It’s so hard to write about blackness. To make it productive. To make it make sense, against the backdrop that is the world.
The show Insecure ended. It feels like a big L for black people, no matter what.
I wouldn’t have minded it becoming The Young and the Restless of the 2020s and beyond. 41 seasons. 12,000 episodes. Issa’s granddaughter becoming mayor of LA or some uplifting stuff like that.
The average wealth for black people is America is ten to a hundred times smaller than for white people. (source, page 5)
White people’s average wealth is not twice as big. Nor five times bigger. It is now one or two orders of magnitude bigger.
It is important to keep this in mind, whenever we compare behaviors of people from both groups.
Not important. Fundamental. Absolutely crucial.
It explains everything. In black communities: the constant pain. The hustling. The hardening. The dilettantism. The fracturing. The praise and respect for anyone making it big, no matter how the making it big happened.
And that one to two order of magnitude difference is pre-pandemic. It probably, almost a 100% sure didn’t get better. The gap is accelerating.
On the black end side of life, in that context, we can mostly hope for the best. It definitely shouldn’t be that way.
When a black citizen dies in the hand of random police unfairness, we hope that it will change policies. When a black celebrity dies of OD, I hope –as in, it would make a lot of sense- that we legalize all drugs so that overdoses are extremely rare.
But nothing happens. Black pain used to propel society into a better society. It hasn’t in the past 30 years.
How can we not legalize all drugs when some people can do them and be here –Charlie Sheen- and others –Shock G-, doing just the same, are not. I’ve never done cocaine but I want it to be legal so that I don’t lose another brother to fentanyl. It is exhausting and so disappointing to see a world of adults being completely unable to change things for the best. Acting blind. BLM not.
Police budgets after millions of people protesting the streets for weeks in 2020, and of course years of more than questionable body camera footage, have never lost their fat. Budgets basically didn’t change and stayed at phenomenal ranges.
This is why we mourn to no end when a successful black person dies early, no matter the cause of death. Nipsey, Chadwick, Virgil. And so many more. Those abruptly cut trajectories hurt so much because they would be the proof in the pudding. And just like that, they’re gone. Unnecessary Black death becomes black disappearance; it is what it is, it just happens, like the weather. At this point it is almost understood that if you are a successful black man today, you won’t live to experience grey blackness. Embedded ephemerality.
Sometimes I’m scared the stress and anxiety I have lived through my particular black life will get me before I make it completely. That damn chip on the shoulder black people in America and most of the world are born with.
This entire situation transforms black communities into dry, inflammable wood. Splintering, snapping. Acute, burning down in any way you can think of, at the first spark.
“The Dogecoin bull run in 2021 and recent airdrop of $SOS tokens by a third party to OpenSea users shows that the only scarce resource in crypto is attention”
My face reading it the first time:
My face reading it the second time:
Etc.
I hope the scamming and scalping and scheming stop soon in tech. This is waste.
Started watching it.
First 30 seconds I was already out (too many rules).
First episode I was wondering why (so much violence).
Fourth episode, I’m not getting it really. This shit is slow as hell.
Episode five. I’m watching this thinking about what funny things could happen; when they walk in the Escher-esque stairs, I imagine the spoof of getting lost while the ominous music abruptly stops. “I thought it was this way; is your gps on?”.
I imagine SNL did it, didn’t they. (after looking up, no, they didn’t)
Episode six. Hold on, this cop can Metal Gear Solid his way in and out of anywhere ala Rambo/ninja now? Isn’t it supposed to be super high tech with tracking and stuff?
I’m on seven. Mmh, ham-fisted stuff left and right. SOS, I’m bored as hell trying to make sense of this and why should I entertain myself with anxiety on camera for hours? Societal anxiety and depression triggered by blatant financial unfairness. Mmh. I wonder where I’ve seen that before because it’s really familiar..
I don’t really get the editing. More interminable than a long cat.
The end becomes ultra obvious quite rapidly in the last two episodes.
This definitely should have been a movie (as it was supposed to).
I can’t believe that it only came out in September. I would have bet my left hand that it did come out in like, May. Virality and the pandemic are blurring everything.
I need to write about ultra violence and brutality as aesthetic.
Why yes, I’m building my prototype house in Unreal. Very early stages but I submitted my house design (concept, floor plans) to an actual architect and she replied:
“this is amazing!! I am so impressed with your research, thoroughness and thoughtfulness towards all the details. […] It’s totally wonderful”
I am super excited for the future of this. I had issues with technical details around glass and I found a local company that basically made those issues irrelevant. So now I know that this California-based sustainable, passive prototype should work. It’s exciting and a relief, too. I can’t wait to run numbers and simulate weather to see where the design would fail. I can’t wait to walk around and inside the 3D model. 3D building is tedious as hell though. I wish it was as simple as plugging my bass in.
At the same time at some point this year, months went like seconds.
It was a productive year in the end. The bar, 2020, was low for sure.
At the start of last year I begun to stretch my body daily and more thoroughly. It’s been doing wonder. There’s always some anxiety building up and those couple minutes stretching left leg and then right leg really can make a difference on wellness. No cap.
I think that’s what happened to me this year: through blog posts, social media, documentaries and IRL comments I realized that my mostly good habits work short and long term and are actually sought after. From how to use tech at work or at home, from health to pandemic-related things, it looks like people are tryna be like me and I don’t blame them. I feel good/better and it doesn’t hurt the earth/others? *includes in habits*.
Sleep was an issue though. Getting my nights killed by my neighbor’s stupid machine for months put me in dire mental situations. Exhausted like I’ve never been before. But I bounced back. Recovered. Fought. I’m like a nuclear plant on Mars, you can’t stop me. Because time doesn’t exist.
“Growing up in California influenced everything about me. I can’t imagine not having grown up in California. Look around this apartment. It’s full of flat horizons. I have to look at flat horizons.”
Me as well. Architecture is important because of how it shapes us.
A horizontal landscape nurtures hope and possibilities.
People wonder why cities with high density and high rises feel impenetrable and ominous. Which is fun as a tourist and not so fun as a local. Well, it’s the architecture.
There are two sides to the antiwork community. Some people are saying, ‘We shouldn’t have to work at all’ and other people are saying that work just should be better.”—Penny, r/antiwork member
What work just should be better means? I’ll bite. It would mean decoupling income and quality of life from actual work. I think that’s what we all want: the ability to do (meaningful) work for which our lives are not completely depending on. That’s when we feel happy, satisfied and non-anxious.
A nurse saving people shouldn’t have to worry about housing, at all, ever. Same with a musician, if you want him to expand his skills and make people cry with his instruments. Same with the bum doing nothing, as if he has a place to live, he’ll do nothing there instead of in front of you in the streets, trying to finesse someone.
Win. Win. Win.
It’s simple really: capitalism has always succeeded for corporations and has stopped uplifting communities basically since the end of the 60s. Wages stayed the same while profits exploded ever since? The contract is broken; therefore capitalism has to go to the bench. We need fresh players here.
When you realize the system is deeply broken, do you try to change it or find a way to exist within it?
You create another one. You create new rules and stick to them. This is hard.
That’s the big issue with everyone trying to change the way things are: we only do it by reproducing a capitalist system, which means that we create the same discrepancies that we try to fight against. Look at crypto; it’s creating the same inequalities as fiat money, only now it’s a bunch of unaccountable dudes instead of a government (which is still quite accountable). Look at us and our little online shops, producing a few shirts to ship across the planet. Not sustainable, still flawed capitalism.
UBI. We’re wealthy as hell and collectively need to share more. Give people money. Let them rearrange their lives without absurd anxiety and stress. People will slow down, relax. Crime will fall the second people know that they are safe, that they can bounce back from whatever problem they face.
So integrate your governments head to toe, y’all. Proselyte, vote, federate efforts toward an actual, solid safety net. Enabling society, unlocking its full potential.
That’s what I really want to see.
(Go Spurs Go)
The Spurs —long time Lakers woe just thoroughly beat them in Los Angeles, in the old Staples Center which is being renamed with a ridiculous 2021 meme. The Spurs also beat the other LA team nice and clean a few weeks ago.
But! The Lakers signed my man Isaiah Thomas, the normal sized left-handed guard. He’s been doing as much as he can but of course everyone piles up on him like he’s the sole reason the Lakers are cheeks. I feel for him.
I said this Spurs team is good and it is. It’s beautiful to see the confidence rising game after game. But it’s sad to see my man IT in the middle of this LA mess.
