Categories
Culture

Day 1591 and Pick Up The Phone

My husband’s most Boomer coded preference is how much he likes phone calls. I think it’s crazy but he will just pick up the phone and call people. Someone will text, email or message him and if he has the time & expertise he will write back “just call me now” as if it were nothing.

Now I grant that being available to get on the phone has plenty of social dynamics at play. If you have power and the luxury of time, availability, and energy “just call me” is quite a flex. I almost never have the energy though I can make time when it’s critical.

I had a funny moment today where the delivery driver for the flowers I sent to my mother for Mother’s Day just could not figure out that I was not the recipient. He declined a voice call with me though seemed to struggle with texting.

I’d laid out what I thought were clear instructions. I was sending flowers to a location that was not my location (I have an account with this very popular delivery service) as this was a gift intended for someone.

I left instructions to ring the doorbell and if no one answers leave the flowers on the porch. If they must call I left my phone number and her phone number saying to call her as she was the receipt.

Now the delivery service had a pin with GPS for the location. I figured literally millions of people order flowers for their mother today so I didn’t think it would be complicated or even unexpected that flowers were meant for someone’s mother.

Now for a quick aside. I did not tell my mother I was doing this. Our family has a fairly strict “don’t gift unless you feel moved” preference so it’s not implied we gift on every holiday. I was raised with the ideal that gifts are most meaningful when someone finds an item we think the other will like and is moved in the moment to get it. Rather than wait for a holiday, we send it then.

I felt moved by some seeing flowers yesterday in my grocery shopping. Spring is coming in and I wanted to send some to her. Now I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for my mother by saying wait at this hour for a delivery. Delight is important.

So back to “getting on the phone” as a forced metaphor. It’s Mother’s Day and I’m literally sending roses so I figured again it was obvious the items were going to my mother. That the flowers were not for me was implied but who knows. I wrote it out in the delivery instructions anyway.

This poor delivery man kept texting me asking where I was and where he should go. I text back the address and note that he should knock on the door to deliver it there.

He keeps asking me to come out. I get an automated call from the service threatening to cancel the order if I don’t respond to the driver who is trying to contact me. Sure. I’m trying to contact him but go off big corporation.

I call my mother. She is in the middle of cooking lunch. I happened to also be eating my own lunch when this kicked off but whatever. I cut her off feeling rude with “pleasantries in a moment, go outside right now there is a delivery man for you.”

She rushed out and successfully retrieves the roses! I hear some background talk as I’m still on the line but I can’t quite make it out. I hear a male voice. My mom gets back on the line. She says I’ve got stuff boiling over on the stove but I am so sorry I didn’t hear a knock.

I try to explain I I know the delivery man was confused so I just decided to pick up the phone. This isn’t your fault.. I didn’t mean to interrupt as it was meant to be a surprise. No need to chat please get back to stove. Admittedly a funny thing to say to one’s mother on Mother’s Day. And that was that. A quick phone call fixed the problem.

So maybe my husband has a point about just getting on the phone. I don’t know if I would have been able to help the flower delivery guy with a call but I could get to my mother even if it was disruptive. So if the spirit moves you maybe call someone. And yes she liked the roses.

Categories
Culture Internet Culture Politics

Day 1588 and American Pope

I am not a Catholic (though I am a Christian) so participating in the ambient excitement of welcoming the newly chosen Pontiff feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. Not my pope, not my Conclave right?

And yet I’m I am drawn in by the enthusiasm, the general spirit of joy and welcome, and, yes, the memes about ushering in the Pontiff.

As soon as the white smoke had been sent up, my group chats, media notifications and social streams went wild as we collectively learned more about the new Pontiff and his history. It was announced that Cardinal Robert Prevost would be named Pope Leo XIV.


Pope Leo XIV appears on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after being chosen the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, at the Vatican, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The details came quickly. And boy did the internet have questions (and a few answers). American Pope?! A Pope from Chicago?!

We soon learned he was a man who ministered to the poor in Peru for most of his life. He studied mathematics at Villanova. He went to seminary nearby my old university.

Blues Brothers Jokes were made as the Vatican must finish the work Francis had set in motion to modernize Vatican finances. A set financial troubles that has remained unfinished and is crucial for the pensions of the clergy.

Naturally many asked if the new Pontiff might be a basketball fan? A Knicks fan? Did he hoop himself?

Did he like Chicago pizza? He has eaten a hotdog at Weiner Circle according to Latin on their newly update sign.

The new Pontiff has a Twitter account. And boy does he Retweet some spicy stuff.

One of my girlfriends drove to see his childhood parish which is nearby her home. Chicago raised Catholics saving church finances so elderly clergy can retire in their home? I feel like I’ve seen this movie and loved it.

The symbolism of the Catholic Church and its representatives are clearly the stuff of which regular observers and semiotics scholars alike can read. Which made for an exciting day for everyone.

In the uncertain modernity we exist in the the Latin mass reassures many traditionalists but for everyone else a holy father who is relatable in interests, origin and culture brings even us Protestants a little closer to Rome.

Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 1587 and Wellderly

My husband’s expert testimony before Congress yesterday was a particularly exciting day even by my standards. I felt so drained today.

My bar for excitement was set pretty high this spring. It has so far included impromptu drives to Istanbul, seeing our right to compute bill get signed into law, watching a founder we backed unveil a nuclear reactor design and discussing futurism at my hometown’s university.

When I list it out I almost forget how much during this time I was battling side effects from a mold infestation and working through changing my medication for my autoimmune condition. I got my right eyelid slit open twice!

When Alex made it home to Montana after midnight I felt like I could finally sleep. I never sleep well alone and much as I tried to sleep as he was flying back I could not. I’m exhausted today and needed a nap to stave off a migraine.

As we get older I am sure we will continue to be called upon to show up. So much of my energy is drawn into improving my health so I can participate in civic and economic life.

I want to improve my health so I can continue to discuss, learn, advocate and invest for this very confusing transition to our future.

I can scoff at catchy neologisms like “wellderly” as marketing campaigns for famous doctors in an especially challenging era for medical trust. But I am also concerned about sleeping better, gaining muscle mass, and improving my meager health. A man has many concerns but a sick man has only one remains true.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 1585 and May Flurries

Colorado gardening lore says you should never move seedlings out before Mother’s Day. In Montana similar wisdom suggests keeping the less hardy planting till after Father’s Day.

You think this is a bit excessive till you experience a May snowstorm and you will no longer scoff at the farmer’s almanac types. Just this weekend we were doing spring cleaning chores.

Alex discovered a tire blowout on our Deere mower. Given the state of imports getting an order in to Deere for a replacement was the first thing we did. We’d had enough growth in the back yard that it looked about ready for a cut. The back pastures get hayed later but we now some areas and the verdant green grass needing cutting.

Now, of course, this means it is snowing to beat the band today. We’ve got a couple inching blanketing everything from front porch to back patio. Underneath one of the big fires there is a patch of green new spring grass. A reminder that false spring is tricky in the Rockies.

Categories
Finance Politics Preparedness

Day 1583 and The Last Tariff Free Shopping Spree

I remember the weeks before Covid-19 lockdowns hit vividly. My father went on international cruise, my husband was traveling domestically right up to the last week, and I got yelled at on the internet for discussing buying masks, toilet paper, and disinfectant.

My father got stuck in a Latin American port as borders closed, Alex made it back with mere days to spare before New York locked down and I had a well stocked pantry & dry goods cabinet. I was a prepper long before it became the default of normie Americans after Hurricane Sandy.

So naturally I’m trying to get ahead of the impacts of the tariff war as the last container loads of goods ordered before “Liberation Day” are sold through by American retailers.

Items Most Likely to Experience Shortages if the Drop in Container Cargo from China Persists
If the current sharp decline in container cargo from China to the United States continues, Americans are likely to see shortages-and significant price increases-across several key product categories. This is due to a combination of record-high tariffs (up to 145%) and a dramatic reduction in shipping volumes, with estimates suggesting a 60% to 80% drop in imports from China

Via Perplexity

Clothing basics, footwear, and cosmetics are at at the top of the list of potential shortage areas so I stocked up on underwear, socks, Aquaphor and hit “order” on the two pairs of athletic shoes I’ve had languishing my cart for months.

Amazon must be having a great couple of weeks.

I also decided to treat myself to a few Landmark classics including Julius Caesar and Alexander’s Campaigns. If the empire is falling I may as well revisit some of my schooling.

Plus I just returned from a run through Alexander’s empire so perhaps this is a moment to ground myself on the rise and fall of empires. I never did much care for Rome though but I didn’t expect to be born in a late republic.

I don’t know how this particular supply shock will play out and I feel lucky to be able to spend on thing’s frivolous and essential. Dry feet and military history are as good as any a thing to have on hand. I imagine we will have more serious inventory to do but it’s better to take the first steps.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 1582 and High Budget Androgny

One aspect of my personality that seems to most confuse other people is my appearance and my identity don’t meet their expectations.

Sasha Chapin (whose writing I’ve found useful many times) had an interesting Tweet today that made me consider how this contrast has potentially worked in my favor

So I have a theory that for most people, men and women, peak attractiveness in a hetero context involves high-budget androgyny

Low-budget androgyny: not inhabiting either gendered energy


High-budget androgyny: inhabiting your own fully, and a bit of the other

I’ve generally presented myself in a normative feminine manner. I’ve leaned into long hair, skincare and cosmetics. Yet all of my interests are masculine coded. I like economics, technology, and science fiction.

Sascha confirms that this would fall into his high budget androgyny conception. I am inhabiting an embodied aesthetic that is fully within the feminine while my intellectual interests code me into “other” lightly.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 1581 and Demand for 15 Friends

We live in an endless scroll world of relational voids. The ways we consume content has now surpassed even the worst fears of media theory greats like Marshall MacLuhan and Neil Postman.

Amusing ourselves to death is no longer a fear but a practical reality. So we spot auto playing clips divorced from context of tech CEOs revealing ever more horrifying statistics about how degraded our conditions have become.

I have no idea if this interview pull quote is from the frat bro former addict Theo Von who so likable interviewed Trump or from Dwarkesh the 24 year old artificial intelligence wunderkind. Context collapse indeed.

Zuckerberg explaining how Meta is creating personalized AI friends to supplement your real ones: “The average American has 3 friends, but has demand for 15.”

I think this tidbit on its own is open to a number of interpretations as our Bowling Alone era has been with us before Facebook.

We forget how inelastic social capital can be. We’ve got a statistic (not even a nod to Dunbar’s number) about friend demand without addressing the issue of friend supply. Of course, it’s not an economics problem as humans are not fungible.

We have a cultural and psychological problem on our hands when it comes to our new relational world as it’s mediated through digital intermediaries. Maybe you can make a case that there is a demand for 15 more people to improve your social standing.

You’d think the man at the head of the corporation who owns Instagram would understand status signaling. For plenty of people having friends is about your social position.

Fortunately for most of us friendship is still about feeling understood and caring enough to understand another person. Which an artificial intelligence is probably capable of doing. But that’s a different story.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1580 and Learn By Doing

Techne and episteme are foundational concepts in Greek philosophy. Practical knowledge and theoretical understanding are interwoven for humans.

Aristotle distinguished between five virtues of thought: technêepistêmêphronêsissophia, and nous, with techne translating as “craft” or “art” and episteme as “knowledge”

Via Wikipedia

As I enjoyed a brief trip to the academy last week I am myself considering how much meaning I derive from knowledge or episteme comes from my enjoyment of applying and experimenting with techne in my daily life.

As I’ve been pondering my own thought and it how it will change in this new era of artificial intelligence I find a calling to practice the virtues of thought in all its forms.

I have a love of chemistry and its applications in beauty. I find virtue in aesthetics and I enjoy many practices within it. Beauty is virtue with a long cultural history. Feminine cultural traditions of potions, cosmetics, and ablutions are an intertwining of disciplines that reflect our embodied humanity within our natural world.

And so in considering how I like to solve for my own pursuit of personal beauty I engaged with a friends interest in pursuing a personal routine that matched her needs, her heritage, her time and her resources. I wrote her an issue and packaged together a set of samples across all those variables with my own library of cosmetics.

A routine of cosmetics based on a set of inputs for a particular girlfriend

I’d love to formalize a way of sharing my knowledge and the flavors of personalization as it’s an enjoyable process of inputs with clear joyful outputs that I hope makes the daily life of someone better. And that might be how I teach myself the use of some new tools.

A Pareto optimal skincare test for under $100 a year
Categories
Chronicle

Day 1579 and Marking The Days

Everyone has their own zero day for something. I’ve been writing for one thousand five hundred and seventy nine days in a row. It is 2025 Anno Domini aka the year of our Lord. It has been 100 days since Trump was sworn back into office as President.

I’m sure someone is celebrating 100 days of sobriety. I’m sure there is a couple celebrating 10 years of marriage today. A totally ordinary day in the spring likely had any number of events big and small being noted today.

We seem to like marking the passage of time quite a bit. For Aristotle fans memory is key to the cultivation of techne. We mark events in order to remember them so that they may be handed down to the next generation. We repeat so we remember.

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 1574 and American HVAC

Being back in America after any amount of time in Europe is always a weird transition for me. I am in Colorado for an academic conference so I’m staying in a chain hotel.

Being accustomed to European systems that simply don’t work beyond a set range I turn the air conditioning on maximum before bed assuming at best I’ll achieve 22C (71.5 degrees in freedom units) as I like to sleep in a cool room.

I wake up with my Whoop warning me I have an “elevated body temp” and I think huh that’s weird it’s freezing in here. The room is 15C. That’s 59 degrees Fahrenheit for Americans.

Social media loves joking about PE HVAC takeover bros but a random conference hotel in Colorado has better air conditioning than the entirety of Western Europe.

You can stay in the best hotel in Frankfurt and it won’t get to a decent temperature. If you stay in an Airbnb and run an air conditioner you may even have troubles with the neighbors.

Isn’t it a bit odd you can be comfortable in a renovated 400 year old bank vault in Istanbul or a corporate chain hotel in American flyover states but Europe simply can’t manage climate control? Don’t worry though I’m sure NATO can re-industrialize no problem. Wink wink.

The way we virtue signal is so bizarre. Like let’s consider the 29 cent Dole branded banana I got at Trade Joe’s. It’s certified organic. The barcode tells me to look. Trader Joe’s is owned by a German conglomerate Aldi.

I’m Bob Dole.

The organic movement may be the original blueprint for ESG and DEI but it’s now so well accepted that hallelujah the mercenaries that guard the banana republic of Dole are verified socially responsible. It was only capitalism that ever forced their hands. Riddle me that my socialist friends.

And this brings me to my panel on Friday on whether technology can be a force used to counter culture. To which I respond with which culture are we countering and why?