Category: Me Myself&I

It’s pretty painful for Gen X Europe to witness what’s going on with Greece. We are the only generation that grew up with the idea that Europe was the goal, the answer, the neatest shit we could conceive.

But we got screwed. Boomers, again, totally hostile to mixing up cultures and sharing our good stuff to each other. Boomers’ elite created that insane technocratic layer on top of Europe’s institutions. Millennials screwing things up too because they didn’t grow up with any ideal and don’t necessarily want to work to fix what previous generations have let go. European millennials, they like their comfort and are not that curious about their neighbors, they have tablets and the world at their fingertips. Why would they?

So it’s a mess. One currency to rule them all wasn’t enough. When I see how hard it is for those countries to get on the same page for stupid things like driving laws or more ridiculous, I kind of feel like it’s never going to happen. We haven’t been able to make work laws more consistent across Europe and we wonder why people don’t move so much and blame other countries.

And always the same problem of not asking Europeans what they think. Most Europeans knew that Greece wasn’t ready in 2000. I wasn’t for it. At that time, bigger economies like Spain and Italy were slipping away. We were already seeing that it was complicated to “synchronize” countries economically and we were adding one with a pretty weak economy. We should have said no to Greece and fix issues with South Europe first and I’m pretty sure that citizens would have gone this way. But we’re never asked directly, instead populist politic parties jump in and tell everyone that we need to go back to National Bullshit. And a lot of people are listening to them. It’s a mess.

Obviously banks are the happy architects of that clusterfuck. They assisted governments lying and profiting meanwhile, people think it’s all about immigration laws and “who’s leading” Europe. That’s genius. Evil, but genius.

I don’t know how it will get better. I feel like we’re passed the point where there was a simple and straight answer to Europe which was let’s build it.

Internet K-hole (IKH) was amazing. For anyone who grew up in the 80s, even outside the US IKH was that bottomless window on that period. Those washed up pictures, the simple fact that we had to wait before seeing those pictures! And of course the entire eighties aesthetic and the sighs it makes you do now.

IKH was on Blogger, that terrible Google-owned blog platform. It is now on Tumblr and updated daily. This fucking sucks.

IKH was mysterious, we didn’t know when it would be updated and then BAM fifty or more pictures would be coming out of nowhere like a random Christmas.

RSS was the way to subscribe. the feed would be silent for months and then one day you would have something to look at, a free trip to nostalgiaville. Time would stop, you would get stuck in that hole. It was glorious.

This obsession for eyeballs and immediacy these days is so stupid. Some things are better when they’re slowly consumed and unpredictable. Receiving daily visual doses of the end 70s/80s/early90s just makes you feel like “the fuck am I doing?”. There’s no joy anymore.

That intersection between something I like, technology thinking it knows what I want forcing me to consume in one single way while the creator is stuck with said technology that doesn’t want him to be free so he just follows what tools and “fans” demand.

Bye IKH.

New art next door

One year on West Adams Blvd. I was the newest roommate and I’m soon going to be the oldest. People follow their jobs, their loved ones. Things move fast. Sometimes.

Still great to be here. There are some amazing jewels around, places to hang out or places I’m lusting for.

There is coach Tily, Q, Jerrick, Mariana, Stephanie, Israel, Jimmy, Fred, Miguel, Car Wash, Yvonne. Brendon, Teddy, Archie, Ben. Oji. And so many more.

I might call it home now.

We can never NOT compare those two now can we?

2 – 4 VS 6 – 6 (finals won – finals appearances).

Now that I have watched Lebron almost as much as Michael I understand better why I’m not loving his style.

Lebron plays like a bear, Michael played like a deer. Statistics will never show that.

Lebron’s legacy will be that basketball is a team sport. That building teams takes time. That it takes a leader some humility to make it work. And that despite everything, he’s not doing so good on that side.

People forget the immense contribution of the team in Jordan’s undefeated Bulls. YouTube makes it look like MJ does all the work. People forget how hard the Pistons hit them for years, how Scottie became so good he was basically Jordan II, same moves, same speed, same hunger. MJ was just one of them. Curry with the Warriors looks exactly like that.

Lebron hasn’t been able to do that at all. I watched him won with the Heat then lose with the Heat then lose with the Cavs. When they won they came back from nowhere thanks to the team and Ray Allen’s three. When they lost they really lost, they couldn’t do anything against the Spurs circulating the ball so well.

This year, same. This is why numbers don’t matter. It’s all about the team. That’s the constant in basketball.

I look at those pictures of solar space ships and robots on Mars etc. It’s cool but imagine if we were all on earth so bored and satisfied that we all agree to work on those problems. They would be solved in a heartbeat. Now I would be excited as hell. In the present time, not so much. You know what? I think that’s why I love modern houses.

18.36.54 Connecticut, USA. Go visit it.

They’re like earthbound and timeless space ships.

I have been thinking about this article a lot lately, trying to grasp the impact of self-driving things. I drove a lot last week.

Shit. it’s going to be dramatic.

No one should be asking what we’re going to do if computers take our jobs.

We should all be asking what we get to do once freed from them.

I freak out when I see that no one in power even acknowledge the massive incoming change. It’s going to be messy and ignorant. The near new paradigm just breaks people’s minds. Dissociating hard work and income is only new and “impossible” to process to privileged people others know, they’re already working hard just to survive and pay the bills. It is worth mentioning that there’s collectively enough money to take care of everything. Just one bank like HSBC makes 13 $billion in profit a year, just sitting on its ass, having computers making transactions. We can solve so many problems with that amount of money from just one bank, for one year. It’s mind-boggling.

Once I’m free from work because computers have taken over, I’ll work. I’ll build things. I’ll teach stuff. I’ll have dogs and we’ll work together and then nap. Starting a family feels way less scary in this setting.

There are tons of shit to do once we’re freed from work. Like work.

Wow. I hadn’t seen all those articles about Mad Max Fury Road (I like this one). I have already written about it and my point of view is that sexism is so potent in our society that that movie looks like freedom from it. Small step or not, I celebrate the move.

Now let’s imagine a really feminist and diverse Mad Max:

In a post-apocalyptic future desert wasteland like that most people would be black. Come on. Y’all white people would have been decimated by scorching temperatures, hiding in a couple caves and shit. You would be weak and retreated. Black people would be the ones running things outside.

Because women plan ahead quite often better than men, they would do well in this world. Because so many men are greedy, we wouldn’t be trusted and we would have our own tribes. Men and women tribes would definitely be gay or forced to.

Complex alliances would emerge from that. Survival from as far as we can look back, is violent. It’s always violent and brutal. High scarcity means rape would be a free weapon/power tool. Death by snu snu aka suffocating between thighs while having your pelvis crushed would be real and not something dudes would look for. Sex is already important in our opulent society I assume it would be even more so in a limited human lifestyle.

Green energy and biofuel would play a huge role. Poop would be an asset.

Just with that I could develop tons of characters and story arcs and tension. There’s enough material in those three paragraphs to upset our current society for years with a movie based on them but to me, it just looks plausible and interesting.