Category: Me Myself&I

Why yes, I’m building my prototype house in Unreal. Very early stages but I submitted my house design (concept, floor plans) to an actual architect and she replied:

“this is amazing!! I am so impressed with your research, thoroughness and thoughtfulness towards all the details. […] It’s totally wonderful”

I am super excited for the future of this. I had issues with technical details around glass and I found a local company that basically made those issues irrelevant. So now I know that this California-based sustainable, passive prototype should work. It’s exciting and a relief, too. I can’t wait to run numbers and simulate weather to see where the design would fail. I can’t wait to walk around and inside the 3D model. 3D building is tedious as hell though. I wish it was as simple as plugging my bass in.

Concept

Floor plan

At the same time at some point this year, months went like seconds.

It was a productive year in the end. The bar, 2020, was low for sure.

At the start of last year I begun to stretch my body daily and more thoroughly. It’s been doing wonder. There’s always some anxiety building up and those couple minutes stretching left leg and then right leg really can make a difference on wellness. No cap.

I think that’s what happened to me this year: through blog posts, social media, documentaries and IRL comments I realized that my mostly good habits work short and long term and are actually sought after. From how to use tech at work or at home, from health to pandemic-related things, it looks like people are tryna be like me and I don’t blame them. I feel good/better and it doesn’t hurt the earth/others? *includes in habits*.

Sleep was an issue though. Getting my nights killed by my neighbor’s stupid machine for months put me in dire mental situations. Exhausted like I’ve never been before. But I bounced back. Recovered. Fought. I’m like a nuclear plant on Mars, you can’t stop me. Because time doesn’t exist.

“Growing up in California influenced everything about me. I can’t imagine not having grown up in California. Look around this apartment. It’s full of flat horizons. I have to look at flat horizons.”

Joan Didion

Me as well. Architecture is important because of how it shapes us.

A horizontal landscape nurtures hope and possibilities.

People wonder why cities with high density and high rises feel impenetrable and ominous. Which is fun as a tourist and not so fun as a local. Well, it’s the architecture.

There are two sides to the antiwork community. Some people are saying, ‘We shouldn’t have to work at all’ and other people are saying that work just should be better.”—Penny, r/antiwork member

Vice on Reddit’s /antiwork

What work just should be better means? I’ll bite. It would mean decoupling income and quality of life from actual work. I think that’s what we all want: the ability to do (meaningful) work for which our lives are not completely depending on. That’s when we feel happy, satisfied and non-anxious.

A nurse saving people shouldn’t have to worry about housing, at all, ever. Same with a musician, if you want him to expand his skills and make people cry with his instruments. Same with the bum doing nothing, as if he has a place to live, he’ll do nothing there instead of in front of you in the streets, trying to finesse someone.

Win. Win. Win.

It’s simple really: capitalism has always succeeded for corporations and has stopped uplifting communities basically since the end of the 60s. Wages stayed the same while profits exploded ever since? The contract is broken; therefore capitalism has to go to the bench. We need fresh players here.

When you realize the system is deeply broken, do you try to change it or find a way to exist within it?

You create another one. You create new rules and stick to them. This is hard.

That’s the big issue with everyone trying to change the way things are: we only do it by reproducing a capitalist system, which means that we create the same discrepancies that we try to fight against. Look at crypto; it’s creating the same inequalities as fiat money, only now it’s a bunch of unaccountable dudes instead of a government (which is still quite accountable). Look at us and our little online shops, producing a few shirts to ship across the planet. Not sustainable, still flawed capitalism.

UBI. We’re wealthy as hell and collectively need to share more. Give people money. Let them rearrange their lives without absurd anxiety and stress. People will slow down, relax. Crime will fall the second people know that they are safe, that they can bounce back from whatever problem they face.

So integrate your governments head to toe, y’all. Proselyte, vote, federate efforts toward an actual, solid safety net. Enabling society, unlocking its full potential.

That’s what I really want to see.

(Go Spurs Go)

The Spurs —long time Lakers woe just thoroughly beat them in Los Angeles, in the old Staples Center which is being renamed with a ridiculous 2021 meme. The Spurs also beat the other LA team nice and clean a few weeks ago.

But! The Lakers signed my man Isaiah Thomas, the normal sized left-handed guard. He’s been doing as much as he can but of course everyone piles up on him like he’s the sole reason the Lakers are cheeks. I feel for him.

I said this Spurs team is good and it is. It’s beautiful to see the confidence rising game after game. But it’s sad to see my man IT in the middle of this LA mess.

My girl Molly, filling out an email address with the word service, in her very calm voice:

“Service oh, I love that word because it doesn’t exist anymore.”

Me, quite literally:

(she’s not wrong, obviously)

This week I jumped on a zoom call late, after getting a flat tire on my car fixed in a hurry. Only the call was the day prior.

Today I had a meeting and I waited. Over a hour later I receive four delayed texts of the person I was meeting with, cancelling. Thanks t-mobile or whatever.

It looks like everything, everyone is tired right now.

United States of America to be renamed Variantpalooza.

(I like COVIDnobyl, sounds like a car; a clown car that is)

We be cookin in here!

Next variant is rotisserie-rotating as we speak. It should have a little bit of Delt’ and Omic’ and make you smell like teen spirit.

Just in time for season 2022.

You might be entitled to tissues, staying at home and keeping it tight.

Hempcrete. Yes, it is the best -by far, period- material we can use to build houses and buildings. Yes it is cheap, renewable, clean, green.

My dad was toying with hemp bricks a decade ago. It wasn’t new then either.

So how the FUCK are we still pondering about that material? While destroying forests for wood (25 years to get a tree ready for lumber; 90 days for hemp), importing lumber from across the world at ridiculous prices???

Meanwhile mfs look forward to float in space for five fucking minutes.

We could literally build sustainable, green housing right now. Retrofit older buildings. Upgrade for real. But no, we just build the same stupidly designed stuff, slap a big ass A/C unit on top (least effective way to live) and call it a day.

We just never aim for better. We settle for “less bad”, while we have less and less time for this “let’s waste time” shit.

It drives me crazy. Inertia and latency. I hate them.

This is a local’s car that is usually looking pristine and always perfectly parked just like on this picture. Only this time it’s a little bit more folded than usual.

Broken axle, flat tire, gas tank destroyed. RWD. This car can’t move on its own.

Behind me and onto the right side of the car are tennis courts; no one can come from there to hit this car. Plus, it would have been sticking out on the lane with the impact thus, removed.

If somehow a car had been going through the sidewalk and hit this car there, the grass would show some severe marks of fight and again, the car would not be perfectly parked. So how? How is this car in this state on that side yet, perfectly parked?

Drugs + paranoia? An artist with a hammer? All of the previous?

Many things don’t make sense at all anymore so I’m not surprised surprised. But still. When physics don’t compute, I kind of notice.

Very sad to hear about the passing of bell hooks.

I had just started reading her stuff, which I enjoyed very much. Her non-negotiable stance on blackness, love and community is like wildfire. So contagious. Her writing is so relevant today.

Wishing all of bell hooks daughters, in the flesh or in spirit, the most delightful and enjoyable future.