h. Play

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

WCF done. NBA Finals, next!

Incredible team. I am still floored at Harper going for 24 points, 6 assists, 11 rebounds and 7 fucking steals in game 1. My man a rookie. Ab-surd.

And that’s just one dude. They’re all so poised. I love them all. Shout out to Vassell for his defense and that F-U dunk at the end of Game 7.

Now, the Knicks. Becky must be cackling.

NYC hasn’t seen good defense for over a month. They have a 5’9 player who will be in JAIL with the Spurs around. The intensity the Spurs faced in the WCF with OKC, a very good team that beat everyone else with ease all season, has made them stronger than Corten steel.

I’m not saying they will sweep. NYC has been waiting for those Finals for a long time and just ended a historical run (11 consecutive wins). But after the last few weeks? I’m having a hard time seeing them scare San Antonio who just beat the 2025 champs on the road. They are beyond locked-in.

Oh, and they have that long ass French dude who’s quite good too.

It is interesting to have a blog for many, many years.

I looked up to see where I had mentioned him in the past. Of course it’s tied to The Promise Ring and Q Lazzarus.

After not being able to skate for 15+ years, I’ve been cruising daily and going to the park religiously every weekend. Learning new tricks. That feeling landing one first try at the next session. Iykyk.

There are not many skaters I was interested in to see how they were doing in the 2000s and 2010s. I remember watching a video of Marc who was living in a house in the LA county woods, skating outside and chilling in nature. Like dude, you made it and I like it. You’re a skateboard living legend, still ripping and laying low, enjoying life. That’s goals.

Then in the mid 2010s I was so confused with his professional life and sponsors rumors. I started to dig a bit through the internet and understood that alcohol had been fucking him up. Then I watched his 9 Club interview and realized that alcohol had been fucking him up for a very, very long time. Eating shit on loading dock concrete for hours and 25 years probably didn’t help either.

I can’t believe that he is gone because I was, like many, secretly hoping to see him give us a beautiful video of him killing it with style and tech, as usual, on a skateboard. Yet I am not surprised at all.

There’s this interview with Anthony Pappalardo where Marc says this about technology:

It’s given us a lot of these tangible things. It’s removed a lot of work, it’s taken away a lot of work and a lot of self-reliance. It’s given us a lot of tangible things and it’s robbed us of these really really important intangible things. Totally stolen these things that you can’t see them or touch them but they are important.

It is 2026 and as I keep whining about it on here, technology has become mostly a disease. I am on a sidewalk, cruising, avoiding a crowd 100% made out of zombies head down their shiny rectangles. They can’t hear, headphones on, and if they look around, their minds is still in that fucking comment/photo/video they just consumed. Human energy around is gone. It’s redirected inside private companies silos and gamed and abused. Those intangible things that used to make a place full of people feel alive, are gone gone.

I mourn this shit like crazy. It is invisible shit. It exists and it is important.

Rest in Power, sir. And thank you so much for making us realize/dream that it is possible. And can look so damn good too.

Full mapping of the clitoris has finally been done!

This thing is big. This thing is just for fun.

It’s incredibly not making sense that this took so long. It is the only pleasure-only organ human beings have I think? Half the planet owns one. And the other half is trying to play with it. But we had to wait until March 2026 to see a paper about it!

Women should be the ones obsessed with sex shouldn’t they? Aren’t y’all? Sex toys sales have been exploding and they are 90% about and for women. If I was a woman I think I’d have fun trying half a dozen, for sure. Securing earth-shattering orgasms has to be hard to give up on though. This changed relationships.

The p-spot should be taught to men. The prostate massage is like caressing your dick from the other side! You’ll come so hard your legs will fold. How are you going to say no to that. It is your body. And yes, a woman eagerly eating your ass is something all men should experience. Men like to talk about minmaxing things or hacking but completely miss that one about sexual pleasure. My pet theory is that women get to toy with their ass the second their wet pussy leaks there. Which probably happens during puberty, at the very least by accident. Men on the other end, never ever touch that area without a piece of paper or in the shower for 1.3 seconds, if ever for some. Staggering knowledge difference!

Sex and anal sex have all kinds of connotations and underlined taboos. All it is, is we have a nervous system. Its ramifications are ending everywhere at the skin surface of our bodies, including the booty and tip and clit, etc. Where they are numerous. Arousal being simply a stimulation of those nerves.

So sex with someone is just arousal teamwork done by performing a stimulation that leads to letting it all out. Through touch. And spit. It is basic and profound at the same time. Feelings and love run in parallel. Completely separate.

I think our environments don’t have enough thick walls. We should be able to moan loudly without annoying others, without fear, without anything but joy and pleasure. Our thin-wall environment is detrimental to our pleasure development.

I am afraid that some dudes are relentlessly using all the AI tools available to map each cam girl to government IDs. Between social engineering and facial recognition, I imagine that it’s fairly easy to get a list of awesome and disgusting women who have played or still are with toys, fluids and holes on camera. Liberating and dangerous.

Sex shouldn’t be an identity today. It’s just a health/hygiene preference. Ideally we shouldn’t have groups of people identifying around some sexual activity. Avoiding ostracism and friction around something we all do and need, is good design I think.

Considering how much sex drives the world. I mean, dudes do the worst to their people to the earth to the future just to pay escorts. And last 30 minutes top. Half of the planet can get sexually harassed at any occasion for no reason at all, anywhere, by the other half.

From our 15-year-old raging hormones to our sexual organs still being functional on our death bed, desire included, we are not talking about sex enough.

For how much free 4K footage we have of it, that is.

In good news, I have started to land nollie heelflips. Hey, there’s that.

I immediately lose my balance for now though. Landed a few pretty ones this weekend where I couldn’t stand longer than half a second, but that’s where the body learns. They are at the door. Soon, I should be able to land them in repetition.

Just a bit obsessed right now.