Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 1130 and Accidental Fast

I had a series of unplanned excursions today that got slightly out of hand. A hotel didn’t work out and I found myself switching my base of operations.

In the process of moving about, I thought to myself “I’ll just have a coffee and eat later!” I fart all the time. It was 10am at that point and I’d had dinner the night before at 6pm.

Truly I sealed my own fate. I did not stop to eat for the next ten hours. I first repacked all of my clothing and other travel items. I then packed it all into a car. I then drove all over town running various errands to make sure I was prepared for the week. I didn’t want any distractions during my workweek.

Being practically minded, and hoping to avoid eating out for all meals, I ended up at a grocery store and bought a week’s worth of meal ingredients. That itself took over an hour. By then was a busy Sunday afternoon so it felt as if the entire city was doing grocery shopping at the same time as me. Fighting with folks in the parking garage made me reconsider if some people should be allowed cars at all. I was getting exasperated.

The drive to my subsequent my lodging managed to take well over an hour and a half. Traffic on the weekends right?

While I knew the lodging was up a hill it somehow didn’t occur to the “bitches be shopping” version of me at the grocery store.

The version of me that lives in reality had to schlep suitcases and a week’s worth of groceries up what my fitness tracker says is five flights of stairs. It took a few trips.

By the time I’d unpacked, put away the groceries and finally had the sense to put together a plate of cold cuts and tomatoes it was 6pm.

That number of activities doesn’t seem like it should have taken the whole day but at least I got in an accidental fast. I hadn’t planned to go an entire day but I’m sure I’ll make up for it with all the groceries I bought tomorrow.

Categories
Travel

Day 1129 and Ambient Noises

My corner of Montana is in the cozy quiet grip of rural winter. I’ve left that quiet behind for a trip.

I’m in a city center and I have a symphonic mix of civilizational noises. The hum of idling trucks, the roar of a motorcycle zooming past, and shrieking giggling teenagers walking past all remind me that density gives vibrancy.

I have become accustomed to quiet noises of country life. Winter in Montana has a wonderful muffled quality after a snow fall. Once a storm has passed and the winds have blown out, you enjoy such peaceful stillness under the snow.

The ambient noises of life drag on my attention. Even as the city outside goes on with its day the Airbnb has its own new noises. The odd efficiency apartment half sized fridge buzzes at a volume I don’t think my refrigerator at home could manage. My fridge runs so quiet an alarm goes off if it’s left open.

Adjusting to new environmental sounds is always a nervous system challenge. The ambient noises of life get categorized by your mind eventually but the adjustment is tiring. I hope these new noises become routine soon. I’d rather it be a thrum in the background filter of my brain instead of this awful foreground of novel noises.

Categories
Travel

Day 1127 and Smooth Sailing

I’m on the last leg of my journey. Yesterday I was marveling at the miracles but today I’m putting one foot ahead of the other. I want to keep getting through the connections and keep my head down.

I’ve had a relatively uneventful trip. No weather got in the way. No mechanical or crew issues delayed us for more than a few minutes No unruly passengers threw fits.

Even getting through security at my least favorite airport wasn’t so bad. Getting through airport security with injectable biologics is usually chore but the Gods smiled on me.

I appreciate how with tempered expectations every moment of travel can be appreciated. Smooth sailing in a choppy ocean is worth a smile.

Categories
Travel

Day 1126 and Modern Miracles

I am in transit at the moment. I’ve never calculated how many times I’ve flown on an airplane but I’ll presume I’m in the triple digits.

It’s not a new experience but it still has the power to astound me. That ugly bags of mostly water had the cognitive power and social coordination skills to lift our species to the sky still astounds me. How we’ve come to view this as anything but miraculous is beyond me.

Flying over Southwest Montana

And yet we become inured to wonder so quickly. Two women on my first flight were complaining about how awful air travel is these days. A common complaint and one I agree with generally.

Prosperity has made air travel as common as taking a bus for Americans. So I suppose the privileged few who remember a more glamorous time can’t help but tut tut about hoi polloi ruining the experience. American Airlines is less miserable than Greyhound, but you’d never know it based on the kvetching.

We’d been stuck on our plane after landing for twenty minutes or so. We’d arrived early so no good deed goes unpunished.

It was the first leg of my journey but seemingly the end of theirs as the two compared how long it has taken to arrive to their destination. Multiple flight delays and rerouting had given one woman a 40 hour transit for what amounted to regional travel.

I’ll be transiting over multiple days. It’s simply how it’s done at this point if you are going internationally. It’s obnoxious, time consuming and exhausting. And yet the miracle of our species achievement is still clear to me. I hope I still feel that way further into my journey.

Categories
Community

Day 1103 and Choosing Optimism

We finally got some significant snowfall in Montana last night. We’ve had a dry and relatively warm winter, so having half a foot of light powder was good news. It seemed to put everyone I met today in spirits.

I had cause to go into town and it was all smiles everywhere we went. A quick doctor visit was all enthusiastic exchanges about how beautiful it was outside.

The universe must have picked up on my general optimism as while we were in town some friends texted let us know they were coming through on their way to the airport. The timing worked perfectly as we went over to the other side of the valley to meet up before their next bit of travel and intersected for some socializing. Football games, bingo nights and bar food certainly sounds like a nice night in America.

As much pessimism infects our daily narratives, sometimes all it takes is a snow day and being together to remind you that we’ve got of reasons for optimism.

After reading about Joel Mokyr’s Culture of Growth thesis on the importance of a positive mindset for technological progress I’m reminded again that we have to bring that mindset to daily life.

The popularity of the e/acc mindset is a reminder that we can choose optimistic narratives to reset the negative algorithmic tilt. I am grateful for every social interaction I have with others who want to discuss progress. I see commitments in lives every day to building. There is optimism everywhere from biohacking to open source software to bingo nights.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1095 and 2023 Round Up

I’ve been sick for the last week and a half or so, so this round-up is coming on the last day of 2023.

As you may have gathered from my title schema, I have been writing every single day for 1095 straight days.

That means I’ve been doing this for three years which is a satisfying achievement. If you’d like see my favorite posts of 2021 here is a link to my first year round up. My round up for the second year of writing in 2022 was quite comprehensive as well.

Below is a list of categories that held my attention in 2023 and the posts I wrote as I tried to make sense of my rapidly changing world.

It probably tells you a lot that the largest sections are artificial intelligence, startups and community. I think this includes almost 50 posts so it’s a testament to how busy the year was that I couldn’t narrow it further. I spent time in Prague, Puerto Vallarta, New York City, Austin, Seattle, Frankfurt, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Amsterdam which is way more travel than I expected. Much of my focus was on investing work for chaotic.capital and is reflected across almost all categories.

Artificial Intelligence

Day 1078 Why We Keep Centering Ourselves

Day 1072 and Math is Leverage.

1055 and Freedom to Compute

Day 989 and Autopoeitic Ergodicity

Day 980 and Beff Jezos

Day 897 and Cruft and Email Bankruptcy

Day 826 and Alignment

Day 780 and Copernican Crisis of Meaning

Community

Day 1070 and Allocating Social Capital

Day 1055 and Shipping, Smoothing Narratives and Making Reality or Effective Acceleration Is About Choice

Day 1053 and Neo Revivalism

1033 and Agency Explosion & The Network State

Day 1025 and Petit Aristocracy

Day 978 and The Great Twitter Unfollowing

Day 932 and Schisms

Day 847 and Erasure in Crypto

Aesthetics

Day 1040 and Being First

Day 1023 and Automatic Doors

Day 1007 and Half A Decade After Premium Mediocrity

Day 961 and Repeating 2003 Aesthetics.

Day 748 and Molly Millions (William Gibson Casting Choices)

Travel

Day 1038 and Travel, Middle Markets & American Exceptionalism

Day 1030 and Helsinki

Day 1029 and Nordic Ferries

Day 1019 and Old Town Tallinn

Day 876 and Americana in Germany

Day 863 and Abstract The Pain Away

Day 749 and Beef in Prague

Economics and Politics

Day 1019 and Tallinn’s Free Enterprise & Alcohol

Day 1010 and Exogenous Shocks

Day 907 and Unaccountable Bureaucracy

Day 904 and Wardogging on Mobile Phones

Day 817 and Mourning A Bank

Day 811 and Hierarchies

Day 807 and Hyperinflation

Day 803 and Killing Strangers

Day 799 and Black Friday in Silicon Valley

Day 740 and Immigration Failures

Emotional Work

Day 1014 and A Fragile Birthday

Day 1000 and Milestones

Day 987 and Eggs

Day 902 and The Singer Lasts A Season

Day 895 and How to Stop Being An NPC

Day 845 and Fucked Fertility

Day 791 and Bathing Suits I’ve Never Worn

Day 784 and Endocrine

Day 731 and Auld Lang Syne Motherfuckas

Startups

Day 1001 and Circumstances Change

Day 970 and I’ll Be Your Publicist

Day 962 and Milestone Based Seed Rounds

Day 939 and Culture Wins Not Culture Wars

Day 906 and Resilience Tech

Day 840 and Chaos Magic

Day 783 and The Alliance (Vanity Fair Magazine coverage of chaotic.capital which is covered in two pieces on the blog)

Homestead & Montana

Day 976 and Chores

Day 969 and Hot Chicks

Day 958 and Civic Engagement

Day 940 and Buying Dishes

Day 856 and Springing Into Action

Day 766 and Weather Station

Categories
Travel

Day 1064 and Faster San Francisco

I am energized by my day. Any residual pain from the challenges of travel have been mitigated by rest, exercise, meditation and lots of medication.

If I could to give only one argument in favor of acceleration, it would be our capacity to improve medicine. I’d like to find a cure to my ankylosis personally, but it’s bigger than all that. I believe we should do everything we can to improve the health and well being of humanity.

I do so much to balance my own health and wellbeing just so I can keep working and contributing to the startups I love so much. Often I miss so much of life that others take for granted like socializing together. Hobbies, socializing and much of the tapestry of living together is off limits to me as energy budget is too high.

I’d like more capacity in life so I can chose not only to work, but to go to meetups, dinners and whatever else folks get up to in their leisure and community hours.

I am not one for FOMO while I’m in bed recovering, but on the occasional day where I get to do leisure activities I am reminded that I could have more of life if we agreed to prioritize the acceleration of medicine. My energy budget is only limited by the state of our healthcare.

On that note I’ll be at an e/acc meetup tonight in San Francisco. If you think you see me do please come up and say hello. I’d love to meet you. I’ll be wearing the leopard dress I have come to think of as the “spot me in the wild” outfit as well as three distinct wearables.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1063 and Overclocked

Since acceleration is within my meme space so heavily I am pushing myself to go faster. Predictably that introduces some instability in my Julie equilibrium. That’s a fancy way of saying I currently feel like shit.

I’ve been a bit immobile for the last couple hours from hitting some type pain wall from overclocking myself. I’d hope it would pass so I could focus and write but it’s getting late on the West Coast and it doesn’t seem likely.

It’s possible this isn’t entirely the fault of excess strain from travel and it is in some manner hormonal. I wonder if at some point an artificial intelligence will be able to deduce my follicular and luteal phases by sentiment analysis on my blog.

Feels like a compelling argument for restricting government power over your bodies doesn’t it? Imagine the unceasing eye of Sauron collecting context clues about your reproductive system and the right to bodily autonomy goes poof.

Anyways I’m out for the night to go do battle with the pain so I can accelerate more tomorrow.

Categories
Biohacking Startups

Day 1039 and Can’t Wait for Monday

Maybe this is my second wind finally kicking in but I cannot wait to start my week tomorrow.

I am pleased that this is how I feel at 5pm Mountain Time. I woke up at 3am thanks to my comical jet lag from having been on GMT +8 for several weeks. I don’t recommend flying a transcontinental flight the day before daylight savings incidentally. I proceeded to feel like absolute shit all day.

But as the Sunday scaries kick in for the rest of the timeline, I am absolutely pumped for my work week. My workload is just super exciting.

The Network State conference left me pumped. The mutuals I spent time with in Amsterdam for other engagements also got me pumped. A founder I’ve been working with for almost a year is hitting his first visible traction moment and I am pumped to strategize with him. Another builder friend is interested in pursuing some funding and asked me to weigh in. The communications work I do for founders has led me to a particularly interesting challenge I want to help them solve.

I am just overall really excited for my work. I can only hope my body is up for it. I will have to carefully manage rest and recovery as this workload is worth the annoyance of treating my body with utmost care.

Categories
Travel

Day 1038 and 9th Circle

Yesterday began my long twenty four hour schlep from Amsterdam to Bozeman Montana. I pissed and moaned about the chaos of Schiphol. I arrived plenty early and still barely made my flight.

The real challenge wasn’t in my sights yet. I did a layover in Dulles before heading to Chicago O’Hare for a final direct to Bozeman Montana. When I got to O’Hare, I had all the bags for a five week trip in Europe on my person.

I attempted to walk to the airport shuttle area only to get lost inside a parking garage. Finally I made it into what looked like a side alley for the shuttles and busses. And proceeded to wait for an hour for the Hyatt bus. Sunk cost fallacy caught up with me fast as I didn’t want you to lug my bags back to find a taxi half a mile away. I was already at 11000 steps, exhausted and half mad from 15 hours of transit.

I was in my own 9th circle. Middle management road warriors of a certain age fighting for an airport shuttle to a Hyatt Regency 30 minutes late. One lady blamed the extra traffic on “the immigrants” while a regional sales director discussed selling mortgage products to Wells Fargo wealth managers during the run up to the global financial crisis.

Big hair don’t care energy from a woman who sold mortgage products to GFC era Wells Fargo wealth managers. Now she sells pharmaceuticals

The woman who sold mortgage products to wealth manager began discussing her “hot mess labradoodle named Karma” and I swear this is not a joke.

She told her companion you can tell things are bad as her trip to Big Sky is too expensive this year. That I don’t lose it on her in that moment is an act of self control.

The delay at the shuttle was so long the line ended up being 50 deep to actually check in at the vast conference hotel.

And what a display of American exceptionalism. Not only was there a pharma conference (that’s where the mortgage product woman was headed as sales is sales) but there was also a regional dance cheer competition for tween girls and a field hockey & lacrosse competition for boys.

The demographics of this odd mix did explain why there are dozens of “not yet rich enough for ozempic but rich enough for Little Miss Subshine’s glitter and a stay at the Hyatt.” White obese stage mothers who spend too much at Ulta were heavily represented. Blessedly the lacrosse and field hockey boys were just noisy.

My flight touched down at 7pm. It’s now 9pm and I am finally checked into my room. I pulled the disability card with my ankylosis & begged a guy to get me a keycard. Tried to tip him $40. He wouldn’t take it. Compromised as I insisted on $20.

We discussed the mortgage products sales lady & how he didnt think his generation would ever own a home. He was a zoomer. He’s probably right.

As I finally gave up on the day, laying in bed I can hear two kids kid above me practicing catching and tossing with their lacrosse sticks Thwack and release. Over & over. Thankfully I had ear plugs. Only one three hour flight left to get me home to Montana.