Tag: Prepared

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Preparedness

Day 323 and Fantasyland

I’m very open about being a prepper. I think it is a moral imperative to be resilient if you have the means to do so. When disaster strikes, which it inevitably does, being able to support yourself and your neighbors frees up first responders to care for the genuinely needy.

Because of this belief I’ve been investigating homesteading seriously for the past two years now. I’ve got concerns about the typical issues someone with exposure to finance has; worries about inflation, the social impact of labor being a poor store of value with currency debasement, & widening inequality. I am also deeply concerned about the rise in populism and the predatory graft of the far right. Add in supply chain worries and the effect of the pandemic on living standards and you can see how I’d prefer to have more control over my own basic needs.

But my plans to go off grid has always had a bit of a fantasyland element to them. While I would love to move to northern Montana and invest in a large property I didn’t expect I’d be able to do that immediately. I needed to get to know the towns, watch an illiquid market over months if not years, and also remain proximate to civilization as I still plan to maintain a career in startups and finance.

But yesterday my husband and I came across a property outside of Boulder Colorado that met many of our criteria for more prepared living. An unobtrusive property on an acre just outside of town that I jokingly called greyman as you’d never guess it was built out for resilience. It has 100% solar with insulation & a wood burning stove for backup, there is a working well that irrigates the garden & orchard, its got a hothouse & a chicken coop, it’s on a reservoir, it has a workshop & an artist studio, and well I could go on. Now I’ve got no idea if it will pass muster on an inspection but as you can see I’m already dreaming of the possibility. It’s not something I’ve absolutely got to do so we can very much walk away from a deal but I’m interested. Enough that I’m looking at mortgages and bringing in a contractor to take a look.

Now I don’t need all of those things right now. The reality of maintaining a vegetable garden and making it through a canning and preservation season isn’t lost on me. Actually building the muscles for true resilience is something that happens over years. But that’s also why I want to start now before it becomes a must have. Learning how to feed yourself when you’ve got no choice isn’t a situation I’d recommend.

We underestimate the work that goes into maintain a healthy, comfortable, warm and well fed life. Mostly because capitalism breeds specialized labor. Which is good in my book. We’ve achieved so much with it. But any complex system is less resilient. So you’ve got to acknowledge that the tail risks are there and real. So if I’ve got a chance to begin on 70% of my ideal preparation while still keeping within my budget and also staying within civilization for the time being then I’m going to consider it. It’s time to move out of fantasyland.

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Politics Preparedness

Day 316 and Prepper Intolerance

I came to the topic of preparedness through personal experience. I lived in lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy and lost power for over a week. My otherwise comfortable urban life had a wake up call as friends and neighbors suffered through natural disaster. So I got interested in how to prepare myself and my community from something worse.

Despite the clearly accessible resonance of preparing for storms and everyday issues like losing power or having food instability, preparedness folks are often not that focused on how everyone should be prepared. There is a purity politics in preparedness. They simply in it for the politics of what might bring on a social or economic disaster. And it’s fucking annoying.

You’ve got the gun folks who are concerned about their rights. You’ve got the gold standard types who think the Fed is driving us to an economic collapse. You’ve got the system is corrupt and cannot be sustained types. You’ve got the suspicion of globalization types. Admittedly it’s a diverse bunch.

But more recently as the culture wars rage on, preparedness communities are overlapping with variant politics of the American right wing. MAGAs came to the preparedness community sensing the possibility for affinity. So now you’ve got folks who whine shit like “all liberals are communist socialists” variant in preparedness with the explicit politics of things like a national divorce or the Boogaloo (that’s slang for civil war 2 if you don’t follow these communities).

Resilience and self reliance and the ability to survive should matter more than your opinions on Democrats. Sure preppers have traditionally had theories on why you should be prepared but it wasn’t obviously exclusionary. Well except for the militia dorks and the white nationalists but those weren’t preppers so much as people who had to be survivalists because they rejected society. Since well society hasn’t actually collapsed yet.

I think it’s a massive disadvantage to be intolerant in preparedness. Going on about how much you dislike “the libs” and your annoyance with various buzzwords just makes you sound like you are interested in resilience and preparedness not because you think it’s responsible but because your culture war opponents are coming to…I don’t know take our guns and insist your children read about racism? I honestly don’t follow the through line sometimes.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with some of the political concerns. As libertarian I am for self determination and limited use of government at the federal level. I am a gun owner and supporter of the right to bear arms. I just don’t think that the culture wars are firm ground for community building.

I’m much more concerned with issues like infrastructure, the increasing frequency of natural disasters, and unsustainable macroeconomic conditions. That’s why I’m a prepper and why I want more people to get into it. And a lot of the politics of the American right wing is hostile to traditional prepper topics like climate change. I don’t see how you overcome some of that cognitive dissonance. So my fellow preppers I hope you won’t engage in purity politics as it’s not going to help your build out the resilience and diversity of skill set required to manage something catastrophic together. Being welcoming on the other hand will do exactly that.

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Politics Preparedness

Day 313 and American Grocery

I drove into Denver today for a doctors appointment. On the way back my husband Alex and I decide to stop at Costco. It’s not that far out of town but it’s still easier mentally to make the trip out to a box store when it’s on the way from somewhere. As someone who identifies as a prepper Costco is one of my favorite places.

I didn’t have anything specific in mind that I wanted (other than a few winter preparedness items), Alex and I just like walking the aisles of Costco. I worked in retail for many years so I enjoy seeing what brands have convinced the king of American retailing to stock their products. Because of their unique stocking and sales methodology it’s almost always an adventure.But it’s also a fairly good indication of where taste is at in America.

America is ready for the holidays if Costco is any indication. Despite it being the second week of November it was decked out in full holiday season merchandising. And not just peppermint bark (which I bought) and colored lights. Costco thinks we want a gourmet Christmas. We saw an entire truffle packaged with a grater. We saw entire cured Spanish hams. We saw tins of caviar stocked in the cheese aisle for $50.

An entire Spanish Serrano ham for $99 at Costco

I always wondered if the story of Khrushchev knowing the Soviets has been beaten when he toured a grocery was apocryphal. Apparently no one knows for sure if the visit happened. But it is true that supermarkets only exist in their modern form because America subsidized the farming and agriculture system as part of a farm arms race against the Soviets.

As amazing as a supermarket is it can be a bit horrifying to visit an American grocery store. Fresh markets that focus on meats, dairy and vegetables always feel like a race against time. Using traditional retailing methods of completely filled aisles bursting with perfect merchandise shouldn’t work when the product was once a living thing. And yet that’s exactly what we have. It’s astonishing the variety of items we stock in an American grocery. That we subsidize and allow for food waste when we still have hunger seems a grave injustice. We have food deserts. And yet our grocery stores are full.

Costco only sells in bulk so it’s mostly given over to packaged foods and dry goods. If you want fresh food you better be prepared to buy several pounds of it. I bought 2 lbs of blueberries. It’s going to be a challenge to eat it all before it goes bad.

Given that most of the news has been focused on the current supply chain crisis it felt odd to stand in a store surrounded by incredible luxury. Maybe it was the calm before the store. I did go on a Tuesday so maybe it has just been restocked after a busy weekend. Maybe folks just aren’t ready to buy their gourmet foods for the holidays yet.

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Preparedness

Day 309 and Buying Land

Now that the pandemic has fully driven startup land to a remote first culture, I have no excuse to put off buying property. But it’s hard to figure out where to settle and when. Alex and I signed another year lease on the townhouse we have in Boulder last month which means the countdown clock is on.

I’ve been in Colorado a full year and I’ve got another one ahead of me as we ride out whatever the pandemic has left. So while I don’t think I’m headed back to New York City for full time living ever again, I don’t feel ready to buy a home yet either. It’s a big decision with consequences! And I’ve got no idea what to do. We want to invest in a home we can invest in for preparedness.

May the crypto and startup gods bless me with pied-a-terre money on the next exit so I can have access to New York City and live off the grid at the same time! But no seriously I don’t think I can settle in Colorado either. The last summer was unlivable between the extreme heat waves and the ozone pollution that comes from high heat combining with high altitude sun. It’s better in the high country but then you are in fire country. And we’ve had terrible fires in the last year. Apocalyptic shit frankly.

The Colorado of my childhood isn’t surviving climate change. And the prepper in me just isn’t willing to invest in putting down roots in a place with water shortages, drought, fires and the potential for civil unrest. Which frankly pisses me off. I’m sad I can’t just buy a homestead in the Colorado Rockies. I have a whole rant about Boomers and ruining my home but I’ll try not to piss off my elders. I just really wanted to be able to live here.

But that begs the question of where is a decent place to buy a home. Leaving behind civilization for Montana doesn’t feel feasible now either. Alex is too social for that kind of nonsense full time. Being in a small town in the middle of nowhere seems romantic until you want takeout. And frankly I like takeout.

But I also want to invest in more serious preparedness efforts. I want to be fully off grid. I want to invest in our water. I want to do the kind of regenerative agriculture and restorative land work that could lead to a self sufficient life if it came to that. I want a homestead. Heck right now I don’t even have a generator or a fire pit. Because I’m in a townhouse. Which is a lot better than being an urban prepper but I’ve got a taste for more.

But I’m also not ready to leave behind civilization. So I’ve got no idea what to do. Because I’m at the end of what kind preparedness even makes sense in a more urban location. And we don’t own it. So I’m feeling itchy. Should we buy something in Boulder that we can do some prepping on and also a piece of land in Montana? I’m not sure that’s feasible financially. I feel stuck on this one if anyone has got opinions.

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Aesthetics Preparedness

Day 308 and Apocalyptic Aesthetics

It’s a pretty open secret that I’m a prepper. And by secret I mean I’ve been quoted in The New York Times and the BBC for being a new kind of “socially acceptable” preparedness aficionado. That basically means I’m not a conspiratorial reactionary but a nice white lady with politics that aligns with the powers that be. I say things like being prepared is the socially responsible thing to do for your community if you are privileged.

I got interested in preparedness because my family has been through a few natural disasters. My brother was in Louisiana during Katrina. My parents have survived a few fire season scares in Colorado. I was in Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy. Watching the power grid go out for ten days in a city like New York changes you.

Now granted I’m still a libertarian and I’m from the mountain west so I’m not too far off the mark of prepper aesthetics. I picked up a lot of shall we say “heritage” skills as a kid with farming, animal husbandry and lots of camping. So it didn’t seem too intimidating to act like a Boy Scout and be prepared. But compared to what the rest of prepper and survivalist universe gets up to I am probably one of its most palatable emissaries.

I’ve been refining some of my longer term preps recently as I’ve been making the transition from being an urban prepper to scouting for a sustainable homestead. That means I’ve been looking for inspiration on what to prioritize. And holy shitballs has the apocalyptic aesthetic gotten even weirder. I read a book called Black Autumn that started pretty normal with lots of practical details about grain milling & food storage. But maybe the the cover should have clued me in.

The damn book ended with, and I am not making this up, a war between illegal Mexican immigrant “gangbangers” and the nice white folk in the Salt Lake City adjacent homestead. It ended up being “operator” porn. If you don’t know what that is read this piece on Black Rifle Coffee and the aesthetics of marketing to conservatives. Americans have a hard on for the military even if they never served.

I’m kind of mortified this is now in my Amazon history. Folks in the analytics department are going to start marketing even more reactionary shit to me. And deservedly because I bought another book called Day 299 (in case you hadn’t noticed I label my shit by the day too) in which some white guy goes from generic conservative “the government is bad” to full blown only alpha male traditionalist reactionary. I’m a third of the way in and I’ve so far gotten exactly zero useful preps out of it. At least the racist operator porn gave me a good tip on a wood fired stove for my fantasy homestead in Montana.

Apparently there is an entire genre of apocalypse fiction and all the books covers are guns, country and God. Which are all things I value too but like let’s tone it down people. Preparedness shouldn’t be the province of one political affiliation. Natural disasters are happening more frequently whether you believe in climate change or not (if you don’t think the climate is changing well you can’t borrow my grain or my rifles). Being a prepper doesn’t mean you are a MAGA, a good ol’ boy, a conspiracy nut or a Christo-fascist neoreactionary. Hell you probably aren’t a blue lives matter bootlicker if you are also a staunch 2A small government type. But the aesthetics sure make it look like it. This Mark Goodwin dude must be really weird in bed.

Books covers by Mark Goodwin. Meltdown and Ava’s Crucible.

Everyone needs water, food and shelter. And we’ve been skeptical of FEMA since the X-Files movie so it’s not exactly news that self reliance is critical. So if you write apocalypse fiction please convince your publishers to chill on the imagery. I get that sex sells but the aesthetics are cringe and that’s keeping people from being prepared.