Tag: Trust

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Culture Politics

Day 1658 and Social Contracts

I sometimes feel as if I’m living in an entirely different rule set than everyone else around me. The social contract is in flux and it’s a challenge to understand why you take norms seriously when everyone around you is breaking them. From big to small it offenses it can drive a person mad.

A large abstract state is great and all until you can’t figure out if anarcho-tyranny is the governing system or if we are reverting to the state of nature.

If you fly economy class chaos reigns in lord of the flies level manners breaking and that’s a kind of miracle of modernity. Our technology works better than we do. So what is a state of nature kind of woman to do about this mismatch?

Thomas Hobbes provided the first comprehensive exposition of modern social contract theory in 1651. Hobbes famously described the “state of nature” as a condition where human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”

social contract theory Wikipedia

You may be familiar with his term the “war of all against all” which we’ve all theoretically given up in order to leave the state of nature and create civilization. Unless you are a fan of nihilist Bronze Age Pervert, you probably aren’t itching to get back to freedoms like murder and tape. But some men want to see the world burn.

But most of the enlightenment folks are keen on the social contract. I am keen on it. Freedom to fuck everyone over isn’t ideal no matter how based you think you are. Airplanes are cool even if we can’t agree on hygiene.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had the concept of the “general will” which is our common good though he did think some people needed to be forced to be free. So maybe he would be ok with certain authoritarian strains of achieving liberalism? In which case he’d really have enjoyed the woke era.

I’m more of a Locke type myself. He wrote that men would only relinquish personal freedoms if it were in service of maintaining fundamental rights like life, liberty, and property. So I’ll tolerate bit bathing in economy class so long as you let me live my life.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical Travel

Day 1654 and Post-Operative Exhaustion

As I slowly walked myself out of surgery yesterday, I thought to myself “I actually feel much better!” And I genuinely did.

If you have a gentle stomach, maybe stop reading here. I’m fine. I’m on my way to well. And this will be graphic.

I do feel dramatically better having had the “slouching towards septic” abscess drained of infection as well as removal of the initial pearl style irritant (a 3mm deep entirely horizontal hair growing not up but sideways like an underground fracking tube).

I appreciated having the walls of the abscess pulled out bit by bit in a delicate curettage by my silk sundress clad physician. It was all a success.

But post operative care is hard? I’m a mess. I’m exhausted, loopy, and the hotel’s guest services are concerned enough that they are doing me such kindnesses like sending up tea and maxipads. Turkish hospitality comes from a place of genuine kindness and I need that right now.

It’s been a long journey of stupid to end up in Istanbul to get a smart fix. Going from a squishy movable almond sized lump without any pain six weeks ago to a hard plum sized lump was disconcerting enough. Especially having done my damned preventive care visits with the useless Dr Oetkin in Montana.

Have had two days of prodding, poking, squeezing, moving and ultrasounding done in the Mediterranean, I was swollen, feverish, and all hurt to the touch. I was afraid.

How did I get here? How had my next generation IL-17 managed to cause me so many negative side effects even as I was doing better across all biometrics and across quality of life metrics?

No wonder the doctor in Istanbul was so concerned. All the previous doctors had done was make my situation worse though inaction and delay m, and then the action they took made it worse.

Now I have recovery ahead of me. Last night as I went to pee, I realized why they had padded the upper areas of my underwear with maxi pads. I’ve got no discharge downstairs but on the upper bikini area there was no such luck.

I only needed one stitch to close up thanks to the careful work of the doctor, but a lot of goo came out during the surgery drainage and I was warned there was still more to come, though it would taper off.

I gently washed the area with a cloth and antiseptic soap before application of antibiotic cream (my third type of antibiotic). I gasped as I saw the first lightly red sticky watery fluid gush out rapidly around the stitch. It was so fast and there was so damn much. Bodies are disgusting what else can be said?

I mopped up with a clean moist towel and applied a thick layer of antibiotic cream, but I had learned the deflation of the abscess wasn’t quite done. The swelling, I was told, would take a week or more to full abate.

I’ll be sleeping this off for the day but if you are in Montana with an autoimmune disease and need a dermatologist I’d recommend you stay away from Dr. Tara Oetken at SkincareMT. Without her hasty heuristics and lack of conviction I wouldn’t be in this mess.

Categories
Biohacking Media Travel

Day 1652 and Back in Istanbul

I’m a mess and somewhat scared. This abcess saga has grown from dismissive preventative care visit (which I did did out of an abundance precaution) and ended with me meeting a general surgeon at a Turkish medical tourism hospital tomorrow to discuss labs and my ultrasound. It’s my second time this year so that’s quite an endorsement as a revealed preference.

But I am serious with this sidebar. Don’t go to SkincareMT’s dermatology practice if you have a layered case that needs more involvement. I found Dr Oetken pleasant but entirely unaccountable when a patient needed advice and weightings on a complex case. I should have known better.

I was afraid she would be a box checking paper pusher afraid to give an opinion. But maybe younger doctors are afraid to treat that way given our system. I needed to know is it worth getting a clearer diagnosis before it is a crisis? Is imaging necessary? I have a set of drugs I take with these specific side effects. Given that risk profile and nuance at hand needed the interpersonal relationship that would guide me.

I do endorse SkincareMT’s cosmetic practice, and Addison in particular is fantastic, but their healthcare wing is clearly designed to extract maximum Medicare dollars from Montana seniors. 

My failure to get an ounce of prevention means I’m flown to Istanbul to attempt to get a pound of cure. Don’t worry I was already in the Mediterranean. Not in the way way some think though.

Yesterday we found out by pulling teeth that I had a problem. It’s clear I need this excised and quickly. The ultrasound is gnarly. Drainage, removal of the foreign object, and potential curratage to make sure the walls of the cyst are removed forever are what is needed. 

The sprawling medical tourism complex in Istanbul is amazing and I trust them more than any other system or talent pool on the planet right now.  What they have built is an incredible achievement and in challenging conditions.

Doctors who listen, who educate you on your options, and most importantly are up to date on current research and global innovations so don’t give you glassy eyed stares when you mention a new medication like a next generation IL-17 inhibitor it’s exotic side effects.  American doctors like that are rare and their hands are often tied by our horrific mess of state failure and lack of market innovation. 

I’m relieved to have choices like “general surgeon or gynecological surgeon” and texting discussions with my case lead (a full time liaison for you and your family on the entire case) on how we will handle excision and culture pathology. 

It does feel like I’ll have good choices. But it also seems like I booked less time than is necessary and I don’t know how I feel about that. A week of waiting on labs in a hotel while in pain is scary. Sure I can work and be productive and maybe even do some tourism but I just want this shit sliced out, an IV of the right antibiotic that will work and some sleep. 

I’ve been doing some crazy bi-phasic sleeping as the Mediterranean is hot as hell from noon to 10pm. So I’ve been doing a bit of staying up late and sleeping in to avoid the heat. It’s not clear how much it’s messing with me yet because I’ve got all these odd infection fever doctor nonsense. A quick surgery and some answers can’t come fast. Thankfully I’m at the crossroads of empires.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1650 and Trying to be Heard

I don’t think of myself as someone who struggles to be heard. I am loud, I speak up, I have a large social media platform and I don’t mind being impolite if I need to be heard.

And yet, the incidents where I am ignored, dismissed, or even outright insulted seem to be on the rise. I follow the rule of three assholes generally so I have to wonder if it’s me, but nothing makes you wonder more than getting really bad basic medical care.

I am attempting to get a cyst (or abscess or infected lymph node or whatever the heck it may be) diagnosed in a country where I don’t speak the language.

No one can agree what doctor is right. It was a gyno who sent me to a dermatologist who wanted me to go back to a gyno last month.

Now I’ve got a gynecologist who wants me to repeat the conservative management program I’ve been doing for months.

Which hasn’t worked, but she is implacable in her iron lady demeanor. Bactine and warm soaking. Maybe she does understand the immune suppression part? Thankfully I come with receipts.

I carry my patient charts, a synopsis of my diagnosis, the side effects of drug treatment and a short “why I am here and for what.”

A radical change in size & texture on a cyst with no response to antibiotics is exactly what the last four doctors told me to watch for as it signals a need for active management.

Now this shouldn’t need years of bloodwork (which I brought and charted for them) or a paragraph on high risk patient needs or a history of my main medical issues and the rationale for why I am requesting imaging. It’s an abscess that’s growing so figure out what kind, remove it and then we figured out why.

And yet it does require all of this to get anywhere. I spent 5 hours in a doctors office today and two hours in one yesterday.

I’ll waste another two days while they will run new bloods when I have a fresh set from a week ago. And still they fought me like hell on imaging.

Which is the only way to decide on the course of treatment. Instead I should do warm compresses and iodine for a month (sorry the first four months not count?) The temptation to unleash is overwhelming.

It was a fight. I got an ultrasound. And I did get a diagnosis and it needs to be carried out asap. Figuring out a doctor and a recovery plan I trust is going to be hard but that’s a tomorrow problem.

Abcess. Filled with bad shit. There is a hair in it acting the part of irksome pearl. 17×13 mm diameter. 3 mm from skin so it’s not small.
Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1649 and Physician Heal Thyself

I’ve been having some side effects from my new biologic injection Bimzelx. Whenever I travel, I do a spate of doctors appointments before I leave so I can be adequately prepared for likely scenarios. Be prepared is my motto.

I had gone to a dermatologist a month ago to check on a cyst or swollen lymph node in an awkward spot. It’s on my pubic bikini area so I’ve been playing hot potato with dermatologists versus gynecologists.

The dermatologist appointment was so horrifying I’d recommend you stay away from Dr. Tara Oetken at SkincareMT as it was such a degrading and frankly useless experience. I do fully endorse their cosmetic practice and Nurse Addison.

I ended up at the dermatologist as the gynos were like “uhhh it’s on the outside and involves no reproductive organs so you need a dermatologist” and then dermatologist was a bit “its close to your vagina ewwww icky scary did you go to the gyno?”

Yes dear that’s how I got sent to you, this ain’t no picnic for me either.

I was embarrassed but the cyst/enflamed lymph node had been unchanging for a few months (not growing or differing in texture but malleable & squishy). So I checked in, was mostly embarrassed, got no direction that helped and left feeling degraded.

Given my previous issues with meiborn gland infections on my eyelids, I’d been instructed to keep a close eye any side effects common like folliculitis that is common Bimzelx. This was clearly a complex side effect that I’d had multiple issues with all year. The next step was imaging but I could get zero sense in the very short visit of whether or not the doctor felt it was warranted. “It’s up to you” sounds nice until you want a doctor to give you their professional advice.

Well now I’m in a foreign country and the almond sized squishy bit has ballooned in just four or five short days to thrice or quadruple its size, it’s now quite firm and not easy to move around or squish and I’ve got to do the same dance all over with doctors ago don’t speak English.

Thankfully I have artificial intelligence and an interpreter. I’ll get the imaging ultrasound done (AI says get it done immediately based on the differential it did) and then we can see if it’s a cyst or a lymph node that needs an I&D. I started antibiotics 3 days into this ballooning and it has done little to fix it so let’s find out. Hopefully I don’t need someone lancing and squeezing out stuff in a foreign country. But if I do need that I may pop a flight to Istanbul for that.

Categories
Community Culture

Day 1641 and Honor

The good vibes of my weekend have washed out on the tides as I consider a frustrating non-interaction that has grown into anger in my heart as rapidly as a wheatgrass seed grows in an Easter basket.

I am considering the question of honor in the context of closed communities and events. If you go looking, the cat is out of the bag on where I was and with whom, but I don’t yet have personal permission to use a name, so I’ll keep this brief.

I’m in my Worf era

I’ve been called many names in my time and plenty of them have not been laudatory. Dirty shiksa, stupid cunt, and mostly recently, demonic. Everyone being entitled to their opinion, I don’t generally ask for apologies. I do ask that you say it to my face though.

I am a shiksa, certainly “see you next Tuesday” from time to time, but I remain skeptical that I am possessed by anything from Hades or other Lovecraftian horror from the beyond.

But so long as you use my name in the process of insulting my honor, I only request you look me in the eyes while you do it. I can take it. I stand by who I am and what I say.

So I can’t shake the feeling that I was deliberately dishonored by the speaker. And I am actually angry now. I am used to the insult throwing and name calling of Internet living, indeed I thrive in it. I am not accustomed to aspersions by celebrities as I don’t matter all that much. And I certainly didn’t expect it in a small private group.

I fight in that arena under my own banner. I take those punches under my own name. I won’t lie, someone of stature being so upset as to call me evil without felt good at first (how nice to be noticed) and slowly curdled into a fury over the disrespect.

Maybe it’s because I was one of the few women speaking. It was only after much effort he agreed to speak with my male co-speaker and not me (I’d already left). Maybe it was because after multiple attempts at engagement I was refused time and again. Maybe it’s because his gaze remained staunchly averted. Whatever triggered it has now turned to fiery anger.

I think it’s a bitch move to drop bombs and then runaway like a kicked cur when the beast stirs. And I am quite wide awake now.

I’m the alien in this scenario
Categories
Culture

Day 1638 and Make Clothes You Would Wear Yourself

I’m with a group of some of my favorite eccentrics. It’s a barn raising kind of vibe as we collect our wits in real life.

It’s a real weird group that operates under Chatham House rules so I’ll keep it to my own experience.

One of my favorite discussions came from a a successful financial executive who farms. He’s an inspiration to anyone who wants to be think about their relationship with the industrial scale world. He came from a family of farmers and returned.

He told a story about how his grandparents farm produced the food that his own family ate as recently as three generations ago. Now they don’t eat any of the food they produce anymore. It is sold into a systems.

I feel a kinship with this experience as I worked for an American heritage brand that had lost its way but had once dressed a generation of American women living American lives.

When the new president had one firm expectation for the quality of the work our product must demonstrate she had a sins tear. Every one of us needed to make clothing we would wear ourselves.

It was a group of luxury executives so their expectations for style and quality was more LVMH than mall brand. And not did force a higher standard. What could be sold and what we ourselves would wear were entirely different beasts. And we had to build the skills to make the clothing we’d wear as consumers of artisan clothes.

It was not a financial success. Private equity came to eat it. No one I know is still at the brand. But for a brief moment of time we made clothing we’d would want to wear ourselves.

Categories
Media Politics

Day 1635 and Slop Doctrine

Yesterday we enjoyed the uncomfortable tension of a cease fire announcement in the Israeli-Iranian conflict that America had just entered that no one was sure was real.

Sure the president had said so inside the heaven ban built to purpose social network Truth Social, but we had no basis for belief in that without hearing from Iran or Israel.

Newspapers sent out alerts that resolved into “unconfirmed” once you hit the landing page. Thanks guys but maybe cool your jets on the alerts?

I read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine when it came out in 2007 with a mix of skepticism and head nodding. Her thesis was that disasters are used to push through unpopular market reforms. I remain skeptical of presenting neoliberalism as exclusively disaster capitalism.

But after resistance to the Iraq War did nothing, and having recently graduated from an alma mater whose reputation in Latin American economies was shall we say mixed, I was somewhat receptive to her thesis.

I alas myself lack the crucial qualification for being a fan of Klein’s work as I am not a socialist. I like the market reforms and doubt chaos is the only vehicle through which they can be passed. At this point in our history, chaos is leading us more towards statist solutions

Nevertheless I remain skeptical of the narratives from state power no matter what solution the state is pushing. I like a market based solution as much as the next bourgeois pig, but I’m no fan of the state overriding its people or its businesses.

The problem we have now isn’t just Shock Doctrine or disaster capitalism driving outcomes. It was mostly disaster authoritarianism in my opinion.

The reason it is so unsettling to have no source of reliable information or institutional trust in our information is because we are now living in the age of Slop Doctrine. You can take it if you like Naomi.

It’s impossible to sort out what reality is winning even when it’s coming from a head of state. A million competing narratives from untold decentralized sources of information now compete to confused and unsettle us. The psy-ops aren’t even run by humans anymore.

I’d love for us to collapse that state of uncertainty that comes from multiple entangled competing realities into consensus reality.

Alas when I searched for quantum reality collapse terminology all I found was a LiDAR imaging company for architectural documentation. Their website doesn’t suggest much of anything invoking quantum states except insofar as one hopes that by using their imaging your buildings won’t do so.

And so we are left swimming in the slop doctrine confusion in which old ways of validating information are entirely useless to us. Slop Doctrine is here and it sucks.

Categories
Internet Culture Media Startups

Day 1628 and Attention Whoring

Attention is a currency with an exchange rate so volatile even a hardened ForEx trader would find it exhausting.

There is a new set of younger founders who are taking the attention trade to new heights. Rate baiting marketing is to the 2020s what growth hacking was to the 2010s. Now a startup like Cluely could be the new the new Dollar Shave Club with its viral success. Or could go the way of Clinkle.

Because who cares how you widen the top of your funnel as long as you are getting enough such that down in the trenches of conversion you have enough leads.

Surviving as a startup isn’t easy and you should grab the opportunities you are given. Yet I imagine you end up with the Glen Gary Glen Ross “the leads are weak” kind of situation, but does management care? Probably not.

And so we continue to coarsen our shared business environment but who cares right? Always be closing.

A lot of people do care though. I care quite a bit. Because it is a trade you are making. Something may work but are you sure you can live with the trade? I am with my anon friend here.

attention whoring founders with mediocre goals actually do drive us deeper into cultural nihilism. technology is powerful, and the preservation of healthy culture among technologists is critical for civilization.

opportunity cost is real. the more skilled you are the more it matters. metrics do not matter. what happens to people, to the world, matters. everyone is responsible for upholding standards. every VC hungry for a multiple, every pair of captive eyes, everyone slightly more willing to run toward defecting plays while chasing fool’s gold- Bayeslord

I’ll never begrudge a market. I believe we should have more markets. Go ahead and make concrete your implicit assumptions about the world and humanity. Own it. Show the revealed preference.

But it’s worth knowing how we do that price discovery on these attention trades. In this world we have grounding validity for all kinds of disappointing facts. The world is made up of many noble lies. We all decide how we want to make our trade with reality.

And as to attention whores? Well, the oldest profession surely knows a lot about the soul of man. I’m sure we all share a desire for a greater spirit of man and aspire towards something greater. But sex sells.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1622 and Pulsed Electromagnetic Field

On a bit of a whim, Alex bought “on the go” PEMF Infrared Mat from HigherDOSE.

This is the year of acquiring mechanical intervention medical equipment for us.

Yes as biohackers we trial a lot and some of it is less woo-woo than others. Treatments like hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy have significantly more clinical data than say pulsed electromagnetic field treatments.

It seems easier to send electromagnetic waves at different frequencies than create a sealed oxygen chamber but consumer is weird and the military and elite athletics tested HBOT whereas mere hippies played around with PEMF.

A temperature setting swaps for 4 separate vibration settings Delta Waves, Theta Waves (Schaumann Reponse, Alpha and Beta Waves

So it’s qualia only here on the good vibrations but I am excited to try it out. I can’t exactly feel the vibrations unlike in other clinical settings where I’ve experienced much more intense (it’s measured in gauss or Tesla) but infrared warmth is a nice experience even if the vibrations don’t do much. But I will report on it.