Author: harold

So this article has been going around this weekend. Gawker had a lot of articles about Amazon’s workers conditions for the past few years. It is also how most tech companies work: commitment must be way up there. All of that is not new.

• It’s not wrong to work your ass off for a company.
• It’s not wrong for a company to use data to get the best of its employees.

What is wrong is having people being deeply dependent on a salary to have a decent life. Yeah, I question that. There’s too much wealth on this planet or in the US to just close my eyes and be like “this is fine just fuck me up”. 1% owning 99%, don’t forget. Never forget, that’s key in changing how society functions.

Like I tweeted Quality of Life shouldn’t be indexed to work. The good news is we can afford it, the bad news is most people can’t grasp that it’s possible. Jeff Bezos “made” $7B in 45 minutes when Amazon stocks jumped a hundred bucks a few days ago. Do you know how many things you can solve with seven billion dollars? Let me help you: a fucking shit ton.

If those Amazon people didn’t have to think about paying rent –being on average half of what we make right?-, they still would work as hard –I think even harder- but they would be freed from pressure if something happens in their lives it wouldn’t be a big deal, just a change of pace. And maybe they would come back to the hard tech world once they feel like they can again.

Failure costs would be at a minimum instead of a maximum: bankruptcy, guilt, feelings of being worthless etc.  All that, gone. Maybe that job wasn’t for you. Maybe you just needed a break!

We need to stop putting all the pressure on people, that’s why people break not because they work hard. We have wealth and we need to redistribute far more efficiently than the way we’re doing it today which is to sprinkle some money on the poor, allow stupid amounts of taxes to not be collected from a stupidly wealthy crowd and ask the middle to do everything more and harder. That’s imploding right now in our faces.

One more thing: Amazon is huge but Amazon is not profitable. You can’t say that you’re that successful if you’re continuously in the red for 15 years. So maybe if pressure comes off people shoulders they will start working on things that are actually making a nice profit for the retail giant and make customers happier. Just sayin’

You know, I really feel like we’re stagnating hard. It is exhausting. There are no debate, studies or discussions to have –been there, done that for the past three decades- we need this shit to stop, period.

The web we have to save.

I just love reading so much. I think it’s because it allows me to listen to music at the same time, thing I can’t do if I’m listening to a stream.

I grew so much by reading things I wasn’t supposed to read –thanks hyperlink-, we all did. Algorithms totally suppress that.

No one cares about the web except nerds like us who spent so much time making it, setting up servers and domain names. Masses don’t care about technology/ethics they just use things and the easiest, the better. Then it’s too late.

What scares me the most about the open internet is when Facebook will start a micropayment system in such a way that no one will pay outside that system. The open internet needs that before walled gardens do.

Timing is everything.

There’s this huge elephant in the black america room: religion.

I grew up non-religious in my foster family and then my Catholic dad adopted me, tried to get me into it but gave up when I just didn’t believe. As a kid it was easy for me to dismiss religion: God is good? Then why don’t have I my parents? He ain’t good with me so fuck him, I didn’t start the beef. Pretty sure a black church –through the power of music- would have converted me to a bigger extent but you know, white Catholicism in Europe is probably the best way to not make you religious, ever.

But it was deeper than that. Religion just didn’t fit the 80s, technology, rockets etc. Like, not at all. Go home religion, you’re drunk.

I think that’s why Ta-Nehisi Coates is more feared than appreciated for his glacial and fear-inducing vision of a world where there’s no god.

That’s where I connect with his writing, when he’s not pushing anything but as pure as possible reasoning and simple facts. Chirurgical, devoid of emotions, precise. He demonstrates that  sorry to be blunt, your prayers didn’t do shit and won’t, that black person will still get killed within systems –street, police, employment- that are all, all of them, human made.

This, is all there is. As Ta-Nehisi writes it down so well, it is scary to acknowledge that but oddly comforting to know that we humans made this. Because it means we can unmake this too. It’s not hope, a vague notion, it’s a fact like rocks in the desert: we can change what we made. It’s not hopelessness nor a focus on struggle, it’s a focus on the real, big work/tiny chance we have. That’s all we have. People always seem to prefer fantasy and we’re paying with flesh for that. So much inaction or action that doesn’t change anything.

I know, around 80% of black people in the US are into religion and go to church. I also know how messed up the relationship has been between black people, Christianity and  History.

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice

Christianity to me growing up in Europe and studying there, is kind of a cancer that screwed an entire world up. Imagine a bunch of dudes going down Africa like “hey lil nigga, you heard about that book?”, tricking people into something. The church as a powerful institution is a failure of the state, supposed to provide. So I never had a great, positive view of religion besides watching black people dancing and harmonizing here in the US. We don’t need religion to sing and dance though.

In the end what frightens me the most is the future and  how religion isn’t helping black people, like making them averse to science for example. It’s still true in 2015 and knowing how the world is shaping up I really don’t like seeing that. It makes me feel I will have to wait more and I don’t want that.

I had read his book “Come on, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors”. It was one of the first time I was reading statistics about black people and those numbers were filling me with fear and sweat.

Yes, even in France the Cosby show was huge. Of course my white liberal parents loved it, probably for slightly different reasons I did (though some things are universal like father/son relationships). Fat Albert was big too, we had reruns in the 80s.

I don’t give a fuck about my Bill memories.

We know rapists get away with rape all the time, even when they are not one of the most powerful and respected black man on earth. We know women under-report rape because they know they will not go anywhere with “justice”. We know most rape happen within personal circles family, friends. We also know that people very rarely falsely accuse people of rape. You just don’t do that for fun. Standing up and having the courage to say “that person abused me” is not a little thing.

46 women, 35 together in an article and probably more who didn’t say anything. Yes, I too have this feeling of being wrong to take a black man down. We don’t have a lot of those, at the top, respected by absolutely everyone. In 2005 when the first “rumors” about him and his pills appeared, I didn’t want to believe it but I knew it smelled real: powerful man, young women? I’m going to go for believing the victims because Bill was way too weird about it. Ten years later I know we’re doing the right thing. Since the first reports appeared I couldn’t  trust that man, even from my couch.

James Brown was the first one that I had trouble to deal with, having pretty much invented a music genre I adore by himself and his band, band he completely abused and stole from. He threatened his wife with a shotgun at some point. People are acting like he was losing it, he wasn’t, he was like that from the start we just didn’t see it when he was on stage, looking at his foot work. Hot pants.

The last one I heard about is Marvin Gaye. Yes, another big black icon. The dude was 34 when he went on seducing that 17 year old foster child who will become his wife. Oh of course, he was already married with three kids. It’s already so wrong at so many levels but that’s the start.

Jan Gaye is releasing a memoir in which we learn how Marvin forced her to have sex with other people and other terrible things. This entire freaky, sense that women are things you consume, control and throw away, I’ll never understand. It broke my heart reading that about Marvin Gaye, another one bites the dust. Glad and proud of Jan for doing the right thing, tell the truth.

It’s just that most powerful men are powerful psychopaths with outdated values I guess. We don’t need them.

It’s a wonderful story. Here’s the intro:

At age six, I ran away with my sister to escape the Rwandan massacre. We spent seven years as refugees. What do you want me to do about it? Cry?

It’s all about luck:

After a few months, Claire broke down — of course she did. This life wasn’t going to lead anywhere anyway, and marriage (however personally problematic) was a lottery ticket out.

Her sister got married to get a chance to live a better life, aka she was attractive enough to have someone take care of her.

I don’t mean to be rude or  judgmental or anything. It’s just survival. But it says something though: we’re bodies too. We’re bodies first, despite the intellectual tendency to make believe that mind and soul are independent from the envelope.

Ta-nehisi Coates has a book coming out focusing on the pain inflicted to black bodies. Look at how much bodies are important and determine so much: Clemantine and her sister are gorgeous and that’s what made them escape a probably terrible future. I was a cute baby, probably not screaming too much and people, multiple people wanted to save my orphan ass. I remember being struck reading about Simone Veil, a great and beloved French minister who survived Auschwitz and who said a bit annoyed by all the praise she got for surviving: “you know, I didn’t do anything. I was a kid. A beautiful little girl and that’s what saved me.”

The body. What women spend so much time and money to paint in the morning. The body, taller on heels which creates all kinds of social behaviors. Our abundant society that makes lean bodies more attractive than plump ones. The body, photoshopped in every single ad, that we still try to match regardless. The body, that trans people are not happy with because it doesn’t connect with who they are. How come smart and public people are pretty much always good-looking if not drop dead beautiful or handsome?

The body might not be everything. But it’s a lot.