Tag: Prepared

Categories
Culture Startups

Day 1561 and Just Don’t Die

I’m noticing a trend among more and more of my social circles of fear, confusion, depression and malaise. Which let’s be frank isn’t at all irrational given (hand waves) all this.

Rapid changes in technology are slamming into geopolitical changes and it is scaring the shit out of all kinds of people. Personal politics aside, many of the institutions, alliances and people we lived with our entire lives are changing.

But the rate of change is exciting! So much of what we took for granted in our youths is simply changing. Maybe (ok definitely) some of it will be worse for parts of it. It’s normal to be afraid of change. But what if we just need to survive the change?

I’ve been in tech my entire life. I was raised in it by my family. My father absolutely loved gadgets and hardware of all kinds and dove headfirst into selling software. I married someone who works in it with me.

I went to work in it by taking my skills in understanding new tools and translating it to an industry that adopted all of it. What an incredible privilege it was.

I worked in fashion and cosmetics so it was a mixed back but many incredible creative talents made and sold clothes that simply wouldn’t have been possible in an earlier more closed era.

The changes my father and I went through feel like slow lumbering industries compared to the rapid iteration of tooling we are seeing now. How we make things is being changed in ways that is almost impossible to keep up with.

I want to survive the Jackpot of change that is upon us. That’s a William Gibson reference. I agree with Bryan Johnson. Just don’t die. Imagine what we will find on the other side.

Categories
Finance Politics

Day 1558 and Basis Point Bullying

I’ve tried not to pay too close attention to the panicked aftermath of the new tariff regime.

I don’t trade the public markets actively and we’d already made preparations in our personal financial lives for a deleveraged dollar. It seemed clear where things were headed and weakening the dollar solves a couple problems for America.

I am a free trader. I believe in open markets as the most effective means we currently have at our disposal for large scale coordination that works with human nature.

Nevertheless the allure of central planning and collectivism is hard to resist for those in power. The market will adapt and find other ways of allocating assets but the wasted energy of a crisis frustrates investors. Damming the waters only impeded flow.

Each basis point drop saves America 1 billion according to Secretary Bessent. So we’ve an incentive to nuke 30 basis points and keep yields low. And yet the 10 year is still stubbornly high.

The exorbitant privilege of Bretton Woods comes with the fears of a centralized currency managed by technocrats who must give guidance to markets without providing too many surprises.

I grew up with a significant amount of skepticism around the federal reserve and its places to hippie parents and the University of Chicago but even I never thought I’d live to see this kind of test. And I am a Bitcoiner! Maybe Silicon Valley will finally find out what bargain we have with Uncle Sam.

Categories
Culture

Day 1557 and Care and Maintenance

The first stress test of our brave new order has arrived and the markets are pissed. Millennials will notice it shortly as tariffs are hitting Internet native homoglobo products particularly hard.

Many bills are coming due. And when you’ve let things go for too long it’s hard to maintain your current needs let alone build for new ambitions. America has a lot of debt and it’s time to crash the dollar.

But perhaps we can’t take care of anything in our lives and the currency is just a small part of our issues. The tariff crisis is a symptom of a wider issue of value in our own lives. We don’t treat any of the things in our lives as if they have value.

“Can the average house be maintained by the average person?” sounds like a nonsense question at first blush but I think it’s an important one?” Simon Harris

This is a problem across all areas of our lives. We don’t know how to maintain anything. It’s not just housing. People don’t know how to care for wool, leather or textiles any longer.

Many items in our lives are meant to last with care and maintenance. But these skills aren’t passed down any more. We stopped mending at home and it’s bubbled up from there.

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 1550 and Fools, Drunks & The United States of America

Americans are mere days away from the dreaded April 2nd tariff reveal and the mood could not be more sour.

If only America was a few good zoning reform bills further along. Then we could house 700 million more people and our Abundance bro moderate liberals would be in a better mood. Alas it’s easy dunking for most of us when Matty Yglesias weighs in late to the party

I’ve spent the last half decade preparing for a more chaotic world. How it would play out and what would be the driver was anyone’s guess.

I made plenty of bets that energy, compute, and decentralization would be the way in a multi-polar world, but I don’t want to count America out just yet. That’s why we made our last stand in Montana.

“God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” Otto von Bismarck

The amusing bit of Trump’s mercantilism is literally only he and a small band of trade administration aids actually think this is sensible economic policy. While I know a tariffs bro personally and I appreciate him as a friend they know I think this approach is dubious.

You know it’s bad when even the king of outlier events Nassim Nicholas Taleb is fretting for Treasury Secretary Bessent. Who is at least qualified to manage the a massive currency crisis.

“He probably gets that whether tarifs make or don’t make sense is irrelevant: any ABRUPT introduction of steep tariffs must lead to a CASCADING & GENERALIZED price action.”

We are damned if you do not because tariffs are the wrong tool for this moment (though most of them are) but because markets like predictable things and cascading price action everywhere makes us dizzy.

Rather like the drunks and the fools mentioned by Bismarck, we’d better hope providence provides in this topsy turvy moment.

Categories
Aesthetics Medical

Day 1547 and Fragrance Free

Going to a spa or a hair appointment has an added layer of stress when you’ve got skin allergies.

I don’t need clean or organic beauty (though I do prefer it). It’s not about being fancy so much as I need it to be free of synthetic fragrances like Limonene.

Limonene is a naturally occurring, colorless liquid terpene hydrocarbon (C10H16) found in citrus fruits and other plants, known for its citrus scent and used as a flavoring agent, solvent, and in various products like cleaning products, cosmetics, and supplements

Somehow I became allergic over the years to a number of fragrances both natural and synthetic. A clean beauty list of “no no”ingredients has become common as everyone from Sephora’s to BeautyPie agreed on things like keeping products free of paraben, sulphate and Methylisothiazol.

It’s a little harder to justify not including citrus or lavender unless you are trying to cater to the most sensitive skin. Both are quite popular for all kinds of personal care. I have to be careful of almost all soaps.

Some of my interest in preparedness (and in travel size cosmetics) surely comes from having to carry around basics from shampoo to shea butter. It’s a pain to have to consider but also a pleasure to always be prepared for any scenario.

Categories
Medical Preparedness

Day 1525 and Turbulence

I am doing what I can to hold steady in the turbulence of the moment. Deals are still getting done, founders move companies forward, I do my small part to contribute in the strange dance of rounds coming together.

It has not been easy with both my husband and I seemingly rotating between one health issue to another. It would be nice to have us both healthy at the same time.

Because it is the winter of our discontent I’ve spent more time on Deep Research projects this past month than seems sensible but the urge to find solutions is strong when your health needs mending.

Plus it saves a ton of time when the alternative is calling a bunch of different experts and making progress at best every two weeks with appointments. Scheduling health care of any kind is a mess.

I remember realizing so vividly during Hurricane Sandy that no matter the catastrophe the rest of life went on. Everything will feel turbulent in our new high variance age and all we can do is live through it.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 1523 and Do Not Disturb

It is in the nature of dysfunction to misuse resources. Something goes wrong and a system that once grew or self sustained finds itself in decline.

What to do? One can apply palliative care certainly. But you can go to the root of a problem and hope systems can be righted by bitter medicine.

I’ve had some degree of measured doom about topics like debt and monetary policy my whole life. I grew up with concerns of peak oil which turned to climate change. There is always a new crisis anytime we find ways to be resource constrained.

But we are resource constrained. That’s just a variable to be accounted for in the engineering of a solution. I care about energy. I mean it in the abstract as in fuel. But I also mean the energy I control.

I don’t have to expend expensive attention for all problems. Maybe becoming “do not disturb” is a scarcity mindset. But sometimes the poison is in the dose. And I want to keep pushing for better.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1520 and Reflexively Negative

When I was younger I would try to demonstrate my cleverness by pointing out problems. Like many precocious youngsters, I was certain that this behavior provided value.

It’s exciting to feel the power that comes with understanding. It is especially intoxicating to students. No one is so fervent as a new convert.

Finding errors in reasoning, gaps in knowledge, poorly laid plans, and lapses in judgement can all be helpful when they are put to use in finding a path to success.

Being able to humbly accept corrections to one’s worldview or understanding when in error is crucial to being able to understand your reality. No one values that more than people who must succeed.

Alas, because finding and correcting misunderstanding is so important, it’s easy to slip into reflexive negativity as your only tactic. You mistake finding errors with being the only valuable contribution. It’s a classic problem with engineers. And unlike the young they rarely outgrow the habit.

Any founder who has had a pitch with a venture capitalist who can only focus on the problems and not the potential, understands why this it is unproductive to rely only on spotting issues. Being right about something being wrong doesn’t build anything.

Categories
Politics

Day 1511 and You Are Here

Watching institutional powers and public figures goes through the Kübler-Ross grief cycle as they grapple with technical and political change sucks. People are all over the place.

Institutional distrust from the public has America and Europe at odds just as our geopolitical position relative to China is most precarious. And yet this strange new world cannot possibly be coming. Having spent the last year in denial Germans have moved into anger.

Imagine what bargaining will look like as power shifts over the next few years. I’ve seen the depression stage already in technology as the shift in intelligence and computing washes over us.

I’ve come to acceptance only because I’ve got a head start. I didn’t look terribly sane at the time and now I am sitting pretty. Taking action while we grieve the loss of the world we knew is the human condition. If you can accept change is inevitable you might even start to enjoy the process.

Categories
Emotional Work Politics

Day 1507 and Apocalypse Narcissism

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.