Author: harold

James Dyson on being eighteen in 1965: “And then there was the war, which we had not had to experience but whose effects on the national psyche infused everything. Everything became suddenly possible. Children were prized because so many had been killed, and money was poured into education? We felt needed, important, protected, and at the centre of the world.”

James Dyson – Against the Odds: An Autobiography (fascinating and hilarious read)

What a contrast with how we treat children now. Have one, put him/her/they in front of a screen, done.

And then we wonder why they turn feral and are quite bad at making decisions.

SQLite is just a little database. With all computers and digital machines, there’s a need for a database. That’s how machines work; they store things up and retrieve them all the time thus, database.

SQLite is the most efficient and quickest database on earth. It was created in summer 2000.

Two things that I love about that:

– SQLite powers your iPhone, Android, Windows, your favorite browser, some Adobe stuff, tons of services out there. It is absolutely everywhere (it powers my RSS reader too, which is insanely fast).

– Despite its age and hundreds if not thousands of ultra-smart engineers tried to make it better or make their own, it is still the best.

There’s a constant push to upgrade, even radically change things in tech (for the best). But SQLite is like “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no”. For twenty years and counting.

I love it.

TikTok Boom | No Mercy

Wonderful article on TikTok kicking ass and stuff.

“The biggest mistake we make in marketing is believing choice is a benefit. No, it’s a tax. Consumers don’t want more choices, they want more confidence in the choices presented. TikTok has taken this to a new level by eliminating the burden of choice entirely. Its content is a continuous stream of videos where the decisions are made for you. Your only choice: what not to watch.”

Yikes. New generations growing up thinking that choices are a difficult thing. Yikes. Wait for when you absolutely have none, you’ll see. Yikes.

“Expect an emerging field of academic research looking at the effects on behavior, and the developing brain, of rapid-fire media.”

I mean, we already know that it’s bad: it destroys the ability to sustain attention, which is essential in any task you want to do in life and obviously, even more crucial when you want to do any task as best as possible. We already live in short-sighted societies, I don’t think this is helping.

“Already, the app appears to be linked with eating disorders and depression, and it may even cause motor and verbal tics among teens.”

Because virality. That’s how you become rich/famous on social media which means doing/saying/singing the most outlandish shit possible. A teen killed 6 driving for a TikTok challenge last weekend, by the way.

Cute and positive at first, now TikTok is full of misinformation and absurdity.

We can’t create culture with 60-second wide lens portrait clips. We need so much more. We are so much more.

It is the afternoon in California and we’re working in the library. Going on our tasks. Helping folks. Little bees in the sunny hive, walking around in silence with little masks on. There was a little party earlier, so everyone is a little full of food and a little slow.

And then we’re randomly checking our devices, news. Uvalde Texas, this time.

The Thousand Yard stare starts. One by one, we get infected. All coping differently, but all with this Thousand Yard stare at one point, way stronger than the one triggered by a lunatic patron. And we’re more frantic in our movements. And we’re quiet. The atmosphere changes.

I personally don’t try to know more, as I already know the bombing of words has already started everywhere.

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At home, chilling. I need focused music. A bit sad, not too much, hopeful and steady in the vibe. I see a 18 body count. I’m writing this. I breathe so much better without Twitter.

But I also know that it’s not over at all. I need happy music now.

I always have a FLW book open on my coffee table and I check houses on YouTube from time to time, to see if a new tour is available. Well, the Mossberg house had one I hadn’t seen yet!

It’s great design, filled with a lot of junk y’all (just kidding). That main room is simply wonderful.

At first I disliked FLW forcing small bedrooms but now I get it. You only need that much space to sleep and uh, do things. Otherwise just utilize the super neat common areas. “Use the freaking house, don’t live in your room!” the architect said and acted on. Respect, bro.

“The basic needs (for life, for safety and security, for belongingness and affection, for respect and self-respect, and for self-actualization), the basic human emotions and the basic human capacities are on their face either neutral, pre-moral or positively “good.” Destructiveness, sadism, cruelty, malice, etc., seem so far not intrinsic but rather they seem to be violent reactions against frustration of our intrinsic needs, emotions and capacities.”

Abraham Maslow, in Toward a Psychology of Being (‘happened to be reading it these days)

How do we create a world where people don’t have violent reactions against frustration? By focusing on eliminating said frustration.

The frustration comes down to: these people get that, and I don’t.

This is easy to solve: give enough to everyone so that everyone stays away from frustration.

Do I believe that a UBI system and sustainable, healthy housing would have avoided the Buffalo shooting? Yes, and countless, constant and invisible other violence would be eliminated too.

When intrinsic needs, emotions and capacities are met, hate doesn’t form, doesn’t blossom.

We supremely need that. And we can afford it, that’s without saying.

‘Vision Zero’ at a Crossroads as U.S. Traffic Death Rise – Bloomberg

They reduced my boulevard from two lanes to one lane+bike lane, and it’s been terrible.

I drive and use my bicycle everyday, it sucks in both cases. It’s such a dumb design on a straight line. It is now actually and honestly less safe, yay.

Imposing European things on top of West coast America is not only dumb, it’s bizarre.

Density is low in LA, it’s a feature called Quality of Life. But that means we need cars, yes. Accidents happen and there won’t ever be anything close to zero deaths. That’s idiotic and quite disrespectful considering how we’re dealing with 1 million dead in two years of plague.

I can’t find the source right now, but here are the city plan steps of failure:

– Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city

– Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works

– Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations

– Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like

– Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality

– Use authoritarian power to impose that vision, by demolishing the old reality if necessary

– Watch your rational Utopia fail horribly

Congratulations West Adams, you tick every single box here!

I vote to revert back to two lanes.