Category: Me Myself&I

Hi. gtfo please.

Sometimes I watch the world around me and it’s pretty simple:

There’s the consumerism disease. People will soon blog about opening up the damn plastic around vegetables. It’s all their fucking life, buying stuff and being the first doing so. Here in California, it’s pretty hardcore to say the least.

There’s the racism/you’re-different-and-dark-skinned-you-shall-struggle-a-bit-more disease. And you can’t feel it more than a black man does. These days, between being an immigrant and reading hideous French news and French reactions absolutely full of bigotry about the French team, back from white E3 (except around Madden Football and Def Jam Karaoke) with inexistent black communities where I live –I see 10 times more black people in Paris than in LA- I have it all in my face even if I don’t want to.

There’s the status disease. STATUS, not what you are or who you want to be but who you are FOR people around. People would do crazy shit for that, even if at the end they’re unhappy.

When I contract one of these, I’m sick fast enough to fight the disease and get back to a healthy mental state where I contemplate things and create some or try to. I love to learn.

Nothing makes me happier or more fullfilled. Seriously.

This post was written a few weeks ago but is still totally valid on the feel side.

Following thoughts about what should really make a difference, just quickly:

-Stop being irrational

Maybe the average Joe in the US is not that smart about what is going on in the world but at least he’s not in denial like French people often do about basics of you know, how it works. For example, football players salaries. The French opinion can’t take the fact that players are making clubs (like any other sport), that people are paying to see them play and that it generates a shitload of money going for a part to these people sweating a few years on a field before retirement. What something like that has to do with racists comments, to what French society is about and other fake moral bullshit, I don’t know. French like to mix stuff up and tell stories except that there’s no story and nothing to say about salaries: players get insanely well paid because you people whining about it are paying insane amounts of subscriptions to watch them play, insane amounts of merchandising etc. Stop being crazy. Damn.

-Elites, stop being in denial

Because you still are. Listen to the most open minded people you have in your circles and listen to them good. Then give them your chair and full authority.

-Nigga please

People from bad suburbs, even if you have a lot of problems, France might be the friendliest place on earth to start your life: so much knowledge and culture for free or almost free, just for decency amongst other people out there, you should take advantage of it and stop whining and doing shit. Now that I have a much better sense of what the education system is here in the US, seeing how it’s hard for minorities I’m even more angry about the waste in France on that matter. What a fucking waste.

Now get busy. Happy late 14th of July.

"Excellent article about French racial tensions, the World Cup fiasco etc Here’s something that resonates:

“That the French national team has become a symbol of society’s divisions is particularly unfortunate, given that in 1998, France’s World Cup winning side was eulogized as the fulfillment of the official French policy of racial and ethnic integration.”

When people think that a sport event is just a sport event, think again, especially with a world cup of the most popular game in the world. I was nineteen in 1998, in the streets of Paris celebrating this multicultural team, this multicultural society, this multicultural, positive, winning future that was going to happen. I’ve never been more positive for the future than these days. It was truly magic (and I’m not an avid follower of soccer but look at how we became Europe Champion 2 years later; JesusFUCK that was awesome).

It’s not about the effectiveness of something as trivial as football compared to politics and economics, it’s about believing that it can work if we work together and respect each other. Sometimes a placebo is the only thing that you need.

Unfortunately it hasn’t been enough for ethnic integration because well, France has some problems still unsolved:

France can’t find a Republic model that fits the last big immigration wave, starting mid-70s, that is, the non-white one. Governments all nicely played around it: Mitterrand and Chirac for a total of 26 motherfucking years. I mean basically all my life, the government wasn’t answering the suburbs and immigration questions of black and arab people. I could see that there was a problem. Music, movies were telling that it’s going to explode. And when the government did something about it –I fucking had unexpected tears watching the 2007’s government including black and arab women, BOUT TIME-, it was way too late. The blingbling and ignorance model straight out the Afro-American bad society had took over two or three generations of young French, and then it was 9/11 and the youngsters turned to their traditional roots.

Other deep problem, France doesn’t want to change and accept differences and therefore, made immigrants doing the same. Yes, the business of pot comes from North Africa immigration and became huge since the 70s while wine consumption is down, that’s why France has the more repressive laws about it in all Europe. How can you explain that, except that France is just in denial? France basically fueled the gangster influence by not accepting that its society is evolving and moving on (Europe is too, but other countries are more prone to change), allowing some people to live with drug money, state money and no taxes all together. France encouraged racism toward minorities with this behavior. France doesn’t understand that selling instant chocolate and rice with black and asian people on packaging is wrong. Integrate so few people from minorities into the high levels of society, except for sports of course, was and always has been a mistake and proves that if you come from nowhere, you’re not welcome in the clubs of the Powerful Ones. Sad.

Lastly, France is clumsy. Instead of using laws against the hijab, putting arab women even more on the side of society, stigmatizing them, it would be much better to actually apply laws about women abuses and segregation, wearing a burqa or a g-string or both. You know, the Republican French thing, everybody is the same and all. Of course you can’t rule a country with 65 million people by saying that an outfit is forbidden so the French government ended up on a weird notice that says that “that’s not cool to wear these things”. Which is utterly useless and sort of sends a “I know better than you do, I’m the State and you’re kind of stupid” signal, which is not a good thing to say to empower people and make them feel like a part of the country. A smart part of it, not like a parasite that make people behave like they are parasites.

Because French people from older immigration didn’t find an updated model of the Republic, they failed to integrate the new waves, being unable to explain the rules of something that is still pretty much inexistent on earth: the ultimate diversity of humans, diversified and united at the same time.

We need to try out more. It’s here. It’s almost here.

At the post office.

In the freezer

On TV, Motorola Droid commercial.

Café Stella, 3 blocks away.

It’s just a little taste because I see something French all the time. If there’s a conspiration, please tell me because I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. I started an album and already missed 18 300 pictures I could have taken of the phenomenon.

Also I can’t figure out how to write back in French, every time I try it feels awkward.

And it’s all cloudy like the usual start of summer in Paris. During that time Sean & Tara are enjoying my place in Vincennes for their GTFO trip (podcast here):

Picture by Sean Bonner.

Yep. Also, meth is on the rise in the US and Europe has almost doubled its number of cokeheads. During that time in Chicago last week-end, 54 people shot and 10 dead over drugs, gangs and territory-related topics. I think we should legalize all the drugs right now. We need to stop having a completely corrupted Southern Hemisphere where the most lucrative drugs are produced. Cartels already know that eventually legalization is going to happen, that’s why they’re becoming the state itself by taking care of the streets and social life of entire regions.

Drugs are the biggest BS ever, we should be much less concerned  by the “moral” and just try to make people’s life better using drugs or not. It is fucking everywhere and it’s indirectly killing more people than drugs themselves, seriously. It shouldn’t kill anybody except people abusing substances, “legal” or not.

So enough time lost, let’s legalize everything now. Just sayin’.

Tesla Roadster somewhere in Santa Monica, June 2010

It’s not the car in itself. It’s the silent revolution and what goes around it.

Miami Vice!

Like I said on Twitter, it’s a-ma-zing to have such a powerful acceleration while listening to music, not barely hearing it due to a fucking huge combustion engine making the car smelling gas and transforming it as a giant vibrator.

The electric car is like my fanless computer; unless you experience it, you can’t really understand how it changes your life and how as me, you couldn’t wait for it to be widespread because consequences are dramatic (just think about a freeway 100% filled with electric cars: no noise, no smell. Living around would be much less a problem).

The tools to do that from a car to a computer are the same: re-think the all thing, push the efficiency envelope (less maintenance, constant performance), not the performance envelope (more horsepower, more problems). Think Wii. And look at its sales.

Just a nice, snappy, sweet and zen experience. The same applies to biking! Yesterday I rode 20 kms, not the fastest way to go somewhere but it matched car and bus timing except that I workout, it’s silent and that there’s no wait (what traffic, what bus schedule?).

What I try to say is that this design trend toward efficiency, user comfort and overall easiness while truly giving up on parameters (you can’t go far on a bike, electric car; my fanless computer can’t play the heaviest games; your smartphone needs to be charge everyday etc), is on its way everywhere I look.

And I freaking lo-vit.

Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

I thought about that article writing on Akira, when I had to wait years before being able to watch it again. I had to go to the Fnac store to read and workout the heavy 12 manga volumes edition, month after month, to get my Neo Tokyo fix.

I had to squeeze my memory so bad to remember a maximum of what I saw of the movie. Because of the lack of information I was daydreaming about it, wondering the story over and over again.

What would have it been if I could have watched this movie anytime I wanted to during these early years? I wouldn’t have workout my memory, neither my imagination or my body by standing up hours in a back aisle of a book store. I would have jumped –I guess- to “yeah, give me some more weirdness, more blood, more sex” anime because at ten you just want to see the limits. And there’s hundreds of these. I would have done that without moving from my bedroom, my chair.

So this article rings a bell for sure. Limited knowledge access makes you work more. You have access to a few things and you learn to focus on it, instead of being hit by multiple things all the time, reducing your will to estimate, making you lazy. You are no more surprised by almost any YouTube video. You watch so many in a day, a week, a month that it’s not as extraordinary as it used to be. By over stimulating your brain, your brain becomes numb.

It’s not really a bad thing to have a lot of information if you can filter and search it. It is a great skill and makes you smarter. But it requires effort against the stream, it means being ready to say no to your brain, trying to prioritize this constant flow of data chunks. I over load sometimes, more often than ever.

For people growing up with internet –90s born people- I’m not sure how you would learn to do that except with information starvation. Is it too late?

Around May and June, each year since then I sort of think about it. I alway have a quick feeling about this time, the time I saw this movie which would totally and absolutely change my perception of stories and narration.

It was out  May 8th, 1991 in France. I must have seen it during the Ascension stuff, my parents were on a weekend trip and my cousin was pre-teen sitting me . I was 10, I was hitting my 20th+ hour of detention (I was chatty and my voice was moving into the get-busted bass frequencies) and knew that this weekend was the only way to see it because of course, my parents wouldn’t have let me do that if they had known about the punition thing, probably would have sent me to the shrink for wanting to see that Akira thing. Thankfully my cousin signed up the detention paper and allowed me to go to the theater.

 
Pretty awful French poster version but at 10, you think it’s badass!

I was with my best friend and his mom, a bit late. The movie had already started but it couldn’t matter less. Of course when we saw Kaneda we thought out loud “it’s him, Akira!” and then we stopped talking until the end because it was so fucking disturbing, dreamy, violent, amazing, eerie. It was like a kick in the balls with fingers in the eyes and a punch in the stomach all together.

At this time and a few years earlier I was digging Heroic Fantasy stuff. I had my LOTR collection, I had read all the Knights of the Round Table stories I could put my hands on, I was totally into Guillaume d’Orange and could name any part of a medieval castle and explain what it was meant for. Epic.

All of this stuff was being severely damaged with this Japanese masterpiece. Suddenly, my culture and entertainment bubble seemed so freaking old and totally uncool compared to this movie, Dragon Ball on TV (which was getting crazier and crazier, Freezer battle) and Street Fighter II being out. Like, light-years old. Swords arrows magic and helmets were so ridiculous compared to fire balls, laser beam satellites and powerful psyche it wasn’t even funny. Tintin, Spirou, Comics Superheroes, US cartoons (really I mean, really?) were all so inexistent all of sudden. As a child your imagination gets stimulated by everything. I was overwhelmed by stuff I had never thought of before, this mix of realness with unreal in every way (narration, design, themes) stimulating my imagination to much higher levels. So much more nuances. Japan seemed like the Land of Superior Brains. It started ten years of mangas and anime being my primary culture food aside of computer games.

Best 2 Wheels Design Eva, that is all.

I would have to wait three or four years –remember kids, no internet- before having Akira on tape and watch it again in the family couch. It was end of May start of June too.

Anyway, it was a deep experience that no “real movie” except maybe some Lynch’s matched ever. When Terminator 2 loudly came out this same 1991 year, it didn’t impress me. It couldn’t man. At all.

Since then I always have thought about this warm end of May day I’ve been hit by the power of imagination, big time.

Holy shit I want to watch it now.

I can’t believe how much it makes me feel sad that Gary Coleman passed away. It’s obviously weird because of the outstanding cheering I receive about the news, being emotional and stuff. But,

If I exclude myself, he was the first black person I saw in my life, before Sidney and during Michael Jackson going full white. And this little dude was having the same story as mine! Adopted by a white family and having no one like him around. Well he had Willie and I didn’t. Which was making me jealous. They seemed to have fun, man.

I was in my foster family and it was broadcast on Sunday afternoon on the French TV. I was captivated, not too much about humor and situations on screen but more about what would it be to be in a wealthy white family like I was supposed to go as it was told to me at this very young age (around 5).

So yeah, it’s just memories coming up in my mind. I can see myself sitting on the couch, not touching the ground, eyes wide opened, ready to catch this little man who looked just like me. And had almost the same name too! (everybody for years would say “Ah, like Arnold and Willie!” It’s Harold you deaf ass).

Maybe it was already making me want to be in the US. Daydreaming about these skyscrapers from the sweet French countryside.

RIP Gary Coleman.

Remember those times when we didn’t have the Universal Serial Bus? Maybe not. It was awful. We had weird connectors only used by specific stuff like the parallel port, the serial port. We had to be careful about these fucking IRQ conflicts with for example, sound cards. A la mano, with jumpers on the motherboard. Ugh.

At these times, nobody –at least in Europe- was using Personal Computers. Later came the USB port, and then the USB 2 port. These made computers so much more easier to plug devices in, making them more accessible to people, who would use more and more computers and a little by a little –with the help of others widespread technologies like TCP/IP, APIC– it would change the world and make computers easier and easier to use to the point where they are everywhere.

What I want to say is this: innovation is not innovation unless it changes the life of a large number of people. Innovation is innovation when it’s cheap and makes it through the life of everyone without them even noticing it that much.

*idea*

I know, it’s playing on words but what we call innovation is useless if it needs 20 years to make it to the market or when it’s just in the hands of a few lucky –dare I say wealthy?- nerds. It’s not innovation, it’s research.

Innovation needs to spread out and find as much people possible. You might say that I’m wrong and that Apple is a walled garden and that it works for them. But it’s not really true:

They got back in the game by switching from ppc to x86 architecture, more generic and widespread. And cheaper.

They made the iPod and iTunes available on the OS touching hundreds of millions of people, Windows (I remember being shocked about it, so not Apple). They aggressively market the mp3 player with the cheap Shuffle/Nano version.

By switching to a standard PC architecture they made their machine totally compatible, like 100% compatible to almost anything, from windows software (Bootcamp) to memory sticks and stuff. Cheaper for users. Cheaper for them.

But they totally made their mobile platform closed as hell, as they did with the Mac in the 90s. And fucking expensive. Are you surprised that Google Android, with its openness and constant improvements through cheaper phones is totally hot right now or that these cheap, opened netbooks sales went from 0 to 18% of the entire computer market share in only three years?

I am not. Microsoft did the same in the 90s with the openness of the beige PC. Bye Commodore, Atari and all. MS had the same aura that Google has now, if you remember. Oh, sure it seems less slick when MS/Google are updating stuff because they fail all the time. But they increment all the time too, with hundreds of partners while with Apple it’s either perfect (iPhone) or a massive fail (AppleTV).

A closed platform is not an innovation. It’s research with users paying a lot to beta test it.

Trying to bring that research to the masses, being agnostic and just trying to make it better to the most people possible, is IMO innovation. It took MS and his partners 25 years from Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 to have an OS working on millions of different configuration and giving people almost anything they want in 2010 with an OS. It took a year and half for Google to make their Android system as widespread and functional as possible. It’s not over but they already are going so fast that it’s hard to be sure that they’re going to fail. This little droid is everywhere like the butterfly was, once.

Business wise the Big Three are doing fine, with different approach from selling hardware (Apple) to selling services and data (Google). But one thing is sure:

“Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries — but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”

Billou, aka Bill Gates.

ps: Enough with your Android tablet prototypes. I want them, under 300 thanks. And please hurry the fuck up.