Author: harold

We get situations like Ben Simmons. Fans live through a pandemic buying $300 jerseys on credit cards and learning new skills to get money on new, ephemeral gigs. Sacrificing, still supporting their teams.

Meanwhile Ben is getting paid $35M/year and doesn’t want to improve on something that I feel like is quite important in basketball: shooting the ball. Of course fans are going to tear him another one.

He didn’t want to improve on it for five damn years. He still doesn’t want to, apparently? I don’t want to know.

All I see if that a players’ league creates a world where winning the genetic lottery allows you to be so complacent, you don’t even care about improving on the top skill you need in the professional field that pays you handsomely.

The balance and respect between players, fans and teams is in shambles in the NBA. It’s mercenary city now. All of that to build ill-designed 10 bds, 14 baths MacMansions and own 4 jet skis.

A mess.

Prince:

Welcome to America
We snatch bass players, not purses

Me, a bass player in America:

(it’s a pretty good album btw)

Everything is super challenging right now. But my plants are doing fine. Like, fine fine. Look at this one:

The old leaves are getting brownish before drying out. They are big. Well look at those fresh, green, erected, even bigger new ones! They don’t even fit the frame. That new sprout is like “YYYAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY” and living its best life. All new sprouts are like that:

This plant is so happy, I can tell. It’s even creating tentacles now, look:

What the. This plant is feeling so good, it doesn’t even need spikes anymore. Just smooth vibes.

Hi Miss Plant. Nice to meet you. If you take over, become sentient and I’m your literal host, you we’d better pay some rent to my landlord, she’s nice.

(No particular care; just a glass of water once a week, a bit of spray on leaves every three months, a couple glasses of cold pasta water in six months)

Oh I know the perfect rebuttal to “Elvish” angle:

“Harold, without brutal capitalism and globalization, we wouldn’t have what we have now!”

What do we have, exactly? I don’t see much greatness out there. I observe a whole lot of waste and attrition.

Now, would I prefer a 2021 world that doesn’t have any homelessness *at all* but still has i386 in beige boxes as the top of technology? Absolutely.

Actually the more I think about it and the more attractive it becomes.

We have to slow down. Earth has started to force us to do so and we’re still like “huh, what?”.

A very thoughtful blog post right here.

I will paste the premises:

There are at least two kinds of magic. These two kinds may not always be distinct in their appearance, but are very different in their underlying motives and their ultimate outcomes.

The first kind of magic, which we shall call “Human”, is driven by the desire to extend one’s power over the world, while simultaneously minimizing one’s dependence on the world. The ultimate outcome of this pursuit is world-amputation: the destruction of the world on which one no longer depends.

The second kind of magic, which we shall call “Elvish”, is driven by the desire to extend one’s understanding of the world, while simultaneously minimizing one’s intentional interference with the ways of the world. The ultimate outcome of this pursuit is self-amputation: the dissolution of the self and becoming one with the world.

I’m obviously an Elvish stan.

You can tell Jeff Bezos —and all the folks like him— sees the world as something to conquer rather that something to adapt with. And they conquer all right! But they’re quite alone in their conquest and the world kind of despise them: you don’t conquer without destroying.

Now imagine Amazon has been hard at work housing people for the past decade not with ridiculously low wages that look good in the Midwest, but with true collaborative power, involving all actors and housing people in sustainable buildings. Imagine that an entire generation of our society grows in near-perfect environment that respect Nature. Imagine what that generation would invent to live in space. They probably wouldn’t care about it like Jeff does in 2020 (they wouldn’t understand the point of trying to live in the most unfriendly environment known to human beings, rightfully so) but if they did, they’d probably provide a shit ton better technology to live outside earth that this ridiculous Blue Whatever thing Jeff Bezos is toying with these days.

He’s about to make those flights a tourist activity, up to thousands of astronauts a year? Imagine the amount of fuel and material waste used to amuse very wealthy folks for 3 minutes in zero G. Conquer, destroy, repeat.

Understanding instead of power goes a long way. Gains are not quarterly, true. They’re immense, though.

Tidying up drives. This is the most ab-surrrd and most annoying and most bizarre and most amazing and creepiest and dopest graphic design I’ve ever seen. This shit haunts me from time to time, like Chucky so I had to share it if you hadn’t seen it before.

I don’t know man.

Sometimes I look closer to see what’s going on under Issa cracking up… Harriett with a big ass phone???? With Sonic doing his best Michael’s impression??? Goku in Thriller mode??? On anything you want, goddamn. Brilliant.

This piece just straight shoots rainbow darts randomly into your psyche. Fascinated and repulsed at the same time, you might even want to sit down to look at it. So gross. Hilarious, I love it.

I can’t remember where I left off:

One Piece (manga). Something in the snow level or something like that?

One Punch Man (anime). Somewhere end of season 1 I guess.

Attack on Titan (anime). I—

Orange is the New Black (series). Can’t recall.

The Walking Dead (both comics and series). Absolutely cannot.

Berserk (manga). Wow sorry Guts.

Audio player through randomized playlist:

Me:

I only like drinking when I celebrate something which is never to a couple times a year these days.

Alcohol deprived my foster dad from a good ten more years on this planet.

Alcohol definitely didn’t help when I was married. You’re not supposed to drink a bottle of wine a day with your SO.

Alcohol started so many fights in my life, physical or not. Truly humbling when I think about it.

Alcohol has decimated tons of people in my fields like game development, music and skateboarding. I keep reading, listening to stories. “what happened to this prodigiously great musician?” “he has dementia from decades of drinking”. “why did this brilliant person quit? Drinking problems? Oh wow”. Because alcohol is so pervasive, it’s always surprising to realize how it can and does obliterate lives.

Alcohol is always the number one fuel for people to sexually harass others. Alcohol opens the gates of stupidity and complacency. How many service workers abused by drunk customers, probably all of them.

I’ve been lucky to be blessed with a “will quietly sit his ass down away from noise” type of very drunk behavior. Harmless. Quite rare, it turns out.

I’ve helped drunk people. I’ve talked to them, took care of them. Had a date vomit on my shoes once, while I was holding her to make sure she throws up correctly. I’ve fought with drunk people, calmly arguing to go to fucking bed. Drunk people are the most annoying, violent toddlers in the world. At first it’s kind of cute but you reach a point where you just want to slap the shit out of them to send them to sober land. This is so not fun.

Alcohol ruins bodies like crazy. You drink regularly and your body looks 20 years older, easily. Easily. You think your back hurts, that you’re getting old, but it’s just your kidneys and liver working OT to dissolve this poison.

And for some reason alcohol is super legal, available everywhere, at any price, any quantity. It’s wild.

Obviously with the pandemic, tons of people started drinking more and probably many became addicted and won’t tell a soul.

It’s not too late. Drink water, quit those relationships, start running etc.