Author: harold

“Listening to audiobooks at 3x speed is born out of a flawed model of learning — and it’s the same one that underpins our modern education system. The assumption is that people can acquire knowledge as if it’s a substance they can pour into their minds.”

Interesting essay on learning.

“The meaningful parts of a culture, like books, only show up when you give them time. They hide parts of their personality and only reveal themselves once you stop, slow down, and commit to them for a little while.”

You have to slow down to appreciate context and truly absorb new knowledge.

This is why you should always try food you previously didn’t like again. Take your time, and try again. Maybe the context this time will make you understand this taste.

And then you might even like it.

“Let’s start with how you don’t learn to think. A study by a team of researchers at Stanford came out a couple of months ago. The investigators wanted to figure out how today’s college students were able to multitask so much more effectively than adults. How do they manage to do it, the researchers asked? The answer, they discovered—and this is by no means what they expected—is that they don’t. The enhanced cognitive abilities the investigators expected to find, the mental faculties that enable people to multitask effectively, were simply not there. In other words, people do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: the more people multitask, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.”

On how to think better.

Human beings born in 2000 are as stupid/intelligent as the ones born in 1942 or 1980.

The idea that in a few generations, the human brain would be SO much better at cognitive tasks, is a bit laughable if you understand evolution (hint: it takes thousands of years for things to actually change in flesh and then abilities).

Human beings don’t multitask. We serialize at high speed, giving the impression that we are multitasking. But we all know that we’re not. We’re quickly rotating tasks and the faster we do it, the worst we do said tasks.

The pervasiveness of tech and the cyberpunk “culture” always makes it like since broadband internet and apps, we are so much smarter. But we’re not. We still have the same number of synapses and same brain weight as people in the 1600s.

We just play more now.

Due to hardware failure, things being spread out across three devices and decidedly capricious operating systems, I’m stuck not making progress at all on music stuff. Very frustrating.

On the other hand I keep practicing instruments.

Dreaming of running a VM with audio stuff and never ever having to update it.

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.

(Jack Davidson photo)

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.

Concept

Floor plan

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.