Mask Requirements at The Food Bin, Santa Cruz, CA – May 14, 2020 (Credit: SurfingTheUniverse.com)
20200514h Santa Cruz, CA: Today, I went shopping at the local grocery story and found the sign at the entrance interesting. While some stores have been selling bandanas for use as wearing masks, and some people have been using scarves or wrapping their head with their shirt, The Food Bin in Santa Cruz, CA is not supporting these actions. Nor or they supporting masks with valves. Instead, you need to have a mask with two straps, ties, or ear loops. It must cover your face from nose to chin. If you arrive at the store without such a mask, you can purchase one at the Herb Store next door.
For me, this is another example of how universes merge together and how the energetic energy of probabilities ripple out to nearby universes. We have universes around us in which different types of masks are the norm, and universes around us in which no masks are the norm. I expect to see a variety of different normals as I continue to surf towards the exit of this pandemic wormhole. I still expect June 8th of this year to be an exit point. Although, in the current universe I feel other unexpected events are on the horizon and I’m curious what new universes I will see as I exit this pandemic wormhole.
I amuse myself by viewing my experiences through the lens of the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics. I began documenting this wormhole surfing experience 108 days ago in almost daily blog posts starting with 2020 Day 1: Seeing is Believing – Good Morning New Universe!. After 80 days, I didn’t recognize the new universe I was in and yet each of the 80 days was connected to the one prior in a smooth fashion. I summarized the first 80 days in 20200320F Day 80: First 80 Days of Surfing into a Pandemic. On that day I also decided to surf out of the pandemic universe, partly as an experiment and partly as a desire to return to a universe in which I could dine in at a restaurant and do other things I had taken for granted before.
14 days to go from 100 to 1000 cases by Jan 23, 2020
7 days to go from 1000 to 10000 cases by Jan 30, 2020
35 days to go from 10000 to 100000 cases by Mar 5, 2020, as the coronavirus epidemic subsided in China and moved to the rest of the world
14 days to go from 100k to 250k cases by Mar 19, 2020
In 2-3 more weeks, the math of exponential growth shows that there will be over 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 if it continues at the same growth as the last few weeks.
Well, according to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html, the number of worldwide confirmed cases of COVID-19 crossed 1 million on April 2, 2020, exactly 14 days later. I also wrote:
And if we continue at this 10x/month rate for another month or two, the number of cases go to 10M after 1 month and 100M after 2 months. This is not to be alarmist – it is just math.
It is looking now that the 10x/month rate is still on track from March 19 and the confirmed COVID-19 cases are expected to hit 2.5M by April 19.
As I continue surfing out of this pandemic wormhole, the 10x/month rate should stay in a farther away universes and the rate will look much less in my universe timeline. If I can exit the wormhole by my target date of June 8th, and if on that date most countries are back to normal, then the 10x rate/month rate needs to reduce to near zero growth, which would imply the total number of cases are slightly growing at just above 1x rate/month. I don’t have the math handy for a smooth function to get there by June 8th, but I would estimate that 7M is a safe upper bound by June 19th, assuming a double to 5M by May 19 and a 1.4x rate of growth by June 19th.
New York cases of COVID-19 rise above 15,000. US cases rise above 30,000. Italy has over 60,000 cases. Worldwide cases rise above 330,000.
US Senator Rand Paul because the first US senator to test positive for COVID-19.
Locally, Santa Cruz County in CA has only reported 15 cases and Travis County in TX has reported 79 cases.
The national guard is being mobilized for states that have the worst outbreaks.
and on the financial side, I noted:
In financial news, as much as I want to call a market bottom, I think the next week is going to be rough. The best bet for a market uplift is if the US congress can agree on a relief package for individuals and businesses.
While COVID-19 is continuing to spread as the math predicts, I’m feeling more optimistic that it’s possible fo me to surf to a universe where COVID-19 is not seen as anything more than a really bad flu virus. The universe I sense is one where the 80+% of people who experiences mild or no symptoms from being infected with SARS_CoV_2 slowly build up a herd immunity across the globe.
From what I know about universe surfing, I can’t do this alone. So, if you find yourself reading this, please join me in surfing to a universe in which SARS_CoV_2 and COVID-19 are not dominating the world’s psyche and are only a distance memory. Oh, and your retirement savings will also be higher in the universe I’m surfing to. I’m putting myself on an 80-day surfing plan from 4 days ago. Target date of June 8, 2020, the 160th day of this year.
The US senate passed 96-0 a $2 Trillion bill to assist individuals and companies affected by COVID-19. It feels good to be in a universe where the two main US political parties work together to write bills.
When I imagine June 8th, it feels like just another day in the parallel reality without a coronavirus pandemic spreading across the world. And yet I know COVID-19 outbreaks will most likely still be occurring. The universe I sense and wish to surf to has the following characteristics:
I don’t think about or talk to anyone about coronaviruses or pandemics;
Everyone I know who wants a job, has a job;
The local newspaper only has an occasionally story about a new local coronavirus case and there are no sustained outbreaks nearby;
Daily whitehouse.gov press briefings are no longer happening;
Doctors have a standard treatment procedure for COVID-19 that brings the CFR down to the same level as seasonal flu;
The stock market has recovered somewhat and volatility is rare;
Unfortunately, the confirmed number of COVID-19 cases and deaths will have far surpassed the number of confirmed number of Influenza cases and deaths; and
Grocery stores are fully stocked and N95 masks are available at normal prices.
This week a record 3.28 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits. Yesterday, the Dow had it’s best 3-day gain since 1931 and today it finished the week up 12.8%, it’s best weekly advance since 1938. The S&P 500 rose 10.3% – best week since 2008. The Nasdaq rose 9.1% – best week since 2009. U.S. COVID-19 cases topped 100,000. U.S. Influenza A cases topped 128,000 and Influenza B cases topped 113,000. Also, the largest relief package ever, at $2 trillion for coronavirus relief, was signed into law.
In 20200328 Day 88: World War C – Humans vs. Coronaviruses, I talked about the world response to the coronavirus pandemic has been similar in some ways to a world war. Having not lived through a world war, it is difficult for me to imagine or compare. I also defined a few surfing terms, including:
Parallel Life Exploration (PLE) is one universe surfing technique that I use to help me understand what is going on in my own universe. Through PLE, I can get a fuller picture of my Quantum Self and also understand the Quantum Environment in which my Quantum Self is existing.
In 20200329 Day 89: Back to the Future, I recorded that the “15 days to flatten the curve” had been extended to 45 days. I also wrote about my target date, June 8th, to exit the pandemic wormhole:
I’m still hoping to intercept a future – to head in a way back to the future of a parallel time line that I was in before I started daily (more or less) blogging 89 days ago. I’ve somewhat arbitrarily selected June 8, 2020, as the date I wish to intercept. Or, perhaps, I’ve sent myself a message from the future that caused me to pick that date for some reason.
So, there are universes in which COVID-19 is not a threat to the world. Many of these involve a vaccine that is developed and tested over the next 18 months. Which vaccine it will be, and how immune enhancement will be avoided, will depend on the universe.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic is such a big effect on the world right now, I was curious if ripples of this event could be felt in the past. I found the following:
“A single person became infected with a novel coronavirus and spread it to almost a million people in 3 months” (Ha!). But in our universe today, 934,519 cases of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus.
“Don’t take Zantac, it was just discovered that it causes cancer.” (Ha!). But in our universe today, FDA orders Zantac to be pulled from shelves because it contains NDMA, a cancer causing substance.
“Everyone has to start wearing masks now whenever they go shopping.” (Ha!). But in our universe today, Pres. Trump is reported as being “sympathetic” to the idea of having all Americans wear masks.
“The IRS is going to send people money instead of taxing them.” (Ha!). But in our universe, everyone is going to get up to $1200.
Yesterday, I clearly felt two distinct sets of universes. In one set, the world is in a state of crisis and fear due to a novel coronavirus that is causing a fast spreading pandemic of deadly respiratory disease. In the other set, the world is in a state of peace and prosperity. I can sense wormholes connecting to the two sets of universes.
and talked about the different ends of the wormhole that I’m trying to surf through. I also looked at other coronaviruses that are endemic in the world.
Given the merger of two sets of universes we are currently experiencing, COVID-19 pandemic in one set and no pandemic in the other set, there will be ripple effects that create unexpected events. While Trump and Biden are the two horses to bet on for President of the U.S. 2021-2024, a third horse is likely to emerge from the tension of these two opposites.
In going down the wormhole of the coronavirus pandemic, I found myself consuming more and creating less. So, to extract myself from the coronavirus pandemic set of universes, I should have an easier time if I also move toward creating more and consuming less. I’m still targeting June 8th, 2020, as the date to exit this pandemic wormhole and look for a new wormhole to enter.
My thoughts on where the stock market is going is all of the above. It will drop due to the increasing costs of the pandemic, it will rise due to the monetary and governmental stimulus, and it will stay the same due to the balance of these two. There are a set of universes for each of these three scenarios and I would like to plan so that my portfolio stays roughly the same in each of these cases. For bonds, I like floating over fixed, shorter over longer, and treasuries over non-treasuries. For real estate, I like residential over commercial. For equities, I like American over non-American – although the stronger dollar is going to be a weight on American companies. For currencies, I like the Dollar over the Euro and Yuan and the Yen over the Dollar. For precious metals, I like Silver over Gold. There is a high likelihood that one or more fiat currencies experiences hyper inflation and the Dollar is not immune.
In 20200414T Day 105: Earth Population 7 Billion, 777 Million, 777 Thousand, 777, I marked the passing of the world population past 7,777,777,777 people and calculated the expected mortality rate for 2020 to be 0.7770%, or 60,437,080 people, after accounting for an anticipated and estimated 1,371,080 additional deaths due to COVID-19.
So, we are definitely in a wormhole and surrounded by a thin layer of universes in which taxes are delayed by 3 months, which is inside a much, much thicker layer of universes in which taxes are due today! I’m trying to surf to the universes past the thin layer of COVID-19 pandemic universes in this wormhole I surfed into. So, I spent all day today working on my taxes and filed them electronically, as I would in many of the universes in which there is no pandemic.
I’m looking forward to the next 52 days until June 8th. Today, Texas began relaxing shelter-in-place restrictions and I expect California and other states to follow soon.
“Out With The Old” — The Jan 1, 2020 New York Daily News front page appears, in retrospect, to warn us of the elderly targeting pandemic that is coming our way.
Santa Cruz, CA: The New York Daily News was founded in 1919 during the 1918 flu pandemic. It was the first U.S. daily newspaper printed in tabloid format. With a 100 year history, it seems like a good one to review the first 100 days of my universe surfing through what feels to me like a wormhole into a pandemic and back.
The first day front page headline “Out With The Old” could mean many things. The least on people’s mind then would be a warning of an upcoming pandemic that would kill the elderly at the highest level since the 1918 flu pandemic.
Here are the first 100 days of front page headlines from the NY Daily News:
Out With The Old
How Hate Looks
U.S. Kills Top Iran General
Iran Vows Payback
The Return of Fear
N.Y. At Her Best – 20,000 march against hate
Bolton: I’m Ready to Sing
Iran Hits Back
Brit Hits the Fan – Harry, Meghan to Ditch Royal Life
Iran Shot Down Jet (accidentally killing 176). PowerBall jackpot $277M
She was 92, Sicko (21yo charged with sexual assault and murder of 92yo)
Revolving Door Lunacy
Sicko’s Lame Defense (21yo denies attack despite video evidence)
The Last ‘Stro (foreshadowing a world without major Sports events)
May The Farce Be With You! (foreshadowing an epic struggle with truth)
Schmear Campaign – Mayor who eats pizza with a fork sparks new fury by TOASTING a fresh bagel
The Good News, He’s UNDEFEATED – The Bad News, He’s UNEMPLOYED (foreshadowing a world where even though shelter-in-place keeps more people alive, it kills their means of employment)
‘ICE’ Cold Slap at Bill (New York’s sanctuary city policies come under attack)
No ‘Bettor’ Place to Be – Jersey crushes N.Y. in sports gambling
Bloomy’s Blitz for Black Votes – Mike Bloomberg Touts mega-bucks for homes, businesses, and poor neighborhoods (Even multi-billionaire Bloomberg can’t fathom the “mega-bucks” stimulus to come)
Get Out of My City! (foreshadowing a world with travel restrictions and screening)
Close 2 Perfect
Wein Stains (about the connection of sexual assault with power and the presidency)
Trainwreck (foreshadowing the world and US mishandling of pandemic)
Devil Duo
Do Not Panic
Kobe Bryant – Hoops Legend, 41, killed in helicopter crash (the first of a wave of unexpected celebrity deaths)
Chicken Kiev – Mitch refuses to budge on witnesses despite Bolton’s Ukraine bombshell
Coward’s End
Road Kill – Uber & Lyft doomed cabbie biz; Center of the Storm; Weinstein Sex Games
Come on, GOP, it’s your last chance to … Show Some Spine
Baby-Faced Butcher
No One Would Listen (foreshadowing U.S. and world leader’s ignoring warnings of coming pandemic)
City Hall’s ‘Gangsta’ Problem (anti-gang activists accused of acting like a gangster)
Caucus Chaos (foreshadowing chaos to come in U.S. presidential election)
Who Won? Who Lost? Who Knows! – And This Guy [Trump] Definitely Doesn’t Care
Our Long National Nightmare is Over (Far From It) (foreshadowing the coming statement from Trump that the U.S. is going to get back to work, and yet we are likely only in the beginning fight against the coronavirus pandemic)
No Safe Haven from ICE
The GOP father
Trouble at the Polls (more foreshadowing of what is yet to come)
‘Assassin’
Gunning for NYPD
Pimp & Circumstance – Kerik’s best man ran sex cult at posh college
Menace 2 Society
Pamper Party Playboy – Accused of drugging, raping underage girls
Just Did It
Bust in Tessa’s Killing
End of the Wein?
Stuck in the Middle
Cuffed for 30 Hours
Bloom Goes the Dynamite
Roger & Over
Split Happens; Remember the ‘Miracle’
Jackpot!
Grisly Machete Attack
#WeToo
School Bus Horror
Buggin’ Out! (Second front page about coronavirus pandemic does not appear until Feb. 27)
Turnstile Justice (back to jail revolving door); Streets of Death (foreshadowing?)
Mask Hysteria
Joe Yeah!
It’s Here!
Go, Joe Rabbit!
Smokin’ Joe
Bloom and Bust
Spread Dread Grows in City
Hero Fights for Life (foreshadowing the coronavirus deaths to come from our heroes who are working to save us); Stumped By Disease
Way Off Course; N.Y. State of Corona Emergency
Time for the Truth; Virus finds a new route into city
Cuo-Rona Cleaner; Dow Suffers Worst Drop Ever
New Roch-hell – Mile-wide swath of W’chester city shut, schools closed, National Guard deployed
War on COVID-19 – President Trump bans all travel from Europe for 30 days
Goin’ Bunkers – Mayor de Blasio declares a state of emergency in New York City
Anger Goes Viral – Mayor de Blasio came under fire Friday from parents and advocates for keeping city schools open in the face of the coronavirus pandemic
Terrible ‘Strain’ – Healthy but panicked people are draining resources. New York has its first two deaths from COVID-19. President Trump tests negative for coronavirus and says he’s totally “normal.”
School’s Out – Virus risk forces mayor to send 1.1M kids home for more than a month. Mayor de Blasio announced Sunday that city schools would be closed until at least April 20
Last Call – Restaurants, bars shut to limit crowds. Parents grapple with school closures. Trump finally concedes virus’ threat
Helter Shelter – Blaz, Cuomo at odds over “quarantine” for city. Streets of Little Italy and rest of city are mostly deserted Tuesday. Mayor de Blasio was ready to order residents to shelter-at-home before Gov. Cuomo ruled against draconian measure.
Help is on the Way
Send in The Army – With coronavirus cases skyrocketing, deaths doubling and the city in dire need of medical supplies, Mayor de Blasio urges President Trump on Thursday to send in the military for functions like setting up field hospitals before coronavirus cases ravage the city.
Long Pause – Gov. Cuomo shuts down all non-critical staff in New York on Friday for an undetermined period as the state’s coronavirus cases soar. With the worst still to come, Mayor de Blasio begs for medical supplies, personnel.
Ground Zero – New York City is the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with over 8,100 cases. Gov. Cuomo chastizes sunbathing millennials.
Coming up Empty – Desperate city gets only more promises from Trump as Congress fails on $1T aid package
Javits (Medical) Center
Easter Basket Case – Hare-brained Trump wants churches full for holiday – even as he calls NYC ‘very hot spot’
Our Grim Reality – “Probably more than half of all New Yorkers will be infected with this disease,” NYC Mayor de Blasio said on Wednesday about coronavirus, noting most would have less serious symptoms. “But for a lot of other people, it’s going to be really tough – and we’re going to lose some people.” The majority of sick patients are under the age of 50. (New York Daily News)
Labor Pains – 3.2M people in the United States file for unemployment as coronavirus crushes businesses. (New York Daily News)
Fire Kills Rail Hero; Checks are on the way; ‘Death sentence’
Getting the RonaRound – Gov. Cuomo questioned the legality of President Trump’s surprise idea to shut down the entire N.Y. metro area before Trump backed down. (New York Daily News)
Chow will they survive? – Without financial help soon, many city eateries will die. Jimmy’s Diner in Brooklyn and hundreds of other restaurants across the city wonder if they have served their last meals. (New York Daily News)
Hope floats – Navy ship arrives in city to ease strain on hospitals. The Navy Hospital ship Comfort sails into New York Harbor and is welcomes by a grateful crowd (inset) before docking Monday on the West Side. (New York Daily News)
“We’re on a suicide mission’ – Bronx hospital staff fights through fears, tears to save lives even as colleague dies. Sean Petty, a pediatric nurse at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, wears his desperate need for a proper mask on his face. Petty is among countless nurses and doctors at city hospitals forced to fight coronavirus pandemic without adequate personal protective equipment. (New York Daily News)
Gov Fears 16,000 Dead – The grim state death toll from the coronavirus would dwarf the tally from 9/11. (New York Daily News)
Running Out Of Air – In six days, New York will deplete its ventilator supply as cases soar toward 100,000 in the state. (New York Daily News)
If Only It Were A Muzzle — President Trump announced on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded all people in the U.S. should wear “a basic cloth or fabric mask” whenever they go outside. Trump said, “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.” (New York Daily News)
Ride On! — MTA getting 250G N95 masks to protect workers from infection. (New York Daily News)
COVID-19 fosters new pain – CUNY kids forced from dorm return to city-provided parents. Queens College student Marcus Diego, who grew up in foster care, said it’s cruel to send students back to homes that are not really theirs. (New York Daily News)
COVID Field – City eyes Hart Island for mass burials as grim toll nears 3,000. Hart Island north of the Bronx (inset) could be used as temporary resting place for coronavirus victims as funeral homes get overwhelmed. (New York Daily News)
Death at Dad’s Door – Brooklyn man, 33, joins grim list of virus victims to die at home after hospital visit. Jorge Cruz of Brooklyn (with son, Logan) died Friday, apparently of COVID-19, after being sent home from hospital. Now his 2-year-old also has the disease, along with the tot’s mother. (New York Daily News)
Out Of Order — On March 12, the courtroom of Brooklyn Judge Johnny Baynes was jammed. He died of complications from COVID-19 two weeks later. (New York Daily News)
As I read through the headlines, it was interesting to see how delayed the news was to covering the coronavirus pandemic as it was raging away in China and entering the US. Since the NY Daily News is a local paper, it can only feel the virus when it is local. This is similar to universe surfing in that we can really only feel the universe we are in. It is very difficult to quantum sense other universes, especially those that are far away. I would bet that the reporters and writers did quantum sense in January what was coming, and yet were too wrapped up in the matrix of the universe to write about what they were sensing. It is a hard enough to quantum sense and even more difficult to make a classical decision in the universe you are in that doesn’t align well with all of the other classical stuff going on in your universe. A ‘hack’ I use is to acknowledge that what I am sensing is a “quantum” variety, and not of this particular universe. Then, I feel like I can access it more readily and it requires less free will to talk about.
A) The number of tests performed to detect any of the four human coronaviruses (HCoVs) -OC43, -NL63, -229E, and -HKU1 reported to the National Respiratory and Enteric Viruses Surveillance System (NREVSS) by week, July 2014–June 2017, B) The percentage of tests positive for HCoVs -OC43, -NL63, -229E, and -HKU1 reported to NREVSS by week, July 2014–June 2017. (Killerby et. al., Apr 2018, 10.1016/j.jcv.2018.01.019)
Santa Cruz, 0403F: Yesterday, I clearly felt two distinct sets of universes. In one set, the world is in a state of crisis and fear due to a novel coronavirus that is causing a fast spreading pandemic of deadly respiratory disease. In the other set, the world is in a state of peace and prosperity. I can sense wormholes connecting to the two sets of universes.
One of the wormholes I sense is there is a novel coronavirus circulating the world, and it is as deadly and infectious as it is in this universe, but the degree of news and fear around the coronavirus varies from one side of the wormhole to the other.
Another one of the wormholes I sense is there is a novel coronavirus circulating the world, and it is feared as it is in this universe, but the degree of deadliness and infectiousness varies from one side of the wormhole to the other.
A third wormhole I sense is there is a novel coronavirus circulating the world, and it is as deadly and infectious as it is in this universe, and it is feared as it is in this universe, but the degree of beneficial action people and governments are taking varies from one side of the wormhole to the other. The beneficial action involves things such as social/physical distancing to slow the spread, manufacturing of PPE for health workers and masks for everyone, financial support for individuals and businesses affected by the shelter-in-place orders, widespread testing and surveillance of the disease, investigations of treatment options to reduce mortality rates, and development of vaccines to decrease the chance of a future outbreaks in the following years.
In the figure above, testing of the four human coronaviruses is plotted for a 3-year period. It can be seen that testing peaked at around 10K tests/week and the percent of these tests that were positive for one coronavirus or another totaled around 10% during the winter season.
I took this photo yesterday at sunrise near Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz, CA
Santa Cruz, CA: The entire state of California is now on lockdown by order of the Governor Newsom. California is the most populous US state with over 40 million residents. At the time of the lockdown order, there were 19 confirmed deaths out of 910 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in California. This compares with at least 5300 confirmed cases in New York and almost 1400 confirmed cases in Washington.
Santa Cruz County and other counties around the Bay Area have been under similar “Shelter in Place” orders for the last two days. The “lockdown” orders appear to be the same. All non-essential businesses are shutdown and social distancing is required when people are out in public.
Local BBQ Place under Lockdown – Take out only, except for beer
How did we get here? It seems like a good time for a review and also a good time to start thinking about how we are going to get back to a universe without all of this social distancing and scary coronaviruses.
I awoke this morning in a new universe – a new reality – a different dimension of reality – a parallel world. As I type this, I feel myself moving through these different dimensions – I feel the influence of the different dimensions in my body, in my mind, and in my soul.
I described my experiences of being in this new universe and what it felt like in my body, mind, and spirit. I ended my blog post with:
It’s 1005 and I now feel complete with this share of my experience now having arrived in what feels like a “far away” reality. I’m curious if I have developed my universe surfing skills sufficiently to stay here for a while and explore or if this has been only a short trip.
My curiosity was around if I would just write one blog post and then go back to my previous set of universes where I wasn’t blogging. I was also curious to explore what was true in this new set of universes I felt myself in.
On the second day, I could feel the prior universes trying to pull me back. My notebook battery didn’t make the leap to the new universes and wasn’t holding a charge. I felt a wormhole closing behind me as I wrote: 2020 Day 2: Feeling a Short Trip and Closing the Wormhole Behind Me.
In 2020 Day 3: In the Wormhole of Consumption and Creation I talked about how I wanted to move from universes where I was spending my time consuming content and move to universe where I was spending my time creating content. I also started talking about stocks because I wanted to eliminate my habit of checking the stock market multiple times a day. It’s interesting to see the stocks I picked to diversify:
For 2019, I was blessed to have AAPL and AMD as my top two investments. I hedged these growth stocks with some value stocks (IBM, WETF, DS, SFM, and NOK) which also provided a bit of diversification. I sold some AAPL and AMD to rebalance my portfolio for 2020 and plan to now only check my portfolio monthly.
Well, the selling of AAPL and AMD turned out to be a good move, but the diversification of buying the other stocks did not protect me from the recent market crash. Of the pick, Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM) is the only one that held up. I should probably think of DS as “dumbshit” and WETF as “WTF was I thinking”. Note to self – always liquidate stock holdings before surfing to a new set of universes!
2020 Day 7: 88% Charge was just another example of how different sets of universes interfere with one another. It seems that my working battery from the prior set of universes was affecting my bad battery of my new set of universes.
As I try to restrict my attention to world and financial news, these both start shouting louder for attention.
Wow, how this insight turned out to be an understatement. On the ninth day of me surfing into this new set of universes, I felt my first synchronicity involving the Chinese city of Wuhan. In 2020 Day 9: New Strain of Coronavirus found in Wuhan, China, I blogged about the “novel coronavirus” as it was called then. Almost a year earlier, I had traveled through Wuhan as a random stop-over on the way to Thailand. I was able to walk around outside and take photos such as this one:
and this one:
I remember noticing how cold it was in January and how cloudy the sky was. In my blog post, I wrote:
Today it is being reported that the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak “mystery illness” that has infected 60 people in the last 2 weeks is caused by a new coronavirus.
Had I not been to Wuhan a year earlier, I doubt this story would have caught my eye. I used my universe surfing skills to notice it and blog about it. It was already an unexpected event for me to travel through Wuhan, and then seeing a “mystery illness” unexpectedly show up in Wuhan was very synchronistic for me. It was a marker that I was in a connected flow of universes. As I reread my post, I’m noticing how much I focused on researching coronaviruses at the time. I’m also remembering that I was sick:
I’ve been sick with a respiratory infection for about two weeks.
I didn’t have a fever. It seemed like just a long, mild symptoms cold. But with my partner later getting sick with (supposedly, according to the second test) FluA, maybe I had the flu. Or, maybe the universe surfing was stressful on my body. Or, maybe my parallel self was traveling to Wuhan this month instead of a year ago, and I was feeling symptoms of him(/her, parallel selves can be any or no gender). My best feeling now, is I was infected with one of the 4 coronaviruses endemic in our population which I also wrote about:
Four identified coronaviruses (HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-HKU1) are endemic in humans and cause up to 30% of respiratory tract infections worldwide each year.
The next day I found myself in a universe where I was a runner. I hadn’t run in quite a while and never longer than 3-4 miles. I periodically wrote posts about my running progress – basically every time I ran. I’m no longer in a universe where I’m running, but feel I will return one day.
At this point, I noticed that I was having more difficulty blogging each day. To continue my habit, I would blog something – anything – whatever popped into my mind. Numbers and spirituality/mythology/religion seemed to guide me as I blogged:
In another universe in which I didn’t run on the 16th day, I blogged about hexadecimal numbers. Then, the novel coronavirus returned to my notice as Thailand and Japan reported confirmed infections: 2020 Day 17: Wuhan Coronavirus infections in Thailand and Japan. It’s interesting to see what I focused on in this post:
This is interesting because China lobbied who.int to not refer to the novel coronavirus as “Wuhan Coronavirus” and today Trump is only using the name “Chinese coronavirus” to describe officially named SARS_CoV_2, which causes COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019).
I also wrote about diagnostic testing by WHO, which is the test rejected by the US.
Testing has become a big issue as South Korea has used widespread testing to “flatten the curve” and control the spread of COVID-19 while the US has struggled to get a working test deployed.
I also showed a graph of the phylogenetic tree of SARS_COV_2. It is still unproven from where SARS_COV_2 arose.
The last paragraph of this blog post reads a bit prophetic to me now:
This story is still not widely reported, but has made it to The Economist. I hope to surf to a universe where this is not a big story, but the synchronicities that found me posting this make me worry that the odds are against me.
Day 18 still feels like a random post – not sure what future this is connected to: 2020 Day 18: Ned Snead. In another universe, I blogged about hanging out with a friend and his family.
2020 Day 19: My longest run 4.67 miles and chair entanglement tells a story of me donating my double-recliner to Goodwill and making an analogy to entanglement. I am not a physicist in this universe, so if you are, please correct the analogy where needed.
Quantum sensing can also appear as a déjà vu feeling. Laurie Garrett, a reporter for CNN, reported yesterday that when she read reports of patients exhibiting symptoms of pneumonia as early as December 12, 2019, she had a “chilling sense of déjà vu”. Seventeen years ago she reported on the SARS virus pandemic that caused illness in at least 8000 people across 37 countries and was associated with at least 774 deaths, including 299 in Hong Kong.
I also wrote this interesting sentence:
I’m now beginning to wonder if these two blog posts will be understood more clearly through a universe surfing viewpoint that does not require time to move in only one direction, and instead allows for anyone to quantum feel possible futures.
I then wrote a story about my experiences feeling, and also my brother feeling, multiple universes as my brother’s washing machine breaks and get replaced with a new one.
20200202 Day 33: First Palindrome Date since 11/11/1111 notes a date for millennials to celebrate. That it’s the 33rd date of the year and this is also a palindrome strikes me as such a rare numerical event. An “exercise for the reader” is to determine if the palindromic qualities of this 33rd day of Gregorian calendar will ever be seen again.
I then pivoted from palindromes to Coronaviruses and discussed palindromic RNA sequences. This lead me somehow to looking at finding a phylogenetic tree of SARS_COV_2 which included a Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1 (ID: KF367457.1) that I had happened to find through my own BLAST searching. I documented this unexpected event to see if it had any links to the future:
I made some more posts about politics and the democratic political race:
Assuming no outbreaks in other countries, using the official numbers reported to date by China, and hoping for the best, the number of worldwide reported cases peak at 145,000 and number of deaths peak at 2,000.
20200209u Day 40: Conspiracy Theories in Multiple Realities is about how universe surfing and quantum sensing can lead one to sound like a conspiracy nut. If you sound like a nut, you’re doing it right. Just know that you sound like a nut and you’ll be ok. The final quote I made in this post deserves to be repeated because it is linked to the future:
At this point, the origin of 2019-nCoV is still in a superposition of states (wild and man-made), at least for most of the people on the planet.
Then cruise ships made the news for all the wrong reasons and China changes the way it counts COVID-19 cases for a few days.
20200317T Days 61-77: Definitely in a New Universe Now! is continuing to feel into the changes in the universe. I am now using twitter and consuming news much more instead of creating. I fell down a wormhole of COVID-19 pandemic and into a set of universes that feel very foreign to me.
20200318W Day 78: It’s a New Universe! is me feeling a desire to leave this set of universes I have found myself in and travel back to one in which there is no pandemic and everyone isn’t worried about the loss in value of their 401k or how they are going to pay their rent.
The sun is just now rising over the trees to the east of my garden window. I am using my iPad to create this post instead of consuming content with my iPhone. Actually, strike that because I’m now using my Mac Book Pro while my iPad updates it’s software. I must mention a synchronistic experience I had before upgrading my iPad software. When I tried to surf to google.com, my Safari web browser told me it could not form a secure connection to the website. The same thing happened when I tried to surf to the web domain yahoo.com. I was able to surf to other websites, including wordpress.com. This was both unexpected and meaningful to me. The meaning I gave to it was a confirmation that the closing of the wormhole of consumption was at least partially successful! It will be interesting to see if these consumption domains are still blocked after I upgrade my iPad operating software.
I like that Apple is now showing me my screen time. Yesterday, I used this information to make note of the 90 minutes of consumption of financial content I was performing each day. I decided to use this as the center of the consumption side of the wormhole that I want to use to travel to the creation side of the wormhole. I’m noticing now that my future self already recognized this as a successful wormhole center and my past self was able to subconsciously feel this and post about financial content, providing the initial openings of this wormhole. Words are limiting to describe all of this and so please forgive my use of a wormhole metaphor. Please also don’t focus too much analysis on the mechanisms of how one’s future self can communicate to one’s past self. The point of this post is for me to describe my synchronicities and how I’m visualizing the anchoring of the wormhole between two sets of different universes, consumption universes and creation universes, between which I’m attempting to travel. There are other ways in which one could describe “replacing old bad habits with new good habits”. I’m using the wormhole analogy here because it fits in well with other universe surfing metaphors.
So for my wormhole, I have it anchored with consumption of financial content on one side and creation of financial content on the other side. Other anchors I wish to add to keep this wormhole open are around news, Facebook, and youTube. I think converting each of these from consumer to creator will help surround me with my more preferred set of universes.
For my own anchoring, it feels important for me to put a bit of financial content creation into this post. I manage my own retirement accounts and primarily invest in individual stocks. For 2019, I was blessed to have AAPL and AMD as my top two investments. I hedged these growth stocks with some value stocks (IBM, WETF, DS, SFM, and NOK) which also provided a bit of diversification. I sold some AAPL and AMD to rebalance my portfolio for 2020 and plan to now only check my portfolio monthly. Because I view reality through a multi-dimensional lens, my stock buy/sell decisions are also made with this same lens. I don’t consciously use any universe surfing “tricks” to make the stocks I buy go up or to select the stocks I buy or sell. If I do anything magical, I attempt to channel Warren Buffet and imagine what stocks he would purchase based on the company’s market and share of that market, the company’s leadership and trustworthiness of that leadership, and the company’s financial fundamentals. Actually, I do use one analysis process that is related to universe surfing – I sometimes consider the probability of different outcomes and weight these as I would if I were gambling. As a simple example, I may estimate that worst case a stock will drop half over the next year and that best case it will double in price. I may then give a 30% chance it will drop in half, a 50% chance it will stay roughly the same, and a 20% chance it will double. Using these estimates, and assuming a current price of $100, I predict a future price over the next year of 30%($50) + 50%($100)+ 20%($200), which is $15 + $50 + $40 = $105, or a 5% return. If my choice is to invest in this stock or pay off some of my car loan that has a 6% annual interest rate, then I choose to pay off my car loan. If instead I estimated that there was only a 20% chance it would drop in half and a 30% chance it would double, then using the same analysis I would get a future predicted price of $10 + $50 + $60 = $115, or a 15% return. In this case, I may choose to buy the stock depending on the faith I had in my estimates (which would be another level of probability analysis).
I feel complete now for today. I’ve spent about an hour on the post and have spent less than 30 minutes consuming financial content. I had to check my visa statement for southwest airline ticket charges because I had been in a universe where I was sure I bought a ticket and now there was no evidence of such a ticket being purchased. While Amazon’s “one-click” purchase may not seem like a patentable idea, from a universe surfing perspective, adding an additional confirmation click to the process does result in two sets of universes, and unfortunately in one of those sets your intended purchase does not happen. Maybe southwest airlines should license Amazon’s patent to sell more tickets. I’m wondering now if there’s a patent for “one-click purchase with second-click undo”.
I started to write this morning at 0830 and my 2014 MacBookPro battery was at 18%. I knew it would not last long because the battery is bad, and so I looked for my charge cable. After a bit of searching, I found it. That and later distractions took me to the present moment almost 4 hours later. Throughout that time, I could feel both my desire to write a second post of 2020, and how easy it would be to avoid writing today. I can tell that it will be a challenge to stay in a universe where I am writing more. I think it will require changing some of my daily habits. One habit I’d like to change is using my cell phone for consuming content. This feels like the best habit to transmute into creating content. I can imagine how the switch of using my notebook to write instead of my phone to read can help me remain in the set of universes where I’m writing more. I see this as choosing the preferred side of two ends of a wormhole. If I am successful at using my phone less for consuming content, it will act to close off the non-preferred side of the wormhole so that I have a higher chance of remaining on the preferred side of the wormhole.
Before I talk more about wormholes, I wanted to revisit one of the thoughts in my first post of 2020. Specifically, this assertion:
I know from the memories of my experiences, and the feelings I get from imagining and sensing the memories of my experiences in parallel worlds, that reality is more than what I see.
To assert that “reality is more than what I see” is a conservative assertion. In fact, researching it now on Wikipedia, I only stated a definition of reality as being “the totality of a system, known and unknown”. When I wrote that, I remember feeling that I wanted to color clearly within the lines of what I actually know from my personal experiences. A more bold assertion would be that reality is more than a single Newtonian universe. An even bolder assertion would be that reality can be modeled as an uncountable number of Newtonian universes that energetically interact in a multi-dimensional (perhaps infinitely dimensional) space.
Consider a reality which matches this model. In this reality, you and I are more than classical beings in a single Newtonian universe. In a multi-dimensional reality, the cells in our body and neurons in our brain are only a 3-dimensional slice of our multi-dimensional cells and neurons. We are multi-dimensional beings. Each 3-D slice of our being is energetically connected with other 3-D slices. I have found that I can train myself, and I believe that you can train yourself, to feel and recognize this multi-dimensional energy.