Category: Me Myself&I

• You own your body. It is yours and yours only, forever.
• However ownership is adjacent in life. What’s important is access.
• Memory and synapses are like muscles; they grow when being used. Therefore use technology to extend yourself, not assist yourself.
• Technology is just tools. Cars are tools. Computers, guitars as well. Do not worship tools. Just use them.
• Communities are like feelings. They come and go. Individuals is what we are, and that’s why they stay with you.
• Long term over short tem, most of the time.
• Questions over dogma, every single time.
• Care about real numbers: number of people living under and above poverty, the optimal length for a wood beam, etc. Don’t care about fake numbers: number of steps, calories, views, JS libraries, hours spent in a game, etc.
• Hierarchy is fluid: someone might be a great mentor for something, and not to be listened to for other things.
• Happiness is a process, not a destination.

Got some stuff to distribute today.

There’s a lot going on in the chat app field. Fediverse, Activitypub, Mastodon and Bluesky and Threads, etc.

I think this is a vast waste of time because chatting is not important. Never was, never will. It’s ephemeral. It’s in the moment. Reading 10-year-old chat logs will make anyone cringe at themselves. There’s no value in chatting besides the few minutes around when it happens. Thus all those companies and developers trying to grab an aspect of our lives that is not really worth anything, is weird (I know, they’re here for the tracking/ad potential but still).

And on the other hand, if you’re a person who likes to write and communicate with others, you probably already have a website/newsletter/stream and discuss things with people in many ways, from SMS to Zoom to Discord and whatnot. There’s no need for one chat thing to rule them all. It’s usually bad for all of us.

Just like chatting a lot.

Also WordPress is better than ever, and RSS is the only thing you really need. Tata,

Them: “Generative AI is not smart, it’s just text and data parsing repeated and matrix’d up, it’s not actual comprehension!”

Me absorbing architecture daily through photos, layouts, axonometric views, articles, 3D scenes, schemes over dozens and dozens of books, blog posts, videos, understanding more and more of its importance in our lives, its literal costs, its structural engineering sub-division via repetition, revisiting the ones that I liked the most and comparing them to what I’m trying to build:

The year of generative AI, for sure.

I have never seen anything take over everything like LLMs did over the year. There are so many things going on in that space on all fronts that I can barely keep up.

Know for instance that full body deepfake humans in videos, at different freaking angles, are a thing now. Or that realistic 3D animation can be made from a single image. You know AI voices are extremely good now, right? Copilot on Windows 11 is impressive. And all those things are developing and improved on at an absurd velocity.

I could see that once the AI chips announced recently are used at high scale with the latest algorithm improvements and data, we’re going to break through something.

There are two main currents these days in tech about AI:

“great, a personal assistant for anyone, democratization of knowledge and increase of freedom, how awesome!!”

or

“AI is going to kill us all.”

I’m neither. I’m more like “the incentive for capitalism is to use the shit out of AI, therefore every single market out there is going to be massively impacted resulting in constant layoffs and more frightening, a lot less hiring.” Which is already happening, after barely 12 months of ChatGPT.

It’s impossible to see what it will be in five years. But I can safely say, be ready to be happy with not much. Get closer to nature, y’all.

I can’t believe he passed.

I’m writing about entertainment’s golden ages because with AI now and the heavy A/B test-based decisions (not the brightest by the way) of the past ten years, I feel like there’s a sense of everything being derived from something done before, at a high rate. It didn’t used to be like that.

My best example of this is floating worlds. Jesus Christ. It’s the de-facto template these days for “edgy” worlds but although it’s an old trope, it used to be rare! Now it’s like everything uses that setting. Which used to be awesome (the end of Laputa, ugh) but isn’t anymore.

What I mean is that over-optimization of entertainment leads to an increase of sameness. Which seems to be very addictive? What kind of impact does it have on people growing up on this? Their ability to discern, perceive differences and commons?

Games

90s-00s. The 90s were full of experimental games, produced Mario Kart, Street Fighter II and Doom. All the best arcade games ever. The 00s with 3D games never done before, FFVII, MGS, Counter-Strike and Mario64 and GTA? Give it up. Those two decades were peak video game. Everything after –massive online gaming full of bullying, mobile gaming and its whales, gambling and complacent long story-based games-, has not been it.

Movies

80s-90s. Just absurd quality when looking back after a decade of streamed movies with no soul. From the artsy, quirky French movies of those years, to the best blockbusters (Indiana Jones and E.T. and Rocky) to the movies we had never seen anything like it before (Terminator, Predator, Aliens, Akira) all the way to the 90s classics (Edward Scissorhands, The Big Lebowsky, Men In Black, Point Break), it’s been downhill from there. Everything in the 00s and beyond is just not as brilliant. It makes me want to re-watch so many things.

Music

70s-90s. Music has been insane during those three decades. Tons of music on the radio in 2023 is still from the 70s because music was everything in that time. Music in the 70s was like skins in games today: the hottest shit youth spends its entire money on. Sure, a lot of people would say that 80s music was not good, I disagree heavily. There was some technical hiccups due to transitioning from full analog to less analog, but I believe people were obsessively trying to make the best sounding music possible. And they did quite often. 80s Funk music is spectacular (Thriller, hello!). 80s metal musicians are playing playing. It’s also the start of hip-hop and house and everything electronic. The 80s were crucial. 90s electronic music is essential. 90s hip-hop is the closest to timelessness, thanks to creativity and sampling. 90s rock? From Nirvana to Korn to Pantera and Pearl Jam, just no contest here. But I think after that, the 00s and up have been rehashing ad nauseam, at a higher pitch and lower bass. Emo rock, trap music and dubstep trigger nostalgia but not much more. Even today, as the first nostalgic wave. Which is usually the strongest.

Me: Thank you, Josh!

Him: It’s Maxwell.

Me: My bad!

Also me, under breath: WhothefuckisJoshthen?

Isn’t it time?? I think it is.

(lowkey the latest technology advances like AI and Waymo are whispering “yeah we’re taking care of stuff, relax humans” but you know, greed and dysfunctional societies)

Lots of things going on personally and internationally, I guess. Some management stuff, work load and involvement into various things keep me from writing, smh.

It is the end of the year and memories show up. I made some really good ones this year. Two trips to France whooped my bank account’s ass, but it was so intensely intense and beautiful.

A few weeks ago I showed a native LA friend a gorgeous place she had no idea existed. Always a great feeling to see someone’s eyes open wide!

Fuck gentrification, it has to be said from time to time.

95% settled now. It couldn’t be better right now. Blessed.