Category: Me Myself&I

It is psychological gravity, not technical inertia, however, that is the greater force against the open web. Human beings are social animals and centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook provide a powerful sense of ambient humanity—the feeling that “others are here”—that is often missing when one writes on one’s own site. Facebook has a whole team of Ph.D.s in social psychology finding ways to increase that feeling of ambient humanity and thus increase your usage of their service.

Fantastic blog post circulating these days.

The feeling that “others are here”. It’s true, when I write on here I don’t really feel that others are here, even though my blog is completely public and available to anyone on earth with an internet connection. I mention it but never push people to it.

I love this. It’s discrete. Discretion is a beautiful paradox. It’s here, but only if you pay attention, look for it. That’s the opposite of how social media works, where anything that’s not amplified times 10,000, doesn’t exist. Discretion is way more human than it looks like. Appreciating something or someone comes with YOU looking for something in the first place. You then find it and enjoy it.

I know. The younger you are, the less this feels natural but trust me, it’s the best. Like discovering some music on your own. We all lived that. It’s more rewarding than being force-fed some bullshit.

It also gets better with time. I have some blogs in my RSS reader that I’ve been following for over ten years. Understanding and reading about someone’s life over a long period of time is a strong positive feeling. It becomes a real lens, with an angle that social media doesn’t give you because we stunt on social media. We brag, we exaggerate. When you’re discrete it’s just you, your reality, your thoughts. It’s clean. It’s a bit scary from time to time to be vulnerable like that but we value authenticity, don’t we? I do.

In this age of insane misinformation, fake news, fake butts, fake everything, reading people’s actual thoughts is refreshing and satisfying. Get on the train, embrace discretion. Plant those seeds and watch growth.

I’m not sure what the variable bitrate is on FB or YT/Spotify but it’s grooooss and weird. Those digital artifacts, that metallic sounding shit or ultra-compressed audio, ew.

Phone speakers/earbuds are the worst and yet used all the time here. All the small speakers are BOOMY as fuck with no mids, no air, no stereo. And now they listen to us too? No pasarán.

Meanwhile they’re ready to push for 8K when no one cares about 4K, that your eyes are fine with clean 1080 and always will be because they’re not getting better. Our phones are filled with super HQ videos of dumb shit that we don’t watch anywhere else because each one is the size of a DVD and it’s a pain to transfer.

Why listening is being downgraded while watching is being upgraded? Technically, audio has been perfect for over ten years while video still had some improvement going. So they had to find some ways to sell audio gear. But also, ads. Eyeballs. Compulsive behavior doesn’t work if you listen and think while closing your eyes.

Don’t sleep. I mean, please do actually.

My favorite is the small one on top of that big Pentium II cartridge, the Am386 DX/DXL-33. So many memories.

AMD fascinates the shit out of me. It’s a “small” company led by a woman, Lisa Su.

AMD competes with Intel, a company ten times bigger and fights against Nvidia, a company about the same size. Both are aggressive as hell. It doesn’t matter. In this ultra-complex world of billions of transistors sandwiches, AMD is and has been able to sustain themselves in both CPU and GPU worlds. That’s so insane. I swear, it’s absurdly amazing.

They bring great products to the market. They launched 20 different CPUs and a bunch of GPUs last year and they’re all excellent. I really wish I could buy some and enjoy them and built rigs for people around.

Keep pushing, AMD.

I’m so appalled at the state of technology right now. It looks like everything bows down to services.

No one is forcing companies to not be dicks. They get away with it. Take Twitter, who became big by having so many people making apps for their service. They meticulously killed those, stealing their features. They started to modify chronological order and shit.

My phone is old but it works perfectly fine. Everything that Twitter does –displaying text, pictures and short videos- can be done on a 2012 phone. I shouldn’t have to upgrade anything *at all* to display not 140, but 280 characters. Flickr gives me that shit too: “you should upgrade your browser”. Your website displays a grid of pictures, the fuck you mean? Any browser can do that.

The other thing is, those services could be so awesome if they hadn’t gone AI and Big Data on us. True Chronological Order on FB or Twitter would be so incredibly powerful. I would be on it all the fucking time instead of being grossed out, kind of forced to check here and there.

Imagine tabs on FB with you sharing to different people, easily. Imagine never having to dread a back and forth in your timeline. Imagine FB as easy to filter as your email. And fast as hell. Mmh.

The sad part is that we’re a few lines of code, a few refactoring away from freedom. It fucks me up.

It’s like a bad joke.

If you’re challenged in life, you’re supposed to talk to a therapist.

Therapists require money, quite some. If you’re challenged, you might not have access to that money. You might have trouble to even pay for basics like food or shoes.

If you vent out to friends, they stop wanting to see you right?

If you let friends vent out to challenged-you so that you can forget your own issues, you start looking like fucking Gollum.

If you stay alone, away, it hurts and things don’t get better magically.

If you socialize heavily, everything feels shallow as fuck and you feel empty for days.

If you look for help, people think you should man up.

If you don’t look for help, it doesn’t come either.

I’m pondering the emergency. Writing helps. Sound is the best.

Could my Spurs miss them? Will the Cavs make it to the ECF? Nothing is less sure. I don’t care about Cleveland so much though but how could San Antonio stay in the race?

Well, maybe the staff wants to preserve players for next year. But that’s not how it works, all those new players need playoff experience. If LMA and Kawhi are back in full effect, they could upset tons of people because nobody has played against them in ages. That would be a serious advantage in the ultra-competitive West. Pop is the smartest, we’ll see.

I miss watching Kawhi so much.

Speaking of the West, the Pels are super scary now. With Okafor and Mirotic added, AD can fest while Jrue is tearing all defenses apart while defending like a demon. He is the most underrated player this season. He is crafty as hell, you don’t know what’s going to happen but bam, 2 points in yo face that’s what happened. They’re a nightmare in the fourth and they have tons of experience in OT. They will hurt bad.

The Lakers won’t make it, the Jazz are ahead and definitely strong right now. My man IT doing well considering what he’s gone through, enabling LA to win in Miami for the first time in ten years. Not bad at all.

3s are cool until they’re really not cool, killing the game.

It’s so good.

I hate the simplicity and minimalism, so on point.

I hate that I feel Earn especially when he says after inhaling, “I’m good”.

I hate how the show is always the same shit and that I can’t get enough of it.

I hate that I recognize René & Angela, Breakwater, L.T.D, The Delfonics and Curtis on the first beat, even filtered out.

I hate that I’d love to work on that show. Or the computer game version of it.

I hate that I’d love to make a show like that, based on my book. Or my friend’s life.

I hate that I’m anxious AF and that this show doesn’t relax me.

I hate that Atlanta feels like a dream that I want to watch again.

I hate the clichés and love the clichés.

I hate Katt *soft damn* Williams for being great. I hate the cast for being so dope.

Atlanta is good. I hate Atlanta.

So, electric cars don’t make noises. Sports cars are supposed to though? Car fans are really into roaring engine sounds. How will they survive when they buy a $150K car and you can only hear gravels under the tires in the driveway? Are engineers ready to play some engine sounds in the car so that the driver feels powerful again? What’s so great about noise, especially loud fart noises from an exhaust? High pitched sounds from Prius cars are annoying when there are a lot of them around.

It’s an interesting design issue.