I don’t have much in me today as I spent most of my energy on showering. What a depressing thought.
Showering is what’s considered a “vasodilating activity” and that can cause problems if you run it too hot. It can make dysautonomia (if you don’t know what that is how did you make it through Covid19) go wild and just generally makes me realize I’ve got some orthostatic issues happening during this flare.
Given that I’m having a fun high BPM couple of does, I got dizzy and that spirals into a migraine and then my whole system gears up and ooops I’m curled into a ball scrolling and texting.
It being 100 degrees in Montana today means that we’d need to run a water cooler not a water heater to get a comfortable lukeroom temperature. Our sauna is being in the shade of the barn is currently cooler than the outdoors. Just funny times but hey I’m doing my bit for the environment.
Despite the embarrassment of needing to sit down to scrub up, I thought I hoy through it with as little energy exertion as I could manage. And I still felt like shit.
So I figured why not compound it with more time on Twitter. It’s true that the website is for bored billionaires and the deranged and sometimes that’s a Venn diagram.
To be fair seeing a website for witticisms and breaking news become just another OnlyFans funnel stop is irritating. I pay up to the big man hoping it won’t get that bad. It’s got network effects for technologists and we have work to do.
Too much signaling of sexual availability and hitting a paywall is just a funny way for that to happen. Like objectively access was always paywalled by culture and contracts. But I can see being indignant about it pervading all social spaces.
Heck if the robotic use is half as good as Wired made his work sound maybe we can solve more pressing problems like having a robot scrub down our Boomers & chronically ill so cleaning up doesn’t kill us? It can probably hold a loofah without anything going wrong right? And nobody use it for anything too nasty if it can’t consent. Don’t prove Wired right. May Lady G rest in power.
I am a wreck. But now that everyone is discovering the value of daily writing (get in the repetition before the AI harms your skill), I have to gut it out as usual when I’ve got little in the way of cogent thought.
In an attempt to recover, I’m in a hyperbaric chamber sucking back oxygen under two atmospheres of pressure and I still can’t get my heart to stop pounding. Damned drugs.
It’s 100 degrees outside which probably doesn’t, help but even with oxygen, an eye mask, a soothing Endel NSDR session delivered by Bose noise canceling headphones, I could not get my heart rate under 100 consistently.
I wish I had a better theory than having over extended myself by traveling from mountain to swamp and desert to sea and then back again. Work and family call me, and they are not ever in the same place. It’s been a season of enormous wins but the price is being paid now.
It would seem that I’ve found my way to my first full system cascade failure since I went off my IL-17 inhibitor and onto a peptide regime with hormonal support.
I’ve had four glorious months of being able to act like I’m a reasonably healthy woman. Then I returned from a Fourth of July celebration in Utah to Montana and immediately fell apart.
My physician suggested the dreaded prednisone as well as a cycle of doxycycline. Goody goody gum drops. Both notably raise resting heart rates.
Want to see how bad? Get a look at this chart of horror and pharmaceutical malice. I woke up around my usual time and my heart has been pounding all night (no wonder prednisone makes people go nuts), my HRV registered as an 8 (average at my age should be 40-50) and this only registered as kinda in the green because I’ve had a week of it being in the mid teens. So yeah what the actual fuck. What do I even have?
The worst Whoop recording I’ve ever had
Maybe I just need to quietly let the steroids tamp down any inflammation and let the antibiotics kill off any bacteria that have decided to colonize me but I won’t lie I am terrified that those good months were a fleeting moment and this is my new normal.
Thankfully I know in my rational mind I’m in my luteal phase of hormonal horrors and I’ll get bloodwork as soon as my menstrual cycle lets me bleed.
It’s likely I’ll be in need of some new hormonal pellets sliced into my ass and any infection or inflammation is just a function of having gone a bit too hard and too fast in my glee that I can feel good again.
There’s a new genre of moralist who likes to shake their finger at you if they believe you’ve used artificial intelligence in the making or editing of your written product.
I find this particularly amusing because I was raised in a hippie family with all kinds of esoteric ideas on the importance of reading and being read to as a child, as well as the dangers of too much screen time.
I believe it served me well and panic essays in the Atlantic notwithstanding, my family was always a member of the reading class. They weren’t fancy but they loved books. We went to the library. My father always brought home a “dad book” after a business trip that he’d give me. Probably why I love science fiction so much as Michael Crichton was his favorite
My mother was more of a theorist and she didn’t hesitate to introduce theory into practice as I got older. Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman were the stuff of dinner table conversation, although usually in reference to why I could not watch Star Trek later that evening. Sometimes she’d give in.
So when I say that I come by my need to write honestly, it’s because many of the startup families who believed both in the liberatory potential of computers and leans heavily on the “computer as a bicycle metaphor” in that computers are tools extending our capacity just as bikes extend the human range. Now here is a surprise for you I also using a dictation application right now. Oh no what purity test have I failed? None as far as I am concerned.
I rarely dictate because, generally speaking, this is a diary, which is, of course, the original form factor of blogging from the early days of chronological feeds and personal websites. It’s my space and I only cheat myself if I don’t use it to benefit my own understanding of my thinking.
What point would there be in mere dictation? That is for notes. Writing is one of the better methods through which you learn to analyze a subject. Others exist, but this can be done alone. Committing a thought to a public forum under one’s own name, even in a private blog, shows you taking accountability for thinking and learning.
I write a blog because I want to get my thinking on a subject down on paper. Maybe from there I either wish convince somebody else that I am right or find somebody else who share my interest on a particular topic. I do this for myself and also so others can know what I am about. Together we may learn something just as in the past peers exchanged letters. Or in my era, emails and message board responses
Back then, you might share particular esoterica or hobbies with others who might not have the same interest as you did because you lived in a small town or in a relatively remote area where nobody else had the passion that you did. For instance, say, libertarian space mining or Warhammer.
I know it’s funny that now I mostly talk about compute policy and nuclear energy along with musings on aesthetics, semiotics, geopolitical chatter and whatever the styles sections are up to when I remain such a nerd. But that’s why the internet is a human space in the first place.
So go ahead and see what parts of this look AI generated if you care. I used Wispr Flow. I have no idea how orality has made its way into my literacy. But by putting it out into the world, it becomes part of my written tradition, and maybe that’s useful someday.
I write every post on my blog with my own mind and my own hands. I type on my phone whatever my mind has managed to organize on a given day. It’s a ritual for thinking more than an attempt at being read by others.
Three years later Isaiah’s reactor went critical, I’m still writing my human brain derived content, and timelines from Twitter to Substack are drowning in pithy highly readable artificial intelligence written content. Poor Will Manidis has jokingly taken responsibility but feed slop was coming one way or mother.
It does make a chronological feed as a timeline a much better choice for personal use as algorithmic buffing of content will make a night river of a platform into a million tributary parts. The feeds crack as the water of thought are routed elsewhere.
This metaphor has clearly reached me as yesterday I went to some effort to do a full shower, exfoliate, shave and wash routine with new products meant to improve my epidermis from tip to toe. I ended up giving myself a number of itchy red notches and spent the evening slathering on lotions and cortisone creams.
My stratum corneum cracked just as my timeline did. The moisture in my skin is we sucked out by acids and scrubbing. I’d taken off a few dead skin cells and irritated the rest.
Just like the insights and prose have been buffed and pumiced to a flat surface of legibility in our feeds. Nothing was buoyant or smooth. It was flat with the occasional warm to the touch but of discomfort. Slopping on occlusives might help my skin but I have no fix for the timeline.
I am an enormous fan of Freddie Mercury thanks to my mother’s excellent collection of classic rock. You’d be surprised at how much I’ve committed to memory from the core cannon and deep cuts that span the Beatles to Cream & Edgar Winter to Led Zeppelin.
I’m not much for karaoke, though I once tweaked my neck doing a full head bang hair whipping, Wayne’s World style, for a friend’s birthday party.
Knowing all the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody is clutch in these circumstances. As can go in, do a full rock opera and ease yourself out of any further obligation to participate saying “oh I had easily three times the stage time as everyone else I’ll just cheer you on!” Pro-tip for group activities amirite?
Fun fact from Reddit. During the Bohemian Rhapsody scene in ‘Wayne’s World’ (1992) Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are both grimacing in pain while headbanging. The director, Penelope Spheeris, shot the scene for approximately five hours. Basically how I felt after my friends birthday karaoke.
Now I don’t always have the common sense to stop myself. I am a real mess at the moment as I have finally come home and I can let the whirlwind dissipate for a moment
Strained sleep with upsettingly high strain but at least it’s restorative. Now if only I could get my resting heart rate down and my HRV back up I’d be right as rain.
My Whoop is sending up red recoveries with a week of barely better yellows, as I spent a bit too much of the last few months going full Freddie Mercury “Don’t Stop Me Now” as not only was I having a real good time but I had a lot to get done.
Tonight, I’m gonna have myself a real good time I feel alive And the world, I’ll turn it inside out, yeah I’m floatin’ around in ecstasy So don’t stop me now Don’t stop me ‘Cause I’m havin’ a good time Havin’ a good time
It’s nice when you work and your life are aligned such that every step feels like you can only accelerate. But if we are sticking to thermodynamics, l may have allowed a little more entropy into the equation.
So give me some time to sleep it off. I’ll be in bed trying to keep my heat rate down. But being in the red won’t stop me forever. It’ll just stop me for a little bit.
My head hurts, I’ve lost my voice and I’m achy everywhere but I’ve got something resembling a tan and my lymph glands are only a little swollen.
Is this is the halfway point of the summer season I feel like I’m doing it rather well. That is rare for me as summer is traditionally my most challenging season but I seem to be doing rather well despite the workload and constant travel.
In a fun coincidence of scheduling, I shared a blue moon at the end of May in Greece and the waning of the full strawberry moon in Utah with same person.
A blue full moon and a sailboat light
What a joy to be half a world away and still find a way to come together. From the Ionian Sea to the high alpine skiing mountains of Utah you are never too far away from a friend.
I’m back in Montana and hoping I’ll enjoy a reasonable chunk of time here as I do feel the strain on my body. I don’t think I am sick but I am struggling to with fatigue and the annoyance of a throat so sore from talking that I should probably commit to a silent retreat for a few days.
So I’ll sip my slippery elm tea and browse the cosmetic sales for skincare (and a little makeup splurge to celebrate the big wins) and get myself back on a routine. I’d like to put on more muscle mass and improve my cardiovascular fitness now that I have more capacity.
If I can manage conference after conference, gala and launch demonstrations along with my workload and time with friends then surely I can add in some overhead presses and a plyometrics right? I did a short but brisk mile and half circuit around the neighboring pastures. And then I got back into bed.
A long block of travel to sync in person with diverse nodes in my network has been invigorating but also exhausting. I’m sure some of the travel looks quite glamorous, but it is always in service of furthering my longterm goals.
For a decade, we have explained the retreat from the public internet using Yancey Strickler’s Dark Forest Theory. People withdrew into smaller, quieter spaces because speaking in public became dangerous…
The resulting cozyweb—private group chats, Discords, Slacks, newsletters, encrypted messaging groups, invite-only communities—was understood as a strategic adaptation. The public remained a single connected univers
The ecosystem of private spaces were connected, but as they accreted power these cozy web communities saw their gravity increase. Eventually some collapsed in on themselves. And thus we have black holes of public collapse in the dark forest; out of which none of us are able to escape.
What Rao calls “inaccessible interiority” traps some of us. We may have visibility to other communities through the byproducts of our niches but that does not mean a shared reality where we can reach consensus with others outside of our space.
My strong fear is that without a possible consensus reality for larger groups like nation states citizens, we lose the basic capacity for productive interactions that move us forward. Only inside a community that has swallowed us whole can we progress. And if we find something novel inside those gravity sinks we have no way of sharing it. Only some of us enjoy progress.
Which might be fine for those who wish to live lives quietly out of sight. But it isn’t a world that enables strangers coming together through public global communication in a shared commons.
This stacks on existing research which illustrates how social media creates echo chambers that amplify consensus ideas while filtering out unconventional or contrarian views — which in turn builds on existing theory that describes how individuals self-censor opinions when they suspect they are in the minority.
When the dark forest was scary but still possible to traverse, we still had a chance to explore and find reality, even if we lived in a consensus bubble most of the times. Dead forest theory means we are past the event horizon, from which we cannot escape. We are locked in whatever consensus reality emerged inside the event horizon.
And so despite its expense, its troubles and its costs, I still push my work into the public commons with the hope that I’ll circle the accretion disks but can fight against falling into one forever with a steady acceleration to preserve a visible orbit.
What both Venkatesh Rao and Dan Grey posit in different ways, is that it is worth understanding where we might be cut off from reality.
Further, who knows what new kinds of horrors we will endure as we lead separate lives online without any contact with real life and real people. We crave community with those whom we can maintain consistent context and contact. That’s why I still get on the airplane, or get in the car, or hop on the bus and show up. I want us to share reality.
As I shook off my sleep this morning, I started the day with a cup of coffee (since after that tea debacles it was coffee powered our revolution) and the NPR news brief.
Their five minute top of the hour news roundups was once my favored way of staying up on national & global news. Nostalgia made me turn it on today. I wanted to feel the patriotism comes from owning one’s responsibility to be an informed citizen.
Fourth of July being Independence Day, I am excited by civic pride that comes with informed self governance. What better way to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial.
Our great American experiment celebrates 250 years of independence from Great Britain. As a singular nation state, committed self evident truths such as all men being equal in our unalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
We say America is a unique and improbable miracle. And many of us remain as committed to the founding fathers’ ethos of self-governance because we are taught that we all must make sacrifices to maintain ordered liberty.
Part of my commitment to being a free American is working towards a higher standard of informed civics. So it felt appropriate to begin this important day of celebration by engaging with the issues of the moment. I hoped NPR might be a part of that.
I have always loved radio (I even worked at an infamous station as a teen). I enjoy eccentric public access Art Bell style shows, opinion shock jocks, and folksy variety shows. Yet it was National Public Radio’s news coverage that was my family’s constant companion for remaining engaged with the public discourse.
We didn’t always have the money for expensive newspapers subscriptions for newspapers like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal so I’d read at the library. But at home I could always rely on NPR.
There was a time when a public radio station, which was free for all Americans who wished to listen, was a source of national civic pride. I was taught it was our patriotic duty to be informed citizens. Plus they played great music from variety shows to classical.
Yet, as you might expect, some of this is mere partisan politics. It will shift just as our political system has always does. The negativity need not be the focus. Even in dark times we must reach for the light.
How proud are you to be an America ?
Interestingly younger generations are more likely than older generations to say America aligns with our founding ideals. And I have to say this aligns with my personal experience.
I have been privileged to work on passing laws that reinforces our core constitutional rights alongside investing in the hard infrastructure work of developing cheaper energy. From our right to compute to the our nuclear renaissance that bloomed in one year from a single executive order, I’ve never felt as engaged with the process of building our nation.
Every day offers us a chance to celebrate our innate freedoms. And I’d like it if our public institutions felt similarly not matter who the people choose as our representatives. We have always been an imperfect nation.
The American experiment is ongoing. Our many problems are real but it is equally true that we have never been more empowered to engage with building the country you wish to see. Happy Birthday America. May we celebrate her today, tomorrow and another 250 years into the future.
I am going full weird Americana for the Forth of July in the mountains with friends . We are all committed to the beautiful wonders that is America as it is our natural beauty in the mountain west that feels right for celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday.
Being very in the moment means it’s hard to capture the moment. I’m in a Jeep Rangler going up one of the steepest graded roads in North America to the top of a ski mountain. I’m in a silk dress with a black baseball cap that says make nuclear great again and art deco costume jewelry. Just for fun because why not?
I hope it was reasonable dress code for a hoedown at a country club. I feel like I should be in cowboy boats, but not haven’t made it home to get any kind of riding boots so I’ll come as I am with a smile.
The alpine country in the summer lends itself to dressing a bit more country than city even with its evident creature comforts. I’m a townie from a mountain town so I can simply be eccentric. The counterculture of mountain towns is obvious to insiders but less to those who move in later in life.
I’ve been going between city, coastal and desert all within a month and I’ve not had space in my suitcase for cowboy boots. But I am glad I am able to enjoy the vista in any state. Who says silk and Jeeps aren’t a natural fit?
I’ve got to remember to keep tissues in my purse. I’m prone to crying when I’m proud. I am a crier by nature and the experience of pride and awe is becoming distressingly common. Woe is me right?
My very early bet on Valar Atomics (I wrote about it on Day 1145 but met Isaiah closer to day 900 early 2023) is paying off years, if not decades, ahead of my expectations. Never did I expect arguably the hardest operational bet in my portfolio to be such a fast breakaway hit. And I owe it to an executive order from Donald Trump and the efforts of patriotic Americans committed to regulatory reform. Which is crazy.
As it turns out, if the government gets out of the way of talented people, nay, if it demands that our state institutions help them, the impossible becomes possible in shockingly short order. The reports of America’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Today in front of a crowd of hundreds of current and potential investors, employees, Orangeville community members, government officials & scientists and most importantly our family members, we watched a reactor (that might not even exist without my first check), power an Nvidea Blackwell chip.
In a demonstration rivaling the greats (Ballmer, Jobs) Isaiah brought up NuclearWebsite.com and asked the audience to load it with him.
“Oh no it’s not loading?!!?” What’s happening? Do we have any electricity on site? Quick someone run the GPUs to the nearest electricity! Go go we can’t disappointment all these people!
And then the Blackwell is rushed into the Ward250 reactor. In real time the chip is run to the control room, gets hooked up and boom the website loads.
The first entirely privately funded nuclear startup was critical, stable, producing electricity and powering state of the art silicon.
We actually did it. The mad lads and ladies of Valar Atomics swept ahead of the competition in a frenzied year of progress (Day 1510) from seed round and Ward Zero to producing electricity to power GPUs.
After a twenty four hour travel marathon to get from the Ionian in the Mediterranean to the southern Utah desert, being back at the Valar Atomics reactor facility for a demonstration of this magnitude felt surreal.
Just a few weeks ago (Day 1969) the reactor was days away from being shielded and then fueled. We’d driven down to see her before she was wrapped up in shielding.
Proud first investors in front of Ward 259
Now not only has she gone critical (Day 1996) but I was able to walk into the running reactor room and see the live reactor for myself. The operator Ben (a former naval nuclear operator) seemed surprised and happy to see me. “Julie! Hi!” He exclaimed as me and the other early lead investors piled in for a tour.
Jason Calacanis (also a master of the live demo) never lets anyone forget he invested in Ubers seed round. I get to brag I wrote Valar’s very first check
And while success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan, I’ll always enjoy the satisfaction of being the very first to take a chance on a long shot no one thought had any business even trying. And well they were wrong. And I was right. Not just right but really fucking right. I backed the long shot dark horse (somewhere around day 950) because my gut told me that the kid had the right stuff. And wow did he.
I only had a dim hint of exactly what we’d be seeing today as the invite said “Watts Next” cohosted by Nvidia and Valar. Clearly a number of us connected the dots because it was packed. The atom would power the compute and we’d get to see it live.
The team after the demo
Every existing investor, and quite a few later stage firms, came out to the middle of nowhere to see if these longshots had really done it. And indeed in just three years the impossible became reality. I’ve never felt prouder to be American. And clearly everyone around me felt the same.
And most importantly, it was a win for the team, led by the indomitable spirit of Isaiah Taylor. Their long nights and constant doubt paid off. The road ahead is long but no one is likely to doubt that we are serious contenders anymore.
I always say there was never a doubt in my mind. I had faith. Isaiah joked he had moments of doubts. I say I’m blessed that I got to be that first believer to say “I think you can do it and I’m going to help.”
And whenever he doubted that we’d make it (there are always near death experiences in any startup) it was my privilege to remind him that doing the impossible is just what we humans do.
Like Captain Kirk, I don’t believe in no win scenarios. I hope you consider joining me for more impossible long shots. Because sometimes taking the shot is worth more than anything else you will ever do.
Want to run your compute on clean renewable cheap American energy?
