I’m surrounded by those where I live. I love that plant so much.
I didn’t know: it is the official flower of Los Angeles! It’s originally from South Africa, but they grow like seaweed in the ocean here in Southern California. They’re everywhere.
The flowers are built different for sure, but I love those fat, wide leaves. They create the best shade and there’s something rich about them, something solid. Give me that luscious vibe, bae.
Tagging Matt for his birthday.
“drive engagement and taking advantage of psychology that makes people want to scroll while they are driving”. If your mental state is that bad, that weak, you should not drive. You should seriously seek help. If you need timer apps to curb your appetite, you need to go back to a flip phone and a laptop. You already know this. Safety first, goddamn.
Last year I almost got hit in a front end collision by a car drifting in my lane, because this idiot was texting with both hands, driving with his elbows while accelerating and of course not paying attention. I avoided him barely and really just because I was super attentive.
It was close enough that I think about it almost every single time I’m down that road. I see horrifying stuff when driving. People watching videos while making a fucking turn (aka when driving needs 100% of your attention). I’ve seen someone in the left lane down a hill stop at the green light because they felt that they should text back now (I thought the car had broken down rather suddenly, it had not). People are absolutely insane on the roads with their phones in L.A.
At this point laws should be voted, companies should be sued and folks should go to therapy.
I was made aware of a New Deal map last year. Reminder of what the New Deal was:
The New Deal was the effort by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, to respond to the calamity of the Great Depression and alleviate the despair besetting America. FDR and the New Dealers launched scores of new programs to respond to a wide range of problems facing the country: stabilizing the banks and stimulating the economy, creating jobs and raising wages, investing in public works and modernizing lagging regions, and giving ordinary Americans a new sense of security and hope. The New Deal lasted until American entry into the Second World War at the end of 1942.
The New Deal keeps on giving: most free stuff (parks, schools, infrastructures like water fountains, art and federal buildings) in America is dated from those years. The map is fabulous. I didn’t know, but I am using New Deal work made before 1942, everyday. Their work mostly still stands admirably 82 years later. Beautiful.
Two thoughts:
How Los Angeles had a $500M budget (do people realize how much money that is???) to end homelessness in 22-23 and couldn’t? Homelessness actually went up in double digit? And the budget for 23-24 is $600M?? Y’all better audit this shit daily.
For that price New Deal folks would renovate every vacant building and house every homeless folks in L.A. before spring.
I keep thinking about how being rich vastly changed meaning since the 90s.
You couldn’t access what rich people had back then, at all, so that made sense to want what they had, which was by being rich. Cool.
But today what is richer than having access to an unlimited amount of entertainment and sugar for a price that isn’t honest but at least doable for most? Tons of people are “rich” now. There’s not much to do but sit down and consume on the same 65″ TV and phone as rich people. EZ.
So people these days switched from wanting to be rich -which doesn’t carry much anymore as I just explained- to wanting to be famous. By being “rich”. Sigh.
Almost 100% of famous people will tell you that fame is the worst and a curse. I think many 2015-ish streamers realized that in the past few years. Taking selfies with random strangers while answering the same questions over and over is not the vibe. Being “known” for flashing benjamins at a NBA game while your team loses horribly, is probably not great. But you’re famous now! I guess.
Anyway, it’s awesome that tech massively made things more affordable for more people. That it dissolves hierarchy in society. The problem is that society is so dependent in its old ways (marriage, career, economic growth), that it doesn’t know how to deal with this dissolution and quite massive shift.
We were not ready.
Don’t be rich, don’t be famous. Optimize healthy Quality of Life. Best investment ever.
I don’t want to look at it though.
It was terrible! The first gateway/router didn’t start. The second was fine but the dude forgot to get the right SIM card in so it didn’t work back home.
Two hours total in the store, 30mn on the phone with at least five different folks to simply subscribe to the internet using a 5G hotspot. We can definitely do better, y’all.
It’s working OK now, but nothing spectacular in terms of bandwidth. It feels like good old 4G. It is also basically all locked, you can’t even change your WiFi’s SSID without the help of Powershell. SMFH
I’ve been trying to get Sonic for 10 years now, and these mfs are never available where I live but a couple streets away, yes, always. Quite infuriating.
Finally watched John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live. I would always see references to that movie here and there but never had the chance to watching it fully.
Increased commercialization. That was 36 years ago. Today we have ads in operating systems, emails and bank portals. Agents on the internet tracking every single pixel we move over. Data mining is the bread and butter of companies making billions in profit from us. Netflix is the last one showing that they make more money per user from ads than from subscriptions. And everyone born after the late 90s doesn’t know what the world without constant commercialization is.
So despite art showing a worrying trend decades ago, it got way worse. There’s so much complacency around phones. I don’t think John Carpenter saw those OBEY devices coming and taking over.
When folks say art changes minds and the world I’m leaning into the “Sure, Jane” meme these days.
I watched Andor and a few other movies this week and I feel exhausted by that much television. And that’s like, a Tuesday for most Americans.
I had been waiting on watching this in the best environment possible and that’s now.
Superbly balanced and done through and through. The best of that fantasy world in 12 episodes. Just enough to indulge and not too much to get lobotomized.
I’ll never get tired of how sound design is so central to making science-fiction believable. Those sliding (cardboard!) doors making all those fuzzy sounds of movement and digital validation, love that.
Dialog was riveting, especially on the Empire side.
It could be just one season and that would be just fine (they’re making a season 2).
It’s called Variable Rate Operant Conditioning.
You know that feeling when you seem to not be able to stop scrolling in any app these days? That’s by design. That’s Variable Rate Operant Conditioning.
In operant conditioning, a variable-ratio schedule is a partial schedule of reinforcement in which a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule creates a steady, high rate of response.
This is what powers slot machines, pachinkos, Pokemon, Etsy’s search, TikTok, app stores, everything with an algorithm.
Your feed, regardless of the app and what you’re interested in, uses this with a level of sophistication (thanks to a decade+ of data) that makes it devastatingly potent. At this point, it might be so optimized and efficient that most people simply can’t escape or fight it. The 24/7 phone paradigm doesn’t give people enough time to separate and think. People get on the scrolling treadmill as soon as they can, right after dropping off the kids or right before bed.
It’s been warping our minds and it is impacting our societies in the worst way. You haven’t found something interesting. They found (know, remember, don’t share) what triggers you 1000% of the time.
We like to say and believe that Boomers are the reason everything is bad today, but the psychopaths using constant skinner boxes on us and optimizing them to get us on that rent-seeking shit, are cute and ruthless Gen-X and Millies.