Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

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Media Politics

Day 1280 and Campaign Season

I am very much beginning to wish I had not watched the presidential debates. I want to say it’s been amusing to watch the different flavors of panic, but it makes me feel a bit gross.

Schadenfreude feels like a cousin to envy. It’s a dirty vice you shouldn’t be swift to cultivate in yourself even if it’s a very human response. I’d prefer to cultivate what virtues I can embody even if imperfectly.

I don’t want to lose my head just because everyone else seems to be doing so but it’s hard not pay attention to the politics when it’s the 4th of July week. I know I can’t do anything about national politics so I continue locally and on issues where we can have clear impact like housing and regulatory reform.

It’s possible that having more hands on experience with on community boards and with local permitting made the more tangible aspects of “Yes In My Neighborhood” campaigns clear to me.

I would prefer to be active in my contributions and focus on solutions. Am I angry and afraid when I see national politics and grand geopolitical news? Of course. If I thought about it too much I’d remember that everyone involved is human just like me. Then I’d worry even more. So I’ll try to focus on moving what I can.

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Emotional Work Media

Day 1279 and Not The Whole Story

I have recently been prioritizing correcting mistaken impressions of the world. As the rationalist set say, I like to update my heuristics.

It’s just not all that uncommon to believe wrong things and for the wrong reasons. We find out with alarming about retracted studies, updates to long held beliefs about culture or politics, or simply something galling about reality. And so sometimes we have to adjust our priors. We never have the whole story.

I recently found myself comparing myself to another person only to get quickly reminded of a set of circumstances that made our situations basically incomparable. I simply didn’t have the whole picture.

My mother loved a hippie bumper sticker about the folly of sincere youthful knowledge.

Quick ask your teenage for advice while they still know everything

The best part of middle age is discovering just how little you know. It can feel paralyzing at times. I’m sure you can imagine how “I don’t know the whole story” can be interpreted in many ways. I hope to be on the sunny side of learning.

Two men sit on a bus. On the dark side facing a dark mountain we see scared sad man with a “I don’t know the whole story” thought bubble. On the bright side of the bus with a wide vista a man thinks “I don’t know the whole story!”
Categories
Community Politics

Day 1277 and Don’t Lose Your Head

Everyone has their entertainment and mine is makes me a little bit of a stereotype. I hate podcasts but do most of my chores while listening to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast.

I was catching up today with an interview with equities analyst Tom Lee. My attention got caught and stuck on his description of Bitcoin.

“Yes, Bitcoin is unlike other asset classes because there is a cooperative value. You know, the people who contribute to the network benefit from it. And that’s different than any other asset class.”

From Odd Lots: Why Tom Lee Thinks We Could See S&P 15,000 by 2030, Jun 24, 2024

Now I don’t think this is unique to Bitcoin. Cooperative value can be found in everything from nationalist politics to luxury handbag resale pricing. But I do this it’s important to have cooperative values be baked into a network for it accrue value.

We’ve traditionally mitigated concerns about market cooperation through clear property rights and legal protections. We’d backed up those claims with things as abstract as a monarch. We’ve evolved to it to the slightly more concrete full faith of the United States and Byzantine bodies of securities law. Fiduciary duty and all that.

But as we become less inclined to trust that the buck does in fact stop “anywhere” we are looking for ways to mitigate that risk. How to operate in a world without trust? You develop trustless protocols. Humans have plenty of intuitions about trust and many these intuitions struggle without a clear person with authority to act.

So I ask if we are heading into a “headless” age?

As distrust in institutional power struggles we are seeking out new ways to continue the business of life and civilization even if a high trust society is in question.

We’ve got networks like Bitcoin that work without a head. We have new corporate structures like decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs) that can operate strictly based on cooperative rules, and indeed now entire memetic cultures (like e/-cc) which hold power while being headless.

Lest you think this is some frontier tech idea that doesn’t apply to you we’ve headless content moderation systems & headless retail platforms. Huge swathes of financial tech is living above the API.

You could even argue that we’ve got headless political parties as the Democrats and Republicans both struggle with defacto heads nobody particular trusts. I don’t know if we can live in a headless democracy. Deciding who is a citizen is a very different matter than deciding who is a shareholder.

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 1276 and Not Just A River in Egypt

I’m pretty comfortable with being embarrassed. I get stuff wrong and I have to come to terms with it even as my ego complains bitterly. The ego protects itself with denial but that doesn’t mean its conclusions are correct.

Being impartial about your reality is hard. Denial is such a normal part of catastrophic events the CDC even has handy public health explainers. I hope post pandemic everyone can enjoy the irony of that.

Taking an impartial view when approaching a problem is hard. If it’s an especially destructive situation (as most forms of crisis tend to be) wanting to put off action is a common coping mechanism. We do it as individuals and we do it within the meta-organisms that form the cultural and political systems we live within.

My suspicion is that some of our current political problems are a result of denialism. Seeing things as they are is impossible for some people. Avoidance, rationalization and minimization is practically a skill set.

I’d hope in a crisis I would attempt to solve a problem with whatever meager tools and skills I had at my disposal. I’ve done my best to take action on a few slow moving problems. And yet impartiality only arises when I can accept reality. And I wouldn’t blame anyone who finding the reality completely unacceptable.

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Community

Day 1273 and Context Window

The fracturing of the social web has made it harder to connect person to person.

The enjoyment of sharing a platform or a protocol with other humans is undermined as grifters and opportunists bang against artificial intelligence slop and algorithmic manipulation. It’s just not as fun to be online in that atmosphere.

I happen to like putting a little more of humanity out here on the edges of the great social media seas. I am not everyone’s cup of tea but at least you know what flavor I am.

Perhaps humans need longer context windows just as much as our artificial intelligence. I’ll allow Google’s Keyword blog on DeepMind’s longer context window to explain.

Context windows are important because they help AI models recall information during a session. Have you ever forgotten someone’s name in the middle of a conversation a few minutes after they’ve said it, or sprinted across a room to grab a notebook to jot down a phone number you were just given? Remembering things in the flow of a conversation can be tricky for AI models, too — you might have had an experience where a chatbot “forgot” information after a few turns. That’s where long context windows can help.

What is a long context window?

Part of my affection for “blogging” whether it’s on my own WordPress powered website or Twitter (remember when we called it a microblogging service?) is that it gives the chance to establish a large context window for me.

You can definitely make predictions about me based on what I’ve shared. If I am as complex as million token window (which is what Google’s Gemini can now handle) I would honestly be surprised. So go ahead and augment any conversations you have with me with the wider context of Julie. It’s my goal that it allows us to connect better.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1272 and GWOT

As an elder millennial fascinated by the mass media I have a lot of mixed feelings on the American government and how it waged the “war on terror.”

It is heavy on my mind with the current news of Julien Assange’s agreement with the American government.

I think a lot about media, and in particular the technology that powers media. An informed population can still act in its own best interests but what we get told affects what we perceive as our best interests. And as we become more informed naturally some skepticism of the intentions of power arise.

Media affects how nation states wage wars. As we’ve evolved from print to television to radio to the internet how we sell the costs of war changed. But there are always populations who pay enough attention to be skeptical.

The open internet was born of that skepticism of government even so much of the technology emerged thanks to America’s heavy investment in defense industries.

Scientists used to have a wide range of politics and it’s not a surprise that defending American interests is a popular idea amongst people who work for the government. But maybe you see things and fight for more accountability along the way.

The GWOT unevenly affected millennials. If you were middle class your kid probably didn’t join up unless being in the service was how you got to being middle class. There was no draft.

Being in Colorado I had exposure to folks who worked for defense contractors as a lot of the private sector had settled around the cluster of talent from Boulder’s science labs down to the Air Force Academy in Fort Collins.

But there has been skepticism in all the branches of government as it became harder to control the narratives. And Americans don’t particularly like the idea of having propaganda even though I’d argue we produce and consumer enormous quantities of it as a nation.

I wish I could be more cogent about any of this. I am regularly shocked by how little people seem to remember how we prosecuted these long wars. We quickly forget.

Don’t be too sure human nature had changed. Don’t be too keen to give the government power because you are afraid. We’ve already seen what they do with it.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1270 and Chin Up

I’d like to maintain some degree of optimism about, well, everything. And yet I am struggling to maintain attitude control.

I like a little joke about navigating in space because I’m the sort of dork who enjoys science fiction books with lengthy digressions about spin and 3 axis stabilization.

But equally I do think it’s important to keep your chin up. Or nose up. It depends on whether you are piloting your emotions or a some other type of craft. It’s going to be forced metaphor post.

There is no need to crash yourself by getting disoriented navigating a situation in which you have some coordinates. It’s possible to calculate what’s going on and get yourself going in right the direction.

I am trying to do so by articulation, which yes is meant to be read as navigation joke, but is really just another goofy way of saying that writing helps me straight myself out.

So I am doing my best to keep my chin up emotionally and keep navigating what’s in front of me. It’s certainly better than a crash.

Categories
Politics

Day 1267 and Civics

I spent my day at a policy organization’s gathering. I feel obligation to become as much a part of the civics process as I can. If we intend to have a working democracy it America it requires citizens who participate in an informed way.

Now cynics might say regular people don’t terribly like being bothered with the hard questions of self government. I’d say that obligates one even more to be a part of a civic polity that treats its participants with the dignity to be capable of self government.

The aspiration may never be fully met but if you cannot find a way to do that within the boundaries of civilization generally you get run out of town. Americans is the product of a lot of people who got run out of town. It shouldn’t surprise us that sometimes raw power rears its ugly head.

So much of my education was dedicated to participating in a Western canon of civilization. The portions of it that privileged anything all novel or even recent barely made a dent in my formal education. It did however spend a lot of time on the civics of Athens, Rome and the Protestant Reformation. And those are all stories of who should govern and on what authority.

Anytime there is a dislocation in the expectations between those who govern and the population it has to be worked out.

The western journey has been one of citizenship. If we cannot self govern in ways others agree to abide by we have lost quite a bit of ground in that quest. And history doesn’t have much positive to say about demagoguery or Vox populi. Anyways good luck out there this election season.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1253 and Dragging

I may give myself an out today to get very little written as despite me being a bit further into my “I’ve got Covid” saga I am in no way feeling better.

I do not want to have a long case of Covid or the much dreaded/debated Long Covid and I am trying to remain optimistic about the situation.

I do not feel optimistic about it as absolutely every aspect of my normal health troubles are 10x worse and I’ve got all your other fun symptoms like coughing.

I’m scared as it’s not getting better which brings up the anxiety that I’ll be back to where I was in 2019-2020 when stabilizing my health was more than a full time job.

I don’t mind having a part time job managing my health. Or as I prefer to think of it a side hustle as a biohacker. Except instead of making money I spend money.

Categories
Medical Travel

Day 1250 and Viral Load

I very much picked up something awful and I suspect viral in Texas and am going to be coping with its fallout for a few days.

I’ve lost track exactly of its onset as my brain is scrambled by cold medication, decongestants and the process of being sick. You go very hard trying to show up for panels and dinners and then you find you can’t get out of bed at all.

I do find it modestly funny to crack jokes about being high on DayQuil and experiencing coughing fits so strong incontinence is a concern. But I guess it depends on your sense of humor. Yes that’s a diaper joke. Either way I’m useless to myself and others except as a source of amusement.

I haven’t had the sort of viral or bacterial load type infection that one would qualify as a cold or flu for sometime.

My immune system is so overclocked that your common cold barely stands a chance. I have endless autoimmune problems but actually having the flu is a bit unusual. I hope it passes soon. Till then I’ll be in bed hopefully not wetting it.