Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

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Medical Politics

Day 1495 and Respiratory Training & Divide and Conquer

I’ve been involved in a few conversations about how some startups (alas deemed the Tech Right) have found themselves aligned with a very unexpected coalition of people.

Whatever is happening it looks like a coalition of people who have lost institutional trust in the American ruling class has emerged as the majority. And naturally there is a lot of tension in the big tent as many of us have sincere reservations about the Trump administration.

The Biden era of Chokepoint 2.0 and censorship policies, a hostile M&A position, and threats to tax unrealized capital gains have left “little tech” from crypto to artificial intelligence to Figma employees fearful.

I am concerned that propaganda being what it is has manynarratives designed to weaken the resolve of this Americans majority.

In other topics, I am trying a Pr02 device to work on respiratory strength. It has shown promise in improving your V02 max by training your respiratory pressure through inspiratory muscle training. So I’ll be playing around with that as I’ve got 8 weeks of regular use before improvements show.

Categories
Media Politics

Day 1494 and Back to Chaos

The Zoomers have so little institutional memory. They don’t remember the first Trump administration. Imagine having no memory of the pitched battles of institution versus ego. I envy them.

The Zoomers I talk to seem to have some memory of a good boom year but then their memories are strongly colored by the many traumas of the panic. Persistent online worlds with a global shutdown didn’t do right by them.

Now that we are back to the chaos of a Trump presidency I have no fond simulated idea of nostalgia for Trump for myself.

In 2016 our politics broke my assessment of what was possible and I did not like where the chaos would lead. I definitely could not predicted how much my own position on issues would change though. I still don’t know the best path but I have ironically opened my eyes to the scale of the issue. They used to call that being “woke” but like the term a lot has changed.

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Chronic Disease Politics

Day 1490 and Healthcare’s Sin Eaters

I went to see a rheumatologist today. I had the baffling experience of them wanting to actually get to know me. Which was surprisingly unhelpful in the moment but really nails vibe we’ve got with healthcare in America.

I kvetched on Twitter that I spent my week defending hot girls and open source software while I deride Big Pharma and public employee unions. That’s more of a humble brag about my priorities. But I felt bad that I picked on pharmaceuticals. I got replies. Why harsh on pharmaceuticals? And actually fair.

Drug companies are the least bad of some very bad actors. For all its faults, drug companies are not just existing to be parasitic like pharmacy benefit managers or generate wealth through regulatory capture like Epic.

If anything pharma is the sad scapegoat in healthcare. We pick one drug a decade to laud & then like clockwork do a hard reversal on it in a decade or two. Patients get hurt and doctors did their best. We saw with statins, SSRIs, opioids, adderall, and I’m sure soon GLP-1s will be next to have Netflix documentaries. Someone is always to blame and it’s usually the drug companies.

Some category is designated a sin eater for the system’s horrors. Which isn’t at all fair as all those drugs serve real needs. Sorry Oxycodone you remain a villain. But why is American in so much pain?

Which gets back to my surprise as having a doctor who wanted to get to know me. We came in with a typed up diagnostics sheet with a timeline of treatments, protocols and medications and the bastard has the audacity to ask me about the quality of my life.

I hesitate to say “well shit” because I am Protestant from Scandinavians stock because we pride ourselves on being “oh just fine”

And of course I’m the asshole who quotes Kierkegaard at my doctor. Sickness unto death right Doctor? Which I guess is a bit of a downer.

The man actually asked me if I’d consider managing my pain more aggressively. I am absolutely mogged by the audacity of the sentiment that I could suffer less.

Apparently no one scans you for drug seeking behavior when you chuckle and kneel before what God has decided for you. So that’s a good trick I guess for the less sincere.

You can really see how public perception of RFK Jr is so different from what elite narratives would like to see. People are with RFK’s righteous indignation. Why are so many suffering?

The cranks and the crazies are here because America is mostly gaslit by a nest of bad incentives. Doctors don’t want any of this. Neither do the drug companies. But someone has to be blamed and it’s usually the guys with the money. But they are trying as hard as anyone to actually come up with solutions.

Maybe no one deserves to have a righteous Kennedy come after them. But everyone feels a little bit crazy with how the system works now.

Categories
Media Politics Preparedness

Day 1489 and Foggy Frosty

I felt it was very important to get off the internet and soak in some restorative aesthetics. We are in a shock and awe moment almost anywhere you look from national politics to geopolitical technology competition. And everyone is jangling for narrative.

We’ve been a fog of informational war so long we forget we are all subject of multiple intersecting and independent actors who want your attention to be on their issues and their terms. We are living in context collapse hell.

Ans it’s not going to get any better. Many independent minded citizens are arising in these challenging times and they all operate with mindful caution. We have to invent our way out of the most challenging information environment of our lives.

Americans don’t realize we are subject to political and industrial competition and it plays out across social media. Don’t think because you know it is being done that you aren’t heavily affected. America has foreign enemies and quite a few domestic ones.

Extremism exist in some very weird bubbles. I am concerned seeing rationalist singularity cultists. But I’m also concerned about high frequency hedge funders who manipulate markets. We are in a great power competition and I’m sure we all have totally sensible opinions about open source artificial intelligence models. Right?

It’s all very cyperpunk. Manipulation of financial markets is as grey zone a tactic as sniping the telecoms pipeline from Helsinki to Tallinn. And we should be concerned about being competitive. We’ve been snowblind before

It’s a nuisance as neither you nor I have a clear line of view. Some of us maybe have a few months heads up. The lead feels less and less even as I am as much a part of shaping narratives as anyone. I was using DeepSeek in the fall.

When I was in fashion we had this website called “don’t believe the hypebeast” to mog those overly concerned with cool. Don’t get mogged. The same principle applies here. Don’t try to figure it all out.

Go read something with soul, listen to some Bach, and be with your family. Be frosty in the fog and exist in the real while you still can.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1488 and Tune Ups

The back half of 2024 was such a whirlwind I keep discovering new eras where I am behind on keeping the engines of my life tuned.

While I’m adding in new excitement to my healthcare like hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy (in the market to acquire one for my own use if you have recommendations) I’ve still got to make the various rounds for everything from my general practitioner to my osteopath to my dermatologist.

If the world is going to insist on going at this pace and I’m unwilling to slow down (because why would I?) then it’s full speed ahead on regular time ups and maintenance.

I hadn’t been to my osteopath since August. I hadn’t been in for Botox since October. And apparently I’ve not had a haircut since July.

Yes some of these are a bit more cosmetic than health driven but I’m somewhere closer to an old Mercedes than the family Subaru when it comes to appreciating form and function.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1483 and Trending Up

I let myself get a little shook up by some poor health news early in the month. I’ve been pushing it physically all through 2024 as let’s be real it’s an exciting time. To fully capitalize on that acceleration we are all more focused on improving our health.

I’m taking action and optimistic about where we are headed with improvements in healthcare. I was able to rapidly iterate through options and set up surprisingly effective new treatments.

As we’ve work through the significant impact of the pandemic on our understanding of post viral illness and autoimmunity, we’ve had a more systems driven approach to testing interventions beyond pharmaceuticals reach more people.

Not that all pharmaceutical interventions are bad obviously as I’m lucky to have interleukin inhibitors in my life. I was able to find a new option with my doctor thanks to help from Claude and Perplexity.

And this progress is happening across all areas of medicine. I am also incredibly bullish on the benefits of GLP-1 inhibitors and their next generations. Inflammation and metabolism are intertwined in ways we can control barely articulate beyond “mind body connection” and yet we are developing the vocabulary.

I enjoy strange adventures in the future now. I am going to be experimenting on my body as it helps me understand not only myself but the evolving opportunities in investing. Even science fiction is excited about biotechnology.

The problems I am solving for myself teach me how we will allocate resources across many industries. The energy required to power artificial intelligence and the chips required to run those models will be pulled forward by our desire for solutions to living healthy lives

Categories
Aesthetics Community Politics

Day 1482 and Freedom, Responsibility and License

A Twitter Mutual who goes my the handle Vivid Void began a discussion about the challenge of having a friendship with someone whose highest value is freedom.

Now in the corner of Twitter where we discuss shared values and personal mutuality, there is an array of anonymous, pseudonymous and real name characters.

Running from how we know what we know

These accounts bring their experiences to the understanding of current civilizational values to life across many mediums beyond Twitter. Our wojack would be the epistemology enjoooyer but most of the memes have a darkness to them.

I happen to prefer the Twitter discourse and felt a pull to VividVoid’s thread on friendship with those who have freedom as the highest value speaks to my own conviction that freedom only exists within a broad set of personal responsibilities.

To think otherwise is to presume you have license which is claim for yourself of presuming a kind of irresponsibility that means you don’t suffer the consideration of others affected by your actions.

I don’t think it’s freedom as a value that is the problem. It’s the lack of realization that to truly maximize freedom, one must attend to many things (health, relationships, self knowledge, work, etc) which temporarily feel constricting – cowtongue

Freedom ultimately means responsibility to the choices you made and the people who are affected by them.

Libertarians in particular should most sincerely believe in the bedrock of responsibility in ensuring freedom.

Without that way shared way of knowing and understanding freedom we have juvenile behavior and culture. Those seeking to defer responsibility to others seem to seek a license for facing no consequences. It’s poison to any political system.

that it’s child-like to think of freedom as a thing you can have, a thing that exists, in the absence of responsibilities – forthwriter

There is no freedom absent responsibility. That’s an expensive view so I understand why people would prefer license to avoid that heavy burden.

I’d wager the biggest complaint of feminism is women who claim the agency of freedom but run to license when overwhelmed by the very real mutual responsibilities that bind us.

That is no less true of men. To claim freedom to act as a man has always meant bearing the responsibility of that power.

When men only wish for the freedoms of power without the responsibilities undergirding your claim to your own freedom it can be maddening.

Both genders wish for less license and much more responsibility in the freedom to build a thriving society of mutuality. And you might ask how to I know this?

It was revealed to me
Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1481 and smh

When I got started with my daily writing project I knew there would be days when I did not want to write. Today is one of them.

I actually expected “ugh no want to write” days to be more frequent than turned out to be true. I’ve bitched about it 51 times which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things.

I knew I’d find a way to force the issue just as I had made other habits a part of my life. You really can make almost anything a habit if you are so inclined. But I rarely have to force habit. I just do the thing till it’s either a habit or it’s clear it’s not for me. They say it’s 21 days but I’d give it more like 100 to be safe.

Things I just do every day include applying facial moisturizer, brushing my teeth, squatting (no not just on the toilet I mean the full body compound exercise), taking my vitamins, Tweeting, playing a stupid pay to play Chinese mobile game, telling my husband I love him and opening up my mobile content management app to write this post.

And yet I am in a real “smh” place today with my attempts to find meaning in any of my habits. I’m disappointed in more than a few things. It’s all very Cthulhu and Antarctic cold vibes for me today. Sure it’s -20 in Montana but it’s very sunny so it’s cheery dread.

Anyways, the interregnum is over, we have a new President who is an old President and everything that is new is old and everything old is new again.

The entire Arnault family showed up for the inauguration so Dior’s New Look is back. Does that make this a post war moment? Did we live through a cultural revolution and not even notice? Smh.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics Travel

Day 1480 and Here We Go

I’m recovering today from transcontinental travel. My body is reconciling itself with my soul after moving through the liminal spaces of German airports through the threshold of Chicago’s regional transit on to my home in Montana.

Travel always feels otherworldly to me and it’s not just the amazement of being above the clouds. The dreamscape surreality of time changing is disorienting to me. Time shifts ambiguously on long journeys which lends an added dimension of unease that comes with the change of place.

It doesn’t help that I’m already feeling the end of the political interregnum in America especially strongly. We may have vibe shifted but it’s unclear what comes next.

It seems appropriate to be uneasy. Everything as a Joker-esque “and here we go” craziness aesthetic to it. Memecoins and the Village People and algorithmic inflections makes the topology of the now impossible to map.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical Uncategorized

Day 1476 and Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

I’m thrilled to see that the very week I began my hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy that we’ve had multiple experiments and data come in.

Bryan Johnson helped answer a few questions in my set up so I was delighted to see he himself was just wrapping up a major experiment with HBOT.

Step into my hyperbaric chamber courtesy of Bryan Johnson’s Twitter

Earlier in the week Harvard professor David Sinclair tweeted a thread on with links to the newest scientific literature on treatment. Stuff with names like Activation of SIRT1 by hyperbaric oxygenation promotes recovery of motor dysfunction in spinal cord injury rats

Esssays

A lovely meditation on what happens when you write 11,000 blog posts. In this case startup blogging. I’m written an order of magnitude less so hopefully I can avoid some of the negative consequences and enjoy the lessons.