h. Play

In 2023, I wrote:

The most impressive new guy by far this season has been Tyrese Haliburton. This man is something else.

Last night I was watching the NBA Finals highlights and for some reason, it just made sense that OKC would win. They’re at home, they’re leading the whole game, they have 14 steals, the MVP is MVP-ing. It’s a wrap.

But then I see Indiana hit shot after shot and I snap out of it and realize, “they might come back oh shit I forgot, they always come back these days omg omg.”

“They can’t keep getting away with this” meme. Tyrese, man.

I yelled, clapped my hands again last night. As I did when they erased the Cavs and Knicks in games that didn’t look their way, at all. They’re amazing. An absolutely amazing team. Shout out to Myles and TJ. I always wanted them to join the Spurs.

The NBA might be scripted (that NYC game loss was sus as fuck; many people made betting money there and Tyrese was smiling and then they beat the Knicks by 20 the next time they played). It’s just not the way you want it.

It’s going to be interesting to see how OKC bounces back, but for Indiana, you couldn’t dream of a better way to start a series. Confidence boosted x100 thanks to a 10,000 megaton missile from midrange, by Tyrese the terrorist. Ball is love.

I needed to install some software on Ubuntu.

So I sudo’d updated and upgraded. Nothing.

I enabled more repositories, including one called “universe”. Nothing.

So I had to compile this fucker from source. Sigh.

I clone that bitch and go ./autogen.sh

And sure enough, I need autoconf installed. So I install it to compile the fucker aforementioned.

To compile, you need to type make. Shit doesn’t work because no makefile has been found. Because make needs fucking dependencies that I should have because I keep updating and upgrading that Linux hoe. But I don’t have them.

So I type ./configure which is a script to let me know which dependencies I need to use make to compile the library I need to run some software. By the way, do you know that it is 2025?

So ./configure is all like “syntax error unexpected token gtk+ 2.0 hello I’m shittin’ the bed ‘gain”.

So I try to install gtk+ 2.0 with pkg-config and guess what? Pkg-config needs some dependencies as well! This is so much fun.

Gtk+ 2.0 (sorry, 2.24.33) is well installed but pkg-config can’t find its ass. So I go into the fucking config.log to look at the abyss.

I try again to make some software and this time, guess what, I’m missing something called yacc, and the solution is to install something called bison and byacc. I am totally serious.

I try again to make. Failure. Something is missing again (remember, I update and upgrade everything I can all the time in between).

Now I need to install something called flex. I do. Still won’t work.

Now I need to install something called makeinfo, which is installed by sudoing texinfo (not a typo)! I’m having a wonderful time.

I make the software and now I can actually install the actual software that relies on that one.

All of that to open a fucking GUI on Ubuntu 24.04 (both native and wsl, same craziness).

Half assed GUI and CLI. Linux might be the worst.

This is the second time that I mention blueberry muffins being gone from the store I shop at and right after I post about the savage loss, guess what, they’re back.

I’m all like

(they’re very light on blueberries, about 10% of the correct quantity needed in a blueberry muffin, just so you know)

It’s on YT, I won’t link it, you know how we do. Finally, I could watch the whole show.

I am very thankful having grown up watching this. It’s peak everything anime in many ways. Yes, repetitive but editing and stories are so well done. So many shots are movie-like. It’s intriguing, sexy. The music is awesome and fits like a glove.

1983, haha.

Look at that perspective and background quality for a TV show, it’s unreal. Today’s cartoons for kids get a solid color and that’s that.

Just gorgeous, subtle artwork.

Hot women whooping ass and stealing stuff back. What’s not to like?

• This CVS is now closed. Shout out to staff for always being nice to me, despite suspecting everyone from stealing. Especially black dudes with backpacks. That CVS held me down quite a lot. That one time I went in at 10am on a Friday to get rubbers and meet her at 10:30am to have some fun. Good times.
• Blueberry muffins came back for like two weeks before disappearing again. Managing fruit is much harder than chocolate.
• I saw a “FUCK BLACKS” written on a wall nearby my mainly black street, thanks gentrification. Destroy traffic flow, insult residents. Love that.
• My laundromat is down bad. Her coin machine hasn’t worked for months (she’d be in her car handing quarters) and she’s been closed two weeks in a row. Never happened before. I had to go to another one and it felt like treason.
• I hate all of those new buildings so much. They canyonize boulevards, making them windy and ominous. I despise that uniformization of things.
• Good vibes at the park, but I went too fast: there are no women skating. It’s still ultra rare. *slams fist*
• Someone, something is protecting the fuckers who started the Palisades fires. The Line fire didn’t start off thin air. Off with their heads.

As I’m printing more and more stuff, the same way social media changes people, 3D printing changes us as well.

Social media induces constant craving for dopamine.

3D printing resolves the stress of “finding something that would help/work”. Sink hole cover? Print it. Hooks for whatever in the house? Print ’em. Gear to fix a device? Bet. All of a sudden, all these small, useful items can be produced at home under a hour, in more than decent quality. I’ve been needed a scraper for those cold mornings and of course those are rare enough here in Cali that I always forget to buy one.

That’s right. I printed it. I know I’ll smile next time I need it.

Unbelievably, there are a few 3D printing companies in California who can build whole houses and after devastating fires that took thousands of homes down, I have yet to see an article about the hope that those can bring: rebuild quick and fireproof, anyone???

*crickets*

As I endure commuting, I keep seeing them (they’re most of the time super great; sometimes they do odd shit) and I have so many questions:

• They scaled up trips 10X in less than two years I think. How tf?

• Do they really have one “file” and upload it to all cars every night?

• Or is it some kind of live update happening? Seems dangerous but maybe safe these days.

• How many iterations before the car knows what to do in a certain situation? 10? 1,000?

• How is AI impacting their progress? Has it made it much better, easier, scarier?

• Has the hardware evolved? What have been the biggest improvements here?

• Are people trying to hack them? I imagine some super embed Linux shell somewhere but maybe it’s running off of Firefox (just kidding).

• Did the team use things from computer games like juicing? The cars are so smooth transitioning from lane to lane, it feels juicy. They have tweening/easing algorithms, 100%.

• How much other cars impact Waymo cars? I see drivers being mean to them all the time.

• Do they record audio outside of the car? Tons of information with that (fire trucks). Can the car process that info in real time?

• How are car insurance companies looking at all this? Virtually no accident with a Waymo, how will they charge anything in the future?

• What is competition doing? I imagine that there’s an absurd amount of nepotism/politics involving local and federal agencies. Meaning, it must be really hard to compete by now.

• How’s cleaning those cars going? Is there a pattern with people having sex in them?

They announced a partnership with Toyota recently. Driverless life is well on its way here in California. Can’t wait.

The dumbest president I have ever seen doesn’t understand anything about how the economy works and is fucking everything with moronic tariffs. Which are being “paused” all the time, because they’re so supremely stupid.

All global companies are already waiting for those next elections. As the next president will immediately end everything Trump did, and that the economy will need to recover, it will take another three to four years to get back to sort of normal. Which was not really normal as it was after 5 years of pandemic. A not so normal thing.

We’re in the process of losing over ten years doing nothing but waiting to undo what this fantastically incompetent government is doing. Goddamn.