Author: harold

I was trying to clean up his eye. He was trying to get in to eat. My dude was stressed. I lived with him for ten months and I left a month ago. He still wants his belly rubbed when he sees me. Bet.

It used to be now and then but now every morning, I make myself a beautiful, absolutely delicious latte. Today the first words to myself after the first sip were, and I quote, “Mmmhhh bitch! So fucking good oh my gahd”

Music and sound production should resume soon. Stay good.

Last year started with Ahmaud Arbery and ended with Timnit Gebru. In the middle, millions of people in the streets for racial justice. Many other black people died in the hands of 12 or 19.

In July I receive almost two orders of magnitude more views on LinkedIn. Nothing happens.

That voter suppression shit. That election so close. The Capitol. The Black Guard.

I stop breathing. All the time.

May your February month be prosperous, lovely and full of self-care y’all.

True.

“Things changed in 2008, during the financial crisis, kicking off Decade 2, what I’ll call "the slide." Lasting from 2008 to 2018, it was a time of UX teams seeing diminished influence in the organization. There were many factors at play, but a major one was the exodus of financialization experts from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Suddenly the "get rich quick" mentality that had caused the 2008 crash was being adopted by senior leadership at Big Tech firms. Now it was data and algorithms, not UX, that mattered most.”

A major shift post-iPhone was a mobile-first computer world which meant that people were stuck somewhere (there’s only one “window” there and we can’t escape what they’re sniffing) while the backend was gathering all kinds of data about how we behave.

Another big shift here was Farmville. It spun the gambling/addictive treats in UX that we now see everywhere. Farmville’s business model expanded way beyond games.

There used to be some kind of respect for the consumer. We are now simply vessels of money that they all try to convert to infinite streams of revenue. Seems healthy!

I’m freaking out about our habits. There’s no way my local businesses –and yours– survive a second year of pandemic. Ordering online is too convenient, easy and completely baked in our lives now.

Will we get bored of receiving things at our doors? I don’t think so. Shopping around is cute and fun to do with your boo or family, but it’s better when it’s not often.

They’ve been building so much retail around in the past few years, there’s no way they can wait for years for those spaces to gross income. Although, real estate mfs have so much money they might be able to sit on their properties until 2025.

The mom & pop shops though. Protect them. Put two masks on and go buy stuff there.

How it started

How it’s going

Plants and bass are utterly important, as you can see.

Things aligned for me to get this great place in a way that I’m not going to try to understand, because I’m healing right now. It’s good.

So much to do. So much to feel. Let’s mf go!

So it’s like, it’s crazy, people attack the Capitol and stuff.

Next thing you know we have a billion meme in 45 minutes about the man that would make a MUCH better president right now.

Humor as a coping mechanism, yes, sure. But dang, at that scale it’s a bit frightening.

Netflix is about to decide what you want to watch.

Windows 10 updates itself depending on how long we’re away from the computer, like a bitch.

I never use webmails but now I have to and emails are typing themselves now????

I can only buy Jazmine Sullivan’s new album on two “platforms”?

I only have one cable provider available and no other choice?

Amazon wants my ID to buy stuff that I could buy for the past decade without?

ANY AGENCY LEFT TO US, CAN WE LIVE

I often hear the argument that one community needs to bootstrap and stop asking for help, because that’s how communities always have been doing: they bootstrap themselves and then rule whatever part of the world, economy, etc. This completely ignores the concentration and abuse of power that we’ve witnessed in the past 70 years or so.

See how the US is almost at 30,000 in 2000? It is now past 60,000 in 2020. Luxembourg is at 100,000. So basically, a straight line going up.

This colossal wealth has been generated by ourselves and our families, and of course a whole lot of stealing and abuse of power and millions of people dying. It is also concentrated in less and less hands which means an abrupt disruption in any kind of bootstrapping. You simply can’t bootstrap yourself anymore. The capital is gone, owned by a Chinese oligarchy or an American trust fund. If your family is doing fine, they’re not doing fine enough for you to “try” something. If you’re lucky to do so, you will sell to whichever big company before you burn yourself to the ground or said companies asphyxiate your business with unfair practices (aka they have money, you don’t).

We have like 6 companies doing ALL of our entertainment. We have about the same number for ALL of our food, do you understand how different the world is since 2000s globalization?

Refusing to talk about fairly redistributing wealth considering how the world is today doesn’t demonstrate a lot of compassion, to say the least. Not engaging in reparations conversations for black Americans considering the history and the receipts (up to right now, with black folks waiting in line for 10+hours to VOTE and block a second term), is so violent and dismissive.

But here we are, arguing over a one-time small ass payment of $2000 in a pandemic while trillions move left and right in the arcane of banks and corporations. Sigh.