It’s hard to trust, well, anything. The uncertainty of the near future looks like the uncertainty of the far future right now.
It feels as if one is in a fog so thick that you can’t see your own hand reaching out to touch something at arm’s length let alone glimpse gjr far horizon
How do we set goals and work towards outcomes in that kind of world? I find it unsettling despite having years to prepare for a more chaotic world.
I am learning to let go of grasping for specific outcomes and lean on process to bring me to outcomes. I work the problems in front of me. I maintain the protocols that work for me. When they cease to yield results I change as rapidly as I am able.
I have now done six days of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy (HBOT for short) in a row. I also did a vitamin IV with glutathione so my morning was well occupied with maximizing wellness.
Because I was inside a chamber and tied to a chair for a few hours I was able to enjoy my backlog of reading. If you enjoy essays and e-ink books I personally use a combination of Readwise Reader and Daylight.
A fan of Leibniz? The New Yorker reviews two books on his life. The polymath wrote quite a bit which endears me to him but our real debt to him goes beyond calculus notation. George Boole’s logic is partially informed by Leibniz.
Leibniz loved the simplicity and the suggestiveness of binary: he titled a draft paper “Wonderful Origin of All Numbers from 1 and 0, Which Serves as a Beautiful Representation of the Mystery of Creation, since Everything Arises from God and Nothing Else.”
Is middle age sexy? I went to read the styles piece in the New York Times only to discover that one must be over 50 to count. This elder millennial keeps trying to claim the mantle of middle age but Gen X and Boomers refuse to age.
“We aren’t quitters” could be a tagline from a sports movie, a speech about the American people or your parent’s family philosophy.
Fortune favors those with fortitude. Gritsums up entire pedagogies of successful education and institutional cultures.
And here I am, one day at a time, continuing to log my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them on this public journal.
When I first began I thought the experiment to write every single day I thought would last a month. Then I thought maybe I could make it to a full year. Now I’m unsure if I will ever want to stop. I’m not even sure I know how to stop?
I’m less sure the narrative aspects of this log are as crucial to me as when I first started . I wanted to improve my capacity to write regularly so I set out to practice that creative process.
Having achieved my goal to write and publish each day, it may be time to evolve this narrative into a more traditional blog format from the past.
We used to include links, asides, and unrelated tidbits alongside narratives and storytelling in old school weblogs. I may try to try to include tidbits of what I am seeing each day as a way of sharing my context and inference process.
If the mood stokes for essays (as is my usual habit) that’s fine and if the mood strikes for a log of influences that is fine too. Year five has permission to be whatever it likes.
Hannu Rajaniemi an entrepreneur and science fiction author has a new book Darkome about a world where with a corporate giant who invented a mRNA vaccine wearable and an underground of biohackers working to keep those vaccines and edits available online not available in America but thankfully I got a copy in Europe.
Why do we know so little history? Bogus airport bestsellers are one culprit. Or a bestseller anyone who took an AP history course “A World Lit Only By Fire” is mostly bunk. Turns out that’s common.
“Style is a magic wand; everything it touches turns to gold.”
One of my resolutions for 2025 is to use LinkedIn. I know it’s a little weird, but a whole swathe of professionals simply don’t Tweet, shit post or blog.
Many professionals brand themselves with polished post on more poised platforms. Their branding is less about authenticity or raw insights and more about composure.
As I’ve been popping in to my old “work” networks and encountering long lost colleagues from my past life in the lifestyle trenches of fashion, beauty and luxury I’ve noticed a grim trend amongst the composed and polished.
These professionals were concerned that in the wider style industry, quality has all but disappeared while costs are way up.
Like my sad Kiki boots, much of old-school luxury — the kind that was so glamorous, lush and exquisite that everyone understood it, many craved it and few could have it — is beyond repair. Once-revered establishments that prided themselves on craftsmanship, service and cultivating a discerning and loyal customer base have become mass-marketing machines that are about as elegant and exclusive as the Times Square M&M’s store.
Everyone has their own style and preferences naturally. When everyone from the tried and true heritage heads to the nouveau grunge appreciators complain that everything is crap and there is far too much of it then a we’ve got a problem.
Ms Zarrella’s Marc Jacob platform boots may be more Doc Martin Hot Topic than my own preference but I doubt I could replace my beloved kitten heel knee high Gucci boots either. We are both stuck with expensive choices that won’t last.
I’ve simply stopped shopping anywhere but a few select unbranded stores like Italic. Repairs are the only option if you have existing pieces you love. There are no replacements available. Even if you are willing to pay the new prices the quality is terrible.
Freshly repaired by LeatherSpa after seventeen years of service on the mean streets of New York
Ten years ago when I was struggling in my role as CEO of a startup I’d cofounded, I was introduced to a classic business book called Leadership and Self Deception. I read it in one setting on an airplane. It was that good. Or I was that bad. Probably both.
The research explored how we end up creating and sustaining problems we don’t know we are causing, and how and why people resist helpful solutions. They discovered the clear and surprising way that people begin to evade responsibility without thinking that they are doing so, and therefore end up blaming others or circumstances they, themselves, are helping to create
It’s worth the read even if you are the type who prefers a synopsis. I believe most business books could have been a blog post personally. That’s how strongly I recommend the book.
Self aware leaders enable personal responsibility in themselves and their teams. And yet we all lie to ourselves in our personal and professional lives to evade taking responsibility for who we are and what we want.
It’s easier to evade responsibility. Things happen to us and we let others direct the course of our lives. This is not however a path to effective leadership and it’s a miserable way to become a victim of everyone and everything.
There are many frameworks for overcoming the self deception our ego generates. We are not doomed to self sabotage and evade seeing ourselves clearly.
Leadership and Self Deception is just one option I recommend. The Art of Accomplishment’s VIEW methodology for connected communication is another I found beneficial. Even Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous offer frameworks for overcoming the lies we tell ourselves.
It’s going to be so tempting to bullshit ourselves as the next era of politics unfolds and a whole new generation of technology is adopted with artificial intelligence. Do yourself a favor and tune up on spotting your own bullshit.
Cool is as scarce as a resource as our species has ever encountered. We plunder and horde cool like the spice in Dune even though absolutely anyone is capable of becoming cool.
I know you probably want to argue but Julie I’ve never been cool or no one I know is cool. Well I’m sorry but that’s actually a skills issue and you can be a part of culture.
Anyone can become cool by not giving too many fucks about the rules. Notice I didn’t say “no fucks” as obviously there are rules and gatekeepers and all kinds of ways to modulate what I’ll call cultural capital.
It’s not too hard to become a polite participant in the unwritten rules of culture. If you are additive to any of ways we create, propagate and monetize culture you will be welcomed in once you learn to contribute.
Looking for a toehold? One of the ways we decide on who and what is cool is simply by showing up to the various nodes of wealth and power I’ll call the circuit. An artist mutual of mine calls it the city with legs.
If you are curious and want to participate the the circuit roughly encapsulates the vacation and social calendars of our global elite class. And it’s quite public and often reasonable accessible if you are curious enough to research. Read the styles section and you notice the repetition.
It’s a more diverse group than you might think. It’s certainly more open to than when society was run by a hereditary aristocracy. Yet it’s still contained enough that anyone on the circuit jokes it’s the same old thing.
Sometimes folks complain that you never meet anyone new on the circuit and it’s true you encounter the same people over and over again. You will probably see me from time to time. Power likes cool because cool is a powerful determinant of wealth and status.
If you attend the main fashion weeks, the world economic forum, the Met Gala, Art Basel, Formula 1 races, the awards seasons, or the main conferences you have encountered the circuit. If you have met someone who winters or summers somewhere then you have seen the circuit.
Maybe just as a townie but you’ve seen it. Even a cat can look at a king. If you’d like to hop on the circuit be sure to bring something to the table. The thing about culture is we are always looking for new faces. You too can try out being cool just for fun. Break a few rules but maybe ask someone on it which ones they follow to get a feel for it first.
We both like to tinker with new artificial intelligence features and I have got a large training set with lots of tagging.
The synopsis it kicked out of two chatting AI hosts makes it sound like I have written a New York Times bestseller on the cultural and emotional adaption in the Great Weirdening.
So naturally instead of sharing those wins with you I’ll show the emotional underbelly. He asked it to generate my blind spots and boy did the AI read me the riot act.
Beware the AI knows you better than you know yourself
I don’t know if I am blind to these as I see them as faults. I can easily go down rabbit holes and overextend myself. I worry about my physical capacity constantly. That’s why it’s such a clear theme in my writing.
I definitely recommend this as an exercise if you have enough personal content to feed into the generator. Seeing clearly into your blind spots gives you a chance see around the corners of your own life. It’s not quite the same thing as therapy but maybe just as useful.
I sit in between half a dozen different community nodes thanks to my interests in open source software, decentralization, crypto, and autonomous systems technology.
This set of interest covers a lot of ground from ecosystem level collaboration in financial organizations like DAOs and to player versus AI agents coordination to peripheral control of drones and machinery.
Many different demographics are attracted to these frontiers for different reasons. Hackers have a very different mentality than mercenary technologists looking for maximum margin.
Open source has traditionally struggled more from a lack of financialization than from an obsession with it. Which seems less true in the crypto era than in previous more academic and defense oriented eras.
There are classic open source business models and anyone with age and experience in startups has some opinions which I leave as an exercise to the reader. They occasionally fail and an open core loses more than they’d like to professional services. I am writing on WordPress.
One strange aspect of what drives these frontier spaces to interact is that depending on how much leverage you find in building a network you may have different incentives than other builders and users. Expanding out to scaled use may drive a lot more value than the resources required. How the surplus gets divided is always contentious.
For some, the most crucial cultural goals is expanding access to automation and ripping away as many of the services and middle men as is feasible.
Decentralized systems make it harder for middle men to maintain monopolies. Thats its own goal for true believers. For others the goal massive financialization that drives network connectivity is the benefit. Self interest driving common goals is perfectly acceptable.
As I watch the current season of hyper self interested memecoin cryptomania engage with the academic utopian open source artificial intelligence community, I am reminded of so many of the classic issues we have in financing and sharing in the spoils of common infrastructure. Who benefits is a question we should all be asking more regularly
As no cultural heritage must remain uncommercialized, you can find many pop culture best sellers on Swedish “lagom” philosophy.
“Not too little, not too much. Just right”
I’d actually never heard of it until today despite being the daughter of a Swedish American man. I am not one for balance though I actually do live a life of simple routines.
Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life.
This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success:
“You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything”
I did not think I was anything special as a child. I’d laugh listening to Garrison Keillor describe the Lake Wobegon residents who were all above average. Those jokes landed with Minnesotans because who would be so foolish as to set unrealistic expectations?
I went through most of my life with the presumption that I was totally normal. I liked ketchup didn’t I? I wasn’t out of the ordinary and didn’t think I was especially intelligent or attractive relative to my peers.
As it turns out this was a real lack of self knowledge on my part. But it set me up for happiness. Every win feels fantastic because in my head I’m just a normal girl from a normal family who will achieve normal things.
None of that ended up being true. And I’ve been pleased to find myself actually quite a bit above average. They say expectations are premeditated resentments. And I have precious few of those.
Maybe I have achieved lagom. I’ve got just the right amount of expectations for my life. Set it low and your achievements will always be great.
My natural optimism is looking for the positive. If you go in for numerology 14 is a good number for the moment as 1 represents independence, leadership and change while 4 is stability and balance.
The world is shifting but my path is clear in front of me. We may be on a chaotic course but the adaption brings us new opportunities. I’ll just do my best to get enough sleep when things get exciting
