Author: harold

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.

Kelsey Plum is super dope, a left-handed basketball player with intensity rivaling the sun’s.

I just love the “I see your lil stupid comment” look, drinking straight out of the bottle with impeccable eyebrows judging your dusty ass.

Good for you, Kelsey.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but if I just uploaded my fancy, clean and readable one-page resume, do not ask me to fill out forms the next page so that the HR robot can tell what’s going on.

You already know what’s going on. You’re hiring and I’m applying. There’s a .pdf upload for a reason.

It’s exhausting, inexplicable and honestly quite disrespectful. It’s 2021, robots dance and imitate our voices. But they can’t correctly parse a text file? C’mon now.

Reading a conversation about cars, with so many people demanding that cars don’t exist anymore because they’re bad, “boo” etc.

Chill.

Cars are necessary anywhere outside cities, aka, most of the world. And you still need them in sprawling suburbs. And when you move furniture. And when you need to water your friend’s plants up high on a hill after work. Or when you need to go to a random location for a vaccine or a skate spot.

Cars are rather essential, period. Stop arguing about this.

People forget one good thing: cars have made tremendous progress on efficiency and cleanliness!

The MPG we get today was complete science-fiction in 1983. 80? 100? I see hybrids at 133 miles per gallon! No one believed that it was even possible 30 years ago! That’s how much we got better. It deserves a smile.

That progress hasn’t curved pollution much because while our cars got far better at energy consumption, we’ve started to ship stuff around the world ten times more. Ten times more cargo ships, ten times more gross fuel being burned (a cargo ship burns the equivalent of thousands of cars’ gas tanks *every hour*), ten times more pollution. And a whole lot of planes in the air too.

Connect the dots, y’all.

In terms of vibes these days, it’s no contest. The WNBA league is so wholesome, I don’t know.

Maybe that’s why they’re playing well together as Team USA in the Olympics compared to the men’s effort or that basically all WNBA players got vaccinated a while ago —women are far too good at understanding that something’s not just about themselves—or that they were truly unified around social justice work, before the NBA last year (how both leagues were not together on this is beyond me though).

Right now in the NBA it’s me-too season, who’s going to get “fleeced” losing a multi-million contract for another, all of that for tall dudes to buy expensive toys and brag about it.

Sure.