. I happily endorse the bumpy progress of material change and the myriad human lives that choose to grow. The responses to my shitpost show that it’s no longer a joke.
Accelerate or die in style of the American Revolution “unite or die” snake representing the thirteen colonies but in the form of a network diagram.
I live in very clear reveled preferences on this front. My husband and I are accelerating the real world in our home in Montana. In two years we’ve planted a fruit orchard, installed solar grid, use the power from that grid to grow hydroponics and mine Bitcoin, we got chickens and advocate for local growth initiatives that allow people in Montana to live and grow together in mutual freedom.
I also believe those rights in the real world rest on a bedrock of natural rights enumerated in the American constitution.
And then suggest you want to engage in earnest debate. I find it hard to believe a good faith reader doesn’t immediately see the cognitive dissonance.
I do have the right to do as I choose as I am an American. We have first amendment rights.
Until you can measurably demonstrate proof that access to compute (which is just mathematics) has specific measurable harms you cannot invoke force on your fellow citizen for your personal paranoias.
The encryption wars had the same logic. So I ask people who worry about the consequences of compute power and artificial intelligence to give us what we’ve asked for in the form of measurably demonstrated specific types of harms where access to compute is a threat.
No “what if” hysterics, show me specifics and we can address those in policy. Armageddon in your head isn’t adequate. Being afraid isn’t enough.
If you can show measurable harms do so. We must hew to empiricism any time we seek to align others to our cause. Show me specific harms & we work to redress those harms. Actual crimes that exist already should be prosecuted as such. Seeking to newly criminalize a basic right because of unprecedented circumstances should be subject to the highest of scrutiny.
However if you show me you want the power for yourself to make these decisions I say no. We all keep our own conscience. We have existing rights.
I have shown through my revealed preferences I also believe this transition to more artificial will be chaotic. An age of higher variance is upon us and this can be a good thing with enough energy and intelligence. And we are about to get more intelligence thanks to the tools we have built.
I hope we can mitigate its harms. I believe we can apply ourselves in individual ways coordinated by the best efforts of those who build new tools. And that because we cannot predict with certainty we must hold firm to our principles doubly so then. We must be brave in approaching these problems as the principles matter.
Marxist Leninist thought has proven resilient
I am not advocating for revolution. I am advocating for keeping our heads and our hearts in times of change and protecting all of our freedoms.
We have historically shown the value of this position and the folly of violent control “for your own good.” Consider those classic socialist musicians the Beatles. Even they understood that revolutionary force was bad.
You say you want a revolution Well, you know We all want to change the world You tell me that it’s evolution Well, you know We all wanna change the world
But when you talk about destruction Don’t you know that you can count me out, in
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah) Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah) Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah)
You say you got a real solution Well, you know We’d all love to see the plan You ask me for a contribution Well, you know We all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell is, brother, you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah) Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah) Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right? (Ah, shu-bi-do, ah)
You say you’ll change the constitution Well, you know We’d all love to change your head (ah, shu-bi-do, ah) You tell me it’s the institution Well, you know You better free your mind instead (ah, shu-bi-do, ah)
If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow
Revolution 1 – The Beatles
If you want to go around quoting Chairman Mao you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow. How prescient those British Boy Band Boomers were. If you are so certain a revolution is necessary but you will take my compute from me then it’s you who wishes to be the Vanguard not me.
These calls for safety and caution, lest an apocalypse scenario ensue, appeal emotions to seek a tyranny of the majority for a fantasy of control over something that “may” be dangerous but not in any empirical ways we can address together and in specific ways. They don’t want to be accountable. Accountability is a democracy not this pantomime of concern seeking control.
Appealing to fears is control. All of the issues which have been brought up in artificial intelligence and access to computer models have past analogs and parallels in our existing policy tool set and within the enumerated rights.
Feel free to specify those issues into specifics and not act like this is Patriot Act 2^nth Terminator 2 Boogaloo. We have no need to indulge in Tom Clancy level panic about sum of all fears.
To lighten the mood this is an aligned AI for you.
Embrace the freedoms of affirming your right to choose your own human life. These new tools can we’ve built from mathematics and computation can enrich all our lives.
Lest you not think I take the consequences of this massive change and its potential for dislocation seriously, I live off grid with redundant power and water in Montana. I invest exclusively in solutions to the real problems we face in uncertain times including energy, open source, decentralization & trustless intermediaries. I walk this walk. The choice to make the future is up to all of us. And we should walk it in the most life affirming way we can for each of us.
