The “circuit” of conferences, events, parties and social goings on can make you feel like a consummate insider or give you social anxiety. For some of us, a given circuit is an exercise in social overwhelm, and for others it can be highlight of their calendars. It takes all kinds.
The “circuit” is a part of life for every industry. For some it’s a bit more glamorous; oh yes I’m off to such and such fashion week for cruise. And for others it’s much more pedestrian. A cash bar with drink tickets in a Courtyard by Marriott surely does the trick for state level budget professionals.
At a certain point, you realize there is always another room and a better party and a circuit inside the circuit and you get rid of the highs and lows of the experience and simply learn to live with the iron law of the circuit and schedule life around various aspects where real life and circuit life intersect. Everyone is on some part of the circuit.
Many places are aggressively part of the circuit. My hometown of Boulder lobbied hard to take on Sundance from Park City. I was just in Deer Valley above Park City for a new crew of energy policy folks. Swapping Hollywood schmoozing for nuclear energy seems like a wise move though I don’t know how Boulder will handle an event of that size.
Meanwhile, I learned that Athens is booting up a new technology conference that I just missed. Right before summer high season is an excellent time to bring folks down to the Mediterranean before jumping off to private islands and yachts.
I wonder about other mainstays on the circuit sometimes. Austin won’t host SXSW forever one imagines. But where should it go and should it split up? March will never be the same.
Burning Man is changing, maybe forever, and even storied camps are selling their vehicles. It’s a great week on the circuit and that time will surely be coveted. If I were Wyoming, I’d been keen to extend folks out from the Federal Reserve contingent within the western region but one doubts Nevada coordination with Wyoming is a top priority amongst old party hippies and economic enthusiasts, but you better believe the overlap includes a few folks.
Not that the circuit is a geographically constrained issue for most people on the most serious aspect of the circuit. And if it is you probably fly private or have excellent transit logistics. Bouncing from Fashion Week to Word Economic Forum isn’t a huge stretch if that’s your world.
I’m thinking about the circuit because I was on a chunk of business that was circuit related most of the spring. There was a brief pause in international traffic as the Iran situation worked itself out but everyone seems to be back to normal travel again.
The friction of coming in and out of reality is surreal. The circuit is not exactly part of normal reality as if you only participate in a few events it is the unreality of your calendar which makes it so special. If you live entirely outside of reality, it’s not quite so special.
I myself always find reality special but the dip in and out of unreality is jarring. I find one foot in each is hard to manage. I’m in unreality at the end of the circuit. And I need to reach again for reality even on vacation in unreality land.
I have really had a busy spring. I was across the country from Utah to Washington DC and back to Montana with an outing to San Diego. Montana did not get much of a winter which is always a disappointment.
I never expected to spend so much time on policy issues. It has unexpectedly taken over a a real portion of my time.
The nature of my portfolio investments has slowly taken me across every issue from banking’s relationship to crypto to the nuclear renaissance to artificial intelligence. American needs a lot from its younger generations and we need to support them.
I feel an obligation to bring my full self to the issues as it gets to the heart of what could change the nature of assumptions of costs and access in meaningful ways.
I do however need a break from all of this as I am quite tired from all the back and forth. I need to take a little break and get some off grid time on another continent. I need to get some perspective before celebrating America’s 250th. There is a lot happening.
So if all I wrote about is makeup and skincare and some science fiction for a couple weeks I hope no one minds. I need a break. I need some Netflix even.
I just had a lovely transcontinental polar flight from San Francisco to Munich. I had access to the Polaris lounge for dinner beforehand where I got a hot meal and was able to livestream an event.
Afterwards I sat myself to watch the sunset and enjoy the parade of takeoffs. Every 2-5 minutes a jet would arc up across the lounge windows, and depending on its size and destinations would slowly bank to the right.
Airplane taking off from San Francisco International airport as seen from Polaris Lounge in the G Gates
It couldn’t have been a more enjoyable way to spend a layover. I must have recorded half a dozen airplanes soaring past to send to Alex as he and I both share a life of air traffic control logistics. The G terminal is undergoing a renovation as well so it has bonus heavy equipment to watch as well.
From the Polaris lounge the G terminal area renovations
I headed to my flight with time to spare so I could get in line first for my boarding class. Too much standing with a backpack hurts me spine. It turned out to be a mistake. The gate agent came over immediately and insisted she weigh my roller bag & my backpack as as it “looked too heavy” so she needed to check. Even though I had a business class ticket, she said would gate check my carry on roller unless I repacked or threw away unnecessary items.
I was confused as I’ve never has anyone weigh my bag at the gate. It has been weighed on my first leg and deemed fine. It fits all normal size constraints even for a regional yet. It should easily fit into the large containers of a transcontinental Airbus where the overhead only needs to accommodate two people’s luggage. None of this made a difference to her.
My suitcase was 2kg over the limit though my backpack was 2kg under the limit. I explained to her I generally pack my suitcase heavy and backpack lighter as I have ankylosing spondylitis so I keep my pack light. S
he scolded me saying if that was true I’d have registered my disability. I tried to explain that disability pre-boarding has become such a scammer’s paradise this method was easier on my spine. I was under the total weight and she could measure to confirm it worked.
Power makes people do odd things. She forced me to repack both bags so they each worked under the limit. But even then tagged my luggage as “heavy and oversized” saying she’d still need to gate check it. I excused myself to the bathroom and removed the tag as it fit the bin and had the correct weight. I wasn’t going to allow her to bully me out of the fair faire I’d purchased.
I got back in the business class line where more trouble awaited me. A very haughty man said I shouldn’t be in the line it was for first class. I explained that there was no first class on this flight, which is why boarding group 1 was combined with 2 but he said I was being silly as we all had to wait and he should be ahead of me and I shouldn’t be in line at all till they called business class.
I didn’t even attempt to explain the disability situation. He was certain he has better status than me so he should be upfront and I should sit down and wait my turn. He accused me of abusing my privilege. I tried a joke saying he’s well life is so hard “ha ha right” and that I just wanted to be prepared to go as I would board after the children.
Then another woman was pulled out of the business class line. The haughty gentleman admonished her as well to not be “like this woman” and listen to the gate check attendant. She looked confused and upset.
Having witnessed my issue, she complied and her bag was gate checked though. Even though she too was allowed two bags and a personal item in business class as well. She had a sling purse and her roller bag. They took her roller bag.
We began boarding and I rushed in to be sure I was in the line I’d tried to be first in, trying to avoid eye contact with the gate check woman. I hoped she forgotten about me. She hadn’t but she was too late. Just as I was being scanned by the biometrics device, she saw me and started towards me. Thankfully device pinged green, the check in woman sent me along and you better believe I ran down the jet bridge.
I reorganized my bags back to my preferred weight balance and stored them above my seat. I had plenty of room. I scanned for the gentleman and asked if I had been mistaken about first class. No, turns out business is the top class and they don’t offer first class. Furthermore, the gentleman turned out to be in coach.
I saw the girl board with only her purse and in some distress. She plopped down in her seat two rows behind me which had an empty flat law next to her. She had none of her essentials and seemed flustered. The sear next to me was also empty.
I kept waiting for the seats to fill to justify the gate check situation. It wasn’t until we pulled back from the jet bridge that I realized both of us were seated alone. Each of us had an entire row to ourselves. There had been no point in the gate nonsense at all.
The man wasn’t up front and our luggage overhead was more than half empty as mine could accommodate two people. The other woman’s overhead was entirely empty as her bag had been taken and her purse was in her lab.
I was so glad I had my things as she was completely lost. I offered up some of my cosmetics so she could clean up, as well an Advil for the headache. She needed tissues more. The poor girl has been bullied into letting go of her luggage by an asshole and a power drunk gate attendant for no point. There was plenty of space for luggage.
Why flying has turned into some kind of battle royal of poor manners and power games I’ll never understand. I wasn’t blocking the boarding inappropriately, I was just first in line for my section to avoid strain on my spine.
I had no reason to give my bags up and simply wouldn’t. Neither did the other woman, but she didn’t want to be bullied so gave in with both the gentleman and the gate attendant on her ass.
I’ll note we were both 30-40 something white women, so maybe we were just easy pickings. Middle aged Karens either go unnoticed or become targets who we tolerate bossing around a bit. No fighting back allowed lest you become one of those hysterics everyone hates.
It doesn’t matter if we followed the rules. Or that we paid to have the space. I clearly should have gone for the disability even if I loathe it as invisible disabilities always get questioned now that it’s everyone favorite scam. I may need to rethink that.
But I made it onto the airplane with my two bags (paid in full for the privilege) and an extra seat to keep them out with me if I so desired. Turns out one chair was broken so I couldn’t use it to sleep on the inside next to the bulkhead. But it stored all my luggage. And I had a lovely sleep on the aisle side. The weights and measures were pointless and I was victorious over petty power battles. Let’s hope I’m as lucky on the next leg. You just never know anymore.
A beautiful blur of lights and bridges and boats over the bay
I’m in Utah with some of the most optimistic people I’ve ever encountered. And it feels so good to be amongst others who believe our problems are tractable, it is our responsibility to solve them, and that we all win when we pursue a positive sum approach together.
The Abundance Institute hosted the Operation GigaWatt Summit in Park City to bring together entrepreneurs, engineers, financiers, legislators and policy experts to discuss America’s energy needs.
I was lucky enough to be invited to the gala where one of our founders Isaiah Taylor gave an incredibly uplifting fireside chat
As some of my longtime colleagues know, I was the first check into Valar Atomics. It was a leap of faith to invest. At the time, we were in the doldrums of negativity towards capital intensive industrial efforts, from both state and capital.
Yet I saw in Isaiah a force that neither leviathan nor fund manager would wish to hinder. I also happened to believe that every other technological trend that was booming rested on our capacity to power it. So I did everything I could to support him in his efforts, including write few more checks. And thank goodness I did as my what a difference a few years make.
Utah’s Governor Cox and Isaiah Taylor of Valar Atomics
To see Isaiah on stage with Utah’s Governor Cox amongst a crowd of hundreds speaking on a vision that a mere three years almost no one thought was a good idea (well except us) is testament to the work and faith of hundreds of men and women.
Many other amazing companies are pursuing a vision to produce abundant clean fuels and I myself believe we will need every one of them. I’m just glad that my crazy bet happens to be running full steam ahead in front.
From artificial intelligence & medical research to new home construction and industrialization, all our biggest opportunities will win on energy costs. Regular people need cheaper, cleaner, more sustainable energy. Our needs can’t be met with what we’ve got. We need nuclear in that mix.
And it is a choice to embrace abundance and not scarcity. A zero sum mentality will not get us where we need to go. Not in America, not on our home Earth, and certainly not in the stars. I believe with effort and ingenuity our best days are not behind us but can, indeed must, be ahead of us.
Utah is focused on delivering to the public by gaining its truth through transparency and accountability.
I’ve come out of the last two days refreshed and filled with positivity as I’ve seen sincere people dedicate themselves to finding solutions to our pressing problems. I was able to see much beloved friends, treasured colleagues, and it was family friendly so I brought along my husband too.
If you care about a future that’s not fighting over what’s left, but building something that makes more for all of us, I hope you consider supporting the work of the Abundance Institute.
And also Montana’s right to compute law.
Oh and if you have a chance to invest in the future of nuclear energy I hope you pick Valar. As we are fond of saying in El Segundo circles, we are going to win.
No one likes a gloomy Gus. The downside of chronicling a chronic disease is the risk of seeing yourself as only the illness. Then other people will see you that way too. And so your identity becomes tied with only one of the many aspects of your life, and often the worst one at that.
Thankfully most humans are centered enough on themselves to forget the occasional gloomy reality from someone outside of their daily lives.
But repetition becomes reality, and eventually we are who we believe ourselves to be because others believe we are who we say we are too.
I came across a startup who is working on one of those classic swamp problems that seems like a great idea until you are well and truly stuck in the muck with bad incentives and no good solutions.
They want to use artificial intelligence to help patients with chronic diseases or complex medical cases to codify the many little details that might add up to the clues that crack the case.
By tracking subject inputs (unstructured data) and overlaying it with the other biometrics gathered by wearables and bloodwork they can help patients. I’ve seen hundreds of variants of this over the years.
Alas this new startup seems to have discovered a flywheel for marketing that relies on the problem I began today’s post with. We believe what we tell ourselves we are and eventually other people will believe what we believe.
They have chosen to market the app with illness influencers. Yes, that’s an actual category of influencer on TikTok and Instagram. Hot girls all have vague chronic illnesses these days haven’t you noticed?
And so a community forms and reinforces the identity that they all share. They are sick. And that makes them special. This gives life meaning. And did I mention lots of pretty girls have the most esoteric and exiting problems? Click to join now!
I find this to be a troubling, even borderline dangerous, approach to anchoring a community meant to help patients advocate better for care with their own personal health records. The incentive to remain with the privileged identity that makes them special only increases over time. Women reinforce themselves into intensely held identities all the time.
I thought about reaching out to them but I don’t want to get tangled with this problem. It is one for professionals which neither myself nor these founders are aside from everyone being a patient with chronic illness.
I do not wish for my identity to be the sick woman. The woman whose life was upended by a fertility protocol gone wrong in the early years of her marriage and in the prime of her life.
It’s one aspect of my reality. I do want others to be saved from my fate so I share it. But it is not who I am. Julie is not a sick woman. Julie is a complicated individual with a beautiful life and family and portfolio.
I had my own glimmer of hope today. Though I have repeated my troubles with my medical history I have never felt it was my identity. I’d happily give it up if I find a path to wellness. And I spend so much of my life trying to walk out of my troubles.
I have walked many side roads and pursued quixotic quests to find health. And some days I even find it. Today I got very good news on a fresh round of bloodwork. I’ve felt recently felt well thanks to some changes and an aggressive pursuit of new modalities.
I never want to get my hopes up too high as this effort has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. But I won’t let go of the hope. The mere idea that this chapter could close and I might be a healthy woman is an identity I’d gladly welcome. And I’d wish that for anyone who takes on illness as a part of their identity.
My father loved gadgets. He was always tinkering with something and was always upgrading his electronics to some new specification.
Is it any wonder that I married such a handy husband? Men love futzing around with stuff. Sometimes they have daughters and then you’ve got women like to mess around with projects too.
I am sure we will have endless rounds of nostalgia for the eighties and nineties era gadget, electronics and novelty shops. You could get lots of mileage out of building your own computer.
But even setting up something silly from Skymall or Sharper Image captured some of the joy. The novelty of a new invention was visceral. I wouldn’t say no to a Hammacher Schlemmer renaissance myself.
I didn’t love it when we remade that style of retail into quirk chungus millennial fandom but I didn’t hate getting Star Trek tchotchkes either. And now I dearly love websites that my friends have built like WireCutter.
My husband was humming the tune to a piece of YouTube esoterica that is a deep cut to the original editor of that bastion of shopping guides. Choire Sicha launched the WireCutter but it’s in some ways the least soulful of his franchises. A Mike Albo shopping column already nailed thebit we’ve just been redeeming it since then.
Choire gave us Gawker 2.0 before his his incredible era of independent publishing streak making properties like the Awl and the Hairpin.
In a world with more shops and essayists than good shoppers or readers, Choire found the good ones and shared. And one of his discoveries was Nina Katchadourian’s work.
I’m sure we will enter an exciting new era of curating down the perfect piece of cultural detritus with artificial intelligence. But I will always be grateful to electronics dads and savvy buying guides for teaching me to enjoy the joy in making something. Even if it is profoundly uncool. I’m still team Barbara Kruger though. Don’t believe the hypebeasts.
The general theory goes that post internet generations see niche algorithm-driven content rather than say cultural or historical touchstones. Past touchstones might have unified past generational experiences.
I don’t know if unified experienced are all good. Sure all of the Boomers have heard the Beatles but all millennial woman recall tabloid headlines about Britney Spears getting fat. The water we swim in can be hard for us fish to spot.
If the younger generations have a problem, it’s being far too unified in their experience of their global position. The pandemic was a surprisingly effective reboot of expectations for all of us. But the older you were the easier it was to contextualize the impact of the pandemic across your entire life.
We all ran a dress rehearsal for collective responsibility at global scale And depending on your personality, you were funneled into perspectives you preferred.
So you saw us either shoulder or shirk responsibility. Not that other generations haven’t had to do some version of this, but being able to see it at networked global scale seems to have done something to the capacity to see the future.
McWorld triumphed over Jihad right? But that is content for a paid Substack where Fukuyama and Zizek both still write. It must have been more convincing in hardcover.
To paraphrase Baz Luhrman “If I could offer you only one tip for the future, being civically engaged would be it”
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it A long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable Than my own meandering experience, I will dispense this advice now
Ironically there is some controversy on types of sunscreen and its downstream impacts, but my own skin shows that Baz did well by millennial audience by recommending sunscreen. I look good and have no risk factors for skin cancer.
Now I have no scientists with long term evidence to back my claims, but if you want the long term benefits of civilization being civically engaged is well supported by our historical record.
What is this fancy task force you might ask? Well it was created by our state Senate Bill 330 in 2025. Governor Gianforte charged the task force with studying digital asset regulation and economic development. You too can find opportunities like this at every level of government.
Our task force is co-chaired by Senator Gayle Lammers and Representative Curtis Schomer. It includes state officials, legislators, and industry experts. You can show up and comment if you like. Isn’t participatory democracy fantastic? No seriously go visit the website and join us for the next meeting if you like
Alex drove to Helena today for this month’s session while I Zoomed in. Act local and consider the national is my edit on the old bumper sticker. And really doesn’t this look like fun?
Some days end up being so much more interesting than you expect. I awoke to a family member, who has been preparing for a set of major surgeries, saying they had in fact gone in that morning for the first round of procedures.
I had been concerned they were putting it off so I was quite relieved that their lack of communication on the topic was simply their preparation to face what will be a grueling health challenge. Preparing for a procedure well gives you the best chance at success.
Then I went about a normal work day having lobbed a question, or maybe a prayer, onto the network as the reality of human lives is that imperfect options are always what remains. Being clear eyed about the choices in our lives and how the weight of our past actions have set us on a path can be hard. But it is necessary.
And as I wrapped up my day I was the recipient of some good news. I can’t share anything but the shape of it. But a project that was an experimental approach to a space I care deeply about has bravely faced the whipping winds and looks like they will successfully come to a safe berth intact with all souls.
Which is not such an easy thing to do when you set out for uncharted territory. I am so very proud of what has been accomplished thus far.
All things in life are the fruits of imperfect options that remain. That we make the best use of them is our obligation not only to ourselves but to those to whom we have committed. I am grateful that today was a day where those hard choices were made.
I’d like to have something positive to say today about the Artemis II mission, going further than we have traveled into space than ever before but it’s much too hard to pay attention to expensive achievements by NASA when your pale blue dot seems set on imploding itself, fourth turning style. But I’m always here for a joke about how we can’t engineer a toilet for zero gravity.
All anyone in finance can talk about is the short seller research firm Citrini that sent analysts to the Strait of Hormuz, only to discover via the mysterious analyst 3 that actually plenty of shit is getting through as long as you pay a toll to the militants holding it hostage, which plenty of people who are desperate for oil are absolutely doing. I am SHOCKED well not shocked exactly.
Meanwhile the Easter Bunny stares into the middle distance as an old man threatens another gerontocracy with obliteration. Not to put too fine a point on it but everybody is going to suffer no matter how this turns out.
And we wonder why Zoomers are all reactionaries. Gee, their older millennial siblings couldn’t possibly have any experience in these matters, could they? Doesn’t matter. They aren’t going to ask us even if we have actually lived through this entire charade once before.
Incidentally has anyone checked in on Condoleezza Rice recently? Seems like she might have something valuable to add here.
