Category: Me Myself&I

I know everything. I know we’re nothing I know we’re everything

I know we’re fucked up I know we’re greedy I know you want that property

I know everything, even how Lord of the Ring warns you about that bling

I know rent doesn’t exist, I know in some ways we have no heart

I know we could. I know we should. I know we would

I know most people can’t see long term, I know they still want those kids

I know we have enough to provide for everybody, I know we fake scarcity

I know them plants and trees are ready to save you and me

I know technology would do the rest if only

I know everything, tits lips and p-spot

Hemp, passive gains and how much Dubai costs

I know God is a fallacy, I know all you need is empathy

I know everything, system theory pattern recognition, meat salad and St Emilion

I know white people can’t deal with Nature, that Queen who’s refusing their future

I know women can’t deal with that endemic sense of entitlement, we vile creatures

I know we can do better, I know we’re trying harder

I know persistence is all we got

And I don’t know where it’s going to take us

 

(inspired by the verse 2 of Kendrick Lamar’s Momma, written in one shot)

Just a lot of work and hustling. L.A. changes so fast. The place next door is blowing up. I am a member of the W. Adams Yacht Club and no I can’t tell you nothing about it. Meanwhile all my favorite staff at my favorite coffee place bounced for some reason, probably a lack of raise. I really hope they come back, the place is a desert in the middle of the desert now.

Definitely Kendrick Lamar’d. The Funk permeates my surrounding. I need to participate more.

It’s amazing how a TV crew attracts attention in 2015 in the town that produces like five billion shows a year. People ask questions, are excited looking at a old as fuck camera when everyone in southern California could shoot the same with their phones. The camera becomes the uniform.

I might speak at a conference sometime in the future.

Also, I don’t keep men in my life who pay for sex. Sorry guys. Life is full of double standards. I’ve got no problem with my girls selling it, but you’ve lost my respect if you’re buying.

Coquette.

Exactly. Which is why I stopped giving a flying fuck about sex workers defending sex work it’s like listening to oil companies telling you that yes, you need a car that consumes fossil fuel because this is how it goes. I’m OK with you selling it because in the case of oil there’s still tons of cars running on it or in the case of sex, I understand that it’s a way to independence for people but don’t ever try to sell me that it’s the norm, the future because it’s fucking not.

I agree with Coquette. She’s right. And that’s the problem because that double standard right here is for me why we can’t have nice things between men and women. I have nothing against double standard per se, but as a black man I’m constantly and forever on the bad side of it. This shit sucks hard. Why we shouldn’t have double standard? Because I’d like to think that we’re not at war, that we’re equal, the same damn meat bags and that we live together and respectively need those tits lips balls and dicks?

How can we have more equality and respect  when a dude can buy a woman for the night, that just really doesn’t make any sense. Imagine a kid trying to make sense out of that. How society can shift its perspective on women if in any city you can get a sloppy blowjob for a a couple bills? Everything from slut shaming to cat calling to internet stalking derives from that, men believing that if some women can be bought –it doesn’t matter for what- they can do whatever they want to them because they feel like they are entitled to. Ladies, don’t you get it?

Even for the brightest men (well, maybe not so bright) that shit is confusing. Respect women, but buy one and do whatever you want wit her? It sounds like the perfect recipe to create psychopaths heavy breathing behind you in the street.

Fuck double standards and if you are a woman with some long term views, you shouldn’t support prostitution. Period.

You fight patriarchy while feeding it with slave-like behavior, how is that supposed to even work? It’s not and it can’t. I see things like “when you allow prostitution, rape rates go down!” God so much sleaziness in this argument, I can’t believe it’s being used. Dude, it’s like trading death for permanent injuries maybe it’s an upgrade but come on, we can do way better.

Dear men seeking that kind of service, what the fuck is wrong with you? I don’t get it except that it’s kind of a way to justify the ridiculous hours of work and absence in your life that you’re dealing with. A “fuck it” to the cubical or constantly-on-the-road loneliness. An immature wish that you can now fulfill, OK’d by society as long as you’re not getting caught.

Stop. This. Shit. Get an Autoblow or something. Go see a therapist or start writing a blog if you pay a hooker to hear your stupid lamentations. Dress better. Hit the fucking gym. Learn to listen. Be smart, fuck for free you idiots.

Dude re-calculate your existence, seriously. Not only you fuck up our global relationship with women in general but you’re making yourself swallow so much pride you’re pretty much choking on it until you’re old enough to not give a fuck about anything. That misogynistic selfishness is sometimes disrupted because you happen to have a little girl. Jesus fuck, if you need to have a kid to understand what women go through you are slow up there, like really slow. And you are the problem.

Let’s be equal, fuck for free and build shit/have fun together. How hard is that, really?

Like, super fascinating and funny and sharp article on AI.

Best comment so far: “I’m excited and shitting my pants at the same time”.

 

– Thing to keep in mind: before we reach the ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) level that either kills us or makes us timeless, we have to go through AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) first. We’re super far from that. We’re still fucking around with basic AI and it’s already a nightmare of complexity.

– Moore’s law? Fine. But the limit isn’t so much technology, it’s economy: all that new technology coming is doable, only it takes decades to make those plants and master some processes. We’re slowing way down because shit is becoming extremely, extremely expensive not because we can’t make them at the speed of Moore’s law.

– There are tons of things we could already improve by ourselves without a need for AI. In the article there are mentions of how it could help us:

ASI could even solve our most complex macro issues—our debates over how economies should be run and how world trade is best facilitated, even our haziest grapplings in philosophy or ethics—would all be painfully obvious to ASI.

It’s already obvious for a lot of humans, usually atheists and with a way more chill sense of moral, nihilistic almost. We could solve all of that in a decade. We’re probably slower than any future machine but we could solve that; it’s not AI science.

It’s like the prospect of being immortal thanks to some friendly ASI. People freak out because of a set of beliefs they have been following all their lives but to me it just sounds doable and I’m not thinking much more. I don’t judge or overthink it. Because I already think humans as amazing biological machines, enhancing our meat envelopes so that we don’t age ever? Nothing crazy about that. We would definitely stop having kids by that time, probably. Or conquer other planets which I don’t care for, let me see how we’ll do so much better on Earth.

I might see that in my lifetime. Dayymm.

One post this month damn, that’s not a lot. I did write but didn’t post. Going back and forth between hard work days and days off where I catch up with everything.

It’s weird to be disconnected for days from what’s going on and then go online, freak out and then just freak out, speechless. You want to comment on everything but nothing matters with this endless stream.

There are so many things going wrong, small to huge it’s ridiculous. It feels like what’s going OK is just to hide the horrendous background behind.

So here’s a picture of someone giving 0 fucks about you and life.

Clearly, my life has changed since having black kids around me, since last year. Before if I was thinking about a baby I would automatically see him white. Now I see 2, one black and one white. I’ve basically never hold a black baby, never hold a mini-me, isn’t that effed up?

Making one sounds good in some way I am the root, the start. It definitely makes me smile to think about a big tree with grand-grand-grand-sons and daughters looking back at that French ancestor coming from nowhere. Child, you have grass fed cow milk in your blood and it’s coming from France’s center. 18-58 represent!

But yeah, it just sounds so selfish to me. I think about my teeth DNA, you don’t want that son. I had to wear every single mouth tool available for a decade to make it right. I can’t just be like “well, he’ll be lucky as I have been!” that’s not going to happen in a tighter and tighter world.

I would need so much margin, room, to conceive you and take care of you baby girl I’m not in that ballpark yet. If ever, that’s the bad thing.

Or not, I am so free. Facebook reminds it to me all the time. Meanwhile the window is slowly closing for me. Oh well.

So yeah the Hololens. Neat. I can see some cool games and apps (architecture hell yeah).

However I think people are not that ready or excited because we’re far behind what technology is capable of.

See it this way: if you haven’t moved from where you live for the past ten years and use a computer on a desktop, wired or wireless internet didn’t change your life. Traveling made you aware of wifi’s badassery. Skype is old as fuck but if you’re not using it to communicate with people very far away regularly, you still don’t see how big of a deal it is. And so forth.

So VR, AR “wearables” haptic feedback and all are out of our reality for like, years. I still don’t have a tablet and don’t feel like missing much years after the first one came out. I was waiting for 20 or 24” tablets –audio design on this? fuck yeah- but they’re not coming because you make more money selling loads of smaller screens, I always forget about profit rules (rule #3: fuck people’s needs).

I think there’s another problem: the experience, which barely changes. You can listen to music on your $700 phone with a $10/month subscription and fundamentally, it’s not different from my $20 USB key and my FLAC files. Firefox support the Oculus Rift but you’re still reading pages of text. The biggest change so far has been mobility and we already have it.

There’s also this fatigue. People are already hooked on tech, know it’s bad and now you want deeper connections? Add the NSA and that’s enough for people to chill and play a platform game. In 2D. With a gamepad. On a TV. Offline.

I’m impressed by scale. Scale is an important concept because it’s easy to see 4 (2 power of 2) but way less to see 65536 (2 power 16).

Here’s a stupid example that shows how complex things can be:

So for some computers running Windows 8.1 or above, when you crank up the volume you get that annoying popup.

Damn it Microsoft, it’s all your fault and you suck and you’re the worst oh god why?

Where does that message come from? Well Reddit answered and a MS engineer confirmed that there’s no code in Windows that displays that popup.

This popup is a European Union requirement that manufacturers are free to implement or not at the audio driver level. So Samsung thought it would be cool to implement that on my laptop.

It’s not much of a deal –it’s loud enough before the popup shows up 90% of the time- but what’s interesting to me is that at the scale Windows and Microsoft work, there are tons of shit we don’t know about, things that as users we think are all about Redmond getting their shit together but it’s not. It’s WAY more complex there’s even countries chiming in.

Right there we have MS, computer manufacturer, audio driver maker, EU battling over the sound volume experience in an OS.

If you don’t know now you know.

Hello 2015. Damn, not a week in. The NAACP bombing was gross but that Charlie Hebdo tragedy touches home for me.

They were a big symbol across all media, for over four decades of freedom of speech in France. I would take the train and look at the newspaper stand and quickly read the front page like millions of people in Paris probably. It didn’t matter if it was brilliant or corny as hell, we all smiled or giggled before getting in the tube. We all took that freedom of speech for granted.  We got warnings but we’re so complacent about how we’re soft with everything, even fundamentals.

What trigger? A generation imploding under heavy unemployment with no upward social mobility: when people are not happy, even smart they become stupid. Religions scoop them all. Second, 9/11. Since then and the monumental hammered in message that it’s “us against them” -I guess Christians VS Muslims kind of vibe?- it’s utterly fucked up.

I see all kinds of messages. France needs more guns. France needs less Muslims. France needs to stand for freedom of speech.

I think France and obviously other nations need less religion. Separation of the State and the Church remember? It’s like we forgot. But as vital, we need to redefine how we get people together economically and how to redistribute our vast wealth. It’s just, it needs to happen.

And dear obnoxious media, you need to stop with “cool pope” and “Islamic terrorists” it’s not a sports game with teams. Fuck.

So yeah, crazy year. I didn’t know how or even if I could make it back to CA so sitting down here on my couch in my little room, watching the sun go up through the windows of my private patio on W. Adams is quite good. Craigslist has been fantastic to me for now maybe I should stop using it before getting that terrible experience that will shatter my faith in bloody humans.

It’s a weird world we’re living in. There’s that struggle for money for tons of people, in so many unexpected ways and yet the super out-of-needing-anything people use the same shit as we do: laptops, taco trucks, UberX (no one cares about other Uber options), Prius, Starbucks. You would not believe the crowd of homeless people on Sunset and Vine drinking their coffee in the morning, most have shoes in better shape than mine, all have smartphones and one has a tablet. People with mansions have three or four Prius parked in the front. Right, the taco truck parked in Beverly Hills is probably for a private party but it’s still just a freaking taco truck.

That cognitive dissonance man it’s been all over this year. Economic inequality has never been bigger and yet we’ve never been closer in lifestyle in so many ways. So I think better redistribution of wealth is even more obvious but anyway.

This year I’ve worked hard to not get much but I knew it would be the case. Transitions, they’re little bitch ass things. Now that I’m mostly settled I have a lot of work to do and I feel great about it. Like, I’m really good at what I’m doing. I’m thorough and reliable. I get what I kind of always needed but never got in France, respect for my work ethics. It feels fucking good. It makes me hungry in a good way. I’ve seen people using computers around, I’m realizing my value my skills more and more and there is no doubt that I can excel and flourish here in LA. Just need a bit more contact, which happens with staying here which is what I’m doing. It feels great not to have to take a plane for once.

I’ve been tripping on Vice’s Epicly Later’d lately, a series of videos on skateboard history. I feel that shit because I see mid 90s footage of LA, which I had seen back in France where I didn’t know anything about Los Angeles. But now I watch it and I know where it’s at or I can tell 12 year old Guy Mariano was probably taking the train from Burbank to DTLA, I can notice differences and of course, nostalgia of that 93-03 era which was fucking amazing skate-wise hits me hard. I look at my deck next to my basketball. Should I go ride today? What if I fuck my ankle up and can’t work huh? Let’s wait a bit before going crazy.