• The month and day of Annie's birthday is currently provided on her account on X (formerly Twitter):

  • 

• The birth years of Max, Jack, and Annie can be deduced from (e.g.) [EW23a], this article, this tweet, etc.
• $⟹$Sam is ~9 years older than Annie, Max is ~7 years older than Annie, Jack is ~5 years older than Annie.

Note: I initially added these to this post because they provided evidence that Annie was, indeed, Sam Altman's actual sister. As of January 2025, I doubt that anyone would question this, e.g. given that Annie filed a lawsuit against Sam on January 6, 2025, and that Connie, Sam, Max, Jack, provided a public statement in response on January 7, 2025. 

However, before January 2025, there were some people who were skeptical that Annie Altman (and her associated accounts and writings on the Internet) were actually real/authentic and/or that Annie Altman was Sam Altman's actual sister, e.g. to the point that Annie posted this on November 22, 2023:
 

Source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1727224272522023287

For now, I've decided to keep these photos in this post, because they also provide evidence supporting Annie's claim that she used to interact with with her family up until June 2020, when she initiated no contact with them (which, as I understand it, has continued to the present, except for the phone calls Annie had with Sam in late 2021 (all of this is be covered later in this Timeline.))
 

• Note on how I determined "between January 8, 1994 and January 8, 1997":
  • It seems that definitions vary regarding the age range in which a human is considered a "baby".
    • Some say "0-12 months." (Example.)
    • Others say "0-3 years." (Example.)
  • So, I just went with the conservative definition of "0-3 years."
  • Thus, because Annie was born on January 8, 1994, it seems the abuse began between January 8, 1994 and January 8, 1997.

• "Things Grandma was right about..."dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong" [AA24n]

• Annie has also written that her grandmother (who I think was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine) reprimanded Connie for neglecting Annie -- see [AA24p].

• The question here being, "why?"
• A possible answer

• "20. As a direct and proximate result of the aforementioned acts, Defendant, Sam Altman, created in Plaintiff’s mind, a well-founded fear of imminent peril, caused by Defendant Sam Altman’s ability to commit an unwanted and forceful sexual assault and battery, and Defendant, Sam Altman, by committing the aforementioned acts, thereby committed a sexual assault upon Plaintiff, Ann Altman." [MLW25a]
• "22. Defendant Sam Altman’s actions amounted to willful and wanton misconduct and/or a reckless disregard for the health and safety of Plaintiff, Ann Altman." [MLW25a]
• "23. As a direct and proximate result of the foregoing acts of sexual assault upon Plaintiff, Ann Altman, by Defendant, Sam Altman, Plaintiff has suffered great bodily injury, including but not limited to, physical injuries associated with the harms committed; she has also experienced PTSD, severe emotional distress, mental anguish, and depression, which is expected to continue into the future; she has experienced embarrassment and humiliation; Plaintiff has incurred numerous medical bills and other health-related bills as a result of medical and mental health treatment for her injuries, and is expected to incur the same in the future; she has lost wages and benefits she would have otherwise received, but for the sexual assault by Defendant; and may suffer such loss of wages and benefits in the future; she has suffered a loss of enjoyment of a normal life as a consequence of her emotional injuries and she has lost her ability to engage in the same kinds of normal activities, all to her damage." [MLW25a]
• "WHEREFORE, Plaintiff, Ann Altman, requests that judgment be entered on her behalf against Defendant, Samuel Altman, for actual damages in a sum in excess of Seventy-Five Thousand Dollars ($75,000.00), for punitive damages, and for costs of suit." [MLW25a]
• Annie has stated that:
  • Sam was something like her "first {sex work} client" [AA23j]
  • Sam used her to "help him figure out his sexuality" [AA23a]
  • Her brothers Sam and Jack "touched her." [AA22a]
    • (implied: in an inappropriate / nonconsensual way that would be classified as sexual abuse.)
  • ""I’m not four years old with a 13 year old “brother” climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I’ve finally accepted that you’ve always been and always will be more scared of me than I’ve been of you."" [AA23a]
  • ""Was he “really aware of his sexuality really young” or was he abusing his little sister to figure it out hmmmmmm"" [AA22d]

• Estimated date ranges for 7th - 12th grade for Sam:
  • August 1997 - June 1998: 7th grade
  • August 1998 - June 1999: 8th grade
  • August 1999 - June 2000: 9th grade
  • August 2000 - June 2001: 10th grade
  • August 2001 - June 2002: 11th grade
  • August 2002 - June 2003: 12th grade
• The date ranges above were estimated using the dates available on the calendar on JBS's website.
• JBS says they're "for grades 7-12" in their X (Twitter) account bio, so I'd assume the earliest that Sam could have started at JBS would have been at the beginning of 7th grade (~August 1997.)
• In the United States, middle school typically goes up to 8th grade (source), and thus I think the latest that Sam could have began at JBS, given that he began there after transferring out of middle school, would have been at the end of 8th grade  (~June 1999.)
• Sources indicating that Sam graduated in 2003: here, here.
• There are numerous sources that indicate that Sam attended JBS: here, here, here, here, [CCF21a], etc.
• How I estimated the date range in which I think Sam started at JBS:
  • From  [WSJ23a]: "In middle school, he {Sam} transferred to the private John Burroughs School."
  • As noted above, it seems the earliest grade that JBS offers is the 7th grade.
  • From the quote from [WSJ23a] above, it's not clear exactly at what point during middle school Sam transferred to JBS. But:
    • From the above bullet point, we can lower-bound it at "the beginning of 7th grade" -- i.e. ~August 1997. (To be conservative, we can specify our upper bound as the earliest possible date in August 1997 -- i.e. "August 1st, 1997."
    • Then, since middle school in the United States ends at 8th grade, we can upper-bound it at "the end of 8th grade" -- i.e. June 1999. (Similarly, we can specify the latest possible date in June 1999 -- i.e. "June 30th, 1999.")
• What I used to calculate Sam's age (in years, months, and days) on August 1st, 1997 and June 30th, 1999 (given that Sam was born on April 22, 1985): https://www.calculator.net/age-calculator.html

  • 

  • 

• Decades later, Annie would write:
  • "I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency." [AA23m]
  • "Child-me...was told to stay quiet about other people's secrets - even when it made me physically ill." [AA23m]
    • I presume that it was Annie's mother who told her to stay quiet, based on this and [AA24t].

• My understanding is that this occurred as part of 4-year-old Annie's subconscious/automatic trauma response and/or as a mental defense mechanism.
  • That is, I think Annie's 4-year-old mind repressed the memories of this event because she was extremely young, and the event was extremely traumatic for her younger self in a way that was hard for her to even conceptualize, much less fully understand and remember.
• Annie does not begin to fully recall her repressed memories until decades later, in a gradual process that intensifies from mid-2018 onwards (as the rest of this timeline describes.)
• Decades later, about her gradual process of recalling her repressed memories, Annie would write:
  • On 11-8-2018: "With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, what is your earliest memory?' Without pause for an inhale I responded, 'probably a panic attack.'...I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death." [AA18b]
  • On 4-21-2023: "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD..."After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they're millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to "work harder." I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much 'discussion'"...I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions...{in 2020} I'm offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad's ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation. I go for no contact with relatives...I have two years of remembering horrific things I'd buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories." [AA23k]
  • On 10-15-2023: "I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting." [AA23u]
  • On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: "{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...{In September 2020} my body was physically hurting in so many ways...I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details*...Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy...I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me...My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago." [AA24b]
  • "I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of." [AA--f]
• It seems that, before Annie started to recall her repressed memories, she only remembered that Sam had "read her books at bedtime." [EW23a] Only decades later did her recollection change: "As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse." [EW23a].

• Annie published 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance on her blog (allhumanarehuman.medium.com) on March 6, 2019 $⟹$she started to criticize her appearance in 2001.
  • "18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance
    • 1. OCD
    • 2. Anxiety
    • 3. Depression
    • 4. A lack of awareness about how a uterus is literally an additional organ inside the abdomen’s of roughly half of all humans
    • 5. A belief that a stomach that does not fold when a whole body folds is a body that exists
    • 6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
    • 7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
    • 8. Media of all forms (especially advertising)
    • 9. Equating appearance (and perspectives on appearance) with value
    • 10. Equating numerical values with black and white rules, always
    • 11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
    • 12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
    • 13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
    • 14. Equating control with peace and happiness
    • 15. A tendency towards being self-critical
    • 16. Ego
    • 17. Privilege
    • 18. Taking this existence way extra seriously"

Image source: https://x.com/sama/status/467486655872385025

• In one of the Altman family pictures above, from when Jack was younger, Jack does indeed look a bit heavier:

• Note: There is some uncertainty about whether or not this happened in 2002 or in ~1996.
  • In Jack Altman's tweet, Jack claims this happened in 2002.
  • However, in [YC16a], which was published to YouTube on September 27, 2016, Sam and Jack seem to indicate that this happened about "20 years ago" which, given the video was published on Sep 27 2016, would have been ~1996:
    • 14:39:
      • Jack: "Switching into a bit -- topic -- of, uh, sort of, money, and sort of, the long-term view of it, and, how people can think about it most clearly, um, I'm actually to start with a quick story, uh, that I think illustrates a bit of --"
      • Sam: [head swivels to face Jack, inhales] "-- uh oh --"
      • Jack: "-- some of your views. Um, this is from when we were very young, and our grandma gave us each some stock --"
      • Sam: [leans back, shifts in chair] "-- oh this is a good story --"
      • Jack: "-- in a company --"
      • Sam: [waves hand as if granting permission, grins] "-- alright, you can tell this one."
      • Jack: "Okay. Uh, so, she gave us each some stock in a company that she thought we would like. Um, and so, as you like to point out, I was heavier as a child, and one --"
      • Sam: [smiles, laughs]
      • Jack: "-- of the things I liked was Applebee's. And you were hacking away on computers, and one of the things you liked was Apple. And so we each got an equal amount of Apple and Applebee's --"
      • Sam: "-- this was like 20 years ago --"
      • Jack: "-- this was like 20 years ago --"
      • Sam: "-- we were kids --"
      • Jack: "-- yeah. And I think neither of us has sold it. In fact, you [pauses, glances to side] nicely brought me my Applebee's stock back from St. Louis recently, uh --"
      • Sam: "-- your stock certificates."
      • Jack: "My stock certificates --"
      • Sam: "-- it was so long ago, it was still paper certificates."
      • Jack: "Yeah. And I think, inflation-adjusted, I've probably lost half my value there. Whereas I think your Apple {stock} has gone up something like - I don't even want to think about it - uh, hundreds, hundreds of --"
      • Sam: "-- yeah, it's been a lot."
      • Jack: "Um. How do you think about, sort of, the long-term willingness, uh, to hold on to things? What are the advantages someone has early in their career? Um, how should people think about money when they're young?"
      • Sam: "Yeah, you know, I still have those, uh, Apple shares marked in my brokerage account as 'Grandma's birthday Apple shares.' --"
      • Jack [Note: Sam and Jack sometimes talk over/at the same time as each other, which is sort of hard to transcribe]: "Yeah, I -- "
      • Sam: "-- I've never sold them."
      • Jack: "-- I'll trade you."
      • Sam: "No, I'm, I'm good. I'm gonna keep them. I should benchmark them against Applebee's --"
      • Jack: [mumbling] "Ah, well --"
      • Sam: "Um --" [looks down, laughs] "-- I think that one of the few arbitrage opportunities left in the market is time. I think..."
  • For now, I'm going with "2002" from Jack's Tweet, because it seems Sam and Jack were just giving a rough estimate (or, even, Sam may have been trying to play up how long ago the stock was given) in [YC16].

• Justification for the lower and upper bounds on the date range:
  • Lower bound = April 22, 2003:
    • in [MLW25a] (the legal complaint from Annie & her lawyers), it is written:
      • "The last acts of rape committed by Defendant, Sam Altman, against Plaintiff, Ann Altman, occurred when Defendant, Sam Altman, was an adult and Plaintiff, Ann Altman, was a minor." [MLW25a]
    • Sam was born on on April 22, 1985.
    • The age at which one becomes a legal adult, in Missouri (where the alleged sexual abuse took place, where Sam and Annie grew up, and where Annie's lawsuit was filed) is 18 (source: here.)
    • Therefore, for {Sam's last acts of rape against Annie} to have taken place when Annie was an adult, they must have taken place on or after April 22, 2003.
  • Upper bound = end of 2006:
    • in [MLW25a], it is written:
      • "For the approximate years of 1997 through 2006, Defendant, Sam Altman, repeatedly anda continually sexually assaulted, sexually penetrated, sexually abused, raped, sodomized, and battered Plaintiff, Ann Altman."
    • [MLW25a] does not indicate when exactly the last act of rape by Sam Altman of Annie Altman occurred. It also does not indicate when exactly in 2006 the final act of abuse by Sam Altman of Annie Altman occurred.
    • Therefore, the lowest (i.e. chronologically earliest) upper bound is: the end of 2006.
  • (Note: I understand that the style of writing I am using here may seem a overly rigorous/verbose. Please know that this is not an attempt on my part to appear erudite, but rather a purposeful stylistic choice -- I want to make my thought process clear & legible, and leave no room for ambiguity.)

• Paul Graham spoke highly of Sam:
  • From [NYT23a]: "'He has a natural ability to talk people into things,' Mr. Graham said. 'If it isn’t inborn, it was at least fully developed before he was 20. I first met Sam when he was 19, and I remember thinking at the time: ‘So this is what Bill Gates must have been like.''”
  • October 2006: "Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking "Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.""
  • August 2008: "When we predict good outcomes for startups, the qualities that come up in the supporting arguments are toughness, adaptability, determination. Which means to the extent we're correct, those are the qualities you need to win. Investors know this, at least unconsciously. The reason they like it when you don't need them is not simply that they like what they can't have, but because that quality is what makes founders succeed. Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you."
  • April 2009: "I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?" What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want."
  • During Sam's time at Loopt, a group of senior Loopt employees "twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior...Senior executives {at Loopt} approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO." [WSJ23b]
  • Sam also helps orchestrate an elaborate, multi-year plan to seize control of Reddit, by slowly diluting the ownership Condé Naste (who'd acquired it) until Reddit was effectively owned, once again, by its original founders, who'd also been part of  Y Combinator's first cohort. (The plan succeeded.)

• 2005: Steve Huffman (aka "spez") and Alexis Ohanian meet Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator), and pitch him a startup idea, hoping to get into Y Combinator (aka YC.) Graham rejects their idea, but calls them the next morning, and has another conversation with Huffman and Ohanian where he tells them to build a "front page for the Internet." With this idea, which becomes Reddit, Huffman and Ohanian join YC's first batch, of which Sam was also a member.
• In ~October 2006, Condé Nast acquires Reddit for ~$10-20 million.
• (If the story told by Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO) here on Reddit is to be believed:) Beginning sometime in the late 2000's, Sam and some of his associates at Y Combinator begin the execution of a years-long effort to dilute Condé Nast's ownership in Reddit, and return Reddit to the control of YC & Reddit's original founders. (This effort seems to have ultimately succeeded.) --

• From [CCF21a], beginning at 24:31:
  • Charlie Brennan: "At one point, you were the CEO of Reddit for 10 days."
  • Sam Altman: "That's true."
  • Charlie Brennan: "What was the story there?"
  • Sam Altman: "We had a CEO quit during a board meeting, which is like, a very rare thing to happen, never seen it before or since. Uh, and it took us a little while to figure out the succession plan, we were caught totally off guard. So, everybody -- the management team sort of, yeah, technically reported to me...I was a recent investor, and {had} joined the board, and kind of, was the only person local. So, I got very involved for a few days, and uh, then, we had an interim CEO, and then after that the original founder returned to run the company."

• I inferred the year that Annie graduated from JBS by looking closely at the bottom-right corner of the pictures she posted in [AA24i]:

  • 

• This implies:
  • August 2006 - June 2007: 7th grade (for Annie, at JBS)
  • August 2007 - June 2008: 8th grade
  • August 2008 - June 2009: 9th grade
  • August 2009 - June 2010: 10th grade
  • August 2010 - June 2011: 11th grade
  • August 2011 - June 2012: 12th grade
• I made the same assumptions/used the same sort of reasoning to make the esitmates here as I did (above) with my estimates regarding Sam's time at JBS.

• ""Not to brag like the drug bro I am, but I took 100mg of Zoloft for 10 years soooooo" [AA22e]"
• "Getting myself off a high dose of 10 years on an anti-depressant I didn't exactly get myself onto" [AA24t]
• Annie eventually tapers herself off of Zoloft at age 22 (in ~2017) [AA19b, EW23a].
• ""Sam offered to help her with money for a while, then he stopped. In their email and text exchanges, his love — and leverage — is clear. He wants to encourage Annie to get on her feet. He wants to encourage her to get back on Zoloft, which she’d quit under the care of a psychiatrist because she hated how it made her feel." [EW23a]

• (I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in "Period lost, period found" [AA19b].)
• Annie stops taking birth control pills at age 22, just before her 23rd birthday (~2017.)

• The flashbacks Annie describes {to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam during her childhood} will re-appear later on in this timeline.
• How I determined the date range during which Annie went to college at Tufts:
  • 1) From [AA15a] and [EW23a]: It seems that Annie began college at Tufts University in ~September 2012.
    • the letter in [AA15a] is dated "March 30, 2015", and in the letter, Annie says that she's "been a full-time student for six semesters" (i.e. if I understand correctly, March 30, 2015 was a date within Annie's 6th semester); the title of [AA15a] makes it clear that Annie's request to graduate early (i.e. after 6 semesters) was denied. So infer that Annie's first semester was the Fall 2012 semester (I'll discuss below how I determined the date upon which that began.)
    • [EW23a] says Annie graduated after 7 semesters. So I infer that Annie's last (7th) semester was the Fall 2015 semester.
  • 2) From [AA19b]: Annie's major in college was Biopsychology.
  • 3) At Tufts, the Biopsychology major is offered within the School of Arts and Sciences.

    • 

  • 4) From the Academic Calendars on the Tufts website, select that for the School of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, SMFA at Tufts, School of Engineering and Tisch College --> one can find the start and end dates for the Fall 2012 and Fall 2015 semesters (respectively):

    • 

    • 

• It seems that "cano" in Spanish (under the most common definition) translates to something like "tube", "pipe", or "spout" in English: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english/ca%C3%B1o (which, given the context here, I think is wrong:)

  • 

• Google Translate provides the following translation of "El Cano" (which, given the context here, I think is also wrong:)

  • 

• With Jack saying Annie's Spanish was "shaky", I think it is likely that Annie was not using the Spanish word "Cano" correctly, i.e. Annie did not intend the correct English translation of "Spout" when she used the Spanish word "Cano".
• What I think Annie was doing with "Cano" was actually this sort of thing --
  • El Spanish "-o" -- tvtropes.org
    • "People all over the world are in contact with people who speak other languages. Much of the time however they cannot actually speak other people's languages. Sometimes, usually as a joke, they will try to "speak" the language by taking words in their own language and then adding stereotypical linguistic markers of the target language in an attempt to fake it."
    • "This is usually a joke, but sometimes it's just plain desperation, if not outright insensitivity. In the U.S., Spanish is the language that most commonly gets this treatment, with the article "el" being put in front of English words and the masculine ending "-o" being put on the end. For example, an English speaker who wanted beer might ask a Spanish-speaker for "el beero," when it should have been "la cerveza.""
• -- i.e. with "Cano", I think Annie meant the English "Can", and thus with "El Cano", Annie was referring to herself as "The Can" (as in "Trash Can" (see next bullet point)).
• Per [AA24o]: Annie's siblings (Sam, Max, Jack) came up with the nickname "Canine" (and a variety of related nicknames), short for "Trash Can", for Annie:

  • 

    • Link to Tweet [AA24o]: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1808260107861741905
• Under this understanding, I thus found it a bit strange that Jack referred to Annie's "El Cano" as "self-determined", and so I made a post (Tweet) on X (Twitter) about this (my first Tweet was dumb/not-very-nice, and I apologize for that -- I said some shit like "Riddle me this, Altman brothers: who came up with the 'Cannie' nickname?", and soon thereafter I decided that I needed to delete that Tweet and refine my thinking // actually turn my brain on and use logic.) I found Jack's Tweet to be further evidence supporting Annie's claim that the Altman brothers came up with & used "Cannie" (and related nicknames, all referring to a "Trash Can") for Annie, and that their use of this nickname dates back to at least November 14, 2012. (Jack and Sam also called Annie "Cannie" in the podcast episode they did with Annie in ~December 2018 (which I discuss later in this Timeline.))

  • 

• See also: Sam Altman says doing psychedelics during a weekend retreat in Mexico changed his life -- Business Insider (published September 24, 2024)
• Sam Altman - Wikipedia is where I got the information that Sam co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman.

• February 21, 2014: Paul Graham announces that Sam Altman will become president of Y Combinator in the next batch (i.e. "batch" meaning, in my understanding, a group of companies funded by Y Combinator, which Y Combinator advises & works closely with for a few months during a certain time of the year.)
  • On February 21, 2014, Y Combinator's next (i.e. upcoming) batch was the Summer 2014 batch, which ran from June 2014 - August 2014.

• In this letter, Annie states that:
  • For the first time, during her current semester {her 6'th semester}, she has started to consider not going to medical school (e.g. to get a MD or DO degree}, and has instead started to consider other (related) career options, such as becoming a nurse, physician's assistant, or a therapist.
  • She wants to have a "summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to...working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.”"

• Annie doesn't specify, in [AA24u], when this occurred.
• I think it's likely that this occurred between December 22, 2015 and June 2020, because:
  • 1) I think it's unlikely that one of Annie's siblings would have asked her to be their surrogate while she was still in college (as I explained earlier in this timeline, it seems that Annie graduated college on December 22, 2015)
  • 2) As I'll describe later in this timeline, Annie went no contact (i.e. stopped communicating with) her siblings (and mother, I think) in June 2020, so I think it's unlikely that one of Annie's siblings would have asked her to be their surrogate after that.

• I infer that the separation (or divorce?) between Jerry and Connie occurred before the date that "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny" [TF16a] was published in the New Yorker because, in that article, Connie is referred to as "Connie Gibstine" (rather than "Connie Altman"), which implies that, by the date of the article's publication, Connie had separated or divorced from Jerry.

• "A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.”"
• "“Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”"
• "Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
• "One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate." “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!”
  Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ”
  Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed."
• "Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.”"

• (I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in "Period lost, period found" [AA19b].)
• How I estimated "~January 2017":
  • In [AA19b], Annie said that she stopped taking birth control pills and Zoloft "just before" her 22nd birthday. Since Annie was born on January 8, 1994, I'm estimating that this occurred in approximately January 2017.

• At point in time {it seems to me}:
  • Jerry (Sam's dad) is still living and working (overtime) in St. Louis (with a heart condition) [AA24c]
  • Annie has been (repeatedly) asking Sam to provide money and resources to Jerry {i.e. to help with his heart condition, or so he doesn't have to work overtime in his late 60's, or so he can retire.} [AA23q]
    • From what I can tell, Sam has not provided Jerry with money or resources [AA24c].

• 8:30 -- "For most of my life I wanted to be a physician...before taking the MCAT I was like 'fuck this'"
• 11:09 -- "In my shifting away from academia to this more intuitive and letting-myself-feel-things self...I let myself put yoga first and put yoga as a priority in my life"
• 13:49 -- "it's been very therapeutic to talk...one-sided talk therapy"

• Caption on the YouTube video: "Sharing because I'm self-conscious about my puffy morning face (enhanced by the bed slant) though I've been informed it makes me look younger?"

• 1:17 -- "I didn't grow up with a Christmas tree. My parents wanted to have one for my brothers, and then my oldest brother {Sam} got Bar Mitzvah'd {and} he nixed the tree, he was like 'What are we doing? We're Jews. No more Christmas Tree.' And sometimes that sounds really depressing to people, and, it's, it's really not to me. I was...yeah...that's just my...I don't have an association of a tree, and like, a Christmas morning...things, and I promise I'm ok with it. Don't get me wrong with it, we're all affected by our childhoods. I think the first 18 years play a huge role in the rest of our life. Not having a Christmas tree, at least not consciously, is not something that causes me grief."
• 3:45 -- "This is my second Christmas without snow, so that's been pretty cool. I'm out here in the sunshine. And the Christmas before, I was in California and ten out of ten will do again {i.e. do a snowless Christmas again}...for this body, snowless Christmas, is pretty, pretty...superb"
  • Note: Annie grew up in Missouri, which would have had snowy Christmases.
• "...It's interesting, like the holiday season - also, we all kind of make a big deal out of it, and people are like, in the same vein of people being like, 'Oh I'm too busy for this, I'm too busy for that' -- like, what does busy mean -- like 'Oh it's the holidays' -- like...what I always meant when I said that was like my feelings are like, really a lot right now, like, I'm going through a lot. Which clearly I was recently and then since the days of those {unintelligible} videos have been feeling a lot more grounded and settled and and really loving the car...I have no hatred on Christmas -- honestly like i do my best - I'm practicing not to have hatred on anything, like even the plastic imported toys, or the whatever. Like, what is me being angry about that going to do to change literally anything? Nothing. So when people say 'Merry Christmas' I say 'Merry Christmas' back....So all that being said, I would love for someone to like...type all of this out and, 'Simon Says', be like, 'Alright where's the thesis of this?' Like what's the thesis statement of of this talk? And that is that Christmas is not that big a deal...we're so weird. Humans are so weird. Why do we act like this time is any more or less special than another time?"
• 9:08 --

  • 

  • "Not addressed in this video:
    • Christmas and family time
    • Christmas and family drama
    • Families that pretend like they have no drama
    • People who pretend like they have no drama"

• 7:20 -- "I guess that's really what all this talking comes down to - that one sentence, of 'what Christmas is.'"

  • 

• "Which makes it sound like I'm really anti-Christmas but I'm not! I don't care! I want you to do -- like -- I -- I -- I -- I'm not -- I have nothing against Christmas. {text edited into the video by Annie: "at least consciously?"} I have a lot of questions, nothing but questions, about Christmas. Nothing but questions.

  • 

• 0:00 -- "I've concluded for me that rushing is the silliest thing I do...we're all gonna die -- which we're aware of...to get all morbid here -- like we have the same end fate here, things are all going to the same place for us...So with that awareness, what is rushing going to do? Get us one place a little bit faster?...I don't know, maybe this sounds a little half-baked...Sometimes I rush, especially if I'm rushing to yoga or..to make time to mediate, and I'll be like 'What are you doing?' And I'll start laughing at myself. Like, 'What's the rush?'...People rushing while traveling is funny too...I did that all the time when I was a little kid, I'd be like 'are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet'"
• 3:06 -- "There's no need to beat yourself up -- that's me saying that to me...over rushing, like 'Oh I'm not being present at all!' Like, 'yeah you are...chill out...It's fine.'

• 

  • {Annie, writing to herself:} "It's fine, Annie"
• ...I've been realizing for myself the ridiculousness, and the hilarity, of rushing, and speeding through things, and being like, 'Gotta get to this next thing! Oh, gotta get to that! Oh, I need to call this person *right now*. This needs to happen *now*.' And...call it 'learning island time.' Or call it 'car life learning', or just 'getting older' for me -- whatever it is, I don't know, I don't really care! I...am...excited, about this newfound understanding about the silliness of rushing. So I wanted to share it...I'm not here to disparage moving quickly. I want you to ask yourself 'why?' Cause that was the question that got me. Why? Why are you rushing? What are you hoping to accomplish by chewing this food faster, or you know, packing your stuff up quicker, or multitasking these things so you can do this other things quicker...thanks for listening to this rush ramble."

• 2:12 -- "When I was little, I felt the same way I felt now, it was just very black and white then, of this thing that is walking around and eating, why would I walk around and eat it? It was too similar."
• 8:01 -- "I know for me...the people who I care the most about going plant-based...are the people I care about the most...the thing about his own family not listening to him...and family doesn't like to listen, often, or loved ones, or the people you're closest with, don't want to take your advice, and what a hilarious and often uncomfortable irony that those are the ones you (I) care the most about and taking my advice"

• 0:00 -- ""Hello friends. Sheila {I think this was Annie's name for her car} and I are coming at you live with a reminder to be gentle with yourself. When was the last time you gave yourself a compliment or told yourself you loved yourself? {Speaking to herself} Annie? You're doing great you are doing the best you can, and that is amazing. Keep it up. Keep on keeping on. A single journey begins with one step that's one of my favorite lines. I definitely like to like know the destination, or know where I'm going, or like, like, no I'm not doing great because...I want to know what's happening all the time. And that's just not a realistic goal. So instead, I am learning to know that I'm doing great, and that you're doing great, and that I will be here to love myself until I am no longer here. But I'm lucky to surround myself with people who help me come back to myself, and who want to practice loving themselves, and remember that putting themselves first is actually the most selfless act they can do. Because me increasing my happiness gives me more happiness to put out to other people and me depleting myself just depletes all of us. So it's in everyone's best interest for you people pleasers to be kind to yourself. So what are three things that you did today, to show yourself you care? This was one of them, for me."

• "I bought this journal in September of 2013, my sophomore year of college"
• "This journal was my first ever 'Humanual'"
• Entry from September 2016 -- "Injury takes a while to heal from, while happiness can be so fleeting. I get uncomfortable being told I'm smart and capable, and also when there's a lot of attention on me and my feelings, BUT ALSO I crave it"
• "Why do I care about being known, famous, touching a lot of lives? Is this some sort of fearing death thing? A self-confidence thing? A need for validation? Why can I let my handwriting get so sloppy, but also make it so neat? Guess which option I have to slow down for?"

• 

  • (The image above is from 3:07 in the video.)

• 

  • (The image above is from 3:11 in the video.)
• October {2016?} -- "I cannot change my past. I can only stay present in the moment and keep moving forward. Holding on and ruminating only hurts me. I want my motivation to come from equal parts self-love and self-discpline. I am worthy of happiness and fulfillment. Listen to your body, it is much smarter than your mind. Personal expression is important for self-advocacy. You need to be able to make yourself and your thought processes clear to stand up for your thoughts and needs."

• Entry from April 24, 2017 -- "I am sitting on a plane, heading for Hawaii to participate in a 3-week-long yoga course to become certified as an instructor. Getting to this point has already taught me so much. This feels like one of the most self-motivated and self-sufficient decisions I've ever made."
• 1:15 -- "Still practicing accepting and releasing so many feelings...guilt, resentment, shame...still letting how to let go of expectations for myself, others, judgements, and just be."
• 1:56 -- "I've been using some daily mantras recently -- and I wrote out a whole list of things I'd been helping with -- side note, mantra meditation - if you're someone like myself who can be very anal and very, like, 'I need a job' and 'I need a thing', mantra meditations are a really great way to give your brain a job, to give yourself a phrase, or a one-word -- even, and as soon as you get distracted from what's going on it's -- you know, it's another it's just another tool, so you can focus on your breath, your inhale, your exhale. You can focus on your body and gravity. Sometimes mantras can be really helpful for when...'I want more.' Or like, my brain needs a job. When I need to employ my brain. Okay. So here's the ones I wrote down.
• 'It's not a big deal' 'Time is my friend' 'Go easy on yourself', 'let shit that go', 'I am enough', 'I am beautiful', 'I am infinite', 'I have everything', 'remain hopeful', 'let it be play', 'accept no limitations', 'there is no right or wrong.' Okay, and also, for the record -- and this is another classic, like, thing of mine -- I'm like, 'Oh, mantras, let's do all of them!' {Addressing herself} work with one at a time, Annie.

• 

  • (The image above is from 4:10 in the video.)

• 

  • (The image above is from 4:11 in the video.)
• 4:12 -- "So I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to talk about how for most of my life, like, as soon as I was exposed to what chakras are, I was like 'That's bullshit', and yeah with like, same as with astrology with any of these things, I was like 'Yeah, that's load crap. What is that, energy centers in your body? Please.' And then I kind of warmed up to it, like, I transitioned a little, and I was like, you know, I really actually like the chakra idea as a way to work on my mind-body connection and really think about different parts of my body and connect, you know...it's like a body scan meditation - you think about your toes, or your ankles, or your whatever"

• Note: I've included the selected excerpts here because:
  • They corroborate Annie's comments in her father's funeral speech [AA18a] (covered later in this Timeline) about her brothers' belief that Jerry changed his diet to be closer to Annie.
  • They corroborate Annie's claims [AA23q, (reported in) EW23a, AA24c] (covered later in this Timeline) that her father (Jerry Altman) was working overtime, commuting between St. Louis and Kansas City (both in Missouri, but about a 3.5 to 4.33 hour drive apart -- see image below) up until his death (on May 25, 2018.)

  • 

• 1:54 --
  • Annie Altman: "My dad, for over two weeks now, 15 days, has been eating a "Sea-gan diet", which is his brilliant term for vegan plus seafood! So that means he's had zero meats, and zero dairy, and zero eggs. And I remember meatloaf being his favorite meal, favorite dinner, as I was growing up. And so -- pretty exciting!...So, Dad, talk a little, please, about your first...glance thoughts about what it feels like to be eating differently than you've been eating most of your life!"
  • Jerry Altman: "Well, I think it's been an evolution for me. I kinda feel like, the last, uh, 10 or 15 years, I've tried to eat a healthier diet, but certainly there's been a lot of chicken in my diet, and meat from time to time, so this has been a bit of a transformation. It's not been a hard one, because I've had you to guide me through the process, and it started, in part, with eliminating milk from my diet, maybe 6 or 7 months ago, and just going to soy milk for cereal...so that was kinda the start of the process --"
  • Annie Altman: "I told everyone when that happened! I was like 'My dad switched to soy milk!'..." ...
  • Jerry Altman: "...being fit has been, as you know, an important part of my life, and also because of you I started rowing with the St. Louis Rowing Club 7 years ago, and I still do that and enjoy it, 12 months a year. The lake is frozen in St. Louis, so {I} do it indoors, so that's been important, and I do circuit training a couple of times a week. So I'm not fanatical about it, but being fit is important to me. So eating healthy is a natural extension of that. So I started, January 1st, with my 'Sea-gan' diet, and so far it's been great! I've been eating a lot of oatmeal, and going through variations of that, which I love. A lot of oatmeal and berries...I've expanded the amount of nuts I ate. I've been eating a lot of rice and beans...giving up eggs...giving up cheese..."
• 7:31 --
  • Annie Altman: "Do you notice, have you noticed, any differences in...any of your exercising, or sleeping, or appetite?..." ...
  • Jerry Altman (8:06) "...Yeah, I feel good. I'm healthy. I don't know if I'm healthier as a result of these 15 days, but I certainly feel fine. I've been able to avoid the flu, which is going around like crazy in St. Louis and Kansas City, and I've been able to avoid that, but I don't know {unintelligible -- perhaps "if that's because of"} my Sea-gan diet"
• 11:31 --
  • Jerry Altman: "I'm gonna keep going {with his Sea-gan diet}. As long as it keeps working and keeps being fine, I'll keep doing it."
  • Annie Altman: "That makes me ecstatically happy to hear. That says the most, I think, about how it's feeling. Wow, that's so cool! Yay!"
  • Jerry Altman: "You being happy makes me happy, so that's good."
  • Annie Altman: "Thank you. And you being happy makes me happy too."

• 0:23 -- "Diary entry number three...so this was written in August of 2017. And I literally, my jaw literally dropped when I read this one. And I saw it as further 'proof', which is something I've always really wanted and needed, is concrete evidence of things, that I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. So, I wrote: 'I want to be a storyteller. I want to captivate an audience and make them question everything in order to better connect with themselves so they may better connect with others.' And then, this was what made my jaw drop, I wrote one -- of my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh quotes -- 'We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.' Which - my jaw dropped about it, because that is currently on my Instagram bio. That is like my quote there. {Text edited onto the video by Annie: And on the intro to this video!} And now using social media to grow a platform to get the word out about the show that I'm writing, and then seeing this here, I was pretty {Annie makes a 'mind blown' gesture} 'pew' - it's just another wonderful occurrence in teaching me there are no such thing as coincidences. Everything is happening exactly as it's meant to be happening. Every, every day of your life is proof that things always work out and always have worked out and always will continue to work out. You're exactly where you need to be doing exactly what you need to be doing. You have all you need to have like. These things that are cliches, that I've spent a lot of time making fun of -- they're totally accurate!"
• 1:51 -- Annie shows her diary to the screen. Part of the page on the left -- which Annie did not read aloud in the video, and which Annie seems to have attempted to obscure (with a pink envelope and a yellow slip of paper behind that) -- is visible, and one can make out the following:

• 

  • From the page on the left: "8/13/17 11:30 pm -- Tomorrow I fly to Boston! What a time in STL, with mom {Connie Gibstine}. do I love that woman something fierce. does {... obscured ...} (avoidance?) of her {Connie's, I presume} feelin{gs}
• 3:44 -- "As we read this serious emotional text -- 'Ride the waves of life. Love and appreciate the ebbs and the flows equally. We are here to live life. We do not need to explain ourselves. We do not need to place expectations on ourselves to be or do anything.' That's been a fun game for me. I really -- I am an expert at expectations. Expert-level. I also wrote a little note to myself here, or a love letter, if you were -- whatever you'd like to call it: 

• 

• 'Dear Annie, I love you for being patient listening to your mom {Connie Gibstine} talk about her mom. I love you for all you do to take care of your health. I love you for working to accept all your feelings as they come. I love you for the progress you've made with your mental health, and how you carry your mental health journey with you as a tool to continue learning from. I love you for being open to not having or needing all the answers, not knowing the future. I love you for embracing change. I love you for wanting to know yourself so deeply.' And in bubble-letter caps {I wrote} 'NO FEAR. Stay curious and have fun. -- Annie' If you've never written a letter to yourself before, maybe try it out. Maybe write a letter to yourself five years ago, or maybe write a letter to yourself five years in the future. And then maybe reflect back on it, some months later, over video format. Over video format. I definitely feel as though this format, this sharing this platform, is another way of me getting to know myself, wanting to know myself very deeply, and recording yourself and watching videos of yourself is sure definitely one means of doing that. So, if it's something that appeals to you, do it! I'm talking to my iPhone right now, and the chances that you have an iPhone or like 98 percent, so you could do this too. So go do it! Aaaaand I think that's -- all I really feel like sharing right now. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being you."

• Annie's notes in her diary about "being patient" listening to her mother {Connie} talk about her mother corroborate Annie's claim from [AA24f] that Connie demanded to receive therapy from Annie when she was young. (I'm interpreting this as: Connie would often treat Annie as if Annie was her therapist, in a way that was inappropriate given that Annie was young and Connie was her mother.)

• From the caption on the YouTube video:
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyone_Poops
    • "The book tells children that all animals defecate and that they have always done so. The book is intended to relieve shame and embarrassment around the act of defecating by explaining to children that it is a natural part of life."
• From the YouTube video itself:
  • 0:39 -- "Why is pooping so taboo to talk about? Why do people get so weird talking about pooping? There's literally a children's book {Everyone Poops}...that explains that everyone does it. So then why is it, after so many years, no one talks about it? Like ever? Okay, then you go vegan, you talk to vegans, {and} all vegans talk about it, all fruit-arians, like - pooping is a big topic of conversation. In the general population, people like laugh, or they get uncomfortable, orrr they just don't want to share, or they look at me like I'm extra weird, or whatever it is, and I am confused. I would love to hear your thoughts about why it's so taboo. Here are some of my theories to begin the discussion. I think part of it has to do with a lack of comfort with our bodies. So, similarly to why sex is a really taboo thing to talk about, and even food and what we eat...people can feel very uncomfortable sharing or discussing it. So I have that theory on why people get uncomfortable talking about pooping, is this like, not being allowed to share these very basic, primal, everyday body things, um... {long pause} I got sidetracked being like, 'Oh man, I wish I was having sex every day.' {I'm} not currently. Alas. Everything isn't permanent."
  • 3:52 -- "Like it just, it makes logical sense, if you're putting things in one end on a daily basis, that things are coming out the other end on a daily basis. So, perhaps people are uncomfortable to face the discomfort in their body from irregular pooping. These are the things you sit in your car and talk to your phone about {pauses, laughs} -- and by 'you', I mean 'me'."
  • 7:08 -- "This was a good, uh, for me, this was a good release of, of the pooping conundrum feeling. so thank you for watching it and thank you for being you. Peace."
• From the comments section of the YouTube video:
  • @tomsmith523 -- I enjoy pooping but need to talk more about it. I have a very Victorian back ground and such topics are not discussed because they are dirty. We really need to loosen up.
    • @AnnieAltman -- Thank you for your response! Funny what we've all chosen to view as "dirty"... funny how tight-assed we all are about talking about our bodies... ;) :P

• 0:25 -- "I really do believe that your body knows better than my body knows what your body wants and needs. I also know that I spent a lot of time not knowing what my body wanted and needed, and so {I} wanted to share some information that has been very powerful. So I'm not here to tell you to go vegan, but I am here...to share a list of the reasons that are the most convincing me to me to eat a plant-based lifestyle, and that have kept me wanting to eat a plant-based diet."
• 12:12 -- "People who are contributing to global warming by eating meat three times a day, there's a lot of them that I truly believe simply are unaware and have not given it the time and space to think about it. They're eating what their parents gave them and their parents gave them that because their parents gave them that. Like it's a lot of people who are just not taking the time to stop and think about it. So {breathes deeply} and with that slight emotional-whatever, what a great transition to the last point, which is that consuming stress makes you stressed. Going plant-based has been one of the best things I have ever done for my mental health, and I firmly believe it's because I cut out consuming cortisol, consuming stress in my diet...these animals react so strongly to knowing that their friends are being slaughtered, that they're about to be slaughtered - they're mammals, they're like we are. When they fear, they tense, they release stress hormones. When cows are being pumped full of hormones so that they continually produce milk, and they're living in small conditions, they're in fear. There is fear, both in a like hippie-dippie metaphysical spiritual sense, and also in a biochemical cortisol and other stress hormone sense -- there is literal stress that is going into that animal product that you are then putting into you. And even -- to go back to this really happy cow on a farm, which -- if you're gonna eat meat, kill it yourself! Have it be your animal! Like, do -- take responsibility for the whole process. And I think that is cool, and I would love to talk to you about that. Getting off track here. Clearly, I have a lot to share on this topic. Even a cow that is been given the happiest of lives it will still have moments of panic before death because you're killing it. And that is gonna go into the meat. So the Temple Grandin talk that I...mentioned she she was called on to help factory farming, because they noticed -- and this is something that chefs will agree with and why chefs care a lot about the quality of the produce and the animal products they're getting -- a happier animal taste better, so I've heard. And an animal that was really stressed, the meat has a different texture, than an animal that was less stressed. So - things to think about. A lot to chew on there. I would love to hear your thoughts your reflections I would love any feedback on how to talk about these things without it being so preachy because I really, really care passionately about sharing this information...because this information has truly been life-changing to me, and if I'm gonna be putting myself on the Internet you bet your butt I'm gonna be sharing this. How, how to share this information without {pauses} the superiority complex, the like 'I know better than you do' or 'you're a bad person for doing this' or any of these things that might have come up for you, that -- my intentions were simply to share information that has been so powerful for me. So, this has been Annie, the 'chill vegan', pleading you to eat more plants, with what I believe are the most logical reasons. I really appreciate you watching this video, and sticking through all these minutes. It means a lot to me. Thank you so much for being you."

• "Hello friends. I'm here with diary number four...I'm gonna read {a diary entry} from August 18th of 2017. So, quick backstory here: before going to the Woodstock fruit festival this past August, I took two months to travel around and stay with different friends, and see people who were really important to me, and see family, and I sort of took a little, took a little tour of, of seeing a lot of people who I'm really lucky to have have in my life. And...so I went from California up to Seattle, stopped in St. Louis, where I grew up, went out to the East Coast, where I went to college, and was in Boston and New York before the festival, and then I was in New York after the festival, and got to see...one of my older brothers get married in Brooklyn, and then -- this was all decently recently -- and then hopped...back...west...{across the} country, stayed in California for a little bit, and then kept hopping west...and {then} came out here {to Hawaii}. So, to the diary...'It's been a funny trip to reflect on how I got to the East Coast {Annie went to college at Tufts University, which is located in the state of Massachusetts, which is on the East Coast of the United States} and how I got away from it, and I know that both were a crucial part of my journey and my development. I thought this coast was 'right for me' because it 'was me' -- the fast pace, the love of routine and tradition for tradition's sake, the rigidity. I think I believed that moving out east would be like coming home, like stepping into myself. From where I'm sitting now' -- and also absolutely from where I'm sitting now-now {laughs} -- 'I can see how this place brought me closer to home within myself, though not without very real suffering and excessive suffering that was self-created and inflicted. The main lesson I feel I've learned from Boston is the importance of letting shit go. No thought or feeling is important enough to hold on to forever. I find it a meaningful coincidence/happening but this is the place I got a triangle tattooed in such a central location on my body.' I have two tattoos, the first one was a little triangle on my sternum -- science nerd points, delta symbol for change, the only permanence is impermanence. The only thing that's gonna say the same is that things are gonna keep changing, so let it go. Let it go!

• 

• 

• 'The only thing that is truly constant is change'...Based on my perspective this knowledge of change can inspire grace and gratitude, or an intense fear of scarcity. The bumps on the train' -- because it was getting bumpy {on the train} and my writing was messy -- 'are reminding me how much of my life I spent living in a place of fear. Making every decision based on worries of not being enough, doing enough, having enough. Getting so absorbed in the feelings of others I could not set a boundary between myself and the outside world. I could not separate myself from a culture of suffering -- a fear-based society that refuses to let go and move on. For someone who considers herself competent at talking and listening, I had, and will always have, a challenging journey with how to listen to and talk to myself. And I don't think this is an original struggle, because I don't think there are original thoughts. Everything has been said and done and thought and felt before. What a magical paradox!..."
• "I wrote some themes for the show {Annie's 'Humanual'}, things I wanted to come up...we all have the same wants and needs, we just attach different stories to the same feeling states. We're all going through the same stuff, we kinda just act like it's different because the experiences, like, the circumstances, are slightly different. I want to talk about my mental health, my journey, the tools I use, my history with medication, with mindfulness, with movement..."
• "The biggest thing the thing that's kept me eating plant-based has been the mental health benefits."
• 6:09 --

• 

  • (The nametag with the yellow border on the bottom of the left page is the name tag that Annie got when she attended the Woodstock Fruit Festival on August 27, 2017.)

• 1:58 -- "It's been about two and a half months of living in the car"
• 6:33 -- "I was really picky with food for a while, so I'd only have fruit in smoothies. Like if it wasn't blended, I wasn't gonna ingest it."
• 7:04 -- "I came out the Big Island this past May {2017}."

• 4:09 -- "Why am I doing this? Why am I talking to my phone? Why am I putting myself on YouTube, you know, besides...the reason I love to give, of, 'I'm writing a show, and I'm using YouTube and Instagram to publicize and get the word out so I can take the show on the tour.' Which is true, and which is what I'm doing. {But} why am I really here? What is -- what am I doing? And my best bet is that I'm using this to get to know myself. To know myself deeply, to love myself deeply. To get in touch with the ego, and to let go of some of it. And I hope to encourage others to do the same, and to take the time to reflect, and just to think, just to sit with it, just sit with the feelings, sit with yourself, instead of, you know, pushing it all away."

• 1:09 -- "I was a very picky eater for most of my life. I was a vegetarian by choice as a little kid...I chose {to do this} in kindergarten...I also was very picky, and a very controlling type {of} person, and so food became a thing to control...and it also became a really physical, textural thing. The textures of different foods were really freaking me out, and I had all of these taste aversions, and very real reactions...so basically for the first two decades of my life I subsisted on eggs, and cheese, and peanut butter, and bread, and potatoes, and rice, and tortillas. And a lot of those things, for the majority of that time, weren't like..."good" quality. It was {like} Wonderbread...so I would say, up until the end of high school, so for the first 18 years of my life, I ate no green things. I started incorporating Caesar salads, and that was a huge deal to eat greens, to give you a show of it. And then in college I got more into cooking and I would, you know, put vegetables and things in muffins, and I'd find ways to incorporate it and get myself to eat these things...{but} I was still like {mainly eating} eggs, cheese, grains..."beige" foods...{but} I still held on to this. I was like..."One day, you're gonna crave broccoli"...If you've dealt with picky eating, you understand when you have something and it's great and it just shifts your whole mindset, of..."I've been missing out on that for that long?" And over my first year into transitioning {to a} plant-based {diet} it was just eating more and more of these fruits and vegetables that, for so long, I hadn't been interested in eating...my body, I think, was so excited that I was finally giving it fruits and vegetables."
• 16:00 -- "From someone who spent so long restricting myself from the play, in both being really picky and then being really serious about it {i.e. "it" being the food Annie chose to eat or not eat}, my PSA {"public service announcement"} is to play with your food! That's what we're gonna end -- by 'we' I mean 'I' -- gonna end this ramble on. Thank you for listening."

• You may be thinking, "Why are you including this? This doesn't seem relevant."
• I am including this because, as I cover later on in the Responding to Objections/Comments I've Seen From Others [LW · GW] section, someone noted than Annie has "ate only beige foods for most of her life", with the implied argument being that Annie is sort of "crazy."
• I don't think this is a convincing argument for Annie being "crazy." To clarify: it is relatively common for some people, especially during childhood, to be sort of a "picky eater" and only want to eat "beige foods", i.e. foods whose color is generally white or beige. {More on this in a bit.}
• Also -- as I understand it, Sam's sexual abuse of Annie when she was 4 years old was the reason why she developed unusual eating patterns in the first place.
  • c.f. 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance -- by Annie Altman -- published March 6, 2019
  • Annie, in [AA23k]: "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay"