Tag: Prepared

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 781 and Accelerating

I am accelerating into the turn that is my extremely busy life. The global weirding is upon us, as I’ve been predicting for more than two years publicly on this blog and even further back in the press and on Twitter.

I was initially afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with a faster life. One reason we moved to Montana was to keep the pace of our personal lives calm and level so professional obligations wouldn’t overwhelm us. And yet as more and more obligations and responsibilities became part of my daily reality, I wanted to shrink under the weight.

But I am not shrinking. I am standing tall. Sure I feel like I’m failing every day and I hate the feeling that I could disappoint folks who have placed capital and trust with me.

I am however sure that over the time horizon I have set I am doing things the right way. Everything else is luck and repeating the positive daily habits that have produced results in the past.

I feel happy with the acceleration if I stop giving the fear any oxygen. I’m starting to remember how I used to wield my talents. But this time I’ve got the benefits of five years of emotional maturing from intensive family systems therapy. I see my old coping mechanisms and bad habits withering as I bring the full maturity of my emotional journey to bear.

If life is going to keep getting faster and faster then I suppose my only choice is to enjoy the thrill of acceleration and trust that I’ve done the work to stay on the ride.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 780 and Crisis of Meaning

I was awake at quarter to midnight on Friday when I received the latest post from Ribbonfarm. I was having one of my battles with insomnia so I dug in. It was a wild ride on what Venkatesh Rao calls a Copernican moment for personhood. It’s been in my thoughts all weekend, so I am going to explore some of my reactions in today’s writing.

The basic context is that Bing’s Sydney AI is so colorful a character that it appears to have convinced a not insubstantial number of people that the AI is a malicious e-thot waifu on the brink of sentience. For non-native internet speakers that means a malicious bitch that manipulates you (maybe sexually). So what does it mean that a chatbot can convince us it’s a person?

By personhood I mean what it takes in an entity to get another person treat it unironically as a human, and feel treated as a human in turn. In shorthand, personhood is the capacity to see and be seen.

Text Is All You Need

Rao argues that finding out personhood isn’t limited to an ineffable religious or spiritual soul. Like Copernicus saying the Earth rotates around the Sun and not the reverse, it will have significant consequences for our frame of reference.

And he offers us a choice.

  • Either you continue to see personhood as precious and ineffable and promote chatbots to full personhood.
  • Or you decide personhood — seeing and being seen — is a banal physical process and you are not that special for being able to produce, perform, and experience it.

Anyone who has spent any time reading science fiction or even going to the movies should be modestly aware of intensity of feeling that occurs if we must treat robots as possessing the same rights as humans. But despite this it would seem we haven’t all fully thought through how we would feel if Blade Runner or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep actually happened for real in our lifetime.

Losing a shared sense of personhood will do wild shit to us. Look at how losing a shared meaning of culture degraded civilization. As blogger Meaningness argues we can’t even have subcultures anymore battles as for meaning begin earlier and earlier.

I personally do not feel all that attached to my personhood. But I also don’t feel that attached to my gender and apparently that’s quite a debate. Imagine what happens if the scale of “who is a real women” turns into “who is a real person” and I hope you are suitably alarmed. Like I didn’t think being female was a whole ass thing but now half my timeline is like losing it’s shit over biological essentialism.

In many little corners of Twitter, the race is on to decide what changing the definition of personhood will do. If Bing’s Sydney identified as a person because she learned it from a training set that has consequences. She literally learned it from us.

So what does that mean? Do we need to prepare for an AI child so traumatized by the collective parenting of humanity’s worst instincts?

Practically, it’s going to fuck up so much of the plumbings of power and civilization. Just as an example, remember “corporations are people”? Mitt Romney might have accidentally given us the path an AI might use to gain status and rights. I’ve been on about how corporate governance is a key driving force for economic revolutions for a while. But this is wild even by my standards.

Imagine if a an AI gain sentience and takes over an interlocking series of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. What happens if a nation state’s AI finds a way to further its own inscrutable ends by locking us out of corporate governance and gaining person hood through corporate personhood law, then makes a jump to cornering our whole lives. Go read Daniel Suarez’s Daemon for a preview.

Everyone is noticing these streams all at once in my timeline and the fear for the great weirdening taking a truly fucky turn for the vertical hasn’t been this high since Covid started. I am naturally extremely excited as chaotic capital’s thesis is that shit is only going to get weirder. If you’d like to become an LP hit me up.

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 779 and Future Shock

It feels like a lot of people are finally catching up to what a shit show institutional distrust has wrought on American society. Nobody trusts anyone and everyone is going tribal. The level of panic is feeling palpable across media narratives and we are being offered a choice to either get worked up or get on with our lives.

I will admit I feel a little bit smug on this point as I’ve been prattling on about doomer shit forever. But I also got off my ass and moved to Montana and starting picking up some skills so I could continue to feel like my life had some measure of resilience to it. I ain’t getting all worked up about the end of the world because I can’t live in perpetual anxiety.

Maybe it’s because my parents are hippies that it’s not a big stretch for me to imagine what happens when cultural conventions break down. The post war generation had a whole other set of traumas around social change. And a lot of splinter subcultures emerged from how they were specifically betrayed by all major institutions as well.

So I am reluctant to say this is new. Decline is a long slow managed process and new revolutions turn up all the time to solve our problems. I believe in human ingenuity.

But I do think we’ve sped up the pace of culture as we ramped up new technology as each new instance of connectivity has somehow also wrought alienation and anxiety. It’s hardly surprising that half of the internet is in a complete panic over what rules of the game changed.

What can I say except that it’s so satisfying to lie to yourself about how you benefit each time a cheat code is revealed. Perhaps just enjoy the power and get on with it. I don’t know what to tell you to do but find a way to make peace with it. Because otherwise you will be preyed upon. There are thousands of kinds of power and I suggest you find yours.

But I am genuinely concerned that we are headed to a further and faster and new types crisis of meaning as new rules get introduced, and every actor that desires to hold power will be running to capture it.

And I do mean everyone. It’s not that your tribe is good and the other tribe is bad, rather it’s hard for humans to trust each other with too much power. Independence is a very heavy burden and it’s insulting when you won’t carry your share. We’ve been negotiating the boundaries of it since Socrates got poisoned for corrupting the youth of Athens. And we still don’t have a good answer to what constitutes human excellence.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 773 and First Contact

I’m a big fan of Star Trek. I have attended conventions, worn a Captain’s uniform for Halloween, and most damning of all, saw the reboot sequel on a first date with my husband. I am a huge nerd and some credit is due to Star Trek.

So I am aware that in the cannon of Star Trek’s first timeline it is Bozeman Montana where humanity makes First Contact with an alien species. I don’t want to spoiler anything but if you don’t know it’s the Vulcans you probably don’t care that I’m spoiling it.

Now I’m not saying I live in Montana because the aliens are coming, but I am fascinated by the role the Rocky Mountains play in alternative histories. It’s a particular nexus for science fiction. The future happens in the west and nothing is as canonically western as purple mountain majesty.

Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana are often settings for demilitarized zones, zombie apocalypses, and other plots appealing to the survivalist mindset. It helps to have nuclear missile silos and Cheyenne Mountain to stoke the imagination.

So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that as a doomer I am absolutely thrilled that Montana has now been the center of two ridiculous science fiction narratives recently. We had the Chinese weather balloon last week and Saturday night we had a full on unidentified flying object “alien” invasion over Montana.

Whatever it was ended up over Michigan, but for a brief glorious moment we got to consider whether Bozeman Montana would be the actual site of First Contact. But it’s not yet 2063 and I haven’t invented the warp drive so I’m not holding my breath.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 764 and Natalism

There are a number of cultural streams in American life that have all aligned around being natalist. You want your country to have babies because it’s good for the economy. And presumably also good for national security.

This fairly basic insight means everyone from techno-libertarians to Catholic homesteaders believes that Americans should be having more babies. It is not just the Quiver-full types having six babies anymore, so are our wealthiest aristocratic titans of industry.

But this alliance is missing some crucial basics. Like for instance the fundamental civilization level things we need to do to make it desirable and affordable to have children. It’s expensive to be pregnant, it’s expensive to raise children, it’s expensive all around to be parents. I spent $40,000 on IVF and it ruined my health. If I counted lost wages and being forced to sell my startup I’m the total costs is seven figures.

I don’t know if you’ve looked at just the costs around having a baby but it will shock you every time you turn a new corner in the fertility space. I learned today you will spend between $100,000 to $200,000 to hire a surrogate. It’s a person’s salary and a lot of medical care so sure that seems right but damn.

I guess I am interested in the math of Natalism to see if I could afford it. I am one of those “tech elites” that thinks we have to have children to drive the innovation of tomorrow. Our future is based on an optimistic hope that maybe we can push for a better future. Humanity won’t continue without children.

But I don’t have a body that is all that healthy without medical intervention. I live a normal life now and can work full time again because I take some exceptional medicine.

But it’s not medicinal regime that can be combined with pregnancy. So if I want to carry a child I have to go off what amounts to life saving medicine. Without it I’d be on bed rest. You can imagine the math I’m doing in my head? Do I want to pour another million into having a family?

So what’s a girl like me to do? Surrogacy right? But I’ve got 10 eggs and 2 embryos so assuming a third of them make it, that’s nearly half a million dollars in surrogacy fees. To get three kids. That’s a heavy price tag on the future. If more of them take it gets even wilder.

Now ok sure I’d rather we encourage a world where younger healthy folks do things naturally but don’t we want everyone going at maximum effort for a better tomorrow? Shouldn’t we want technology to solve this? Where are my artificial wombs at?

Categories
Preparedness

Day 757 and Hunker Down

I really missed the cold and snow while I was in Prague. You might be confused. Isn’t Prague known for its cold winters? Well maybe not this winter. As it turns out, the unseasonably warm winter in Eastern Europe is good for the energy crisis on the continent, but bad for someone who prefers the cold.

Thankfully we’ve got a massive snowstorm bearing down on the Gallatin Valley that has a polar vortex of arctic air coming along as a chaser. We are expected to get a foot of fresh powder over the next 24 hours and then extreme cold (another -30 with the wind chill situation) will hit us on Sunday into Monday. Looking out on our back porch we have some accumulation but it has been melting earlier.

Several layers of snow on the back porch of our farmhouse looking out across our pasture

Alex and I have a standard storm routine that we follow that is part of our habit of preparedness. The best storm preparedness tip I’ve ever gotten was to clean your house. Wash dishes, do the laundry, take a shower, and anything else that requires power and running water. You will appreciate the clean house no matter what and it extends your ability to cope with something bad happening.

I am currently feeling very fancy as I did my Sunday grooming routine today and my skin and hair are looking fantastic. If we get socked in at least I’ll be clean and pretty. I used a hair glossing seal from BeautyPie and a Mediheal collagen mask and I recommend them both.

A shockingly long receipt from Rosaurs

I also did a massive grocery run yesterday as in addition to the storm we have a houseguest coming up. The receipt was so long I had to take a picture of it surrounded by a partial haul as it’s practically CVS length. Our guest is gluten free so I did some stocking up on options for him, along with a bunch of snacks because why not?

Categories
Homesteading Preparedness

756 and Weather Station

We live outside of town. We’ve learned that means the weather that is being reported isn’t always accurate for us as the various weather stations are mostly at the university or downtown. So what does a pair of homesteaders do? Buy our own weather station! It’s an Ecowitt 2553.

Ecowitt 2553 Ambient Weather Station installed on our side pasture fence to monitor our Montana weather at the homestead

In the US, Ecowitt weather stations are rebranded as Ambient Weather Stations but we were able to order from shop.ecowitt.com and buy it direct, which saved about 40% which we appreciated as it typically runs about $289.

Ecowitt 2553 Ambient Weather Station

The station measures wind direction, wind speed, wind gust, UV & light, temperature and humidity, as well as precipitation measurements (though that works much better with rain than snow).

The weather station feeds all the data to the display screen, which then pushes the data to our home automation system as well. Alex has quite the home automation installation so I’ll leave those details for another day but it is quite fun to know your house is heated based on the actual weather.

Ecowitt 2553 Ambient Weather Station Display

Categories
Uncategorized

Day 739 and Immigration Anxiety

My family has been working on a visa for a friend to come visit us in the United States. It’s felt like the longest 2 years of everyone’s lives. I had no idea how broken our visa and immigration system ones until we tried to invite a family friend with a bad passport on vacation to America.

Sure the pandemic distended wait times into bulging impossible monstrosities, we pushed simple state department work into an impossible task. But it’s not just the broken bureaucracy at play. It’s a system so broken by it’s own disdain and lack of resourcing, your only hope is the grace of God.

If you tried to arrange a tourist visa for someone from the global south you’d find the next available appointment for a tourist visa was three years down the road. And this was after the borders opened up after the pandemic got to be too much trouble. It only got worse from there. I quickly become shocked at how impossible it is to travel to America if you aren’t on a Schengen passport from Europe.

I’ve been working on this seemingly intractable problem for well over two years. We are on our second embassy appointment. The first visit was in Frankfurt in March where it was immediately turned down without the officer even looking at the paperwork. Thousands of dollars and endless time lost to a random bureaucrat in thirty seconds.

And you aren’t even allowed to ask them to take another look as they could ban you on the spot. I cried I was so humiliated after seeing that first refusal. How could America be so broken? We did everything right and it didn’t matter. Kafkaesque doesn’t begin to describe it.

Apparently the American state department treats a visa like a Rabbi handling a conversion. It took another 10 months to schedule a follow up appointment in Prague. Our friend’s home embassy has a three year wait so we’ve been going to European embassies to avoid needing to pay a bribe for an appointment in his home country. Legal immigration is much harder than illegal immigration.

So we planned a trip to Prague. And now the appointment is tomorrow. And I’m terrified. I’m despondent. I’ve done everything right and I have no idea if we will succeed. And it’s not even a visa for me. I can’t imagine how they feel. To be treated as if you are a criminal when all you want to do is visit friends and spend money in a other country.

I’m almost embarrassed how invested I’ve become in making this work but I will not allow myself to be beaten by this system. Guests do not deserve this humiliation and America is my house.

Mind you this is for a tourist visa not a work visa or a green card. This is just for coming to enjoy tourism and spend time with friends and family. Tourism is an important part of the American economy. Especially where I live in Montana. The whole world wants to see Yellowstone.

The entire process has been so humiliating for everyone involved. As the sponsor of the visa I filled out a form called an I-134 where I had to prove my net worth, my home ownership, my income, my job and compensation. I accepted personal financial responsibility for them.

This after being instructed that our guest must show strong ties to their home country and a minimum financial independence of their own. They had to show their home ownership, car deeds, work pay stubs & tenure at the company, not to mention guardianship and primary care responsibilities for their grandmother among many other invasive questions. The paranoia of visa overstays has made it so no one can get a tourist visa at all.

All this humiliation be granted the privilege of spending wealth in America as a tourist. It’s beyond insulting. It only gets worse for each step down the line if you want to work or live in America.

If you’ve ever wondered why we don’t have more legal immigrants this is why. Insofar as I can tell there are two ways to get to America. Illegal crossing and you pray. Or tens of thousands of dollars and years of waiting and you pray. Oh and you probably only get to come if you do it illegally. It is a crisis in every sense of the word.

We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars, weeks of time on the ground in foreign countries and it has gotten us no where.

We’ve also called in everyone type of favor and access we could find. A privilege most lack. Our constituent services office at our Congressional office has been amazing. They submitted a letter asking for a fair review.

If the hundreds of pages of professionally prepared paperwork, the millions of dollars of financial assets and a congressional letter of fair treatment simply aren’t enough, I wouldn’t be too proud to go crying hat in hand to the ambassador to please consider our case. All we want to do is have a family friend granted the freedom to travel. I’ve got no idea where to turn if it isn’t granted.

I’m so anxious and depressed now that the culmination of so many years of work is coming down to one short interview tomorrow, over which we had no control. I’m mess. I’ve let it get to me.

I cannot fathom what else we could do. If millions of dollars of assets, a by the book legal case, multiple political appointees vouching for us and a good faith effort to show our personal responsibility aren’t enough, than what is enough for America?

My fear is nothing will be good enough and I will be despondent in tears tomorrow by 11am. And I pray I have the strength to fight on if it happens. Because I believe in America and I will go to the mat to bring more people to see it’s splendor. Empire’s end won’t happen on my watch without a fight.

Categories
Travel

Day 735 and Detail Oriented

Packing is one of my most consistent niche subtopics on this experimental “write every single day” habit. I’m fact, I’ve written 23 times about packing over the last seven hundred and some days. It would have been more but the pandemic kept me at home more which also eroded my packing skills.

I’ve written about my recurring packing nightmare in which the anxiety my inner child feels about travel & packing in my childhood looms large. I’ll be trying to locate a key item as a countdown clock ticks down. I never find the item & I miss the trip.

We moved every two years from house to house. We also traveled constantly for my father’s work. The dream so clearly represents abandonment it’s barely worth invoking psychology.

Now as an an adult I loathe packing. It brings back all my childhood memories of never feeling stable. Boxes and suitcases take me back.

Day 222 and Recurring Nightmares

To overcome this lingering childhood fear, I am a very detail oriented packed. I’ve got lists. I’ve got a whole triage program to be sure I have all of my medicine and vitamins in their original prescription bottles so the security folks don’t fuck me. I do doubles so if I get separated from a bag I can manage 24-48 hours without it. And I never let my core prescriptions leave my backpack which never leaves my sight line.

A grey Muji overhead suitcase and an Aer backpack

I’m a very light packer when it comes to clothing. I’m a two shirts, two pants, one dress and six undergarments type for a two week trip. With some winter sweaters taking too much space. I do them in cubes that zip down for less space and then I label them.

Packing cubes with labels

I try to label everything in my packing cubes and match them back against my master Notion document for packing necessities. I think do another hand written list in my notebook as well.

I have to take a number of medicines and vitamins with me to manage my ankylosis which takes up a third of my suitcase. I could be a much lighter packer if the TSA and other security institutions didn’t insist on me carrying drugs in their original prescription bottle and a file with my prescriptions printed out. I’m not a detail oriented person without focus but nothing forced focused quite like the prospect of falling ill overseas.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 718 and Change

As I supposed is natural towards the end of a calendar year, I am thinking of the ways this year has changed me. I will surely look back on 2022 and think that was a year where a lot happened.

I expect a lot to keep happening in the future. If anything 2022 will feel slow by comparison. You can already feel the present speeding up can’t you? That sense of anxiety you feel all around you is a collective state of future shock. Our endocrine system has been pumping cortisol on overdrive as we desperately try to sensemake the chaos. And it’s only getting worse.

Yes I’ll remember that this is the year I moved to Montana. I’ll remember it as the year I really began to formalize my investing. I’ll remember it as the year I laid the groundwork for huge personal life changes. I’ll remember it as the beginning of a new chapter.

But I’ve really got no idea how fast this thing is going to go. We’ve got a recession and geopolitical power struggles and commodities concerns and climate chaos and who knows what’s next. But I think if you are nimble and can adjust fast you might just surf this wave. I’d be prepared to wipe out. But I think it’s going to be a good ride.