Tag: Prepared

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Chronic Disease Preparedness

Day 373 and Picking Up Signals

I missed a signal from my body today. I promised myself I’d rest this weekend as I was feeling the exertion from the week. Which is exciting and great that life is having good energy but you’ve got to make sure to restore and preserve.

But this morning I learned that the Costco that burned in the Marshall Fire was reopening. We’d briefly thought we’d lost it during the chaos of the fires. But somehow they had managed to get it cleaned up and opened within a week. I was running low on groceries because of our own Omicron cases and the after math of the fires kept us at home. I immediately felt like we needed to go to the Costco. Emotionally I needed the Costco run. We needed groceries but I needed to see that it was still standing. That it survived.

Physically it was a mistake. Driving past the new burn scars was surreal. Seeing the remains of Old Town Superior as nothing but rubble was upsetting. But it wasn’t nearly as upsetting as turning into a giant box store parking lot and doing chores in the aftermath of a fire. Like nothing had ever happened.

We bought a bunch of shit in completely apocalyptic settings. Traffic lights were still off but a bunch of chain stores has big signs that said “we are open!” The Costco was running heaters on generators. The HVAC system has smoke damage so it couldn’t be run. But it’s freezing and we just had two large snowstorms so they needed to do something to warm up the warehouse. Life goes on.

I was relieved our Costco was still there. Glad for my bulk raspberries and chai as much as the security of seeing something made it. But fuck did I feel terrible afterwards. My entire body hurt. I’m not sure if it was emotional or physical but I was hurting. I still am hurting. I could barely write this down. I wasn’t listening to my own signals. That maybe I needed rest. That maybe I shouldn’t have gone to Costco. We’ve got to be gentle as we navigate the chaos of our current moment. You never know when you will find a trigger point.

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Politics Preparedness

Day 367 and Flat Out Grossings

December was a pretty gnarly month for me. I tore a ligament. I got Covid. A fire burned down two entire towns. I’m emotionally burnt out right now and letting myself feel it because tomorrow I go back to work. So apologies if this is even more stream of consciousness than usual.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a reporter. So I talked my way into an internship at our local television station Channel 8. I loved it. I got to be the assistant for such glamorous events as city council land use meetings. Which is how I happen to have the misfortune of knowing how Boulder became surrounded by suburban sprawl. I don’t have a grand unified theory. I just witness a lot of little decisions that compounded into unspeakable disaster no one could have predicted. Except we did.

There used to be a crappy mall in Boulder. It had a Macy’s and a Foley’s but it couldn’t sustain its anchor tenant department stores even in the late 90s and early aughts. Now big developers and chain stores knew that Boulder was fast becoming a wealthy town and wanted in. Maybe we could upgrade from middle market to premium retail. But Boulder is run by a bunch of hippies and wanted no part of upgrading big box stores. City council meeting turned into an endless parade of “no” to various folks coming in attempting to take over the mall on 28th street. It languished for years.

Eventually the developers gave up. Decided to construct a mall outside of the open space belt outside of the city. You see Boulder is the prototype for NIMBYS. We literally bought up a bunch of land that the town owns and can never ever be developed so no one could sprawl the town. It’s gorgeous and amazing and expensive to maintain and makes Boulder a haven for its natives and an impossibly expensive place if you didn’t buy real estate in the 60s. But I digress. This is about the mall.

The developers called the new mall out on the prairie beyond the town’s open space Flatiron Crossing. It’s an homage to Boulder’s signature feature the flatiron mountains. And the views from up town highway 36 into town driving back from the mall are amazing.

And Boulder honestly felt like it won. The ugly box stores went up around it. Our town was saved from Costco and Chuckee Cheese and Ann Taylor. We all snobbishly called it Flat Out Grossings. We thought it was a nasty money grab. It was wise we let them develop outside the open space band and protected the town.

Except that mall and all the box stores turned into the anchor for all the surrounding towns. We called them the L towns. Well that and Superior. And that’s where the growth happened. That’s what enabled Colorado to thrive. And that’s exactly how an urban fire that was started on Boulder open space ended up destroying so many homes. We pushed out the development thinking we’d done a good thing.

I actually have to stop writing this as I can’t make the point I want to which is that Boulder brought much of this misery on itself. We wouldn’t let the land be developed in town. So someone else did outside of town. And now that land got wiped out from a fire in our open space. And everyone is going to be snide and awful but our policies have consequences and by pushing out our development to Flat Out Grossing the law of unintended consequences has taken over. And I’m sick to my stomach knowing the well intentioned hippies ended up doing so much more damage.

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Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 365 and Normalcy Bias

Today officially marks a full year of writing every single day. What should be a sense of accomplishment is mostly a sense of comfort at my own discipline. It’s an edge. I like to be improving and that takes good habits. Writing daily been an enormously positive influence in my daily life. I don’t have any plans to stop but as with hang habit you take it one day at a time.

I’m writing from Boulder Colorado after one of the worst natural disasters our state has ever seen. Though the experience was entirely unnatural. Gusting winds over 100mph combined with bone dry grasslands to start a raging wildfire in the middle of the suburbs. The front range hasn’t seen snow yet this season so Chinook winds must have rolled over a downed power line. The wildfire destroyed two towns in my county in the space of a few hours. Last I heard over 500 homes were lost.

I’m devastated. I feel genuinely traumatized even as I’m safe. But of course I feel the trauma of the hour. This is my home. My neighbors lost their homes. All the roads that are closed are my daily routes. My fucking grocery store was burning. Another climate driven disaster makes the national news. But it’s not somewhere else. It’s my home. Better active shooter I guess. A comparison we can make in Boulder. Gallows humor.

I was working through most of the fire. Just letting the apocalypse unfold around me as I went about my business. 8 miles away the world was on fire but I had no evacuation order. No reason to stop working. I closed the blinds as I found the hurricane force gusts unsettling. They shook the house. I would check social media on my phone in between pitches and worked on financial modeling. I took an Ativan to calm myself down so I could focus.

I had explicitly known something like this was coming. Maybe not this crisis. But more weird shit was inbound bWe named our fund chaotic.capital. Precisely because we believe stochastic shit will dominate the next decade. We are betting the future will be chaotic so we must bake flexibility into everything. There is good money to be made betting on chaos. Normally bias will lose you money. Chaos is good for business.

So what does that have to do with writing every day? I want to say something wise about bearing witness. But I don’t think I’m capable of living so large with this much fear around me. I didn’t expect the exercise of daily writing would mean writing through crisis. But I should have. Normalcy bias effects me too.

This year showed me stochastic chaos regularly. After only six days of writing the insurrection in Washing’s D.C. happened. And so I wrote because I made the commitment. And then a few months later a man shot dead 10 people in a grocery store down the road. And so I wrote. Because it’s my habit. I didn’t expect to be covering so much chaotic shit in a public journal.

And yet I must have in some sense predicted that life would take this path even if I wasn’t directly in it. Or I wouldn’t have named the fund chaotic. I wouldn’t proudly discuss prepping. This is the world I live in. Chaos is a given and I’m going to work towards a better future. I’m documenting it as it comes with these essays. And I guess we will see how far it goes. Thanks for joining me for the first year.

Categories
Preparedness

364 and Shower Before The Storm

I’m not sure where I was this particular preparedness tip, but someone once suggested you should go on cleaning spree before a big storm hits. I knew we were going to have a windstorm on the front range of Colorado so I decided to wash my hair and shave my legs. My husband gathered up all our laundry to be washed. We got through one load when the power went out.

We’ve long maintained particular habits around storms. At the first hint of weather we go to Costco and the grocery store. The day before we wash dishes and clean the kitchen. Every room in the house gets vacuumed. We scrub down the bathrooms. The idea is that if you lose power for an extended period you will appreciate having a clean home. In the cold and dark you don’t want to be surrounded dirty dishes. The extra time to feel you live in a clean house is well worth it.

Usually it amounts to nothing. Maybe the power goes out for a day. But you get the pleasure of clean clothes and a fresh hours. You come to appreciate storms for bringing about a better home. It makes you feel more comfortable being prepared for the worst. Because it’s enjoyable. Just a little mental trick to not get overwhelmed by crisis.

Sadly today in Boulder County about 10 miles away a massive grass wildfire went up in flames. I could hear the wind gusts and smell the smoke. We saw the plumes of wire. I was gripped with panic that the winds would change course and head towards us. Sadly our neighbors in Superior and Louisville had to be evacuated. 30,000 evacuated in a rush as the fire leaped a highway. I just watched a press conference where I learned 580 structures were affected. Rumor has it my Costco might have burned. The one where we found the whole Serrano ham. This disaster is happening in our community.

And yet I’m safe. I washed my hair. I did the pre-storm rituals. I’m alright. I spent the morning anxious and sure I was out of sorts. That maybe I needed to do something to fix my bad mental state as there couldn’t be a good reason I was out of sorts. But it turns out that an actual apocalyptic event was bearing down on my neighbors.

Incorporation of the existential horror of a changing climate grass fire the middle of a pandemic while we all go about our work day making money is just normal life now. I took pitch as the evacuation orders went out. Alex was on a Zoom call running numbers. Every day is chaotic at the end of empire. So make sure to wash your hair before trouble. Carry a pink towel for drying off. And don’t panic.

Please pray for Boulder County tonight. The winds have night died down and many are without the safety of their own homes.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 351 and Preppers

The smartest people I know are preppers. Not the end times doomers and apocalyptic types; preppers I know are regular people who happen to have the means to get ahead of disasters. And they are quietly preparing for a much harder century ahead.

There is a significant amount of optimism in my world right now. Crypto and web3 has done well for startup people who saw the promise of blockchain early. But also more traditional startups like SaaS companies are having boom times as well. Every aspect of the pandemic has made life appreciably better for technology workers of all kinds.

Permanent work from home freed us from expensive cities like San Francisco. A stock market buoyed by stimulus made our equity heavy portfolios soar. We have been able to isolate if we want. We’ve had only the upside of the pandemic and born few of its burdens. We are the undisputed winners of the pandemic. And we see how that victory is fragile. An accident even. We did little to earn our comfort.

And so we are preparing for bad times. I’ve got multiple friends who have moved to rural communities from metropolitan cities where they have lived for decades. They are investing in farmland in some cases. In others, just little upgrades like gardens and chicken coops in small towns provide a bit of resilience. Gentleman farmers are making a comeback. Homesteading is to millennials what “back to the land” was for my boomer parents. Some of it is cozycore but a lot of it is genuine desire to get back to making things that keep us alive.

I’m seeing it increasingly from people who work in finance as well. There is a kind of quiet consensus that it’s wise to prepare for winter. Even in the midst of growth so impressive even the Fed is finally acting on inflation, the savvy finance folks know our world has risks. We talk about downside protection and portfolio diversification. But we also quietly talk about tail risks, complexity science and anti-fragility.

It’s not the we are Cassandras assuming that we live in a permanent bearish state. We aren’t convinced that if Rome falls so do we. If anything most of us are optimistic bulls who believe the best case scenario could show us into a new exponential age. But also many of us live in America. And who knows if America’s political situation will remain stable. Our liberal party can’t govern without panic and incompetence and our conservatives are openly adopting populism that flirts with fascism.

Add in that the regular climate driven catastrophes are now weekly. We are all aware it could be our homes in the eye of the next storm. And well it’s rational to be concerned that the world will be more chaotic. Some of us, including me, are convinced it will be an age for making fortunes.

But we aren’t idiots. We believe in scale, specializing and capitalism. We’d also like to know how to manage our own vegetables out back. It’s wise to know your local farmer and dairy. It just tasted better. We know it’s more resilient. Being decentralized may add in some additional friction. We think that’s a good thing in some cases. Why do you think we invested in Bitcoin?

Now I’m not saying we are right. I have no idea when or how some kind of disaster will befall us. But I am saying it couldn’t hurt to have some bottles of water and a couple weeks of food on hand. I’m saying you should prep. DM me if you need help.

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 346 and Pandemic Inequalities

The last two years have been pretty good for the wealthy and pretty shitty for everyone else. Mostly because when governments slash interest rates and pour in stimulus, it’s the wealthy who can flood into equities and secure loans that make money functionally free. Everyone else has to rely on salaries that are paid in a currency that is being inflated.

I don’t think we are coming back from this widening division. It started before this anyway. The Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis decoupled a lot. And you can probably blame the rest on Reagan. Hell go back to Nixon and the gold standard. Doesn’t matter. Compound interest and power laws have pretty clear math. The rich get richer.

But I’m somewhat more offended by the cultural chasm that is emerging. The labor class that lives under restrictions and fear while the elite with good passports and wealth move into Dubai apparently.

In a very fine demonstration of the power of public relations, The UAE appears to have placed glowing article in the Wall Street Journal about how Dubai is the new Covid free home of the monied. It’s a fascinating piece of propaganda about freedom to live life and do business. As long as you can afford it. It’s expensive to move to Dubai but once you are there apparently life is back to normal.

Sky high vaccinations and low taxes make Dubai a pandemic boomtown. Open borders and low infections are drawing the wealthy, businesses and tourists.

If you aren’t wealthy enough to pick up and start life over, you are stuck with whatever restrictions your nation places on you. Or conversely, you accept the risks of local transmission, vaccine uptake & political disposition of wherever you live. If you want to travel good luck with things like visas and the expense of quarantines.

I don’t know why this offends me. It’s been clear from the start that some people have had very different pandemics. The middle class has had the benefits of work from home. It’s been the working class that has had to live with all the risk and restrictions. But I do find it a bit upsetting that we are accepting new tiers of global citizenship based simply on your ability to pay to be without Covid cases. Since we can’t end this together I guess we are doomed to escape it on our own with our own abilities.

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Aesthetics Preparedness

Day 339 and Doomer Optimism

I write a mini-festo for the Doomer Optimism community. I am sharing it here today as well as gosh darn it I wrote it so it counts.

I come from hippie utopian stock. My parents, both working class union types, moved us to the promised land of Silicon Valley right before I was born. The family lore concludes that my father had no job on the day I came into the world as he was pitching a startup. My parents believed in the promise of computing, and eventually, the internet, to connect free thinking humans in a culture of collaboration and self-sufficiency. The do-it-yourself ethos of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog combined with a heady blend of technical opportunity and growth that is well chronicled in What The Dormouse Said. This gives you a sense of cultural milieu in which I was raised. The sixties had long given way to the Reagan revolution and the rise of Clinton’s neoliberalism when I came on the scene, but I never forgot my roots. I invest in startups to continue that legacy of autonomy and freedom at my own fund chaotic.capital.

“Remember what the dormouse said: feed your head.”

For me doomer optimism is the continued braiding of those cultural strands. Each one of us is capable of connecting to each other and enabling ourselves, individually and collectively, to lead the life of flourishing and growth we seek. We want tools and information that feed our head but also crucially our heart. The key insight that these very different culture strains, hippie and technology, have shown us, is that individual empowerment is what ultimately connects us to our tribes. 

How does it work? Well, natural law is pretty simple. The laws of thermodynamics are clear.  “If you do not fuck around, you never find out.” As we cede autonomy to others, we cede our capacity to fuck around. The inexorable logic of that, means we also cede our capacity to find out. Without the natural chaos of energetic entropy pushing man against nature, we get stuck. We stagnate in the local maxima. 

And we long to find out. We want to find our communities, our families, our capacities, and our passions. That is how we build. That is how we invent. That is how we solve our problems. Humans are capable of huge creative leaps. Massive shifts in capacity have risen in a blink of an eye. We can solve our problems, and indeed have been doing so, for millennia. But the only way we do is if we fuck around. Otherwise we will never find out what we are capable of overcoming. No matter how dire our problems we can rely on the deep laws of energy. So don’t be afraid, go and fuck around. We are counting on you to find out.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 330 and Vitamin Not Pill

I was reading a fellow investor’s thesis page and noticed one lens they use for investing is whether a product is a “vitamin or a pill” with the insinuation that pills are inherently better investments than vitamins, as one is a nice to have for a business and the other is a must have. Now I can’t speak to this as an investment thesis, though I largely agree, but I do disagree on a wellness basis.

Preventative medicine is just as necessary as interventional medicine. In some cases more so, as getting ahead of a disease’s inflection point should be the humane way we handle our medical needs. We are just often too focused on short term impacts to see the value of solutions that build over time. Think of it as the quarterly reports of healthcare. Why build for the future when the market judges by each 10K?

The nature of panic may make us inclined to spend heavily on something that has become acute. But that does not make it inherently more effective or worthwhile. It’s just the immediately necessary. It just means we need higher minimum effective doses to see a result.

What we often ignore is compounding effects of wellness interventions are far superior to the mitigation of a pharmaceutical over time. Most of us would prefer to not require the costly (both biologically and financially) medicines that keep us together. This is not to say that I am not deeply grateful for all the drugs I take. But rather that I have seen incredible value in what we deem “lifestyle interventions” and other “nice to have” vitamin style supplements and protocols.

And while it takes much longer to see their effects, the compounding positive effects often wildly outperform anything that might be dubbed a pill. The trouble probably boils down to switching costs and time to pay off. Which is why an investor would prefer a pill to a vitamin. But just because something has a longer lifecycle doesn’t make it inherently less sticky. Or less effective. Or crucially any less profitable. The only way we ever see the deeply positive effects of habitual practice and dedication is to do the work. That work is boring, repetitive and low payoff. Until, most times years in the making, you see how putting your future self over your present self is what is giving you the future you always dreamed would be yours.

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Preparedness

Day 325 and Preparedness Reading List

Since I’ve been yakking on about being a prepper recently I thought I’d take a moment to share my recommendations for thinking about a more resilient life. They range from the extremely practical to the oh shit I hope I never need this information.

Homestead & Practical Skills

Escape the City by Travis J Corcoran is literally pound for pound the best value in preparedness. It focused largely on folks who want to build up a piece of land or otherwise want to homestead. But it’s extremely practical advice on everything from planning a home to what tools and skills you will need.

Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery: an absolute classic with everything from recipes to practical how to guides. If you want to see what practical skills might be for you this is a great start.

Back to Basics edited by Abigail Gehring: it’s not as comprehensive as Carla’s encyclopedia but it’s a bit more accessible if you want to think about gardening, food preservation and the like.

Land book by Neil Shelton: a very specific little book on how to evaluate and buy rural properties for families.

Emergency & Disaster Preparedness

Beginners Guide to Emergency Survival Preparedness by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross: these dudes write the Black Autumn series which is a weirdly racist but packed with surprisingly good detail fiction series. Their beginner guide is actually short and reasonable information on preparing for the 3-10 day emergencies.

Urban Preppers with Pets and Kids by James Mushen: exactly what it claims. I used to be an urban prepper and it’s one of the first books I read after Hurricane Sandy got me prepping. Likely the first place to start for most of you.

Philosophy

Lean Logic by David Fleming: it’s subtitle is a dictionary for the future and how to survive it. This isn’t practical so much as a deeply comprehensive look at a world that isn’t flooded with cheap oil and requires a more decentralized approach.

First Aid and Medical

The American Red Cross First Aid & Safety Handbook: pretty self explanatory. This is the text everyone uses when they get certified.

The Survival Medicine Handbook by Amy and Joseph Alton: preppers love this doctor and nurse husband and wife duo. The book is super practical and frankly you should pray you never need it. But if you are outdoorsy you appreciate that medicine looks different if a doctor isn’t on the way to help.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 324 and Seneca

I was once asked by someone how I can act so quickly on major life decisions when they needed to mull a change over for months. I found the question confusing as I don’t think of myself as being particularly fast or even impulsive.

Well, that’s a lie, I’m impulsive about lots of shit but never anything of consequences. When it’s a major life decision I gather information for years so if the opportunity presents itself I’m prepared to act immediately. I take the bias towards action seriously.

But I only make a move when I believe I’ve crossed a threshold of information where the benefits of action clearly outweigh the benefits of inaction. I’ll make a move when I think I’ve got a better chance of winning than losing. Or when it’s clear that if I don’t act at all I’ll have a losing hand. But I generally only needs the odds to be tilted to a plurality of probability. Especially if it’s an action I can undo later. It’s not always easy to know if you can win. Sometimes the best you can do is recognize that inaction is weakening your position.

Part of my comfort in my process for taking action is I am a researcher by nature. If I’m interested in a topic I’ll begin with exposure right away. I’ll do the light skimming research the internet has enabled through articles and videos. I’ll dive deeper and purchase books. I’ll find experts in the field and begin following them. If I have questions I’ve got a habit of emailing the source. And then I’ll start doing what I can to implement my research with small scale experiments.

Chances are if you see me making a major move it’s because I’ve been considering the possibility of action for years. I like to be prepared to act immediately if an opportunity presents itself. If a situation presents itself I want to be ready. That way I’m positioned for luck. Seneca had it right. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. But you can only have luck if you are willing to do the work of preparing and be ready to take action if opportunities present themselves.