I’m deeply in the red on my energy stores. All my dashboards are flashing warning signs that I need to get in a good recovery.
I’ve up all my reserves to get myself to Utah and make a good showing to support team Valar Atomics. Ironic that I’m energy poor as all my effort posting (both online and in real life) is about a vision of cheap abundant safe and clean energy for all mankind.
What a privilege to say that Valar Atomics has been my everything for the last forty eight hours. Everyone is running on so little sleep but the outcome is a success that is undeniable. There are so many exciting interviews about our reactor and Isaiah’s from Ti Morse at Relentless (here on YouTube) to Sarah Guo at No Priors that you could spend a happy afternoon getting up to speed on the nuclear renaissance.
I hope to watch them all soon as I need some rest. So does the team. At team party after the big Nvidia event, much of the conversation turned to where everyone planned to enjoy their well deserved 4th of July break
Having served our nation by reaching criticality and generating electricity as ordered by the executive branch, this team as earned some leave. Hundred hour weeks have been the norm for many of them. This crew knows hard work. One former navy nuclear engineer joked that while the navy was tough, booting up a reactor from scratch was much harder.
Most just want some sleep but the diversity of plans was exciting. From touring Spain’s Catholic cathedrals to hiking in Alaska clearly a few had some energetic plans. But there was a lot of life basics like setting up new apartments and sleeping off an accumulated sleep debt.
I’m in camp sleep it off. Whoop is sure I’m either dying or super sick my metrics are pretty bad. Thankfully I’m going to be enjoying our nation’s birthday in the mountains with my husband and our friends. I will go from in the red to red, white and blue.
I’ve got to remember to keep tissues in my purse. I’m prone to crying when I’m proud. I am a crier by nature and the experience of pride and awe is becoming distressingly common. Woe is me right?
My very early bet on Valar Atomics (I wrote about it on Day 1145 but met Isaiah closer to day 900 early 2023) is paying off years, if not decades, ahead of my expectations. Never did I expect arguably the hardest operational bet in my portfolio to be such a fast breakaway hit. And I owe it to an executive order from Donald Trump and the efforts of patriotic Americans committed to regulatory reform. Which is crazy.
As it turns out, if the government gets out of the way of talented people, nay, if it demands that our state institutions help them, the impossible becomes possible in shockingly short order. The reports of America’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Today in front of a crowd of hundreds of current and potential investors, employees, Orangeville community members, government officials & scientists and most importantly our family members, we watched a reactor (that might not even exist without my first check), power an Nvidea Blackwell chip.
In a demonstration rivaling the greats (Ballmer, Jobs) Isaiah brought up NuclearWebsite.com and asked the audience to load it with him.
“Oh no it’s not loading?!!?” What’s happening? Do we have any electricity on site? Quick someone run the GPUs to the nearest electricity! Go go we can’t disappointment all these people!
And then the Blackwell is rushed into the Ward250 reactor. In real time the chip is run to the control room, gets hooked up and boom the website loads.
The first entirely privately funded nuclear startup was critical, stable, producing electricity and powering state of the art silicon.
We actually did it. The mad lads and ladies of Valar Atomics swept ahead of the competition in a frenzied year of progress (Day 1510) from seed round and Ward Zero to producing electricity to power GPUs.
After a twenty four hour travel marathon to get from the Ionian in the Mediterranean to the southern Utah desert, being back at the Valar Atomics reactor facility for a demonstration of this magnitude felt surreal.
Just a few weeks ago (Day 1969) the reactor was days away from being shielded and then fueled. We’d driven down to see her before she was wrapped up in shielding.
Proud first investors in front of Ward 259
Now not only has she gone critical (Day 1996) but I was able to walk into the running reactor room and see the live reactor for myself. The operator Ben (a former naval nuclear operator) seemed surprised and happy to see me. “Julie! Hi!” He exclaimed as me and the other early lead investors piled in for a tour.
Jason Calacanis (also a master of the live demo) never lets anyone forget he invested in Ubers seed round. I get to brag I wrote Valar’s very first check
And while success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan, I’ll always enjoy the satisfaction of being the very first to take a chance on a long shot no one thought had any business even trying. And well they were wrong. And I was right. Not just right but really fucking right. I backed the long shot dark horse (somewhere around day 950) because my gut told me that the kid had the right stuff. And wow did he.
I only had a dim hint of exactly what we’d be seeing today as the invite said “Watts Next” cohosted by Nvidia and Valar. Clearly a number of us connected the dots because it was packed. The atom would power the compute and we’d get to see it live.
The team after the demo
Every existing investor, and quite a few later stage firms, came out to the middle of nowhere to see if these longshots had really done it. And indeed in just three years the impossible became reality. I’ve never felt prouder to be American. And clearly everyone around me felt the same.
And most importantly, it was a win for the team, led by the indomitable spirit of Isaiah Taylor. Their long nights and constant doubt paid off. The road ahead is long but no one is likely to doubt that we are serious contenders anymore.
I always say there was never a doubt in my mind. I had faith. Isaiah joked he had moments of doubts. I say I’m blessed that I got to be that first believer to say “I think you can do it and I’m going to help.”
And whenever he doubted that we’d make it (there are always near death experiences in any startup) it was my privilege to remind him that doing the impossible is just what we humans do.
Like Captain Kirk, I don’t believe in no win scenarios. I hope you consider joining me for more impossible long shots. Because sometimes taking the shot is worth more than anything else you will ever do.
Want to run your compute on clean renewable cheap American energy?
I wrote these notes while a little bit high, both literally (a transcontinental flight) and figuratively (CBD & a THCa blend meant to give anti-inflammatory relief without hitting your mind but it probably does) but it’s hard to say if I’m less focused than when I’m on the ground. You be the judge of that. Nostalgia machine clicks on
Business class and its perks are lost on me as I don’t drink alcohol. So I had rhubarb and raspberry tonic water in whatever passes for cut glassware on airplanes now. I said no at the fancy lounges to very decent champagnes but I don’t want to get dehydrated. I got a sugar crash instead.
I’m listening to Ethiopian jazz as I find this piece relaxing in the context of airplane travel. Mulatu Astake is a master in a genre I don’t even like but this particular piece has always spoken to me.
Nobody paid me for the diffusion but I was paid for the original campaign. A lesson for anyone bitching about how their work wasn’t compensated by the artificial intelligence models that ingested their contributions.
How funny that I should manage a Club Monaco Facebook page involving a pop-up event for a chef that would go on to define so much of culture.
I worked with impossibly cool creative director on the account who was famous in Japan for his photography and also as the guy who made Pabst cool for hipsters. I sometimes wonder where he ended up when his talent set was so hype sensitive. But we were pretty ahead of the times on this one.
Before this fashion agency career, in the post GFC aughts, lived across from a weekend installation of a projected light Pabst installation when I was in North 7th and Bedford. My Turkish banker roommate and I used to throw raves there so we couldn’t exactly complain about the lights hitting our living room. But it was a good campaign in a good location.
I shot low budget fashion shoots during the day with a very competent hungry young editor. She worked as a waitress at night and for me during running our fashion editorial to get toehold in the business. It seems to have worked.
She has an amazing career, a handsome husband, a beautiful child and kicked it off with an impossibly stylish wedding which every hipster you knew copied till well past the Tommy Hilfiger event horizon of having no soul. We had a tortured Swedish nepo-baby photographer too. I adored him. It was a very “rents were cheap” time in hindsight.
Anyways, in transit through Heathrow, I picked up a raft of print magazines from the Cathay lounge which kicked off this nostalgia. I’d browsed Wallpaper but as I’m not a design person a flip through was fine.
The Cathay Delight is the same shade as this campaign from Van Cleef and Arpels.
But Condé Nast Traveler caught my eye as I went in to grab the pink Financial Times. I got Tattler as well as why else fly British Airways if you can’t get some gossip on this social hierarchy right?
It’s just that taste is so far down the commodity chain anymore it’d hard to know when and where to find any thing that’s not made to be sold to someone. The menu on my flight had basque cheesecake. That became a joke on a trip I threw together last minute for girlfriends in Corfu. Apparently it’s made it into the Club World menu much to its detriment.
The choices from Condé Nast on a perfect summer was so on the nose. Montana’s Rocky Mountain sybarism and off the beaten path Adriatic and Ionian options for exploring covers and lots of seafood.
The whole damn thing reads like my travel itinerary.
Yeah that’s my coastal move with friends and family. And I do rather loudly live in Montana. It’s like am I joke to their psychographic team? A department that has three people no less. And they only market to women exactly like me. Funny that. I’ll have to check up on their old editor Lilit. She was much better than whatever this nonsense of repackaged Julie seems to be.
I’m in a private terminal in a tier three European capital, as I begin the long transit back to the remote regions of America’s effort to reboot our lost industrial capacity. I am ready to celebrate our 250th birthday.
All this can be yours if you pay a few backs to cut the line in the former eastern block
You will find me in the desert trying to convince anyone who will listen of the many industrial and environmental benefits of nuclear energy. Might you be interested in particular of the learning we gain from repeatedly making thousands of small modular nuclear reactors? Scale baby scale.
I’m team Valar Atomics or bust, but I know it won’t be a bust as we have just had a race to criticality that half a dozen companies will meet for July 4th. And what better birthday present to give Lady Liberty?
“When you have the will of federal policy and the will of the people, these things can absolutely happen.”
The artificial intelligence intelligence revolution pretends we still have the height of America’s wartime Industrial & Management Revolution capacity for the build out still available within America’s heartland.
We don’t but I believe despite the bread & circus it might be possible. Lord knows we are trying to get back up and going. Just look how quickly we got our nukes back up in just one year.
Yes we got algae bloom sabotage on the bloom in DC, UFC fights on the White House lawn and some bizarro corruption but at least we aren’t having a Flamingo Revolution of Zoomers rebelling against oligarchs skimming too much from corrupt socialists who need to revamp their attitude. The Geopolitical Cousints get what I’m saying right Marko?
I rewatched season three & four of Apple’s For All Mankind alternative history of the space race as a hype effort to remember that we did indeed have other options for our near future and as the Abundance Institute reminded us all mere month’s ago history is giving us a second chance.
The Blue Sphere Transmission” is an electronic, modern-disco track by MelodiZenith that blends nostalgic 80s Eurodance rhythms (reminiscent of Bad Boys Blue) with deep house and synthwave.
Line dancing Euro-Disco Italian Pop on Mars? Now that’s a future I can get behind powering with SMRs by Valar
If professional class workers thin out as a function of artificial intelligence taking some of the work done by the professional management or PMC class, I suspect we will see nostalgia for the time they were seen as aspirational. I’d like to explore that near-future science fiction today with the PMC Olympics.
After the initial decade or two of upset (possibly even rage) at the power shifts & new status dynamics subside, we fondly remember business class types like lawyers & consultants with the same wistful fondness as we recall switchboard operators or the stenography pool.
I’d bet in the nostalgia wave, we see competitions, cosplaying and an equivalent of Renaissance Fairs or reenactments pop up where former PMCs and thr youth pretending to be them, compete in a cargo cult display of its cultural identity markers.
And when this does inevitably emerge as a cultural touchstone, I want to compete in the PMC Olympics with my husband in transcontinental logistics events. Think of it as figure skating but for married business partners.
I’m confident we would medal in the transcontinental travel logistics category. I’d get gold in the individual “cosmetic and liquids” category. Think of it as “uneven-bars” of the transcontinental logistics travel competition.
As part of this mirthful sci-fi exercise, I input a prompt to ChatGPT’s current image model and it gave me a very amusing montage of who might compete and win in just such an event.
Naturally the shining blonde California affluence worker (subcategory creative class) took the gold but let’s not forget the New York finance couple nor the European directorate class.
ChatGPT image prompted with: Make me an image of three sets of couples who are professional management class knowledge workers. They are on an Olympics podium receiving gold, silver and bronze medals for medalling in the “Transcontinental Logistics: Couples” event. I’d like two American couples (one New Yorker finance style and one California Hollywood style) as well as a European couple (Swiss) in the style of a Brussels bureaucrat. There should be suitcases, travel bags for laptops, a 1L cosmetics bag, a medication cold tube, and other travel essentials in the image
I know this sounds a little goofy, but the work that goes into managing what a couple need when constantly switching between personal life and work on the road involves a surprising amount of logistical support work. And that’s without children. I’d add a category with a toddler as the most extreme form of this event.
Just check this prompt I made for my own PDF for an event involving both industrial site visits and formal galas that I am attending after flying west from London. Some details are changed or redacted for modest privacy. Anyone can easily guess what I’m going to be doing.
Build a 8-10 day travel itinerary for a business trip departing from Heathrow London and arriving to Salt Lake City and a remote desert town in Utah, from June XX to July 2, 2026. Include a day-off rest plan for Salt Lake City, a Department of Redacted event logistics flow chart, transport coordination for a bus to small town and return back to the city on July X of event, and recommendations for high-quality food near event venues.
Include transitioning time and necessary grooming required for a facility floor tour with safety gear and a change for a formalwear gala with an hour buffer assuming an event mid afternoon, there hours transit and evening formal event at 7pm.
July 2-5th include a secondary itinerary for a follow on mountain social event at 8,000 feet Utah mountains with outdoorsman activities.
Format as a structured PDF briefing with time-stamped logistics, travel maps, and weather-appropriate clothing advice for the city to desert climate shift as well as mountain elevation needs. Include medications, standard pharmacy and first aid needs, cooled medications for peptide regimen, sun safety, facility floor safety gear, day event makeup, formalwear makeup, possible television ready makeup as well as hairstyle needs based on 3 day warning cycle.
Make sure personal preferences for all clothing, sleeping, cosmetic, medication and other gear is accommodated in a carry on suitcase, personal bag and one checked baggage.
Pretty fun right? And I might add that it’s relatively easy to spit these itineraries out once you’ve harnessed your preferences and all necessary items in one’s personal stock keeping. Always take inventory regularly when on the road and unpack and repack quickly for fast turn arounds. Oh and use the three pack cascade system. To my fellow flying logistic Olympians I wish you safe travels while we still enjoy global transportation for capitalism.
The persistent resistance of the French, Germans and British to installing air conditioning and updating their cities to manage climate change seems to wobble between old health superstitions and smug moral superiority. Eastern Europe and Southern Europe do not suffer from this issue.
The WSJ editorial board shared this information from France’s ecological transition agency. They are slowly being convinced that the death tolls and hospitalizations that heat waves produce may need mitigation.
The French ecological transition agency said in May guidance that AC may be necessary for the elderly, chronically ill or pregnant. But if you really can’t live without it, use it in only one room of your home, and don’t set the temperature below 79 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s because AC uses too much energy and contributes to climate change.
I prefer to sleep at 20C or 68F. This partially because my sleep & biometric tracking apps as well as my physician recommend a cold dark room to achieve the sleep required to keep my health stable. The 26C recommended by the French for us chronically ill types? It is 79 degrees Fahrenheit.
On my most recent European trip, I brought paper fans. Not electronic (though I did bring two of them as well) but the sort you languidly wave yourself with in an attempt to look cool when in a desultory mood. Which never seems to lift in this heat. It actually does look rather chic and the movement of the air helps.
I brought the pharmaceutical storage grade ice sheets used for shipping injections that have granulated particles that bond with ice to keep them cold longer.
I strap the ice inside a travel vest with dozens of pockets or wrap them around pressure points on my feet, ankles, wrist and neck with scarves when I’m particularly overheated. I’ve seen people do this with socks filled with rice and water kept in the freezer as well.
I have those goofy towels that absorb extra water and keep it cooler that I wear around my neck and head to go under the several wide brim hats I travel with. I always swear SPF 50. A sunburn is a nasty way to bring on heatstroke. I also bring my own ice trays to freeze ice cubes for both drinks & a bowl over which my hand fan blows for faux AC. I’ve dampened cotton sheets over open windows at night with a fan in to create evaporative cooling. It’s not AC but it helps. That’s why I carry two charger fans.
I will also chill wet wipes and my cosmetics. I carry small misting sprays with me everywhere (I like the classic Mario Badescu Rose). I have even mixed mint essential oil into my travel-size aloe antiseptic gel. My soup is peppermint as well to give that feeling of cool. And I always carry few rehydration sachets of electrolytes.
I’ve made friends with these techniques pretty regularly. Hydrating salts and a water bottle refill is a good conversation starter. Because as much as the French fear drafts for their health with artificial cold the Germans seem to think it’s a necessary part of life to suffer the heat (as if we don’t have enough heat in hell) everyone is suffering and needs help to get through this kind of extreme heat.
I am going to be scattered and long winded so please excuse my exhaustion and joy, as I have used up all of my focus in the excitement of a truly incredible moment that represents years of work.
Moments ago, Valar Atomics took Ward 250 critical for the first time. This fulfills President Trump’s EO 14301, which called for 3 advanced reactors to go critical by July 4th.
This is our second criticality as a company, and an important step toward our goal of power by July 4.
This is a historic moment and the culmination of two years of work on the part of the Valar Atomics team. This is the most hardcore, intelligent, and driven people I’ve ever had the privilege of working with; which will be seen as we begin power ascension in the coming days.
Our mission at Valar Atomics is to make abundant energy for all mankind. The best way to make energy 10x cheaper today is to mass-scale nuclear fission. We began our mission by creating WardZero, our fully functional thermal prototype. Next, we took the NOVA core critical.
Today, we took the next step: criticality in the Ward 250 test reactor. Ward 250 is a TRISO-fueled High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) designed for simplicity and scale, and is the first nuclear reactor ever air-lifted by a C-17.
We’ve been honored to be become part of the community in Orangeville, Utah, the home of Ward 250. Many thanks to all of our government partners who made this possible: hundreds of individuals across the Trump administration, the DOE, the DoW, and the government of Utah.
The list of individuals who have spent their time and energy and talents to accomplish this feat is too long to list in one post, but I am incredibly grateful to all of them.
I am one of those individuals who spent their time, energy, talents and capital to accomplish this incredible feat. Investing in Valar may well be the greatest accomplishment of my life.
You see I am Valar’s very first investor. Yes I mean I wrote the very first angel investment check from my small venture fund.
Crazy but possible makes complete sense to me. So I said he’s. And we chewed glass for a few years working towards the possible, while everyone told us it couldn’t be done.
Through the magic of Twitter DMs, I met Isaiah before he had even started Valar. He was working on another startup I didn’t love but I knew immediately that I loved him as a founder.
I was so impressed with his intelligence and his capacity to learn quickly. He had that ineffable “it” quality that all founders possess in some measure. He took feedback well but had a firm backbone. He listened to one piece of advice I gave him and based on that decision alone, I told him I’d back anything he did in the future and I meant it. I’ll admit I didn’t expect it to be “I’m building a nuclear reactor” but I am true to my word.
We’ve been there for every step of this amazing journey. It was an objectively insane thing to invest in. Yet the more time I spent with Isaiah the more convinced I was that he was a generational talent. The best part of being first is the opportunity to spend lots of time with a founder before anyone else learns of their genius. I learn as much from them as they do from me. And Isaiah is a quick study.
I wrote the check and went about the long grueling process of convincing others they should invest alongside me. It wasn’t easy. We got told no a lot. Failure lurked around every corner. People ranged from outright hostility to tempered skepticism. There were moments when defeat felt very close.
There were hard times. A lot of glass chewing. I never wavered in my belief that Isaiah would get it done. Alex and I were blessed with the opportunity to invest more and gladly wired in additional capital when others couldn’t see as far as we did. This may well be a career defining investment for me. I intend to keep putting in whatever Isaiah will allow us to invest.
And to everyone who said it couldn’t be done, or that it was too early or too risky to invest in something as crazy as nuclear, please let me invite you to join us now. There is much more to be done. We will need all the talent and capital we can get to win this bright future for America and for humanity.
I hate to be feeling anything but patriotic as we get closer to America’s 250th birthday this July 4th. America has so much optimism in my corners of the world from nuclear energy to artificial intelligence and I want to celebrate this with my countrymen.
Alas there is always the nagging feeling that no matter one’s dedication to one’s nation, having a plan B in place has proven wise. Historically speaking in times of great change, technological shifts, and generational hand overs it has paid to plan ahead and be flexible.
Maybe I feel this more keenly with the rise of antisemitism from populist camps both left and right. I’m not Jewish, but my husband is culturally Jewish.
The fear that lurks in the back of the mind can’t be dismissed. They are history’s favored scapegoat. And I can’t help but feel technology is right behind as the next source of blame.
Add in the challenges of getting travel visas for unfavorable passports in my extended family, and I am always abroad. I never excited visa issues to prevent someone from being allowed to visit my own family America and we’ve never found a solution in a half a decade of work and advocacy.
So now we consider having a hide-y hole secondary residency sometimes. Never in my life did I expect to lose years of our lives to trying to manage visas that simply cannot be granted or to decide that perhaps it might be wise to have another residency just in case.
Many other nationalities are “Non Doms” in cities like London for similar reasons. You may want to get further from the front of a kinetic conflict or perhaps your government is looking messy or corrupt, perhaps your work has caught the attention of Leviathan in your home but other nations will welcome the work you do.
So I have been keeping on the on other jurisdictions I could see us living in if only for vacations for now. I see the value in owning a plot of land and having residency on another country should my passport become a “bad” passport in the future. Being prepared has new boundaries.
There is a lot of chatter as to the eventual ownership makeup of the frontier artificial intelligence labs and their economic surplus. One question that came up this weekend is whether equity in the companies should be owned in some portion at the nation state level. I am opposed to this for a host of reasons that I’ll try to get down in whatever garbled form.
I do not own a stake in any of the frontier labs other than owning ETFs that own Magnificent 7 exposure who own portions of the labs. I do invest in compute, nuclear energy and cryptography. I believe AI will change a lot about how we do business, my revealed preferences show I live remotely in Montana, I have a tendency toward emergency planning and Plan B scenarios. As a disclosure of my priors.
There are lots of competing interests in this and the self interests from the labs does no any favors. Especially after months, nay years, of overwhelmingly hyperbole about changing labor dynamics, the potential for mass layoffs due to automation as well as obfuscation and excuses about the reason for layoffs in existing companies. And that’s before we get the singularity which is a religious orientation toward making super intelligence that is Godlike in its framing.
I hate this entire conversation on nationalization and socialism. Part of it is that state actors desiring ownership of private companies reeks of the “you didn’t build that” malapropisms from Barack Obama’s presidency in which he attempted to articulate that America’s enormous wealth is built on generational compacts that no one individual could ever own outright. It triggers socialists and capitalists both.
We all contributed in our own ways to the shared infrastructure, institutions, education, cultural norms and the pluralism embedded in our governance systems that enabled the American Dream.
Unless you are a deep partisan, you understand Obama was trying to articulate that none of us made America alone. But the framing from liberals (and populists of all stripes) automatically make this conversation concerning.
Economics is complicated, central planning has a hell of a body count and your average American can only gesture towards the invisible hand and the benefits of self interested commerce. It’s easy to sell us bad policy from envy and fear.
So I must ask why are we acting like we have suddenly won a national level economic boom with clear winners whose spoils must be distributed by the nation state before we’ve even managed to understand how it will be used, at what level an AI model is a commodity and where the benefits will accrue?
Self interested pluralism with a system of checks and balances at the national federal level coupled with states exercising their own interests has been the bedrock of our national success. Changing this has not gone well for us as a nation nor do we have better examples in other nations.
Sure America has had a few twists and turns. The last time we made an attempt at a New Deal post Great Depression worked only thanks to a global world war industrial mobilization in which we won the war and all our other competitors were decimated on bombed our continents across massive geographical boundaries.
And that boom has been largely spent by the children of the generation that fought this war and their children are looking at a pretty significant bill. So why do labs suddenly want to “compensate” Americans and our collective contributions to the models?
And why are politicians taking this bait when we have so little insight into whether we should funnel cash into them in order to own them in trust for some nebulous future?
I have a few reasons in no particular order that I put on Twitter as to why I am opposed to this format of American state equity being the means through which we compensate the people who theoretically trained these models with our output on the wider open web and its content.
1) We don’t know who the winners will be or where the benefits will diffuse (as in post liquidity the current winners might not be the eventual winners) so compensation for model training when the eventual benefits disperse elsewhere isn’t ideal. Why aren’t taxes at state & federal level aren’t adequate enough here should be answered before we make moves
2) Existing IP law doesn’t account well for culture which is a shared co-creative process (i recommend Susan Scafidi of fashion law institute “who owns culture” ) so compensation is already not easy to track back
3) A state entity w the monopoly on violence can do a lot of damage on the margin by not fully understanding who created what and where it is applied especially in non deterministic systems
4) Much of what the models were trained on was open source licensing including the company where my own family made money Stack Overflow. We got paid sure, but none of this would exist without the effort of its users who contributed on those open license terms. But clearly the final value of the content created & company’s value itself were harvested much further down the line in enterprise contracts for coding models. It was not in the management of an open source license community product created by users or managed by engineers, so who should have been paid? The users who wanted their content to be open sourced? The volunteer moderators? The full time employees? The shareholders of the company, the buyer of the company or the users of that data set at Claude or Cursor or OpenAI? Or is it Americans that never even heard of SO? Where does value accrue over time versus point in time? It’s not an easy question to answer is it?
I just had a lovely transcontinental polar flight from San Francisco to Munich. I had access to the Polaris lounge for dinner beforehand where I got a hot meal and was able to livestream an event.
Afterwards I sat myself to watch the sunset and enjoy the parade of takeoffs. Every 2-5 minutes a jet would arc up across the lounge windows, and depending on its size and destinations would slowly bank to the right.
Airplane taking off from San Francisco International airport as seen from Polaris Lounge in the G Gates
It couldn’t have been a more enjoyable way to spend a layover. I must have recorded half a dozen airplanes soaring past to send to Alex as he and I both share a life of air traffic control logistics. The G terminal is undergoing a renovation as well so it has bonus heavy equipment to watch as well.
From the Polaris lounge the G terminal area renovations
I headed to my flight with time to spare so I could get in line first for my boarding class. Too much standing with a backpack hurts me spine. It turned out to be a mistake. The gate agent came over immediately and insisted she weigh my roller bag & my backpack as as it “looked too heavy” so she needed to check. Even though I had a business class ticket, she said would gate check my carry on roller unless I repacked or threw away unnecessary items.
I was confused as I’ve never has anyone weigh my bag at the gate. It has been weighed on my first leg and deemed fine. It fits all normal size constraints even for a regional yet. It should easily fit into the large containers of a transcontinental Airbus where the overhead only needs to accommodate two people’s luggage. None of this made a difference to her.
My suitcase was 2kg over the limit though my backpack was 2kg under the limit. I explained to her I generally pack my suitcase heavy and backpack lighter as I have ankylosing spondylitis so I keep my pack light. S
he scolded me saying if that was true I’d have registered my disability. I tried to explain that disability pre-boarding has become such a scammer’s paradise this method was easier on my spine. I was under the total weight and she could measure to confirm it worked.
Power makes people do odd things. She forced me to repack both bags so they each worked under the limit. But even then tagged my luggage as “heavy and oversized” saying she’d still need to gate check it. I excused myself to the bathroom and removed the tag as it fit the bin and had the correct weight. I wasn’t going to allow her to bully me out of the fair faire I’d purchased.
I got back in the business class line where more trouble awaited me. A very haughty man said I shouldn’t be in the line it was for first class. I explained that there was no first class on this flight, which is why boarding group 1 was combined with 2 but he said I was being silly as we all had to wait and he should be ahead of me and I shouldn’t be in line at all till they called business class.
I didn’t even attempt to explain the disability situation. He was certain he has better status than me so he should be upfront and I should sit down and wait my turn. He accused me of abusing my privilege. I tried a joke saying he’s well life is so hard “ha ha right” and that I just wanted to be prepared to go as I would board after the children.
Then another woman was pulled out of the business class line. The haughty gentleman admonished her as well to not be “like this woman” and listen to the gate check attendant. She looked confused and upset.
Having witnessed my issue, she complied and her bag was gate checked though. Even though she too was allowed two bags and a personal item in business class as well. She had a sling purse and her roller bag. They took her roller bag.
We began boarding and I rushed in to be sure I was in the line I’d tried to be first in, trying to avoid eye contact with the gate check woman. I hoped she forgotten about me. She hadn’t but she was too late. Just as I was being scanned by the biometrics device, she saw me and started towards me. Thankfully device pinged green, the check in woman sent me along and you better believe I ran down the jet bridge.
I reorganized my bags back to my preferred weight balance and stored them above my seat. I had plenty of room. I scanned for the gentleman and asked if I had been mistaken about first class. No, turns out business is the top class and they don’t offer first class. Furthermore, the gentleman turned out to be in coach.
I saw the girl board with only her purse and in some distress. She plopped down in her seat two rows behind me which had an empty flat law next to her. She had none of her essentials and seemed flustered. The sear next to me was also empty.
I kept waiting for the seats to fill to justify the gate check situation. It wasn’t until we pulled back from the jet bridge that I realized both of us were seated alone. Each of us had an entire row to ourselves. There had been no point in the gate nonsense at all.
The man wasn’t up front and our luggage overhead was more than half empty as mine could accommodate two people. The other woman’s overhead was entirely empty as her bag had been taken and her purse was in her lab.
I was so glad I had my things as she was completely lost. I offered up some of my cosmetics so she could clean up, as well an Advil for the headache. She needed tissues more. The poor girl has been bullied into letting go of her luggage by an asshole and a power drunk gate attendant for no point. There was plenty of space for luggage.
Why flying has turned into some kind of battle royal of poor manners and power games I’ll never understand. I wasn’t blocking the boarding inappropriately, I was just first in line for my section to avoid strain on my spine.
I had no reason to give my bags up and simply wouldn’t. Neither did the other woman, but she didn’t want to be bullied so gave in with both the gentleman and the gate attendant on her ass.
I’ll note we were both 30-40 something white women, so maybe we were just easy pickings. Middle aged Karens either go unnoticed or become targets who we tolerate bossing around a bit. No fighting back allowed lest you become one of those hysterics everyone hates.
It doesn’t matter if we followed the rules. Or that we paid to have the space. I clearly should have gone for the disability even if I loathe it as invisible disabilities always get questioned now that it’s everyone favorite scam. I may need to rethink that.
But I made it onto the airplane with my two bags (paid in full for the privilege) and an extra seat to keep them out with me if I so desired. Turns out one chair was broken so I couldn’t use it to sleep on the inside next to the bulkhead. But it stored all my luggage. And I had a lovely sleep on the aisle side. The weights and measures were pointless and I was victorious over petty power battles. Let’s hope I’m as lucky on the next leg. You just never know anymore.
A beautiful blur of lights and bridges and boats over the bay
