Category: Me Myself&I

The email:

My face:

*deletes*

Yup. Gotta focus on important things like credit union emails these days to make it through the week.

1987 German movie Bagdad Café.

Nothing is looking like what you expect with this movie. The title calls for Iraq but then we’re in the desert in the US. There’s this white woman but the movie is a lot about a black woman. It’s a drama, could be a thriller yet it is a romantic comedy. A soft, bitter situation in the middle of physical emptiness.

It is also the story of someone dropped out of nowhere, trying to fit in and make things work. I feel that. I felt that too when I watched it the first time as a kid.

The soundtrack is one song and there’s no need for more. Very few songs move me the way Calling You does. It’s so majestic and tense and gorgeous. Jevetta Steele eats it completely. That bridge, so perfect (is that Toots on the harmonica?). Those chords are the best musical expression of being slightly afraid of the future. Her voice soaring for help. It’s haunting me like nothing else.

A gem.

Is Everything Falling Apart?

“By that I don’t just mean that I see social media, and the internet broadly, sustaining a trend we’ve seen at earlier technological thresholds, such as the print revolution—a trend toward more tribes, often narrower tribes, and sometimes more intensely combative tribes. I also mean that the prime mover of the antagonism now emanating from some of the tribal boundaries is the same as it ever was: the psychology of tribalism. Martin Luther pushed the buttons that are being pushed now.”

It’s a whole lot faster now. So much faster than the print revolution that it’s not comparable to it.

This is what I dislike when people use the “History repeats itself, we’ll be fine” framing about things. That’s a false sense of control, and the worst part? It completely OMITS the compounding effects of societies fuck ups. We still pay for mistakes done decades, hundreds of years ago. It adds up to the price we’re paying.

Everything is intertwined and interlinked. Far more than before. We see it with Russian gas, pension funds, real estate, supply chain. In the west about 30 companies provide everything we do eat drink! Twitter was this toy for nerds and dorks ten years ago and now it seems inescapable yet more useless than ever?

Today’s far different. Today is intense like a mf.

Today’s narrower tribes are very combative BECAUSE they’re online. Because they can spy on each other in real time, from wherever they are. Because social media has incentives engineered left and right to maintain engagement, that fog of war.

This is not a slow ass print revolution, with time for society to absorb it. This is fragmentation on steroids, while we have the biggest wealth gap ever —which keeps growing and the most damaged Earth has ever been I mean, hello?? Talking about building a global community in this context, is weird. We need to solve a bunch of shit, first. And that means facing things without looking away.

The current “situation” or hellscape of a Western world being new or newish doesn’t matter. It should be tackled appropriately, which is not by saying “meh, been there done that”. Because we have not.

Now, I totally know what to do and how to unfuck ourselves. Will we ever be able to depoliticize ourselves and simply get to work? I don’t know about that though.

(cars, man)

And? Still runs (neighborhood car; those 80s American cars are the most comfortable mfs ever)

I wanted to post something about cars.

Have you heard of the Cannonball Run Challenge? I know, it’s illegal and a white dude thing, but I’m super fascinated by it. Coast to coast, pedal to the floor. Somehow, me a rather careful person, loves the idea  of freedom of going away at maximum speed. Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away).

Anyway, the record was broken multiple times in 2020 thanks to a reduction of traffic and cops. I can only imagine the thrill of those empty roads, engine roaring like it’s Mad Max.

Excellent article on the subject.

I was thinking about the most 2010s car and I think without a doubt, this is the one:

Toyota Prius Third Generation, codename XW30.

I love this car. There are a billion of those around. It’s super comfortable, useable, affordable. It looks great, to this day better than the next generations which try to do too much. The Prius is probably the car representing the hybrid transformation the most but this one is really anchored as the Uber/taxi car, the delivery guy car, the friend’s car, the rental car, the dad’s car etc. of the 2010s. Amazing job, engineers.

Okay I know someone who has this Kia K5 in Grey Wolf with tinted windows and it s l a p s. Those orange lights? *Chef’s kiss*.

Anecdata: my sister had a flat tire in France, it cost her €400 and she had to wait for the dude to come over for days. Here in Cali it cost me $30 and I only had to roll my car across the street to have it done in 15 minutes.

I’ll never complain about older cars and seeing too many tire shops in LA.

The Weird and Wonderful World of AI Art

Yes, we have reached the point of typing something in a box, and the computers create (great) art.

The progress is unbelievable. A few years ago and AI graphic art was gross and weird. It’s good now.

I imagine today’s toddlers will never try to make graphic art. Kids will be like “a doodle of my dog”. And that’s lowkey one of the most amazing shifts in humanity we’ve ever witnessed.

Me watching my hands handle five, slightly different keyboards with slightly different layouts and sizes everyday.

Back to the Rona Club. It was down for the past four or five weeks.

@CAAM, once.

What would I do with “around” $44B?

Immediately start new villages made of 3D-printed 100% sustainable homes with radiant heating floors, hemp insulation and green roofs. You already know. I would give them a nice lot for people to grow some stuff. I’d subsidized rent, of course. I’d create a copy of Broadacre, only smaller.

Offices would be rare as most people would work from home. If not, there would be nice roads to use to go there where you could use a car or a bicycle, both being on different, astuciously designed  paths.

There would be downtowns, albeit small ones because only those work. A main street, stores, ta-da.

I think $43B would allow me to try that, and see how much better of a plan it is than what we currently have.

Then once I know this village works, I’d made more in very different climates, to optimize the sustainability of those homes; weather dramatically changes everything about a house’s needs and infrastructures around.

Once I have a cluster of solutions, I’d scale up.

That’s a good use of $44B, I’d say.

Or maybe as someone said, I would just give each American $1M and some change for us to chill while robots now and then produce.

Either way, it would be fun.

Pretty sure it doesn’t work anymore.