Category: Me Myself&I

S L A Y I N ‘

My trial just expired and I’m kind of sad, which is the first time ever that I’m sad about a software trial expiring.

Why? Because Hey.com is fabulous. They did reinvent email, and email should be like Hey.com now and forever. It’s that great.

The HUGE problem is, it’s not cheap (yet totally affordable), and it’s hard to justify the cost.

The massive challenge for Hey.com is that we all have found (terrible) ways to manage our free emails, ways that we kind of don’t want to give up on because of the good old sunk-cost fallacy. And for new email users well, they need to know about Hey.com and they probably just want an email account to log in somewhere. They don’t really use email (though I’m sure they would with Hey!).

It’s very annoying to me that such a great product is struggling to find its way into the heart of our digital lives because damn, it’s so good.

One interface, one screen to rule almost ALL communications? Bliss and massive achievement.

So I encourage you to use it. Try it. If you’re looking at that ONE email provider to rule them all, please choose Hey.com.

Reading about Union Station in L.A. It opened in 1939, but the city had plans for a central train station as early as 1905.

Railroad companies were competing and didn’t want to share tracks or a common station. They fought so hard, it took 20 years and two supreme court hearings before they could agree with the city to have a shared station. And by that time in 1939, people were all about cars and that new thing that was faster than anything before, planes.

A whole generation started paying taxes between the start of negotiations and when they concluded. For a train station. Wild AF!

When I hear people in their 20s today talking about “car culture this, car culture that, ban all cars boo” I’m just like “trains kind of suck, stop being dogmatic also pettiness has been ruining everything since forever”. Then they order an Uber or jump on a scooter, zip through traffic with that thousand-yard scooter stare, and I shake my head.

It is pouring. Not sure why this is happening in southern California—who placed the order? But it sure is here. Thunderstorm with snow in Los Angeles, yes ma’am.

I noticed people paying their groceries with cash all the time these days. Not a good sign.

There have been thousands of thousands of layoffs in tech in the past six months. In an in-demand field. Also not a good sign.

And just like that, one year of war in Ukraine and now everyone in the West has checked out. Just like all wars, we don’t know what/where/how this is going to pan out. Wonderful.

Still rare, but more and more folks are getting cured from HIV. That’s kind of outstanding yet, it feels normal? We humans squash those diseases away, that’s what we do (thanks, science).

I keep iterating and testing my house design. This is done with Sweet Home 3D, a great little app. Things are still a bit off measurement wise, but it gives me a better idea of what’s going on and in this picture, the house is at its smallest size: 114m² (1,227 square foot). If I expand just a little bit more, it works beautifully.

You can’t see it here, but I can see the colors and finish and final form. It’s going to be amazing.

I had one today! I stuffed my nostril in the bottle and it smelled like innocence, vacation and high-pitched voices.

A bit obsessed with this jewel of a house in Texas (built in 2012):

• Small (130m², 1,400 square feet), check.
• Green roof, check.
• Passive, close to net-zero, ready for off-grid, check.
• Striking design, triple check.

It is the home for a couple and their kid. They survived the terrifying 2021 Texas Freeze just fine, as their house is well insulated and doesn’t require much energy to run. Healthy ass house.

My brother. Custom homes is the wave. Think small yet expansive, bro.

(I can see the French headline: “drunk, he tried to jump from roof to roof, impaling his chin in the steel structure in the process, triggering an investigation around architecture’s dangerousness, which is why architects and plumbers are in the streets protesting.”)

Ishod is the man. Those fakie flip and hard flip? Dang.

Ferociously reading. Almost done with all of these. It’s time-consuming? It’s also opening my brain like nothing else does.

Paupiettes de veau from the local butcher at the family home back in France. Classic dish, this is his version of it and it s l a p s. Ground meat with cheese wrapped in a veal envelope itself wrapped with lard, which is like bacon but totally not the same at the same time. I’ll explain later. It doesn’t matter. This is delicious beyond my own taste buds.

I kindly asked mom if she could get me some for when I visit, and she didn’t disappoint. They used to be bigger but pandemic-flation, I guess. I should have eaten four of these instead of one.