Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      It was an environment of low variance in both individual needs and abilities to prepare. Now both have become very high variance. AND these traditional sources of sigint have become very noisy. By the time a signal gets to them, it’s either too late, or the get it wrong.

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Now besides social media, there’s a lot more you could do. For example: monitor a basket of goods on Amazon for stock-outs. People already do this to track sales/discounts. Why not crisis early warning? State of the art: walk to local supermarket and check toilet paper level 🙄

      3 replies 0 retweets 31 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Also more physical instrumentation. Those with air quality sensors can respond more individually to forest-fire and pollution risks. Those with oximeters can manage Covid risk better. U. Arizona caught a Covid outbreak early with sewage monitoring (shows up early in stool)

      3 replies 0 retweets 26 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      That last one reveals a specific weakness in normal prepper mindset. If you only have a nuclear option of fleeing to your cabin, bunker, or New Zealand mansion, you’re not ready for milder crises where that’s an over-reaction. Apartment buildings with shared sewage surveillance?

      1 reply 0 retweets 23 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Autocorrect typo: first estimation = domestic 🥴https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1300207171628490753 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Regular prepping is like a mix of waterfall planning for a very specific scenario (Costco 5-year food supply pallet anyone?) and Soviet 5-year plan command ec0nomy mindset at first estimation scale. It is overkill in anything short of a sudden step-function overnight collapse.
      Show this thread
      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      I think you could sort survivalist postures by locus of self-preservation concerns. The hard-preppers are me-and-my-family sovereign individual types. Everybody else in trade-or-fight zone. This affects their planning. For example undervaluing shared risk mitigation tactics.

      1 reply 0 retweets 19 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      At the other extreme, it’s the communitarian survivalists. “We’re all in this together, no matter what.” This has its own blindspots, like the practically existing levels of trust and alignment, variance in needs and abilities, level of endemic strife.

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Problem with both extremes is that posture towards others becomes a matter of values rather than empirical judgment. Which requires observation capabilities throughout the stack. If you can measure the right things, your approach needn’t have a libertarian or socialist flavor.

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      You can adapt to actual social conditions rather than theoretical. Your prepping model need not have Hobbesian or Rousseauean priors that haven’t been updated since 1800. You can construct state based on today.

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Live example: Portland shitshow related stuff already appears to have caused some smaller incidents here in LA. How to respond? Monitor on Twitter? Rush out for more toilet paper? Run around looking for open gun store? Look for cabin in woods on Airbnb?

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The better your stack instrumentation, the more calibrated and continuous your response can be.

      4:42 PM - 30 Aug 2020
      • 16 Likes
      • Trust Birungi Caelan Huntress Rahul Ramchandani Arlyn Culwick micah.fyi BDE Jean M Russell Death will not release you Kyle Russell
      2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          What we’ve learned from Covid is that the right assumption is continuous partial collapse, not rare binary state changes. And your response likewise should be continuous partial resiliency tuning, not a two-state switching curve between full-blown lockdown mindset and normalcy.

          1 reply 7 retweets 62 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Pre-enacting the coming gradually darkening ages for fun and profit. Buy my teachable course “stack survivalism 101”

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted T

          Yep this is ithttps://twitter.com/meanderingexile/status/1300229349820362752 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          T @meanderingexile
          Replying to @vgr
          I've been feeling something similar lately, so it's interesting to hear you put it into words. It's hard psychologically, because you accept the survivalist premise ("the system is on the brink") but reject the survivalist fantasy that this will make life simple and genuine
          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted T

          Amenhttps://twitter.com/meanderingexile/status/1300230320160038912 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          T @meanderingexile
          Replying to @meanderingexile @vgr
          instead of Zombieland's freedom or Tyler Durden's primitivism, you get some weirding nightmare where you're purifying your own water but still have to worry about office politics, getting into Route Irish-style gun battles on the way home while dodging robocalls from the IRS
          1 reply 1 retweet 22 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          There’s also similarities to a cold war condition between you and the world. It’s a backdrop of tension that may get to you anytime, but if it not, you can continue in surreal normalcy. Like the Cold War was just normalcy with a side of polonium-tip umbrella assassinations.

          1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          There’s surprising similarities between stack survivalism and gig economy career management. Pragmatic prepping is a series of life gigs rather than work gigs. Transition from ordinary life to continuous partial collapse life is a bit like transition from paycheck to gig life.

          1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In the gig economy, you see surge pricing coming, and you go live. In stack survivalist living you see a toilet paper outage coming and you stock up.

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I wonder how many people with bunkers are pissed that things are bad but not bad enough to retreat to bunkers. If I had a bunker I think I’d unconsciously be hoping for a chance to use it. And kinda hoping for the Real Thing™ instead of just a bunch of stock-outs and slow mail.

          1 reply 0 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        10. End of conversation
        1. Go Ducks‏ @kmetzpor Aug 30
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation
          Replying to @vgr

          What the hell is “a stack”? Inquiring noobs want to know...thx

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
          Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. Undo
          Undo

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info