Author: harold

Not the easiest read because it’s a collection of essays apparently. I really enjoyed her vision. It’s funny how many words are French or close cousins and that probably throw people off but I’m just like “French language is precise as fuck, I know”.

However when Margo pins something down, damn. Here on the difference between privilege and entitlement:

“when those who would snatch it away weren’t looking” daaaaamn Margo you’re going to get us in trouble.

I learned about Florynce Kennedy and that made me happy. It’s also frightening how black struggle stays similar through time and space.

Finished Margo Jefferson’s. Finished Questlove’s. Rick James’ in progress.

I really enjoyed Ahmir’s book. It was fun and funny enough, it gave me answers that I was wondering about when I was a teenager looking at The Roots as if they were my answer to a lot of things. Following their weird pace and label changes through early 2000s, the break out ‘You Got Me” single. Here’s his take on a Jay Dee’s track:

I wasn’t into hip-hop at that time BUT I tripped on that particular track after borrowing the album from a friend because those beats sounded real good. I wrote about it in my upcoming book:

Yes, I felt validated by the fact that I loved that track and that it fucked up Questlove too.

I share a lot of his opinions and I know why: we’re only six years apart. He’s my big brother, same generation. Questlove wonders how to get more fans while keeping the old fans and it turns out that it’s complex. But it’s in the end, simple: a creative endeavor, especially music, is generational. It attracts people from one generation more than others. The Roots being a Gen X band, and the Gen X population being the smallest generation alive… Millennials had Kanye, Boomers don’t care about hip-hop. That’s why it was hard and weird for them and why becoming a backup band for a TV show made a lot of sense.

Now, I’m super surprised that Quest doesn’t mention MC Lyte or Queen Latifah from the golden era or Missy Elliott from the very productive end of the 90s/start of the 00s. Those girls destroyed! It seems to me that if one of hip-hop’s strongest feeling is unity, then you have to talk about the divide and women rapping, because they have been since the beginning. You know, a chapter about it would have been cool. I guess I’ll read their books.

Five stars. I always rate everything good or good enough five stars.

Hold up, Reuters.

The first article I read about the Las Vegas shooting immediately references 2015 Paris attacks.

Reuters, established in 1851, compares and claims that a single, old white man in America shooting over fifty people dead for no reason –for now at least- is reminiscent of a bunch of young French Arabs attacking a rock concert with a clear motive?

How. The. Fuck.

How can you be so desperate for attention that you write that kind of horrifying shortcut? How can you lack so much integrity while being such an old and experienced news agency? How can you go to sleep knowing that you fuel racial tensions with blatant lies? Those two events have nothing in common at all.

How come a news agency compares America and France’s tragedies but never go like “while America is debating on universal healthcare, most countries on earth have been enjoying a version of it for decades.”

Mainstream news have become the worst of trash.

From Mo’ Meta Blues, Questlove’s memoir.

“something switched over in them” “in the early eighties”

This is the world inequality ratio, the closer to zero the better:

So many things went bad and were hidden back then after the start of that decade. I think Questlove’s parents turn to Ned and Maude Flanders’ ways was a reaction to the rise of inequality, which is mostly fueled by disgusting laws targeting some people. They lived through the 50s, 60s, 70s and saw progress back and forth but mostly forth considering the start of the century. As you can see on this graph, the eighties were a different beast.

His parents probably saw that being carefree and screaming like Prince at that time would not help their son. They were right in a way, but diving into religion and Christianity didn’t miraculously washed society off of “the devil”. There is no devil, only hate and greed.

Fear is powerful and makes us make the craziest turns.

Serendipity:

NOUN

serendipities (plural noun)

1. the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

This does happen less and less, thanks to algorithms. I’m realizing how much of my life has been brought up to me by serendipity. You have to be active to enable positive events and now you have machines deciding for you, for everything. All the time.

You grow/grew up with those machines deciding for yourself so now you don’t even have the tools built-in in your mind to make serendipity happen. You say “no” or “yes” but the “why”, “what” “how” are disappearing.

I guess we need chance less now that we have access to so much in a few clicks, being able to be part of multiple worlds more than ever. But I don’t like when the built-in processes, the good habits are going away.

This off season is crazy.

Here’s what’s going to happen: LBJ joins the Lakers next year. IT follows him. IT and I, both 1,75m lefties fusion. We beat all the teams forever.

OR

The NBA cancels the East Coast in December before y’all get your ass whooped by the entire West Armada.

OR

It’s going to be interesting. My Spurs have the hardest road, filled with teams that are very different with all those trades. That’s going to be their strength: they all know how to play together compared to teams that just got players with strong ego and skills. Down the stretch, that will make a difference.

I’m scared of the Pelicans, man. If AD and Boogie go off, shit’s going to get ugly. They can’t be stopped. The Rockets with CP3, are a walking nightmare. Hopefully Chris clashes with James so that Aldridge the Fridge –WHO SAID THAT– can score and ruin other teams’ hopes that he’s the weak link. I hope Popovich put him on a skateboard all summer so that he worked on his balance and foot work. I believe he woke up after the last playoffs. I want to believe he lands switch 360 flips by now.

The Warriors got another absurd 3-pt shooter so there’s that. And OKC has three crazy good players now. I think that might be a bit too much for a team to digest at once. It looks good on paper but they will have to change so many things in their habits. The Wolves look hungry as hell, they will hurt.

The season starts soon and I’m so ready.

So if just one of Facebook’s 2 billion users entered “Jew-hater” as her “field of study”—whether out of malice or a misplaced attempt at humor—an advertiser who typed that same term in the same field could then include that user among the target audience. (Following ProPublica’s and Slate’s reports, Facebook disabled these targeting options.) To the extent there’s a problem, then, it’s not a case of machine intelligence run amok but rather a lack of any intelligence in the process, machine or otherwise. In short, Facebook’s ad tool is dumb.

The entire ad business is dumb, always has been. That’s also why we don’t like ads. Find another fucking business model. Lower your filthy profit expectations and have a good life. Is that hard?

Oh yeah, I forgot that I stopped smoking tobacco a year or so ago so happy birthday to me! I also not long after stopped putting sugar in my coffee. Not really something that I planned to do but there is so much sugar in all the food here that I figured that would not be bad to cut down a bit.

After sweating less, not smoking made me sweat more. Under stress, not smoking anymore would make me wet like I have never been before. It’s getting better. The sensation of losing focus progressively went away, I don’t have the issue anymore but I remember how strong that felt. Nicotine trying to be smart.

The funny thing is smelling someone smoking without seeing him/her and thinking “wait, this smell smells familiar but I can’t.. Oh right, cigarettes”. I forgot! Of course the hard first 5 minutes on my bike are gone. I can bike at full speed immediately, lungs wise. I can feel them getting cleaner. Cool, but not life-changing for now.

Coffee is definitely better without sugar but I sometimes miss the sweet morning kick. Sugar stimulates so much of our excitement. It wakes us up, keeps us awake more than  the coffee itself. But also it’s such a drug. I. WANT. SWEETS.

Anyway, my wallet is happy for me too.