h. Play

Working relentlessly. This week was a bit hard with this humid heat.

I momentarily gave up on 3D, it’s really insane. But I’m making progress with models. I’m making furniture (not that easy at that small scale), I finished the roof so that I can use a sponge filling to make it as if it was a green roof. More like a yellow roof because grass will probably be yellow most of the time.

I’ll paint some red dots of flowers and it will look like spring in SoCal.

Financing is moving forward as well, and that’s a bit of a relief. I was ready to buy some land early this year but they put it off market so I’ll be back, mfs.

Thankful.

I missed her so much! She is back.

I had predicted that looking at how hard she plays defense, she was going to get hurt. She did. She was out for a while.

I had also talked shit about the fact that she didn’t shoot the 3 well and then she said shhh.

Well, this week she was back, shot twice, made them both. They were threes.

The first one early in the game. Late in the game, she made a defensive move (deflection and steal) that basically sealed the win. And then she made a perfect 3. You know, shot so pure that the ball stays levitating in the air right after hitting the net. Like, you cannot do better. Pure perfection.

That’s her face after that shot.

I hope she’s having a good time in Chicago. AT-DB-DC at the Sun was a whole vibe.

Internet comment:

I’m just so frustrated by how quickly and easily people give in to these things. People face relatively small inconveniences and quickly give away their rights. Smart phones and social media (in large part, enabled by always-on, always-present smart phones) have so, so many negatives effects and people won’t even consider moving on. “It’s hard to find parking” or “some restaurants are now inconvenient to eat at” are measured next to “the suicide rate of teen girls is spiking” and “we’ve enabled government tracking and surveillance on a scale never before thought possible.” I don’t know how else to be. People are so obsessed with immediate impulse satisfaction and immediate comfort that they’d give up anything. I think if you offered to remove someone’s right to vote, but told them they would be able to gamble for free once a month you’d lose half the votes in the country.

I think hyper, ultra-convenience short-circuits our brains.

Once on that “I am a god and just talk or tap to get anything I want”, people don’t want to go back.

Self-discipline blown out of the water.

Except that the entire juiciness of life is in the balance and oscillation between joy and pain. Effort and rest. Comfort, and discomfort. Struggle and mastery.

Once on that god shit, your brain doesn’t do anything. And so it atrophies. Or reacts violently against a change from doing nothing.

I’m keeping a line. I stay on the slightly inconvenient side of life to keep the smell, the taste. It feels stupid sometimes. But it always leads somewhere, to something, someone.

Ultra-convenience makes you rot in circle. Self-discipline makes you travel distances.

I realize that I’ve been able to avoid the mobile duopoly thanks to living in California/US. Anywhere else in the world? I would have been fucked years ago.

You can do everything with sms, email and websites here! To this day. Maybe it’s because those companies are all based in CA and know damn well how they’re making the world weaker and more sedated that they haven’t pushed state legislation around that. Or because people have pushed against it. Waymo might be the only service where I need a GoogApple app (I can order an Uber with a phone call). Hopefully they make a call service too.

In any case, I am very thankful for that freedom. I love that local businesses have responsive, simple websites and that I can order with the quickness from my laptop, typing with a nice keyboard that springs back and is felt under my fingers.

This is how it should be. Digital, respectful, and a bit slower.

Two things really stand out with this massive change for me:

• Phones being so personal, friends family and girlfriends having a different smartphone never created issues. Everyone is able to occasionally use a different interface. No big deal.
• Because no one else but me has been on a different wave with how UI/UX can be on mobile, everyone assumes that the iPhone/Android UI/UX is the best we can do.

It is the worst we can do. It has been optimized and A/B tested to oblivion to engage you beyond control. By the brightest minds of a few generations that are even more ruthless than actual Boomers. That’s why people can’t stop.

I wouldn’t be surprised if designing the phone and interface to “force” folks to use both hands all the time increases usage by 3. Apple, Google, phone carriers and everyone making money off that stuff is happy about that.

They’re not making a device to help, they’re making it to suck everything out of you. Absolutely everything.

And now, it is so clear to me. The addiction starts with the interface. Because it doesn’t respect you. It drags you. It hypnotizes you. It nags you. It makes you tap more. And no one escaped that but me?

It is keeping me up at night a bit.

I ordered a “dumb” phone or whatever the term is these days.

• Giant FOR LEASE signs at those gentrificating new buildings.
• Folks still paying cash most of the times at my store. This morning this man used 3 cards, all rejected until he used another one I think, I had stopped paying close attention. He then went on checking some lottery tickets at the machine: nothing, compadre.
• Speaking of store, I’ve never seen mine so understaffed and struggling with lines. In ten years, that’s the worst it’s been.
• I used to get an outstanding latte at a place nearby. $3.94 for a tall, big one in 2015. Today it was $7.48 and barely better than Starbucks. I don’t think I’ll go back.
• People are increasingly betting. It is visible. More machines at the store, I see people checking their parlays constantly. It is fucking everywhere in sports, YouTube, all TV apps.
• I have senior citizens with walkers sleeping outside by the basketball field now. A cute black couple. Not everyday. But man, this is heartbreaking.
• People drive unimaginably bad. The complacency at the wheel is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s wild. And dangerous.
• I love our California flora’s vitality so damn much. Those plants make me smile.

I recently had to switch to an iPhone 8. After 16 years using a Nokia Windows Phone.

Not only I abhor this interface that looks like a slice of pizza with candy topping, but now I understand clearly why everyone is on their phones that much.

Every single little thing with the modern smartphone is designed to make you use it. Just the fact that you need both hands to navigate smoothly through the interface and that the only thing you can do one-handed with ease, is scroll.

I see it all now. It’s fucking diabolical.

I should write more.

The childhood home has been sold. I’m in denial. I imagine that they haven’t told her. How convenient that she has Alzheimer’s.

I was there just last year in July. I didn’t know it would be the last time because there was absolutely no fucking way it would.

It had been short. Driving multiple hours to stay about one, is not very efficient.

It was amazing though. The weather was pitch perfect. You know, temperature just right. A bit overcast so that it doesn’t slap you too hard. Well balanced breeze. Driving window down, feeling the coolness when passing by trees and thick French foliage.

Parking as usual. Opening the gate as usual. Stairs up. Door open, double French doors open. She is serene, watching “my TV”, as she always loves to say.

I give her four kisses and hold her hand. She is radiating. 89 years old, in her squeaky clean house that she has been living in since what, 1974? 51 years. She probably left it longer than 2 days a handful of times. Raised 5 children, 1 foster kid (me), took care of a dozen grandchildren, great-grandchildren, dozens of kids as a mini daycare center for a 300-people village in the middle of France. Hosted a billion parties and family reunions. Her house.

I refuse to believe it happened right now. Total denial.

whatever