My mental model of the world:

Yo I found the selfies from years ago when some documentary put makeup on me. Nostr exclusives. It was really basic but I took some pics in the dressing room like “this, really?” View quoted note →

I haven't worn makeup in a decade in any public context. There was a bitcoin documentary that put some on me but I don't know if they aired it. Or maybe a brief moment. I don't know and don't care. My husband often says I should wear makeup for special occasions. Which means he'd like to see it and I should practice more. I ignored this for years and he keeps reminding me, but this year I'm going to do better at it, for him. We have our 7-year anniversary coming up. I'm going to try to surprise him with it. My argument previously was I can't be good at everything. If I'm going to run our main business then maybe it's fine if I'm not great at makeup. It's not that I don't have time, although that's a factor, but mainly I don't have mental bandwidth. I wear the same clothes, I don't wear makeup, I get the same haircut, and focus on finance and tech every day. When I'm alone for a season, separated by him due to travel, rather than figure out makeup I post too much on social media and write a 130k word science fiction novel manuscript (which in retrospective, he ends up really liking) to fill our time apart. So I'm like, "maybe makeup isn't me." His argument, as a proper method to not insult his own wife, is that it would "be a shame to not ever dabble in make up", given how I could look in it. Objectively it's a reasonable argument; there are plenty of iconic people that look totally different without makeup. His argument is that I should at least wear it sometimes. I've been meaning to give him that view for years but I keep putting it off. Years now. But sometimes it's a character rather than a concept that brings us to an idea. Much like novels. It's about characters more-so than plot or worlds that wake you up to something. So I see Kristi Noem at 53 with great makeup, looking amazing, getting sworn in as Secretary of Homeland Security. All the politicians are thinking about her new position, but realistically myself and many other women are like, "fuck, that's my new 53 year old benchmark." She looks so good. Partially because she's attractive but also her makeup and hair are just so solid. I assume she'll be weak at the job but she'll look damn good doing it. And so I think, "Well fuck, I hope I look half as good at 53 as she does. Maybe I can ignore this shit in my 30s but I have to figure it out by my 40s and 50s." Anyway, that's my random vulnerable mental shit for Nostr.

I tried to order Grubhub tonight after two attempts but they cancelled for no reason. Robots are taking over the world I guess, but they can't deliver to suburban NJ at 9pm despite being open, so in the meantime I'll cook some ground beef, spices, and greens. It's healthier than the Indian curry I ordered on the first try and Chipotle I ordred on the second. Somewhat relatedly; I use the word "retard" in my sci fi manuscript one time. There's one character that uses that term, while others do not. Because decades in the future, I do think someone who is impatient will look around and be like, "this is kind of retarded."

Normally I ignore troll posts. I write only to engage with serious people. Rarely, when I look at the repeated profiles of troll posters, I am embarrassed for them. I sympathize to them. Imagine the time spent on such low reward activity. It is an impoverishment of their potential merit and action to spend time as such. And yet they do so. It is such a mess of low social content there; nobody likes their posts. Posts and replies with few likes or zaps. A desert of solitude. I feel sympathy rather than malevolence toward them. I wish them solace and yet many will persist in darkness without reflection.

One of the crazy things about AI and robotics is that in the year 2025, most people still don't use Roombas or other robotic vacuum cleaners. They're useful in many contexts, but they're not clearly better across most metrics than a human with a vacuum cleaner yet. They've been out for a very long time, gradually improving. And that's one *very specific* task with pretty clear visualization requirements and floor mobility requirements and pretty low safety thresholds with high repetition levels, and yet that market isn't dominated by robotics yet. That's an example of why I continue to view white collar computer-work AI as being *way* ahead of in-the-field blue collar robotic AI in terms of competing with human jobs. The moment where it's a joke to buy a human-powered vacuum instead of a robot vacuum, rather than a debatable trade-off, is kind of the canary in the coal mine moment for consumer robotics. We can't even nail that yet, but once we do, it's kind of a floodgate moment, considering how long that task has been in the works for, and it will probably quickly expand to other areas following that moment. That's kind of my basic test for robot hype. Yes, they're getting better and better. Yes, they do backflips now. Yes, it's a big deal. But in-the-field blue collar skilled work is a really high bar, and we haven't fully cleared the "vacuum carpeted areas of the same house floor area over and over" stage of that yet. Everything is kind of hype until that stage is fully breached. Then it's off to the races. What's your view of that heuristic?

I’ll tell you ahead of time. The watchmen are retarded. They were retarded for the Middle East. They were retarded for the Patriot act. And they’re still retarded now. Don’t give them information. Pressure them every step of the way. Assume retardation whenever possible. Mock them when a meme presents itself. View quoted note →

People often assume that whoever their god is, that it is standing with them specifically. In the US, they often separate this view along party lines. Conservatives to some extent imagine Jesus standing with them on the border with a rifle protecting Christendom against anarchy. Even if many of those immigrants are ::checks notes:: also Christians. If a "woke" bishop calls for compassion on immigrants and is not a fan of the twice-divorced President who can't name his favorite bible chapter and forgot to put his hand on the bible when being sworn in, she's somehow the baddie rather than him, even among Christians. Progressives to some extent imagine Jesus walking around in Gaza or Haiti or Sudan attending to the least advantaged among us. He shuns the empire and tends to them. And yet, while Jesus called for pacifism and was a rhetorical saint among chill speakers, many of them find a way to mentally turn extremists into heroes. Anything the underdog society does against the dominant society is justified. Even if it's violent toward civilians. In our media rebels are cool, but in reality they often like to kill the gays or the civilians, so it gets awkward pretty fast rather than being like the cool Star Wars rebels vs the Empire. I find myself in a weird camp that almost nobody is onboard with. I'm like, "Yes, we actually need to secure our borders. We need to be more scrutinizing for our society's sake. We need slower, higher-end immigration. And we actually need to enforce the rule of law for theft on the streets." But also, "No, I don't think Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in text would be onboard with this border view. He'd view us like Rome. Let's not re-imagine him as onboard with this. We're rooting for ourselves; he'd root for the underdogs." I'm too woke for the conservatives and too based for the progressives. The US was involved with multiple coups in Latin America. We ran the reserve currency and tried to bend them to our will with their dollar-denominated debt 40 years ago by spiking the value of that debt. Some of them went into retarded socialism and rekt themselves throughout that time period too; it's not all our fault. But it's some of our fault. And then we militarily entered the Middle East. We made deals with them, funded them against the Soviets, and then turned against them. We've invaded them at like a 100:1 ratio vs them invading us with one major incidence (9/11). And as much as I am a fan of Jews as a people (as someone who grew up in Northeastern USA where Jews are relatively dense, I'd happily have them settle all around here), Israel is a state is colonial; our western powers displaced Gazans to make it and have been fighting that reality ever since. We're Rome. And like Rome, we think we are justified. And along those lines, we're probably partially right, and probably partially wrong. When you take a view, imagine every possible view opposing it. And as the US dominates as neo-Rome, I think we will realize how distant we are from Jesus the hippie.

In the Animatrix, there is a short story called the Program. In it, a woman is trapped in a training program by her crewmate. She desperately calls the operator for an exit but is blocked. She cannot exit herself, which made the stakes real. View quoted note →

When Cypher goes into the Matrix alone to secretly meet agent Smith and prepare to betray the group, who plugged Cypher into the Matrix? Did he plug himself in somehow? If so, could he unplug himself? Why can’t the others do that?

Woke up, realized I forgot to take out the trash last night. But the trash guy is late. Not taken yet. Usually he comes super early. So I put the trash out and he comes like five minutes later. Sometimes it’s the little wins that make your day. GM.

Summary of the past 24 hours:

What are your favorite sci-fi novels? Not necessarily the classics you *think* you should say (we'll leave those for Twitter/X), but rather the ones you actually read and loved.

How advanced, or what types of advancement, would it take to convince you to get a cybernetic brain implant in the future? -Substantially improves a major disability (blindness, paralysis, brain damage, etc) -Boosts sensory abilities beyond normal (eyesight, hearing, etc). -Boosts IQ or some other meaningful metric of intelligence and computation, thereby increasing your competitiveness in multiple fields. Becomes basically necessary for some fields due to many others doing it. -Lets you enter VR with all five senses in a way that feels like 80-90% realistic but can be any environment/context. People make increasingly awe-inspiring virtual experiences/worlds, only accessible this way. -Substantially increases the bandwidth with which you can interface with computers. Like, lets you download a ton of info quickly.

Egypt is cool and all, but after a couple months it feels good to be back in ‘Merica. 💪

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My husband’s 8-year-old niece is having a birthday party with relatives and friends invited. But all seven friends declined to come, one by one, either due to getting sick or family issues or because some of them have big tests. And the mom was hesitant to tell her about the last ones, including her best friend, being unable to come, since that final piece of news is devastating. So when we arrived, the niece was super happy, dressed up like a princess, showing us all the decorations and picking which colored forks each of her friends would have for the cake. Basically, the expectations and reality couldn’t be more starkly different. It was like a comedy show setting up for a sad punchline. And eventually the mom dropped the bombshell, crying ensued, etc. The niece said this would be awful since her party would be all adults talking. So, now I’m playing My Little Pony with her for damage control. Next, I’m going to blow up a lot of balloons to throw around with her and challenge her to see how many she can keep in the air at once. And then she wants to watch Inside Out 2 together. How’s your day going?

I never really thought about it before, but I have no first cousins. I was chilling with my husband’s extended family and everyone was counting how many first cousins they had. One of them had over 50 first cousins. Another had over 30. All of them had over 10. Then it came to me and I had been going through it in my head and I was like, “uh… zero. Huh.”

At night, the excessive billboards in Cairo look kind of cyberpunk.

I collaborated with Sam Callahan to publish a research report on fiscal dominance:

Lyn Alden

Full Steam Ahead: All Aboard Fiscal Dominance

This research piece on fiscal dominance in the United States was compiled and written by Sam Callahan, and commissioned and advised by Lyn Alden. P...