Category: Me Myself&I

It’s kind of scary how good at mutation this covid shit is. Wear yo mask, still.

There’s an Uber Files scandal in France, involving the French president.

Ugh.

Uber is this weird thing where I know they’ve been bad but also where I know how much they changed the game for good. They did.

In 2014, not so long ago, Uber was a freaking lifesaver. Taxis would be horrendous to me! I would never get one, or it was killing my bank account, $60 at a time. Uber solved that problem in a second.

I still remember my first driver, on a super-hot day, straight off of the T-Mobile shop, after grabbing my first and last US phone number. He was so happy to drive, and I was so happy to drink water in the back of his SUV.

But then, yeah. Virtually unlimited VC money, Bait & Switch tactics, massive lobbying at every government levels everywhere, and here we are.

I mentioned recently how every good idea turns into terrible business in no time these days, and Uber is probably the best example of this.

For those outside the United States, there’s this Vehicle Registration Renewal that has to be paid every two years. Yup. What for? Just because you own a vehicle, you need to pay a fee every 24 months. It doesn’t do anything.

You also need to renew your driver’s license every four or five years in CA. It could be valid for life, but rent from every single driver every few years, is a good deal for the DMV.

And then, there’s car insurance…smh

I had been trying things out for a couple weeks.

After using the same custom/hacked theme for close to a millennium, I wanted a little coat of fresh paint.

I didn’t change much! I like my dual-tone design. It’s just better for mobile reading now. And a bit fancier (check out the about, son). Still not sure on the background, I made it a little bit lighter, but it might be better darker, making the contrast stronger.

Anyway.

I encourage you to publish online. It’s easier than ever, you know you don’t want to go viral, and it will make you feel good. Also, you’re humbly making history.

I wish I could read a bus driver in LA narrate her stories all year long. Or a valet parking attendant in Silver Lake. Checking out an IT guy’s challenges in Ghana or a session musician in Japan fighting his parents. All of that without the “check me, check me, check me” of social media. Just purity of experience. Just witnessing consistency and persistence.

On the Open Web, as we should. Thank you, open source developers.

I heavily disliked Pixar’s Soul.

Yes, I’m a black man, a musician, and I hate seeing us dead all the time. it’s boring and I don’t relate! I’m alive and enjoying every second of my life—it’s the little things etc—, so the entire movie didn’t do anything to me besides being annoying and making me anxious.

Yes, beautifully rendered but that’s when it is so expected, it’s not even a feature anymore. Very nice sound design as well. As usual.

The Last Dinosaur was weird pace and consistency wise, and Onward’s main characters are quite insufferable. But Soul, due to hitting close and being so lovely when it starts, really made me do a weird face for the rest of the movie.

I also think we’re hitting a “too realistic environment with cartoon characters in it” vibes and it’s on the edge of uncanny valley. Some of the skin in Coco had given me the creeps already.

Now that 3D is perfect, man, I want much more coherent and interesting scenarios and stories, aimed at a curious and grown population. Some not-possible-before shots of romantic escapades, some ultra funny and irreverent weed-related joint (smoke effects y’all!!), I don’t know but, I think we’re all super ready for that.

Maybe I’ll go see LightYear next week.

The check-in was supposed to happen with a QR code. I don’t do that, so I go to the front desk, where the dude, a bit annoyed, checks me in “manually” with my ID. Two minutes.

Another customer comes in. She checks in with the QR code. She stays in front of the sign. I can tell something is wrong. She goes to the front desk and comes back a minute later with a good old clipboard and a form to fill out.

Third customer comes in, goes directly to the front desk. She comes back with the front desk person to:

– connect to the wifi, grab the QR code, fill out the form on her phone and then, go back to the front desk. I guess to “fully” check in?

I’m leaning against the wall, amused. Do you know that QR stands for Quick Response? LMAO

QR codes are unsecured by default. Please do not use them, do not spread them.

You have a front desk? Use it. You want to share a URL? Make it readable/typable (aka website.com/hey). You are a restaurant and you want to share your menu? Simple HTML will do and be 100% viewed on all devices since 2004.

Choose simplicity, choose Life.

It’s incredible how complex or cumbersome it is to do web dev locally. Always has been, which is super weird to me: dev is supposed to be done on your machine and then you commit/update.

Our local machines are filthy powerful, and restricted like crazy these days. It drives me nuts.

Anyway. Another thing, no one ever talks about Pivotal Tracker! It’s a wonderful product. Try it.

When they pop, 300ms in:

When they release, 1 second later and that you know those shots are fireworks:

(yes, living in America; yes, I saw someone shooting at someone else across the street one time, and I also heard shots a block away from me on a Sunday morning which was a murder)

Anxiety as a Service!

My parents are building a final home back in France. They have been working on it for a couple years now, and submitted plans to start construction.

This is a passive house with all the goodies to follow the standards. So, very sustainable, green, etc.

The plans have been rejected by the local administration because they don’t “respect” the local architecture. This is a house that’s invisible from anywhere from the road.

Meanwhile, 10,000 miles away in the city next to mine:

This is a new building, and the orientation on this picture is West/South. This building is 100% black (absorbing 30% more heat than if it was not black), with high windows from floor to ceiling that are cooking inside. No problem! Let’s run A/C units on top of the roof, 24/7, using an absurd amount of electricity to cool down a not-smart design that was easy to avoid!

We know how to solve every problem on earth. Systems govern us to just not do anything.

We have to keep going, making the right choices, despite the systems which are quite dumb, deaf, and blind.

Okay one last quote:

“Perhaps a third of the population of Classical Athens was enslaved; they were integral to the city-state’s economy. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing, not only necessary, but expedient, wrote Aristotle; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

Only a minority, the adult male citizens, could vote in the assembly. Just as women’s work at home gave men free time for public life, slavery provided the material basis for Athenian Democracy; the philosopher Bernard Williams argues that ancient Greeks were unable to imagine civilization without it. The effect of the necessity was, rather, he wrote, that life proceeded on the basis of slavery and left no space, effectively, for the question of its justice to be raised.”

Enslaved people and women have enabled our western opulence as much if not more than inventors.

We have a lot of enslaved-lite people now; part time gigs, warehouse madness, delivery nightmare. OnlyFans, Patreons and Substacks too I guess.

Enough money that it’s worth doing the work, not enough to keep doing it. Ad nauseam.

And women at home, still! I’m sorry y’all (not with me though, stay safe).

Sure enough, we’re in the world of machines being dedicated to us now. Right?

So if we depend on machines more and more, and we sure do, the question of justice rises and needs to be answered once and for all. Productivity’s gains since the 1970s thanks to tech have never been properly re-distributed. Let’s start there.

We can’t help ourselves through individual capitalism. Every single family in America has two or three vacuum cleaners, right? There’s nothing to buy, really. Homeless folks streaming music with ads, it’s a new world. Tech is going all in with subscriptions, leaving no space for anyone starting a business. VC money can’t just float everything up. And, the craziest think to me is how everything is so volatile: all new markets or ideas become commodities in like, 18 months these days.

Please discuss those UBI ideas with your friends and families. We need a government that makes sense and acts on that. There’s literally no other solution.