#i need to replicate my conditions from high school because i never had problems until college

[i-like-gay-books]

what a shame that ive been filled with an inexplicable zest for life and motivation to do everything i never have the energy to do but it’s 1am

[seanmeverett]

Principles for Survival

Background

I’m breaking my nearly three years of silence on Humanizing Tech. I started this publication as a resource for those who shared my lifelong mission of “building the world’s most advanced technology and using it to help people”. Because of the clear and present dangers that continue to present themselves as we’ve crossed the threshold into this new decade, I feel a responsibility to share a few primary principles on how to think in order to protect yourselves and loved ones in a constantly evolving and unforgiving universe.

Believability

Whenever anyone communicates anything, the first thing you should assess is whether they are believable in what they are saying. Said differently, do they have the expertise, education, or understanding that makes them a resource you should listen to. If not, you should simply ignore it.

Therefore, you must analyze this content and decide for yourself whether you should believe it or ignore it. To help, I’ve provide the background necessary so you can make an informed decision.

The first 20 years of my life was primarily focused on physical achievement, while the last 20 years on intellectual achievement, though I’ve maintained both over all four decades of life.

I’ve been studying mathematics seriously since I began advanced classes in the 6th grade (from about 10 years old onwards). Mathematics is focused on a single study: encoding the universe into symbols that can be manipulated spatially in order to solve difficult problems in how the universe actually behaves. Said more simply, “solving problems”.

I leveraged my mathematics education into something called Actuarial Science, which is the study of risk. Insurance companies, financial firms, and pension funds hire Actuaries in order to make sense of uncertainty. They calculate the probability of events (including death), and their financial impact, using sophisticated mathematical models. During my time as an undergraduate, I passed two Actuarial exams and worked for well-known companies in the space: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mellon Financial.

I would later leverage that to work for Watson Wyatt, which has gone through multiple mergers (Towers Watson, then Willis Towers Watson), and now Aon after its acquisition for $30 billion. I designed incentives for the largest global companies, creating systems for boards, executives, employees, and sales people to achieve agreed upon financial and operational goals.

For approximately the last 15 years, I’ve been operating high technology companies, building large global teams (remotely) across cultures, languages, time zones, tech stacks, customer profiles, and markets in order to build the world’s most advanced technologies, even before Big Tech firms had done so, and commercialize them for a broad population of people and businesses.

The focus of my adult life has been on creating systems for how to achieve the second and third principles listed below. Over the last few years, however, I’ve been focusing primarily on the first principle, which I believe supersedes the other two, and is arguably more important.

Principles

Adapt faster.

Find risks, then remove them.

Prioritize problems, then solve them.

Situation

Today, the entire world is experiencing an elegant technology that any Venture Capitalist would salivate to invest in and operators would compete to work on. Without any PR or marketing budget, it has made headlines globally because it is a disruptor the likes of which we have never experienced. Not Uber, not AirBnB, not Digital Transformation, and not even the Internet can hold a candle to its speed of adoption.

It has been installed by people across nearly every geographic boundary and gives every user equal opportunity to experience it regardless of education, wealth, social status, sexual orientation, race, or age. It has disrupted people’s daily lives, the global financial system, and the global healthcare system. Users didn’t have to change any of their daily habits to experience it, it’s completely free, and takes up no space so it can be carried anywhere. It’s completely decentralized, low-power, can upgrade itself in real-time in response to market conditions, and is highly scalable.

It is a self-replicating, biologic intelligence that is invisible, viral, and non-discriminatory. Of course, I’m talking about the Coronavirus.

If it had a positive impact on humanity, we would be marveling at its features, celebrating its creator, and leveraging the technology for every other product.

But it’s not.

Strategy

And so, as a human species, who have three of our own features (survival, intelligence, opposable thumbs) we must use in order to compete against it and win. This is Uber vs Lyft, Coke vs Pepsi, and a Space Race with stakes higher than we have dealt with before.

For all of human history, people have designed and changed our environments for habitability. As we face this novel technology, and a guarantee of even more elegant ones in the future, we must create and use tools to evolve our environments at a faster rate than the threats that seek to disrupt them, either within our outside our bodies.

If our iteration speed is higher than our competitors, we will win. If not, we will lose. But it requires a 100% execution of fundamentals. Like a professional tennis player, it is the competitor who makes a mistake first that loses. As such, it requires that we develop systems that guarantee we do not make a mistake while also iterating faster. Which brings us to another principle that’s taken me decades to develop and describe succintly:

Quality at Speed.

Tactics

From a product management perspective, once you understand a problem, you need to prioritize and begin executing a solution immediately while systematically removing risks that could stop you from execution. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs holds true here.

Continual clean air supply: you only have a few minutes to remove this risk.

Continual clean water supply: you have a few days to remove this risk.

Continual food supply, ideally fresh superfoods like broccoli, bananas, tomatoes, nuts, along with specific supplements (Turmeric, Chondroitin, Glucosamine, Vitamin B/D, Cinnamon, Copper, plus the more popular ones): you have a few weeks to remove this risk.

Strengthen your immune system: get a full night’s sleep as a primary priority, drink fluids to maintain hydration and expell , reduce stress as much as possible, and continue to get exercise (both cardio and strength).

Strengthen your mind: figure out a system for maintaining mental fortitude so you can continue to perform at a high-level under extreme duress and circumstances.

Sustainable shelter: protect yourself from any harsh environment, including other people who may be dangerous with or without them knowing.

Sustainable energy collection and storage: hand cranks, leg power, solar cells, batteries, and generators.

As Ryan Holiday wrote, “the obstacle is the way”.

Mindset

In addition to Intelligence, Heart is another superpower of humanity.

It enables us to connect to one another on a personal basis, which is the first half of the equation. The second half is about compounding our collective strength by acting together on unified goals, but doing so without threatening our survival.

Please remember, the internet is not a guaranteed resource, nor is food or water supply chains, and you certainly can’t eat or drink money. Invest in the right things, in the right order.

Next

We are have been preparing for years, from a variety of perspectives. If you need help preparing you and your family, please reach out. I will do my best to give you the information you needed to keep you strong regardless of what the universe puts in your way.

Stay calm. Nothing grows forever and most growth is defined by s-curves so all you really have to worry about is protecting yourself until you find the inflection point.

Sean

Citations

Getting Enough Fluids, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 4/30/2019

Stress Research, The American Institute of Stress, 3/16/2020

Superfoods: Recent Data on their Role in Prevention of Diseases, Current Research in Nutrition and Food Science, 9/14/2018

How to Boost Your Immune System, Harvard Medical School, 9/1/2014

Internet Sacred Text Archive, 3/16/2020

Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health, 3/16/2020

Principles for Survival was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean M Everett on Medium https://ift.tt/2x1dCp3

[mahalidael]

Heart Attack #1: It’s Over, Romeo! I Have the High Ground

Content warning: Swearing, injury, brief mentions of sexual content.

What if you could share a body with your soulmate? Sounds like a fun story, but for Kanon and Stephanie, it's reality--a painfully awkward reality, especially because they hate each other and now they have to fight crime.

It all started when I broke Stephanie Lemaire’s wrist in study hall.

When I moved to Kansas, I noticed there were a lot of jocks, a lot of girls, and an overwhelming number of jock girls at my school. At the time, I had no idea why there were so many, I was just afraid to talk to them—and for some reason they liked congregating in Ms. Parker’s classroom.

Security during study hall was lax. A lot of people just wandered around in the hallway convening with friends. I think I was the only person who actually studied, no matter how much the flock of capes distracted me.

I don’t know exactly why they went to Ms. Parker’s room—maybe it was just convenient, but more likely is that people gravitated to Stephanie.

Stephanie had a surprising silhouette for a Kansas girl. She was about fifteen when I met her and her shoulders had already broadened out. She had firm features and a really butch way of dressing—I bet she would have looked like a football player if she cut her Dolly Parton curls, but she didn’t. She was also dumb as a box of hammers.

Never had one girl been blamed for so much. Every time I heard something about her, it was an answer to a question. “Why doesn’t the cafeteria have barbecue sauce packets any more?” “Stephanie was hoarding them.” “Why can’t we use duct tape on school grounds?” “Stephanie taped some kid to the closet door.”

I didn’t actually talk to her that much. Sometimes she would push me out of the way in the locker room, and for a while it was a game for the capes to bop all the short kids over the head in the hallway, but no real talking.

Usually when Stephanie’s meat ocean appeared, I was an easy target. I was fairly small, my hair was just coming in pink at the roots, and I only ever wore sweaters. On top of everything else, I’ve got a heart condition, and periodically turning purple if you over-exert yourself isn’t a recipe for popularity. So most of the time I’d get paper tossed at me, or somebody would make a Super Saiyan joke. Most of the time.

But a little more information, and keep in mind I didn’t know any of this shit at the time, but I heard all of this from Stephanie later on:

The high school capes aren’t an official club, because the school’s not allowed to sanction heroism, but they might as well be. They get together on Sunday afternoons and train their asses off preparing for the day that they too will get to fistfight a clown in a dark alley.

So that’s the set dressing. The conflict is the lacrosse team.

There are two kinds of jock in my high school: lacrosse jock and cape jock. The lacrosse team is mostly supers, so it’s only inevitable that they would feud, and today it had manifested in the form of an arm wrestling tournament in the middle of the room.

I didn’t hear the first part of the conversation, but apparently one of the greasier lacrosse players had challenged one of the capes and now it was just coming together. Winner of the last round got to pick the next challenger, and so it went.

These fights never last, and eventually it was less of a “what sports team is better” contest and more of a “supers are better than capes” contest. It was like Injustice: Gods Among Us but shittier.

I didn’t want to be pulled in, but it was one of those things that were so stupid you just couldn’t look away. The most surprising thing was that Stephanie won three rounds in a row, against three increasingly big lacrosse players. I knew that capes weren’t slouches, but holy shit.

It went downhill when they tied. “We need a tie-breaker,” greasy boy declared.

Stephanie was leaning back in her chair, sweating and red in the face. “I heard you the first time, asslamp; there’s no need to yell. Okay, are there any supers who haven’t gone?” She said, and then took a long drink of the bottle of Gatorade on her desk. I turned away and pretended to cough so it wouldn’t look like I was making eyes at her.

Of course, that act of repressed lesbianism was my undoing. As if cued, everyone simultaneously noticed me. Asslamp said: “Hey, nerd!”

“I—yes?” I sputtered.

“Are you a super?”

“Yes,” I said, before I could stop myself.

The capes erupted into laughter, and the supers groaned. I felt my face heat up. “I’m not gonna wrestle that,” Stephanie giggled.

And I thought “wow… now I’m obligated to kick her ass.”

I stood up, and I walked as confidently as I could towards an arm wrestling match with a girl twice my size, which wasn’t very. Honestly, I wouldn’t have passed a field sobriety test. I sat down and looked her dead in the eye. Everyone else was whooping like idiots.

She put her elbow on the table. “You ready to lose?”

I laughed nervously as I did the same. “No.”

“Wrong hand, short-ass.”

“I’m left-handed, is that a problem?”

Stephanie shrugged and put her left hand in mine. “Only if you make it a problem.”

Asslamp refereed. “Are you ready? On your marks…”

Everyone in the room was yelling now.

“Get set…”

I squeezed her hand a little harder.

“Go!”

…I wish I had something interesting to say about the ten seconds or so that I actually arm wrestled Stephanie, but really I was just internally screaming. Mostly because I was wilting quickly, and my arm was almost touching the desk, but also because I could not stop pumping myself up to kick her ass.

After all, how could I her beat me? She was so stupid, so arrogant, so blonde, so fucking cu—

And that’s when her arm hit the desk, hard. I could have sworn I heard a snapping sound, but it was lost in the sound of the supers cheering like wild animals. Eventually it subsided when people started noticing that Stephanie was both holding her arm to her chest and screaming bloody murder at me.

“What the fuck did you do to my wrist?!” Sure enough, it was bent strangely, in a way that wasn’t present before we arm wrestled.

Shit. Fuck. Shit fuck. “I’m sorry! It was an accident!”

The apology didn’t stop Stephanie from grabbing me by my sweater. “Son of a bitch, dude, fucking warn me! You know how much trouble we’re gonna get in now? If I get suspended one more time, I’m fucked!”

...Is what I think she said. Her voice sounded really far away for some reason, and all I could hear was a loud electric whine.

And then I apologized, and I apologized, and I said “I didn’t know I could do that,” and then I woke up in the hospital.

Smooth.

I got off easy with the school due to the medical scare. Apparently Stephanie’s parents didn’t sue because this kind of thing happens a lot, and it was a minor fracture. The doctor still made her wear a cast, though, which she made a point of flipping me off with a couple of times.

More confusing was where that sudden burst of strength had come from, and how quickly it had left. Best I could figure was that it was triggered by high stress, but trying to replicate the scenario produced nothing.

Maybe an outside factor had set it off, but aside from the actual arm wrestling, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual…

And then I had that thought that only teenagers and fraternity brothers can have:

Was I—was I being too gay?

I figured, no… it couldn’t be that. I mean, I’d accidentally jacked it to the thought of my first grade teacher once, but that didn’t cause any super-powered fireworks. Besides, whatever creamy feelings I might have had for Stephanie were killed after she made a habit of chucking orange juice cartons at me at lunch.

But I couldn’t be sure—until a few months later, on a biology field trip.

When field trip buddies were announced, we didn’t say anything on the bus, we didn’t say anything in the field trip line, and we didn’t say anything until halfway through the day when our group stopped for lunch. We were required to remain within twenty feet of each other, but otherwise we were completely ignoring each other.

I was like, holding a thing of yogurt, and then Stephanie sat down next to me, and she fished a bag of protein powder (?) out of her varsity jacket, and absolutely nothing else. She swallowed down the whole packet, then walked off towards the bathroom like it was nobody’s business.

Now, my dumb ass was still in that good Asian schoolgirl mentality, and field trip buddy rules said that Stephanie walking to the bathroom was absolutely my business. I jettisoned my yogurt and took off after her.

To give you an idea of what happened: the Kansas City aquarium has a cafeteria. Off that cafeteria, there’s a straight, darkened hallway. At the start of that hallway, there’s a ladies’ room—a ladies’ room that Stephanie was now breezing past, into the shadows.

You what fucking sucks about tall people? They can just strut off wherever they want, and us normal-sized people have to run behind them like idiots.

“Hey, wait!” I shouted as quietly as I could, to avoid getting myself in trouble.

By some miracle, Stephanie didn’t ignore me, but instead turned on her heel and faced me in the darkness, features set. “What?”

“Um…” She glared down at me. “Did you, like, forget your lunch, or…”

“That was my lunch,” she said in the same tone you would say something like “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us.”

“Oh.” Stephanie’s glare was sharp enough to cut glass. “I can buy you a banana or—”

She thrust her right hand towards me, as if asking for a handshake. I blinked. “Go on,” she said.

I carefully shook her hand, not sure what she wanted. She brought her left to her face in a gesture of frustration. “Don’t be stupid!”

“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you want.”

Stephanie huffed. “If you wanna break my other wrist so bad, you might as well do it!”

Aw, man, this again. “I’m not here to break your wrist, I’m here because you’re wandering off into the unknown!”

She leaned into the wall, crossing her arms and looking at me like I was the densest girl she’d ever met. There was no light in the hallway, and the light of the cafeteria was very soft on her face. “It’s not ‘the unknown’ if I know what’s at the end of it. The tour isn’t going through this wing, but it’s still open.”

“Then dick around on your own time! We’re gonna get in trouble again.”

Stephanie puffed her chest out indignantly and planted her feet. “Okay. Go on. Go ahead and stop me.”

I took her hand and pulled hard as I could. Stephanie smiled, barely swaying. I went around to her side and tried pushing her back towards the cafeteria, leaning my whole weight into it, but she didn’t budge at all. All I accomplished was making myself aware that I was half her size.

“Where’d that arm wrestling strength go?” she said when I had finally given up, wheezing a little bit. I hoped I wouldn’t pass out again.

“Shut up.”

“We’ve got twenty minutes. You can’t stop me, so either you go back and get in trouble, or you see something cool and get in trouble. I mean, you’re screwed no matter what happens.”

I weighed my options. Maybe it was the super curiosity in me, but I really wanted to see what was at the end of that dark hallway. And Stephanie was dumb, but she was right. My biology teacher hated me, and if I went back and told her I would still get in trouble.

I took a deep breath. “Five minutes, then we’re gonna try slipping back into the cafeteria.”

“What makes you think you can drive a bargain with me?”

“If I remember anything from that time I broke your wrist, it’s that you care about getting in trouble.”

Stephanie’s expression seemed to do a little dance of panic and anger before getting schooled. “Whatever. Five minutes is good. Come on, follow me.”

She kept a firm hand on my shoulder, and her face was still very neutral, but she held onto me like she was scared I was gonna run off or try to break her arm again.

As we walked down the hallway, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see we were approaching a pair of doors at the end. They were painted black, and looking at them I thought it was a place that I wouldn’t be allowed to enter.

“There’s a reason,” Stephanie said when she reached the doors, “why this hallway is so dark, and it’s not because it’s closed.” She grinned at me. “You ready?”

“Ready enough.”

“Watch this.” She opened the door just a crack, and I saw a soft purple light in the darkness.

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