Author: harold

In no particular order:

• The rich are getting richer faster than the rest of us.
• Real wages are stagnant. Social safety nets are constantly being removed.
• Labor protections have been being rolled back or enforcement lax since the ATC strike.
• Atomization and alienation have taken root.
• The mythos of the nuclear family being paramount is fully embedded in the culture, destroying the older concept of a broader family and community taking part in the rearing of the next generation and just general socialization.
• We’re heading to the failure of multiple systems, including food production and power, due to climate change and the increasing frequency of disastrous weather systems.
• "Greed is good" has been a value promulgated by the elites for a few generations now.
• Things are getting more expensive faster than wage growth, especially basics and things needed for economic upward mobility (housing, education, healthcare, etc).
• Identity politics and wedge issues are dividing people who otherwise have similar interests.
• Modern life is anxiety and depression inducing, creating a rise in interpersonal conflict.
• Our government is no longer accountable to the people or representative of them in any real way unless you’re in the top quintile of wealth/income (and that is generous).

All of these things, and many more, are ripping apart the social contract. People no longer feel invested in the wellbeing of the places in which they reside or the governmental and societal systems they are a part of. Instead, they merely endure them with resentment. This won’t end well.

UBI would solve all of that within a few years. We just did it, worldwide, in 2020 and most of 2021! Did the economy crumble? No. Did all that money given to people killed the economy? Also no. Many big companies recorded their best years ever.

That is the best proof you can possibly have that UBI works and would/will safe us.

We have the knowledge, the tools and still time to fix our issues. It’s embarrassing how the resistance to obvious solutions leads us further down the hole while people who could modify laws, who could heavily promote UBI are like “nah bro, it’s a done deal; you can apply for a gig at my tech company if you want the chance to get exploited real quick”.

Keep your head up.

I’ve had email conversations lately.

A young customer this week asked me if we had Brave on our machines and I told him “it’s Chrome or IE” and he said “IE is fine, I can’t stand Google”. True story.

Tumblr is apparenty hot these days?

RSS and blogs are hot topics in nerdy forums?

Hey, I’ll take that. This is good.

The thing about writing a blog post is that good writing requires clear thinking, and clear thinking is useful!

It would be nice if we could tap into that benefit in personal journals without publishing a blog, but as far as I can tell, most people write differently when they write only for themselves. There’s a number of benefits of writing for an audience, even if that audience turns out not to exist. When I blog, I feel forced to justify my reasoning and investigate alternatives. I feel the need to explain something a little deeper than whatever literal series of events that I’m talking about.

Exactly. That’s how I end up watchingvery few shows, because I’m always in an internet rabbit hole or clarifying my thoughts about something. I tried writing for myself and that ends up being a mess of unreadable and sad streams of consciousness. Audience –real or not- shifts your brain into “I need to make sense” mode.

Harder, but better.

And the thing is, after doing that for over a decade, I feel clarity for *so* many things. I’ve learned and pondered so much through hundreds of posts. I see the difference when solving issues with people who never write. The ability to dance around angles for a specific problem is big and writing helps tremendously with that.

More importantly, I think blogging needs to proliferate these days because most people need to make sense of things and get more clarity in their lives. Social media and Covid have done mass damage in this sense.

Write it down. Explore. Your mind is free.

My audio machine has been restored and back to 100% working.

Now the bill for the fix is looking at me like

(Venmo me if you want/can)

When it’s “I just need to go through this week” but it’s only the second week of the first month of a new pandemic year.

So no Twitter half a year.

Not using Twitter made me realize how small Twitter is. In most of the world, Twitter is irrelevant. There are so many networks and platforms and communities out there. Twitter is just another one.

After about three months, I had forgotten everything about Twitter. It would only pop up in online articles, sometimes, like “so there was this Twitter thread and people fought over that tweet bla bla bla”. This is when I realized what Twitter actually is:

Twitter is 2D Roblox for exhausted adults.

From the outside it really looks like its own metaverse: cliques and their own etiquette, own reality, avatars, power trips and so forth. It is wild to see people well into their 50s or 60s troll like little bitches in high school. But it is happening!

Screenshots are so ubiquitous I always end up seeing the “best” or more accurately, most viral tweets without spending a second logged in on Twitter anyway.

Technology doesn’t care about your business model.

Over six months completely off Twitter, after over a decade being on it every single day.

There’s a lot to unpack.

Am I less anxious and depressed? Yes. No doubt. It feels almost weird that despite whatever happening around, I’ll take it, and move on.

Seeing the same bad news a few dozen times a day is an absolute mind killer that I’m glad is gone from my life right now.

Am I missing Twitter? No and yes. Twitter is the closest thing to a digital cigarette.

It’s really wild: the first time you connect after being addicted is like the first puff. You get a buzz –hilarious comment, smart tip-, you smile, you feel good. Then you almost feel more focused, just like the first 2mn of a cigarette break.

And then it’s over. It goes inexorably downhill after that.

You scroll down, see a murder, read some inane comment about something mildly interesting, someone is trying too hard next, then a funny gif but is it really the time to smile? Some terrible national news, here’s a puppy and some obscure challenge hashtag etc. After those first good minutes you hate yourself more and more. Your heart rate goes up and your chest feels compressed.

And just like a cigarette in the hands of a veteran smoker, you are hurrying to end the smoke session. More than half the cigarette is making you feel bad about yourself. The after taste makes you feel guilty.

Twitter is the same, in about the same time frame of a small smoke break. You scroll faster to make it stop.

I do miss the friends I was having a Twitter smoke break with. Not necessarily friends, but people you overhear and giggle at what they say or agree with heavily without needing to interact much. After thousands of days with them, and now a couple hundreds without them, I still miss them a bit.

Dear future,

The weirdest and most exhausting part of this pandemic is the illusion that everything is normal while nothing is.

Right now at the start of ‘22, watching people everywhere being more and more careless while the virus numbers are absolutely insane, is so much cognitive dissonance.

The same way, when I think that something is slow and that I start mapping the effect of people being on sick leaves, the supply chain issues, etc. I realize, oh my god, of course it is slow.

Appearances feel like it shouldn’t be the case.

It’s exhausting to constantly readjust thoughts when the outside world looks just the same; trucks around, folks. Life with a bunch of people wearing masks, nothing much.

Uh. Well.