Author: harold

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

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.