Category: Me Myself&I

This is what I liked about the open blogosphere of 2000 to 2008. Whereas something like Twitter is optimized for the fast-take and the brutal one-liner, blogs allowed actual conversations. You could write something serious, develop the idea, and maybe some other people would engage with it, also at a serious level. But then the walled-gardens began to gain ground (Facebook, Twitter, and then later Instagram) and the era of the blogs came to an end. (Yes, they still exist, but they most exist as standalone essays, not engaged in conversation with other blogs.)

This is a good analysis but here’s the thing about online conversation: it is more often than not, useless. I’ve read millions of comments on blogs and they rarely added anything.

They follow a pattern through a spectrum. On one side you have the friend, who’s going to agree with you no matter what. And on the other side, you have an anonymous troll whose entire goal is to disagree with you.

This is a waste of anyone’s time and today with bots and AI? Yeah.

The interesting thing to me is that we keep saying that blogs and online reading MUST evolve into a conversation. The so-called engagement. I don’t think it has to at all.

Reading is about you. It’s about making sense of what you read, connecting to who you are and what you’re looking for. It is mostly a personal adventure. Later on, you will have a conversation with someone and naturally if something that you read changed your mind, you will talk about it. Maybe even mention the author or share the link.

More importantly, knowledge needs to simmer through. It takes time.

The obsession with engagement and becoming a “leader” a “voice” or an “influencer” is just fast food ego trip. It’s kind of weird.

Standalone essays are the bomb. Non-sponsored (aka 100% integrity), independent and smart opinions? All day, everyday.

Those two young men approach me. “hey, that’s a nice badge you have on, where did you get it?” I internally roll my eyes and reply “at work?”

Now they’re asking me if I’m interested in doing something related to religion. I’m probably looking confused. One of them tells me, matter-of-factly “you know, God?” pointing at the sky as if it made all the sense in the world.

I start to smile and tell them, “oh, I don’t do that” and he’s like, “you don’t believe in God?” to which I reply over my shoulder because I’m going places, “never did! Have a great day!” to which they answer lowkey agitated, “have a great day”.

I almost started to run into the sun with a giant smile behind my mask.

The Man You Trust is a book from Bill Harris. I modestly helped proofreading it back in May. It is a wonderful book, surprising, delightful. Intense. Different. The landscapes and situations described in it stayed with me the whole year.

I highly recommend it. I’d also suggest anyone working remotely close to Pixar to make an adult, animated movie based on it. Awards guaranteed. Actually, I’m begging you to make it. It’d be stellar.

Congratulations, Bill!

Yesterday this Waymo car cut me off with its little gyrating devices left and right. How rude!

I don’t know if it was driven by someone or fully on automatic. The move was smooth.

Waymo is about to start their services in Los Angeles. I can’t wait for people to stop pretending to drive when they’re addicted to their phones to the point of forgetting to move when the light is green. They won’t have to drive anymore and that’s progress. Sort of.

Still on my cult list wave, focusing on the 80s. They’re so whimsical and adorable! They often have this technology obsession, which mirrors the start of our new 2020s pretty well.

That logo is fire, can you guess from which movie it is from?

I also got into Chainsaw man. At first I thought “ugh” but now I’m into it, thanks to its enigmatic side characters. Japan’s cultural ability to mix up things –Demon Hunters meets Corporate Society here, is unparalleled. Yes, it can be seen as unimaginative or lazy but I think it creates new things like very few other design processes do. It pushes the envelope and although I dislike the cringe aspect of Chainsaw man, I dig the rest.

Who’s calling Austin Reaves “My Nigga” more, Pat or Russ? I’m debating with myself.

That the continent of Africa never went to the semi-finals of the World Cup is insane considering the passion for the sport on that land. Football there is like NASCAR for white folks here, only for 1.29B folks.

Morocco is going to be supported like it’s never been before.

France having kind of half of its team come from Africa is going to be interesting for those players, mentally.

Que le meilleur gagne, and inshallah.

Gentrification is so crazy. It had stopped in my neighborhood thanks to COVID, but now it’s back.

It makes a total of zero sense. Look:

• Restaurants: they added like 5 of them, with valet parking and shit. There’s a new Thai joint with a $40 noodle soup. Just typing this makes me angry.
• Offices: it’s 2022, people don’t care about no offices, and they still offer those while homelessness is rampant. I drive at night looking at those brightly lit brand new cubicles, chairs and desks. Not a soul in sight around. Same in the morning. It’s fucking embarrassing.
• Housing: they take years to complete shitty apartments with $3K/month rents that no one really wants at all.
• Community: they make a bike lane larger than an 18-wheeler with about a bicycle every 4 days on it. Due to this absolutely stupid design, traffic jam and road rage exploded.

All of that costs a lot of money and doesn’t bring much, if any. Sometimes I really feel like those investments are just money laundering processes, nothing else. They don’t care about people, places and communities. It’s just financial dump.

There’s something super exciting about the future of architecture.

Architecture has always been dependent on structural questions: to build a living room with large windows, you will need a system to hold those heavy glass panes, probably a load-bearing wall nearby, etc.

Whatever you think about in terms of architecture and interior design will be controlled and given to you by the structural quality of the building.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a 1956 rare, custom, complex mid-century home in the desert or a produced en masse apartment building from 2007 in Florida. Same structural questions that will answer your living questions, always. We are limited by the frame.

Until now!!!

3D printing means that we do not care about structure anymore. Because everything is made through a printing process, everything stands on its own, like a shell. No more calculations to know if that steel frame can hold and support this and that. We print, y’all! It’ll hold and support by default.

How much it liberates our minds, it’s pure magic. I was re-reading the famous Case Study Houses book and most of the challenges were about structure and cost. Those architects were structure’s bitches.

Not anymore!!!

It’s not the end of math: there are other calculations and numbers to take care of with 3D printing, but the all “is it possible to..?” crucial question doesn’t exist anymore.

It is so freeing, I cannot.

I will 3D-print my custom house. It will probably be concrete (or maybe rammed earth if possible) and hemp, two natural and extremely strong materials. Of course, that also means near zero-waste construction and pre-build homes, which means assembled in a matter of weeks.

This is so exciting. OMG

My dad’s face when I waved that little book on Skype one hour ago, y’all. He looked so young. Smiling, and full of excitement. Goddamn, it was beautiful.

The road to this picture. Eight straight years of intense focus. Thoughts about Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, Ethiopia. The arbitrary-ness of where you are born and how it controls your life before you even started it. My somehow botched childhood that led me to having the possibility to choose where I want to live.

I’m Harold, a France-born American designer, producer and musician. Welcome.