Author: harold

Homes are not built by people intending to live in them. Instead, they are built by builders, who mostly want to flash-form 60 “units” overnight out of sticks and drywall. Everything from sun positioning to doorknobs becomes not just an afterthought, but a no-thought. The major architectural decision is how to maximize square-footage, over all else, in order to maximize sale price, because at some point in the past consumers wanted more space, and space (considered as square-footage) was an easily legible metric to aim for.

SAY IT. (part 2)

We need passive and efficient homes more than ever.

Texas is waking up realizing that 8-bedroom homes with high ceilings are not it, at all. You freeze in there or, you spend thousands to not freeze in there. We can do a whole lot better, technically speaking. We can make houses that sustain that kind of temperature drop or temperature pendulum (it’s back to being warm right now). It’s doable, now and yesterday.

It frustrates me to no end how bad we are at building the structures we live in. There’s so much more to do here than in Bitcoin or stocks.

Focus on building your own house. What you need. The maintenance costs. Question everything about your habits. Ponder. Study. Think long term (yeah, those stairs to the bedroom when you’ll be 70 lol).

It’s a great mind game.

My sister got into a car accident and was extremely lucky. Ice on the freeway, she skid off and did a 180. No one was hurt. She was able to reverse and keep going. She stopped at the next exit and ran for 15mn in the snow.

Meanwhile it is now official pandemic rule, I can’t visit France but for a bunch of reasons I don’t qualify for.

Meanwhile, the vaccine rollout is terrible over there as well. I’m afraid for my parents.

And so it dawns on me that the odds of never seeing them in person ever again –or for a very long time have increased by a lot right now.

I dislike not having control over things. It is what it is.

Check out my friend’s website we worked on for mental health. It’s called Mental Health in the Hood and it is live on the internet!

You can watch the Mental Health Show, which started its season 3, and we have Zoom meetings sharing knowledge and inspiration, every month!

Spread the word and take care!

We change the climate.

We average around 100,000 flights in the world, everyday. Imagine the amount of fuel dispersed in the sky. Every day.

We order stuff online, thinking that we’re slick not using our cars to go to the store. Shipping is using those absolutely insane boats called container ships. They run on bunker fuel. You know what bunker fuel is? It is the dirtiest fuel you can possibly get. A cargo ship has the equivalent of 300,000 15-gallon tank cars. A typical container ship burns 80+ tons of fuel PER DAY (up to 16 tons PER HOUR). Thousands of ships. Every day. All the time.

Gains in fuel efficiency you think? Yeah, we kill those with the increase in annual shipping and due to the pandemic, it probably went WAY up. It also already doubled in twenty years. Doubled.

So why am I adamant about enjoying local life, planting trees and using a bicycle as much as I can?

I don’t know, man. Just a feeling.

No social media until lunch.

No social media after 6pm.

That’s how I’ve been rolling for almost a year now. I recommend.

But also I can accurately see how it impacts me and honestly, it’s really bad. When I start muttering “wtf” over and over, I know I have to close that stuff. It truly hacks our minds.

Blogging and the open web are so much healthier.

I’m still thinking of my future sustainable, green roof-having, small house. I keep looking around (RSS, beloved) and I see things around.

I don’t know if this is a render or real. I know it’s possible that it’s real. Green roofs are as old as humanity. Why green roofs? Maintenance, y’all. Cheap maintenance, great insulation. And yes, nature and all that shit. It only needs to be thought about when building the house’s structure; one does not simply add a green roof.

This one is very interesting to me because it’s made of hempcrete. The design is too rough for me, though. Put some hardwood radiant heating floors inside with nice rugs and we can talk.

Okay, that’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s not. You can’t integrate a house with nature more and that should be architecture #1 goal. No roofs, no fences, no walls. Maintenance is probably very low. It might blow sand inside a lot though. Disappearing in earth’s crust while feeling very safe and practicing self-care?? Yessir. What if people walk around? Hide cameras in rocks, set a bunch of old school bear traps and there won’t be people walking around for long.

The Last Dance was great. Since then I have watched The Last Season: the 1998, 82 games Bulls regular season. It’s fantastic basketball and makes that last run feel even more spectacular.

First off, in 1998 the Bulls team is a *lot* slower than the two previous runs. It’s obvious. Their bodies –especially Scottie’s, who’s on the bench until January- are messed up. When Phil Jackson says in the documentary that they wouldn’t have been able to get a 7th title, I really agree with that.

Second, EVERYONE wants to beat them. They’re the champs, the 5-time champions. Every single team wants to beat the Bulls and most are extremely well prepared. They also know that they’re not as quick as before and ALL the young guns are ready to show Michael who’s taking the crown next. They all know how the Bulls work, how to double team, when etc. The Bulls are known, dissected. The Bulls have no secret.

I’ve never seen MJ getting blocked or smacked to the ground or forced to pass the ball more than those games. There’s a game at the end of the season where Grant Hill absolutely dominates Michael. The NBA teams knew what the fuck was going on.

When the Bulls lose during that regular season, the other teams look like they just won the Finals and Olympics combined. There’s this game where MJ has 47 pts, Dennis has 29 rebounds and they win by single digit. They look completely exhausted and it’s only October or November.

The media talks shit. The Bulls are super good and strong as hell, but you can see the cracks. Plus, they already have 5 titles, how can you possibly want more? There might be fatigue. There’s also this halo around Michael. The man is a god at that time, more than ever. No one wants him to retire, but everyone wants to beat him. So it’s a strange mix and probably an insane and absurd pressure on the players’ shoulders. Observations:

The Bench

Shout out to them! Even though they’re struggling at the start of the season, they end up being crucial, allowing the starting 5 to recover. Wennington is hitting the baseline Js like it’s nothing, Brown is stealing the ball like there’s no tomorrow and Buechler is setting things on fire from those corner 3s. Burrell also has some excellent games at the end of the season and provides a lot of energy.

Kerr

Steve is a defensive beast. Of course he gets thrown around against the biggest guards in the league but his relentlessness is relentless. If you wonder why now as a coach he gets players to become much better defenders (Andrew Wiggins), that’s why.

MJ’s feeding energy

Now that I saw it, it’s true. This man wants to win every single *play*. He doesn’t want the other team to succeed at anything. He goes so hard, all the time. But that season, it’s barely enough to keep a 5-8 pts lead. He spends so much energy though that when he hits the bench, the bench is ready to throw it down just by sheer respect for his incredible hustle on the field. It’s feeding other players and without it, there’s no championship because the team would crumble under the pressure.

Phil Jackson is scary

He spends that season berating Kukoc, I mean, it’s unreal. There’s not a timeout without Phil going at Toni with “what the fuck are you doing out there you piece of shit?” vibes. It’s frightening because he’s supposed to be that cool, zen dude who wrote a book about LSD and all of a sudden he stomps Croatians for dinner. It’s wild. But it works, because Toni gets better and becomes a key to the Bulls offense (Game 7 against the Pacers in the eastern conference finals, he will go 5/5 from the field in the 3rd quarter, sealing the win).

Time Out

Phil calls them at the absolute perfect time. The second the other team feels some kind of flow, he calls it. He absolutely destroys momentums like that. It’s a beautiful thing to see and I’ve only seen Greg Popovich being that good at calling time outs. Weirdly, other teams don’t use theirs to disrupt the Bulls.

Dennis

He is so crucial to that championship team. We forget how essential rebounding is when MJ hits that crazy fadeaway J, but without Dennis getting that offensive board, there’s no win. He’s also quite nasty, locking people’s arms and getting under people’s skin like no other player. FOR THE WIN

The Pacers

From the start of the season, you can tell they’re the team the Bulls are afraid of. Even during regular season, it’s on sight. The Pacers are absolutely excellent with their 3 lefties and Reggie. The games are tough. I think the last game they meet, the Bulls again barely win and MJ who give everything on the floor is a bum for the next game like, he’s not even caring about it because he knows that they just beat their strongest opponent. The Bulls are also at that time like 25-2. Unreal.

Triangle and Defense

I say that the Bulls have no secret for other teams but their triangle offense in 1998, is a thing of beauty. They circulate the ball so well and always find something to do where they can get a nice shot. It’s honestly the most beautiful offense I’ve ever seen. Only the beautiful game of the 2014 Spurs comes close. And then the defense is just something that we don’t see anymore these days. They’d press you 24/7, basically. Long bois everywhere. The Jordan-Pippen-Harper claw, yeah, good luck with that.

Kobe Damon Allen

There’s a couple plays in LA where MJ defends Kobe without holding anything. Kobe drains the Js in his face, but knows that holy shit, that was close. Damon Stoudamire slaps the ball off Michael’s hands once, it’s dope to see a small player block OG 23. Allen is not able to shake MJ much, but he’s scoring efficiently against the Bulls. The Bulls win anyway.

 

Fast forward to those last moves in the last game of the finals, –clutch free throws, layup, steal, jump shot, it almost feels like MJ simply reminds himself of how painfully hard that year has been and that it’s time to fucking end this shit. Right now.

*squares up for The Shot*

It’s a great book. I read it almost in one shot because I share the premises with the author: raised by white folks in rural white folks world and trying to find myself.

That’s the interesting part for most readers: her point of view and actions in a racially convoluted world. But I was looking for something else: Rebecca not having access to any biological relatives. She does, and it takes a wild turn.

She’s the second author I read who wrote about her transracial adoption. The first one was Marcus Samuelsson’s, which I wrote about two years ago. He, too, has connection with biological relatives, starting with his young sister.

Thus, the meme rises in my head:

It’s something to live without knowing anyone sharing your blood, ever. Not a picture, not a name, nada, zero. No one looking like me, in perpetuity. It’s the result of national laws in France and the times in which my adoption happened. I’m at peace with that. Sort of. I guess? Now you know why I care more about the now and the future. The past is this rigid, unmovable and unattainable bitch.

Rebecca notes about a big national event that “but I realized, not for the first time, that I had no real community at a time of crisis” . I feel that. I felt that so often in my life, even with significant others by my side or my parents around and everything being fine. There’s just something missing. They don’t get it. They want to tell me how to feel, while subconsciously knowing it won’t work.

Therapy? You mean paying a white dude to listen to things he can’t comprehend while he tries to put me on meds? This sounds like a bad idea.

I just need some black love. It’s always done wonder to me. I take a sip of it and I’m over 9000 for the next eight weeks. It’s just science.

Probably around 100 people this morning at the park. Playing tennis, baseball and soccer. Half of them without a mask, of course. Kids running.

Me shooting on my locked rims. I called and emailed the city for them to free me. They don’t care.

I am so sick of things making no sense whatsoever while I stress for my health while trying to stay healthy.