Category: Me Myself&I

I can explain, but you might need to sit down for a few hours.

Dear future,

Time doesn’t exist etc. I just try to remember. Last year at the same moment, we didn’t have vaccines. We only knew that scientists were onto something and that it would be ready soon. Maybe.

12 months later and 600 gazillion vaccine doses distributed, uh, it’s still a fucking mess. Infection rates are through the roof and deaths are following.

It’s hard to go from no hope to hope to reality check.

Meanwhile the US government feels like it’s made of NPCs, women might really lose their fundamental abortion rights, France is getting steamrolled by heavy right wing ideologies in an election year and Russia is Russia-ing. WHEW.

I’ll be soaking up the sun outside. Cheers,

The Revenge of the Hot Water Bottle.

I went back to using hot water bottles, or hot bottle waters like I used to mess up.

They are the best. I use one with a nice, soft, fluffy fur cover. Knee is sore due to fade away turn around jumpers? 10mn on said knee, while moving it, and it’s back to normal. Neck hurts from typing? Five minutes of hot water bottle rolling between my shoulders and I feel much better. Cold feet? No more cold feet. Cold bed? No, it’s not now. Feel like needing a warm hug in this panny? There it is.

Heated water warms your blood up and said warmed blood circulates all over your body making you warmer naturally without getting forced dry, hot air on your delicate skin.

It’s awesome. Renewable. Cheap. It should be in every single home because it’s perfection.

(not really because I’m eating)

ANYWAY. About technology.

It’s not about centralized VS decentralized. Those things happen, for good and bad reasons and give us good and bad results. They change. They happen.

What matters is INTEROPERABILITY. Interop is needed now, in the past and in the future. Everywhere. And sometimes, often, interop doesn’t exist.

Interop. Focus on interop, my dear software companies.

Phil Jackson the famous Bulls coach, narrates in his books what happens when you win it all, after beating every single team all year long, all the way to the finals (he did it eleven times):

– 24 to 48 hours of partying

– ???

– Go back to practice

I like to remind myself of that when things are hard.

It’s old ass eastern philosophy I guess but it’s still pretty much on point.

The journey is quite important, if not everything.

It looks like I’m pretty good with plants.

They have algorithmized TV production.

They collect shit-ton of data on everything of the users, and track eyeballs (not literally, I think)- what are people watching, what are people binging, etc.

They are forming clusters of users based on demographic, purchase power, etc, and mapping those clusters to features in content.

And if a certain overall kind or discreet feature is worth the amount of eyeball it is attracting, a designed, soulless series gets created with those features, or two.

This is what modern, app-TV feels to me. No art, no quality. Just content tailor-made and factory produced to match the taste of favored demographics with purchase power. And they not only want to match. They want to maximize.

They want the maximum amount of people to watch something, not small amounts of people finding their niche.

I cannot tolerate this kind of content, and I am unsubscribed to all services except Amazon Prime for free delivery of goods.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some good TV. I would consider Bosch to be quality TV, and Ozark is okay-ish. The Expanse, too.

But I am done with conveyor-belt driven app-TV.

I feel that too. That’s how Don’t Look Up felt like. Not bad, but not “real” either. So weird.

Teenagers and early 20s folks are often on Snap these days.

I’m wondering about the cultural impact of a service based on ephemerality, once those people realize that their youth will be a hollow memory with nothing to show.

Especially when they compare themselves to previous generations who have most of their digital memories saved.

Y’all will have 5,000 questionable selfies and 240fps footage of random shit on icloud to remember when you were young. And that will be it.

We will talk a lot more about that in ten years, once they reach 30.

I had been in the family for a year by then, I believe. We were busy building the family house every weekend, which included trips to the French Lowe’s or Home Depot. Dad drove a Ford Fiesta hatchback because who cares about driving people around? We’re moving weight (concrete mix bags), bro!

So weird to look at now. Another life, another dimension, I don’t know.

Summer. On a sunny Sunday morning on the freeway, we were on our way to get some lumber or something. Maybe I was a little bored, though really happy to be sitting in the passenger seat instead of laying down in the back. Dad decided to do something.

“So, I’m thinking about pushing the car, to see how fast it can go, don’t tell your mom”

My face probably lit up at the idea of not only doing something risky and illegal, but doing it without anyone else knowing about it. Plus, I really wanted to see what’s like to drive really fast. I imagine I just said “ok!”

It was on the A4 freeway, which where we were about to get our “speed demon” scream, was the largest freeway in France: four lanes both ways. He also chose the part where it goes a little bit downhill.

“Is your seatbelt tight? Here we go!”

He jumped on the left lane and started to push his foot on the gas. I remember feeling so giddy.

130 km/h (80 mph) is the max authorized on freeways, but we used to rarely go that fast in general. 110 km/h was the usual freeway speed. And we were about to pass it!

115…120…130…145… Now we’re passing everyone. 150.

“I still have a bit of room under the pedal, but not much!” Dad is yelling now because the noise inside the car is pretty loud. That freeway at that time is a lot like a lot of US freeways: no asphalt, just rough concrete. He floors it.

155…160… I want to see 200!! I know it’s impossible –I already know at that time that only sports cars can go that fast– but it seems so close. The needle moves slower now. 165… 170…

We reach 177 km/h (110 mph). The car is vibrating heavily. We stay at that speed for a few minutes. It’s thrilling, the engine is roaring. It’s also not really as exciting as I thought it would be! We’re passing other vehicles faster. But it’s Sunday and we are not late for anything.

Dad slows down. We exit and go back home, silently. We never did that ever again with any of the next family cars.

It was cool enough that I remember it to this day, though.

Maybe we have too much entertainment.