Author: harold

“Dude, that’s one extremely depressing town square: Owned by a billionaire, complete corporate and government surveillance, full of ads, looks different to each participant, shows everyone a reality that gets you addicted to that square (by either showing you a reality you agree with or one you completely disagree with) and it makes you work for free just to be visible.”

From someone on the free, OG open internet out there.

Looking back,

• Horizontal emphasis to take the time to read pages instead of the vertical infinite scroll to death.
• Discrete notification system to not overwhelm.
• Words instead of icons so you don’t have to constantly decipher. If you can read, you can use.
• No JS per default, blocking all web tracking out of the box.
• No telemetry, no mandatory updates messing up everything.
• Stable, solid, ultra-fast-to-restart-if-they-crash apps.
• All the goodness of having access to most of all the software in the world from 1984 and on.
• Absolutely all software business allowed: shareware, freeware, open source, stores, email lists and keys. Whatever.
• Excellent performance, the best of any Windows I’ve used. Very consistent as well.

It just needed a bit more time and a few additional options like make the start menu a dock on big monitors, or allow the option to go vertical on scrolls instead of enforcing the horizontal one. For when it makes sense.

Today’s operating systems cannot shut the fuck up. A shame.

The past week demonstrates, again, that we should have stopped at laptop/blogging/rss. The phone/social media/algo has fucking killed society’s self-control.

Around 2005 I was thinking that if we were to stay on RSS without an ad-based business model ala Google, things would be online, but local.

RSS gives you all the content so you can’t monetize. If you can’t monetize, you can’t scale. Which would probably have been good at taming people’s thirst for grandeur.

The other good thing would have been local media being empowered by technology instead of becoming zombies for the ad money.

An active, local online scene using open protocols to make things better? Still dreaming of that, can’t deny.

(title is a quick 2025 meme)

Heavy WNBA season. Lots of team changes.

I’m always annoyed how much A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young and especially Chelsea Gray never ever make it into conversations about this league in the general news. As if they didn’t exist or were not absolutely killing it.

That trio is insane and the Aces after a rough start finished very strong (13 wins in a row I think). 2 units, Ms. Parker coming back for the playoffs. They thirsty.

The Lynx are amazing and scooping Dijonai was the move. She immediately slows down the other team it’s something.

The rookies are not rookies? Like Paige dropping 44 points on our Los Angeles Sparks (clinic is the word) but the most impressive to me are Kiki Iriafen and Sonia Citron. Already playing like vets and absorbing like sponges. They’re going to be sooo dangerous in the next few years.

New York seems a bit fragile and ATL a bit under-experienced, but those playoffs will be nice I think.

I’m intensely into the idea of prefabrication of my house in a factory because I can assemble in ten parts.

Ten parts if the roof is only one piece, which technically would fit on a truck without a special-special permit (just a normal special one), but it would probably be too complicated. So I would cut it in 3 and make HHH a 13-piece, Ikea-like puzzle.

Those 13 pieces/modules (structure, partitions), appliances (faucets, switches, machines) and some furniture, bam. Done.

Concrete is a pretty difficult material to work with. Temperature influences its behavior wildly, for instance. Having a controlled environment in a building VS being in the afternoon sun in southern California with a concrete mix a bit dry and cranky workers is not the same pain at all. The added cost seems to be worth it in a few ways.

Pretty locked on the design. I need to create the VR version next. I’m a bit behind.

Cold grapefruit/tuna salad with Banyuls vinegar dressing. It is insane.

Banyul wine is a sweet French wine that nobody in their right mind would drink on the regular. It’s pretty good as vinegar though.

But here with the combination of the acid and sweet on the sour side of grapefruit, the light tartness of tuna, the crunchiness of iceberg salad and the heat from onions, pepper and Goya’s seasoning, it is wild.

I start eating until it’s empty. Like, every single time. It’s filling and refreshing. Extremely satisfying.

I tried other vinegars. Oh child, no. That’s the one. This is the one.

‘was on a quick vacation and watched Mall Cop. I had liked it when it came out so long ago now. Well, this movie has everything from before the phone/social media era. It is a time capsule:

• Bad immigration jokes
• Perfect 90mn length
• Vibrant mall activity though that was already mostly a lie (but recently they look so morbid)
• Futuristic vehicles (Segway), computers (VAIO portable) and toys (robots and Guitar Hero) that didn’t even make it to the end of that year in terms of relevance (the movie came out January 2009)
• Classic 2000s romantic silliness (I can’t explain, there’s one)
• Representation and good spirit
• Texting jokes and dumb phones (if only they could see the streets of [your city] today)
• Skateboarder villains (Mike V)
• Aquariums
• One liners (“feel the nub”, “nobody wins with a headbutt”)

Bonus: my favorite minivan. That I didn’t know in 2009 but that I drove a lot when working for TV in Hollywood.

Anyway. We didn’t know the acceleration society was about to go through then.

We never talk about it.

Air conditioning is so fucking stupid.

Why is it hot inside? Well, the sun rises and slowly, its energy rays penetrate our walls. At some point, they go through and we feel them inside; the heat.

We know that wall thickness and material composition are the most efficient way to delay heat transfer from outside to inside. 0.3”/1.5 cm glass with outside temperature of 35°C/95°F? Almost instant. 6”/15 cm standard (wood frame, some insulation, plaster) exterior wall? A few hours. 2 feet/60 cm of insulated concrete or bricks? 12+ hours, if ever.

So, instead of building properly in hot regions, here in America we go with this “standard” 6” wall and use a machine that uses enormous amounts of energy, running hot outside while it blasts cold air inside, to cool down those thin ass, warm stupid stucco walls and ceilings.

This is the stupidest design ever.

Instead of using energy once, building a thick wall that will passively make things cool inside for decades, we choose to use energy every day to actively cool down a hot wall that will be replaced in 15 years.

We’re idiots.

I’m trying that thick wall thing because that sounds logical and low maintenance.

Forced cooled air is way too dumb and wasteful! It bothers me.

• My Latinos are ALL paying cash at the grocery store.
• One of the first building to gentrify West Adams is already 2/3 empty. Restaurant died and tenant left.
• People delivering food are either in their 20s or 60s. More and more in their 60s.
• They’re planting cactus where homeless folks plant their tents. They do it anyway, they don’t have that much choice.
• Food prices are absolutely insane and unpredictable.
• My Euro food stores had stock and survived. Until now. It’s fucking dire and I’m afraid that one will close soon. Can’t import things with additional 40% tax and make a living.
• People’s addiction to watching the world go down through their lil’ phone makes me want to slap everyone starting with Mark Zuckerberg harrrd.
• Basically ALL my Latino young skaters who would always hit the park every weekend, have been gone since the start of the year. I thought I would see some this summer. I saw one. Once.
• New cars, outside of those, are disgusting. Bloated, toad like. It’s unreal how designers can get away with cars that don’t fit roads anymore at all.
• I see small shops in small buildings and like six months later they subdivide and now you have 2 small shops in one small building.
• My brothers are down bad. Sisters losing it. It’s a slow descent.

I’m doing OK, progressing on a bunch of stuff. I think I haven’t watched a full sunset in years. Sunrize, all year long.

Prince would have made it happen.

I can see him touring for free for Kamala. Rallying crowds with a triple album about the lessons of multiculturalism. Maybe someone would have tried to shoot him down, but he would have overcome.

He would have doubled down, as the symbol of cross, inter worlds icon who got together for multiple decades straight just about everyone to dance to his music. To respect him. To listen to him.

The Dems would have won and we would have been like, “of course they did. A second term was never going to happen!”.

We would have been so fucking wrong.

I miss that dude.