Category: Me Myself&I

My booster shot hitting my body like

I will sleep tonight. I sure will.

There’s tons of hot takes about the Lakers, probably.

But the main lesson is very simple: basketball is a team sport, and the bigger, stronger the team, the better.

My Spurs are tasting blood, losing close games or winning with poise. They’re not doing so well but the team spirit is alive. It’s visible from YouTube highlights.

The Clippers have been phenomenal. Winning a back to back game down 30 points on the road? They did that. With basically their third unit. That’s a deep team. They hustle, play hard, progress.

The Lakers are a bunch of individuals making way too much money.

I still can’t wrap my head around what’s going on over there. The West acting like we didn’t welcome Putin at every opportunity since he came out of Russia lol.

It must be wild in those darknet/hacker/nsa streets right now.

This morning I was at the French embassy, reminding me that I was technically in France, reminding me of borders and stuff. When you become international, borders make even less sense. So war for territory? Just visit, bro.

We are so inter-dependent. Ubisoft having studios in Ukraine for instance. If aliens exist, they must be rolling on the floor right now. “those animals don’t even realize that they’re shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, these mfs have NO memory LMAOOO”

It’s really harsh to experience how progress is so not linear. We get apartheid and the Berlin wall out, next second we have 20 years of occupation in Afghanistan while the Queen, Occupation OG #1 is still here!

I just read this headline:

“The US Space Force plans to start patrolling the area around the Moon”

For what, skaters using the parking lot? WHAT IS GOING ON

In 2020 my neighbor across the street had a baby. He would go out in the morning with his son in his arms. Then the baby was in a stroller. By the end of the year, the baby was walking.

This man never looked away from his phone. Pretty much the whole time.

I keep being horrified by the memory. That first year of development in a child is so freaking amazing, unique and short. I’m mad at that man and engineers crafting that pull to scroll. We came to accept the neck-down-the-phone behavior and that was a wrap.

There’s no presence anymore.

I’m super big on UBI these days because of NFTs.

We live in a world where we apparently have those, sure.

Then UBI should absolutely exist. That’s the least we should do, right?

I’m voting for the presidential elections in France this year and the far-right is super hot.

I’m also becoming an American citizen, after eight straight years on California soil.

It’s super intense because if I think about democracies, the right to vote, conflicts etc. Boy, am I in the luckiest tier of humanity with both US and French passports in my hands soon. Not that they mean as much as they used to I guess, but still.

Big responsibilities. I take them.

Dear future,

I don’t know what to say but it feels like there’s something noticeable happening right now. A moment in history.

The blend of old problems, new technology, current algorithms. Everyone and everything dissociates constantly.

I think it’s the oscillation; it’s way too powerful. One second you are slammed to the left, laughing on the floor at a meme or a moment in a show. The next one you are slammed to the right watching war footage from 30 minutes ago,  while NBA and pandemic scores float above it all. Social media is all kind of batshit crazy.

It’s really way wild right now.

Having an absolute uh, blast.

It’s a good summary of the past 40 years in feminism, with an emphasis on the 2010s, which is great.

In the quest to the answer for a better world between women and men, Amia Shrinivasan asks good questions and covers it all. I’m trying to write about answers here.

First of all, I think it’s important to understand that the systems in place ruining our lives are not going to be cut off clean; we need to think about them as fading out, as hard and as fast as we work on them to be part of the past. So it’s fluctuating and moving. Regressing and expanding.

The assumption that we can flip a switch in society by passing laws and calling it a day, is an illusion. Or that we can convince people profiting from those systems. Not happening either.

Second, I think it’s fundamental that we acknowledge that by default, women and men are the same, require the same care, love, respect, discipline and so forth, to be good human beings and stay that way. Women and men created what we have. There is no domination or submission at the individual level, unless it’s a game between adults, which is then not reality: it is a sandboxed game.

TL;DR: Systems are moving slowly and are hard to predict; individuals, —straight/LGBTQ+— are the same basic atoms, requiring the same basic needs and are quite predictable. Therefore,

Sex Ed and porn

As Amia writes about it, obviously we need better sex education and yes, porn is and will be around. What can we do? Be as honest as possible. One way would be to ensure teenagers have safe sex so that their brains can move on. The weird abstinence happening in porn-fueled America for folks 15-30 is so destructive. For sex not to be special, it needs to be treated as such. If sex is simply part of life, why not treat it like it is? Masturbation (still so taboo for women in the public sphere!) should be taught like a necessity, just like brushing your teeth. Encouraging young men to understand that sex is teamwork —a lot of listening— would do wonder. I know plenty of young men know all that but then, peer-pressure from older ideologies and stuff. Be you, bro. Sex is public health, but also a private act. You don’t have to brag about it or make it a list of things that needs to be done. Relax, and work on your skills. Sex is awesome and nothing at the same time. It is a paradox.

On porn, we adults could suggest teenagers to watch amateur acts, to make them more accustomed to what real sex is. To separate theater and reality. To push them to use their imagination, too. Imagination is still super powerful because it stimulates desire, real, personal desire. Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore in kids minds these days.

Solution: UBI. This way teenagers know –as well as adults- that they will not jeopardize their future by exploring intimacy. They might have sex early which would avoid the resentment, loneliness and subscribing-to-wrong ideas phases, especially for young men. Which would be dramatically great.

Sex

Amia writes: “Sex is no longer morally problematic or unproblematic: it is instead merely wanted or unwanted. In this sense, the norms of sex are like the norms of capitalist free exchange.”

I truly disagree here. if sex is wanted, it is simply a union. There’s no commerce in intimacy. It is not a transaction like capitalist free exchange. Which is by the way, not free: it is interested. “Free” exchange in capitalist terms really means “getting as much as you can for the least effort”. It’s min-max to oblivion. Yeah, that’s an atrocious mindset for relationships. We can see that in dating apps Reddit subs: people, mostly men, treat sex like a goddamn stock investment. It’s horrible.

It’s fundamental to not treat sex as a transactional commodity. Yes, it happens in our capitalist and very unfair society, but it certainly shouldn’t be normalized, nor needs to be reprimanded. For women and men to feel liberated about this, we need to treat sex as anything but a transaction. Because when we do, we create markets, competition, cheating, resentment, abuse and so forth. Which kill women in a myriad of ways.

Solution: UBI so that everyone lives their lives without using sex as a capitalistic mechanism to achieve higher status, not even a little bit.

Masculinity

If today’s masculinity is about big numbers, —bodies, money— then it is a rather weak and dumb concept. Masculinity is the ability to be the best man you can be, to me. That is, it is a very broad concept, depending on context and culture. But it always rests on solid foundations: be good, be efficient, always learn.

Since the 2010s though, it seems like many men feel like learning to unlearn stuff is anti-men or something. Being able to change your mind on a crucial topic means you’re “giving up”? On what, your bruised feelings? There’s so much war narratives in men circles. Zero sum logic. We really need to step away from this, but mfs enjoy those stories.

Solution: UBI so that all men chill at home, learning and doing better, without the stress of bragging rights that no one cares about, really.

Marriage

How in *checks notes* 2022 we still use it as a stick to measure one’s relationship achievement makes me shake my head. But for taxes purposes, vague religious nostalgia of simpler times and the desire to treat yourself with a wedding, marriages are still a thing. Which so often creates imbalance in relationships, punishing women and men. Because the entire society and state are involved in it, the consequences are pretty big when shit hits the fan.

Solution: UBI so that people get into unions like marriage without a heavy chip on their shoulder. Also, a new social contract between people, like in France, would allow Americans to be in relationship with a contract that allows fairness when it comes down to assets, shared items and will, which is what really matters.

 

So yeah, an absolute necessity for better men and women relationships is for all of us to decouple the risks associated to partnering up with someone. UBI is the best tool to create personal and collective agency! We need to significantly decrease our collective anxiety towards intimacy and relationships. It’s easy to do, in a way: we just need to be pragmatic and give society ways for its individuals to move around, without being stuck by some stupid historic and politic fact, irrelevant to how we live in the current moment and even more for the future. Especially when sex is, for the most part, an intimate, private thing.

We are not free yet. But we know how to be.