Category: Me Myself&I

The memoir is going.

Reading others’ biographies, I realize that it was hard work for them too. Only usually they have an editor and people encouraging them, I just do it all on my own. I told my parents about it, they said “ok”. Okay, then.

People talk about taking notes and organizing them in the real world of paper and physics, I do it all in my head. Four decades, four parts. I wrote in chronological order.  If there’s something I forgot to talk about I note it in my head and keep thinking about it until I finally write it down. I do that for everything in my life, from EQ settings for a kick drum to things to send at work or tasks to do at home. I’m lazy, my memory is always with me, closer than a phone or a notebook. I use post-it for dumb things like moving the car for street cleaning.

I’m exhausted and burned out mentally. But then I find the energy again and again.

I’m job hunting like a demon, still. Living the leanest life I’ve ever lived.

I broke my bike’s rear wheel axle. I biked over 9000 km (6,000+ miles) in the past four years.

I took this screenshot ten years ago, when I was doing research for my aunt on her computer after she went through chemotherapy for an ovary cancer.

This year she’s finally getting some cannabis-based treatment and feels much better. Less pain, sleeps better, has less difficulty to talk. I’m glad she feels better but I’m sad that she could have a long time ago. At that time I was ready to grow some, to buy some for her and for myself. I had had one of those talk that ends up with a door slammed with my dad. He thought I had lost my mind a bit.

Now he tells me how his sister is feeling better, looking down on skype.

I will never understand what the fuck we’re doing, why we’re so weird with this plant.

The Kings and Nets are going to be fun to watch this year. I miss D-Lo at the Lakers and I still think that Lakers squad last year was the best, they needed to consolidate. Oh well. D Fox at Sacramento is nuts.

My Spurs doing fine. LMA being super impressive with the return of his unbeatable midrange fade away. Passing sharply, blocking. Murray’s ceiling seems to get higher every game. Rudy Gay and Kawhi Leonard are going to slowly clutch all the close games, watch. The Timberwolves are definitely scary. MAN

Boogie and AD going ham as predicted but the rest of the Pels look bleak. OKC and Houston definitely have a “too many possibilities” problem on offense and still not so great defense that they need to solve quick.

That’s a Coates-approved title, isn’t it?

Ellen Pao wrote a book about sexism in Silicon Valley that came out last month. There was the crazy R Kelly human trafficking stuff this summer.

There’s the all Weinstein thing exploding in Hollywood, and a few hashtags on Twitter about sexual harassment and discrimination towards women, from #MeToo to #BalanceTonPorc. Almost two decades that I introduced myself to feminism and we’re still unveiling awful shit. I hope this is actual progress that we’re witnessing.

I never know what to say to men besides focusing on how freedom means freedom, which means women are entitled to as much, as absurd, as luscious things as men and that it’s not fucking complicated to understand. When we’re chilling men can’t not agree.

But as soon as we feel threatened, as soon as we need to lash out, we’re back on our bullshit. A lot of us. Too many. And too many who wish they could.

On the other hand the elephant in the room is that abuse is abuse but it still can serve someone’s goals, true. Being abused and personal gain are not mutually exclusive. Women were scared by Mr. Weinstein, got nightmares and PTSD for years but also got promoted, or got that role that allowed them to flourish. For some reason men, who are the ones setting up the rules or working on being the ones making them, are mad that women could use a ladder after being molested and soiled.

We can’t steal women’s agency and then be furious that they find ways to do what they wanted anyway by playing us, that’s stupid. But more importantly we need to stop the stealing, plain and simple.

“Specialize” the displaced workers are being told. “Up your education and increase your skills! Move to a different city! Find a niche where technology can’t replace you! Learn to code!” They’re trying, but this doesn’t seem to be a long-term solution. We’re in an age where we’re being told AI is about to start writing its own software. Machines are going to be trying legal cases and diagnosing illnesses, writing songs and architecting buildings, giving financial advice and driving our vehicles. Every day more articles about this or that breakthrough. There are no limits, there are no protections. It’s bordering on lawlessness.

Yup.

I see on Hacker News a whole lot of young tech folks in denial with arguments and data from the past.

I think you need to be in the situation of running against fast-paced progress for over ten years to actually get what’s actually going on. Or maybe it was a one time thing. The generation that was 20 year old when 2000 happened and who saw the ridiculous progress of the digital world and jobs going away, closer than anyone else. That’s me and I’m feeling dizzy from running that race.

So since Windows 8 came out, I have been using Bing for search and IE to browse the web. It’s been five years now. I was just completely tired of customizing dumb stuff like a browser. Just let me use stock stuff and move on with my life.

Well, Google can’t find shit for me now. It’s just not good, DuckDuckGo does better. And of course after Bing aggregated my data, Bing’s the best for me.

I didn’t think I would use IE for that long, but the truth is that as soon as you have some ad-blocking going on, the browser in itself doesn’t matter. The funniest part would be that once every six months or maybe once a year, a website would not work in IE. I would immediately go hard on myself like “boy you dumb as shit, you know this website has been optimized for the mighty Webkit engine, all the kids only know Chrome now, they only develop for it so that’s why”.

Then I would load up the website in Chrome and it would be fucked up exactly like it was in IE. I would smile and shake my head at the absurd witch hunt out there, and the insanity of being mad at someone using one car instead of another one on the information freeways. I grossed myself out with this metaphor but this is what we’re doing these days. “Don’t use that car omg!!” “Why? It works and I know what I’m doing. Shut up”

All browsers suck and they’re all good enough. Search engines suck until they get your data and then they’re pretty good.

Computers are basic, people. Google is not some kind of magic trick. If they can’t get your data, their services are immediately not that great.

Noah was excited to tell us about a new thing he was working on. “You can use it to send group SMS.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“Look at the logo!”

“That’s even stupider.”

Mike Monteiro on Twitter. I’ve been on it for a decade and I’m pondering on life with and without that service. It’s become so absurd, nasty and plain negative. But sometimes it’s still dope.

Twitter was a technological tool. It should have stayed this way, becoming the WordPress of microblogging.

But there’s a way to possibly make a hundred times more money, and be the star (WordPress is made by a company called Automattic that no one but geeks know about) so Twitter entered the media business with its terrible ad-based, view-based economy. And fucked us all over. This is where we –but mostly you, powerful guys in San Francisco- should have said no, leave the platform and create another one.

Every single thing wrong with Twitter comes from making money from impressions. Abuse? They make Twitter thrive. Awful very important people acting wild? They make Twitter thrive. Harassment? Twitter suddenly has a lot more users, which is great.

More numbers, more money. I don’t know how those executives sleep at night but they live the life I guess? I’m mad that I know what it could have been.

Finished Rick James’ memoir, started Curtis Mayfield’s.

Crazy life for sure. A lot of setbacks before hitting the jackpot. Understandably, he doesn’t mention Dave Chappelle once.

The main take for me is that boredom leads to self-destruction quite easily, regardless of finances. Rick did the three things I told myself to never do:

– Don’t get anyone pregnant by mistake

– Don’t sell drugs

– Don’t do cocaine, ever

It definitely reduced my social circles and opportunities by a lot but, I’m aiming at not dying before 100 and I think I’m on the good foot for that.

Big shout out to his mom. The dude was man child’s poster child, she carried his ass his whole life. His groove, style and sound will always cover it up though. Thank you for them, Superfreak.

That’s Rick James talking about his childhood.

Thank you, sis.