Author: harold

It used to be that, for years and years:

http://har0ld.free.fr/myblog/crayonphysics_launch.jpg

Readable URL with a picture file at the end. Harmless.

Then it was bad, thanks Google for being so great at respecting the Web and making it even better:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V2KxqFTnho4/VQyNttyz7MI/AAAAAAAABkw/m-7V38p
ZvZQ/s800/tumblr_nlffxgy67S1tmkxe3o2_540.png

You see, it still respected the syntax and some WWW readability: URL and picture file at the end.

Now it’s 2016 Picasa is dead and Google has Google Photos, which displays pictures like that:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/SJZfoWrPOFBE021c2C04U8Ohbdj6RTvOYkM3gsxkjzIn
71oR6TkJsnHXYMZTvZzVNJcKt313p4
-pX6NCecq6vNaW0a_c9XPgtlsW9OfkzXy8bkPkRqqyFlrQMgD5Nh9P9hA415wKxUPUPGlJL8PS-
DslvPriquRV5FEKWQ4108lxwkNOUqvqIgovsS9fZNo92jDFLcWmF70HyqipMtY-
ifzbBtj6UsejzMNlhzkotc5K5_X-UJSjf7ZDXCkHMitJszzuCMcOBgH2DxQvMPwGUpynbw513zSFLV
Je3BKB3rJvzteMKIUrjII0qdGQzpHUF_fEOgtn1oG7jCEome6q3TsEwaYF9LkLCi2zUeTvjH1Bo8tq
qKf-a7-ZTer6JSN2YpEij49poblCQI2ConNtGvwwF3Y-tvKH2Cr9aMTC0eC16UqjZjBGmAy2LkpurO
tSqx6brFrNHUJyyUxhrxKIUiljVNSqduYG7duyY2baFTM7Vp5bdHqnzEojiMmEAzje4d9oIXXrmFZf
VsZsihyWraTN2PphyFFWRIwW4w4vAP7CwAxTH__zJtiwoNmaKuN4wJB2z5df5g-
sqBpEs6c3ok8FpSoiYIA=w1064-h636-no

Of course it absolutely breaks HTML and makes your brain vomit. It’s the URL for machines, it’s the web for “AI” and crawling robots. It’s the web where we can’t put our little hands in and make stuff the way we want them.

I guess I’ll have to find a solution to that mess. I like pictures in the middle of text.

What is up yall?

Enjoying some pool time last week or whatever. My memory gets blurry, sometimes I’m not sure if I ever lived somewhere else. France probably changed so much in the past three or four years. It’s going to be weird next time and probably a bit painful. But also exciting because I *really* forgot about plenty of things that will pop up once I’ll land. Not anytime soon though. Those plane tickets are hurting, yo. But family is getting antsy.

Elections on and I’m getting ready to vote from Santa Monica Blvd next year for the French presidential. It’s going to be very similar to the US: a right wing nuts VS whoever made it to the final stage. Yay democracy.

Billions of things to make, do, send, wait for etc. Peace.

First, I got screwed because it’s hard to stop the entire internet. So I knew.

The rest though. it hits close to home. It’s hard to see this in real life, it’s hard to see it again as entertainment like I immediately get mad and sad.

It’s not helping anything. I feel bamboozled. There’s no need for more light on black people’s unjustified suffering because the problem is not that people don’t know about it. It’s actually never been the issue. People always knew. It’s the acting, solving part where no one shows up.

I don’t really care about the show anymore. Still has the most captivating cast/character design I have ever seen, by far. Put them in a spaceship, a jungle, a cute neighborhood I’d watch the fuck outta that new show.

(I wrote this months ago, just making adjustments to the new now)

Following my usual half hour on Skype with my parents on Sunday morning, I started to think about them when they got me. I mean, making the decision of adopting a child.

It’s wild.

Everything is new and fancy at that time hence my face, dad looks like a young Popovich.

They couldn’t conceive a kid at that time. And I’m sure my dad wanted to do more than the basic thing of finding a white baby. He was like “fuck it if we can’t make our kid, let’s save one that really needs help.” That’s how I understand their decision to adopt a six year old black kid. I mean, that’s punk as fuck. Unless the reason was to secure a crib in paradise later, then it’s kind of lame but whatever.

Older foster kids do not having the best odds in life. Parentless and not a baby? Some would even say dude you’re so fucked. You’ll be sniffing glue by the age of 9.

So anyway. Very bold move from them that worked out pretty well for both of us, back then. In today’s France or US I would never think that this is a good idea. Between my parents and I it’s still a lot of pain and incomprehension and attempts to make it up for whatever etc. It is a very singular relationship and it was at a great time and place to make it happen. If I look back 80s Paris was one of the most open, richest culture ever seen on earth. Not kidding. There was a strong inclusiveness that disappeared now that everyone is back to heritage shit. Yes, it was fake like Benetton ads. But you fake it until you make it.

We didn’t make it and we’re not faking it anymore. Our recent failures to live in peace together, the fact that it only marginally gets better cut me really deep. My crumbling world got me like:

If I had one, I couldn’t imagine having to teach my kid about Sandra Bland, Alton and Philando, or Trump. Even less in the context of adopting a child different from myself. “so you see daddy is black and has to deal with some stuff you will never have to deal with unless you’re hanging out with me but then it will be very different and then it’s complicated”. Just thinking about the prospect of doing that makes my eyes turn like mini oceans. It’s so hard. The privilege of seeing extremely clearly how much we are not together at all, despite what the president says and what we say to ourselves. I have it.

I feel like my parents and I are humbly nurturing a mutual respect for our differences and that it’s pretty unique to us. They don’t do that with my sister they gave birth to. I don’t see that with other parents. It’s very fragile love and at the same time it’s graphene love.

I’m thankful. I try to do my best. I just want to love and make the shit the shit.

I hadn’t cried like that in a long time.

I hadn’t felt that powerless in maybe forever.

There is no need for a billion dollar fund for police training to understand common sense that is to not kill a citizen when he’s cooperating. It’s basic. Keep your billion Hillary and please disappear.

There is no justice. I kept thinking of that murderer who got to get into a police car to get a last burger I mean you guys don’t even know how much pride and pain we have to swallow. There are nothing you can tell to make us feel better. Nothing.

The more I think and the more I want an off-the-grid, passive house not to be smart or feel fancy, but just to guarantee a life that will make sense. To be away from that bullshit, as much as possible.

It’s a good article on Brexit.

After the market-venerating radicalism of Reagan and Thatcher, he said, “the center left” — Blair and Clinton and various European parties — “managed to regain political office but failed to reimagine the mission and purpose of social democracy, which ­became empty and obsolete.”

French, slow ass, condescending and pointless 90s socialism definitely played a role in suffocating Europe’s institutions. But it’s bigger than that.

We as societies just can’t seem to make real stances and we pay for it.

The EU. The UK shouldn’t have been able to negotiate their position: you either go all in with us and you put the £ in the museum, or you don’t join the EU. Had they integrated the EU and be our equals, they wouldn’t have privatized their economy like crazy for the past 15 years, killing their own citizens’ QoL. And migrants wouldn’t try so hard to go over there, they would spread out in Western Europe. The UK with the € flavor probably would have added more dynamism and maybe a cog needed between France and Germany. I don’t know, something better than having one foot in and being weird.

We forgot that the EU wasn’t just signing papers and have a new fancy blue flag. We –mostly Boomers- have been lazy fucks.

Over four decades of immigration from Africa and Eastern Europe and the EU rings the alarm once people starve in Calais, once it’s too late. Decisions should have been made in the 80s or early 90s about immigration to have a chance to be controlled and dealt with in an efficient way. But it’s bigger than that.

Let’s face it: Europe adores the Universal Talk, how we’re All in This Together the We Invented Democracy. But Europe is the most colonialist area on earth! Just four of its countries have conquered the entire fucking world at a time when you couldn’t just fly with your army to Iraq. It transpires for centuries. Europeans are kind of proud of this past grip on the planet. Europe never really realized that it was going to drastically change with its post WWII immigration.

Let’s face it: if elites acknowledged mistakes and flaws and tried to fix them, they would not be considered elites anymore (not that I agree with that but that’s how things go, still). And those European elites have been clear with migrating African population: Yes we invaded you early 1900s, yes we fucked up your countries from that point on, no we won’t apologize and yes, if you don’t feel like you’re welcome here it’s because you’re not really! Nothing good could happen from that. It actually went pretty smooth for over 30 years thanks to economic growth. Now that it’s been stagnating for decades, people look at each other.

Let’s face it: the middle class used to be powerful enough to change institutions, to be smart enough to not go populist on election days. To fine tune democracy, to curve those elites’ obnoxious disregard. The problem is the middle class doesn’t exist anymore. The “middle” class is so dependent from elites that it shuts the fuck up. It’s a byproduct of global, super capitalism now.

Meanwhile people further down the economy ladder who are eating shit at an irrational rate are mad and ready to vote for whoever says the craziest shit because they’re pissed off, rightfully so.

The solution is always and has always been a more direct democracy. I mean at least we should try it. But no one has the incentive –the powerful- or the power –the powerless- to make it happen.

The opportunity is still there though. Damn we’re slow.

Did you read that article on Ev and Medium?

Ev Williams became a billionaire by helping to create the free and open web. Now, he’s betting against it.

The Atlantic writes a perfect definition of the open web:

the open web describes an internet where people mostly publish their writing (or music, or photos, or films) to servers that they own or rent, accessible via their own personal domain names, in formats that are themselves free or unrestricted. It is the web because the pages are written in HTML and CSS; it is open because anyone can access almost all of it, without special privileges, expenditures, or a user account. Above all, the open web is free—free like language is free, like consciousness is free. Freedom not so much as a right, but as a technical and inalienable fact.

It is the web we’re still trying to use between silos. OG web. But yeah it’s tedious to set up RSS, it’s tedious to manage favorites, it’s even more tedious to create the pipeline to publish (from installing local apps to connect to diverse sources and understand the concept of client/server).

But when I read this:

Medium seeks to replicate the web’s old, chaotic hubbub on a single, ordered site—because, ultimately, Ev values the chaos.

I’m like, this is bullshit. Sorry, this is pure antinomy. That makes no sense and I don’t want it. If you value the chaos, just leave it alone.

I understand WordPress is out of reach for non-tech people and I understand that Medium wants to be the FB of thoughts or whatever. We have to find something better. Another interesting quote though:

Railroad, electricity, cable, telephone—all followed this similar pattern toward closedness and monopoly, and government regulated or not, it tends to happen because of the power of network effects and the economies of scale

Keyword it tends to. Monopoly and closedness are fine when they don’t own shit but the pipes. Railroad companies didn’t own people’s suitcases. Medium does. Inside your brain will reside on their servers and we absolutely don’t have to. Monopolies tend to vastly abuse our collective asses, let’s not forget that.

Where closedness and more monopolies should happen is probably around hosting companies. It’s still the wild wild west and they don’t understand how to provide the next step of web services. I’ve been using a few in 16 years, they all are pretty terrible if not appalling. So here are a few ideas:

– The entire process of creating a personal website online space and being able to publish stuff on it should be as easy as signing up for a new phone line. One payment, One email, One password. You download an app. You publish 5mn later. You pay your host a fee. Storage and bandwidth should be limitless.

I mean in 2016 this simple thing doesn’t exist. The closest to that, Squarespace, is still talking about templates and “building” websites. Girl, that’s the past. Empower people, don’t scare them with technical shenanigans. The geekiness is not appealing to most people.

– Second, following and blocking should be as easy as on Twitter. Maybe in your app you have one tab with your content and then tabs for your groups, crews, posses, friends, followers etc. on/off toggles for options.

– Tertiomundo, I think there should be a limit in how many times you can post a day. Maybe just twice a day, under a 1,000 words each. I want people to write their thoughts, to discuss them, not to spam and take over just through shear output.

– Fourth, a micropayment solution perfectly integrated to allow people to pay each other. The hosting company takes a cut.

In a perfect world this framework would be open source and installed en masse by hosting companies trying to enlarge their markets.

I don’t believe in Ev’s vision of providing content to people. Not providing actually, force-feeding. “You might also like”  is wrong. Time spent reading is a weak ass metric. Publishing isn’t just about audience. FB’s algos are so wrong I always always feel like a lab rat on it, it’s gross. People need to make decisions, to reach for something. They need to want to read someone’s experience that’s how you grow, that’s how you actually profit from it. Did you know that your body processes food much better when you focus on it instead of watching some screen? Yup, same for thoughts. And as for food, it’s great to change and get something different any time you want. No “recommendation engine” can do that for you. You are your own chaos.

I’ll finish with this quote from Idle Words’ brilliant talks:

But the real world is a stubborn place. It is complex in ways that resist abstraction and modeling. It notices and reacts to our attempts to affect it. Nor can we hope to examine it objectively from the outside, any more than we can step out of our own skin.

Chaos is already here. Don’t try to reinvent it, incrementally make it more useful.