Author: harold

I mean, every single picture taken with a 2017 and above phone, looks amazing. And that’s not really a good thing to me, personally. We have integrated Photoshop in our cameras. It’s built-in.

Photos are mostly used to capture a moment in reality, visually. Mostly. But now they deny reality: it’s just ultra clean. Colors are super vivid, the wide angle makes the room large, the picture is pristine, skins are cleaner than a surgery room.

Deep down our brains know that’s bullshit.

Scrolling a social media feed full of those *perfect* pictures is boring. I’m sure I’m not the only one not stopping anymore at any of those. I know, you look great on this etc. Photos don’t mean the same when they never have a little something special.

Now with a decade worth of photos from various phones and technology, I’m impressed with the fact that dirty, low-res first-generation smartphones photos do not look that bad today! Same with early 2000s digital cameras. They have a cachet. They’re pixelized, they’re “bad” but they also represent a time period accurately. The colors are flat and much closer to reality and memories.

Today’s phones just do too much.

This was starkly exemplified in 2019, when New York’s subway system allowed ads for erectile dysfunction but banned billboards for women’s sex toys.

Mel Magazine on the “female pleasure button”.

Wow, that’s so crazy knowing how lucrative the women’s sex toy market is (28 billion dollars worldwide in 2019). But even worse, it’s such a massive denial of reality: a vast majority of women have a sex toy or a dozen!

We should talk about sex more and make it an important self care, healthy thing to do. Because that’s what it simply is. The past twenty years have dramatically changed our relationship to it and sex is absolutely central in western lives; after all, every man I know is trying to be rich to have sex with their fantasy girl. All the way to billionaires and uh, sex slaves stuff going on I don’t know, ask them.

It fascinates me how as societies we can avoid conversations about natural stuff and reality, trying not to connect the dots lmao.

“My work has been trying to promote e-learning with ted talk-like videos and I absolutely hate it. It’s not just about the speed.

I can learn so much quicker with text. I can skim through the parts I already know and spend more time on the parts I need to carefully consider. With video I need to skip around and it’s hard to keep track of what’s being discussed then.”

Text to me is like ASM for computers. It’s immediately hitting the raw levels of my brain, which makes it fast and efficient. Immediately absorbed.

“For computer stuff text is usually  better than video, except maybe for how to do complex stuff in some desktop application or walk through games. But for learning how to raise a fence a video is so much better than text.”

A video can be so much better, but might be worse. Most likely, a blog post about raising a fence would probably not be great to read. But! It might also be the ultimate resource to raising a fence, if the person went through diagrams and pictures and values in tables. That would make it far more precious than a video that you know will probably disappear at some point, even if it can be so much better than text (say a beautiful, short video straight to the point, a rare feature on YouTube). But might be the worst time-consuming thing. Gambling!

In any way I think it’s much easier to skim through texts than through videos. Always will. Which is why text is better to learn, while video adds fantastic value (sometimes).

The Bulls are legit. The Warriors are super legit.

My Spurs are running and fun to watch. Too sad they lose games they could win, but they’re improving. I miss DeMar who’s having a great time in Chicago *pulls the Wolverine meme*.

The Lakers are not even talked about in town right now.

Employment in America in 2021 is a nightmarish maze.

The family dog passed away and he was cute.

I’m hiding his toy.

Like, so so cute. Well behaved most of the time, if a little bit mischievous.

He spent his life following my mom and my sister. I played with him a lot. I was hoping that I would travel back on time for him to make a very specific yapping at me; mom told me that he always greeted me differently and I always put that on the fact that I was the one running after him and his toy in the front yard. That’s connection right here.

May you enjoy running with other dogs in the dogs paradise, little dude.

We hear a lot about the metaverse or metaverses.

That makes me think about microcosms.

microcosm

[ˈmīkrəˌkäzəm]

NOUN

1. a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger.

Everything is a microcosm now. Everyone is in his/her lil world(s).

Mainstream, culturally, isn’t really a thing anymore.

That’s a big shift.

There’s a pull and push in the world of technology right now.

A push for the most cutting edge tech, putting us inside virtual worlds like we’ve never been before: VR/AR, services, subscriptions.

A pull for the most efficient, no-brainer old tech that keeps us in the real world: 2010s or older desktop software, no smartphones or very limited ones, computers used until they die.

I think we should aim for a middle ground that would simultaneously provide progress AND sustainability. Me and my middle! I know.

The consequences for the next decades will be defined in the current one.

They say “pimpin’ ain’t easy.” Well, neither is slaveholdin’. Like children, dogs, dice, and overpromising politicians, and apparently prostitutes, slaves don’t do what you tell them to do.

“I looked on the Internet, and the therapists are all white. Standing in the forest or in front of a bookshelf, promising career and sexual fulfillment, and healthy relationships. How come you never see photos of them with their overachieving kids or fucking their partners to satisfaction? Where’s the proof in the pudding?”

My father had a theory that poor people are the best drivers because they can’t afford to carry car insurance and have to drive like they live, defensively. We were caught up in a slog of uninsured rust-bucket jalopies and compacts, all doing exactly fifty-five miles per hour, their trash bag windshields flapping in the wind.

Jaguar model names sound like rockets: XJ-S, XJ8, E-Type. Hondas sound like cars designed by pacifists and humanitarian diplomats. The Accord, Civic, Insight.

Paul Beatty in The Sellout, which makes me laugh to no end. It’s brutal and irreverent satire and not easy to grasp at first. Definitely needs multiple passes to get it all.

I think this book would make a tremendous animated movie or series with a A Scanner Darkly aesthetic. It would be the bomb.