I think I’m getting my brain sliced in two different ways.
Predicting how Big Tech was going to be a problem and how it happened exactly how a few—including me were worried it would.
Not predicting how science would be challenged in a sizzling pandemic with a virus mutating faster than wheels spinning in a donut maneuver.
How the first prediction induced the second non-prediction. *mind explodes* *pikachu face*
The thing about overt sexism and racism “phase” is that, it’s not a phase. It never is.
Sexism and racism are systems. You adhere to them. You now believe that women and black folks are inferior to you. Because you’re a teenager and that those years are fundamental, you’re now fundamentally thinking that you’re probably right. It’s anchored in your brain and you flutter around those rancid concepts, which are syncing well with what bell hooks calls White Supremacy Capitalist Patriarchy, aka our society.
That’s not a phase. That’s how you’re thinking now and until something very powerful proving you wrong happens, forever.
So saying “I’m sorry, I was young(er)” later, is some PR bull. You probably still think the same, only now you’re quiet or forced to be.
And none of that is great. None.
I would wholeheartedly agree with that. Developers don’t talk about enabling people or making lives better anymore, they don’t talk about helping people work more efficiently or use their computer more effectively. Developers treat their users like cattle now. They addict them and herd them and farm their eyeballs for ad-revenue. They don’t program to make the world a better place, they program because it’s a fun way to make entirely too much money at their favorite hobby: reinventing and overcomplicating the wheel.
This is very true from all software: web, desktop, games.
The underlying fact to me is: other than custom apps for very specific cases, we don’t actually need new software, or more programmers.
We already have them all! And we already have the best (as in “works good enough for most”) UX.
We have tools to create, produce and build pretty much anything we want. Just thinking about AutoCAD or Excel and I smile.
Even in terms of hardware we already have everything: we have more digital storage to host content than time to consume said content, hello! All recent computers have 4 to 32 cores and most of those don’t do shit all day, except getting hogged by a browser reinventing 4096 wheels at the same time. The amount of waste in computing is excruciating.
So if we maxed out our digital needs, why are we acting like we can do so much better, that we need better apps when we know that we absolutely do not? We don’t need more apps. Not even updates.
Take Spotify and any 2000s audio players hooked to a SSD full of music. The old apps trounce the new one in every way (usability, stability, speed, customization) without nagging you for any update, ever. And no subscription, of course. That’s swag, bro.
How do y’all accept using an app daily, which could change quite fundamentally any time while logging your behavior 24/7, is beyond me. That’s abusive as hell. Quit them, we have enough alternatives.
A one trillion dollar company.
One billion is one million times a thousand.
One trillion is one million times a million.
Yeah.
It’s unprecedented, gross, absurd, staggering, etc.
This company has your biometrics (fingerprint, eyes, face, voice), your contacts, your photos, your music, your routine, your everything.
This company makes you pay little cables day in day out.
This company, remember, does everything it can to not pay taxes. Money for Californian infrastructure to build underground power lines to prevent wildfires could be nice. It could have been done a while ago.
This company is building its own hardware, all of it, which means that soon you won’t be able to switch to another platform. At all.
And they just announced that they would scan whatever they want about what you do on your devices. Because they can, thanks to owning almost 100% of the vertical integration they pushed for for a decade.
Nothing could go wrong.
I think you should really keep trusting them. It’s a nice, very private and opaque company and they are not super extremely powerful like we’ve never seen anything like this before so, everything should go well. Buttery.
Latest US numbers:
Me as soon as I saw the curve:
And that’s before the Delta+ and Lambda variants take over. 255K cases in one day yesterday. Yikes.
We are back to the highest daily cases rates and thanks to vaccines the death rate is way lower but it’s changing rapidly because the vaccines are less and less efficient thanks to you guys doing a fantastic job at being absolutely irresponsible.
I really enjoy the fact that I will be back working in a public space in three weeks.
I hope my loved ones are triple-masking even in their own bathrooms. Hang in there, almost literally.
We get situations like Ben Simmons. Fans live through a pandemic buying $300 jerseys on credit cards and learning new skills to get money on new, ephemeral gigs. Sacrificing, still supporting their teams.
Meanwhile Ben is getting paid $35M/year and doesn’t want to improve on something that I feel like is quite important in basketball: shooting the ball. Of course fans are going to tear him another one.
He didn’t want to improve on it for five damn years. He still doesn’t want to, apparently? I don’t want to know.
All I see if that a players’ league creates a world where winning the genetic lottery allows you to be so complacent, you don’t even care about improving on the top skill you need in the professional field that pays you handsomely.
The balance and respect between players, fans and teams is in shambles in the NBA. It’s mercenary city now. All of that to build ill-designed 10 bds, 14 baths MacMansions and own 4 jet skis.
A mess.
Prince:
Welcome to America
We snatch bass players, not purses
Me, a bass player in America:
(it’s a pretty good album btw)
Everything is super challenging right now. But my plants are doing fine. Like, fine fine. Look at this one:
The old leaves are getting brownish before drying out. They are big. Well look at those fresh, green, erected, even bigger new ones! They don’t even fit the frame. That new sprout is like “YYYAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY” and living its best life. All new sprouts are like that:
This plant is so happy, I can tell. It’s even creating tentacles now, look:
What the. This plant is feeling so good, it doesn’t even need spikes anymore. Just smooth vibes.
Hi Miss Plant. Nice to meet you. If you take over, become sentient and I’m your literal host, you we’d better pay some rent to my landlord, she’s nice.
(No particular care; just a glass of water once a week, a bit of spray on leaves every three months, a couple glasses of cold pasta water in six months)
Oh I know the perfect rebuttal to “Elvish” angle:
“Harold, without brutal capitalism and globalization, we wouldn’t have what we have now!”
What do we have, exactly? I don’t see much greatness out there. I observe a whole lot of waste and attrition.
Now, would I prefer a 2021 world that doesn’t have any homelessness *at all* but still has i386 in beige boxes as the top of technology? Absolutely.
Actually the more I think about it and the more attractive it becomes.
We have to slow down. Earth has started to force us to do so and we’re still like “huh, what?”.
A very thoughtful blog post right here.
I will paste the premises:
There are at least two kinds of magic. These two kinds may not always be distinct in their appearance, but are very different in their underlying motives and their ultimate outcomes.
The first kind of magic, which we shall call “Human”, is driven by the desire to extend one’s power over the world, while simultaneously minimizing one’s dependence on the world. The ultimate outcome of this pursuit is world-amputation: the destruction of the world on which one no longer depends.
The second kind of magic, which we shall call “Elvish”, is driven by the desire to extend one’s understanding of the world, while simultaneously minimizing one’s intentional interference with the ways of the world. The ultimate outcome of this pursuit is self-amputation: the dissolution of the self and becoming one with the world.
I’m obviously an Elvish stan.
You can tell Jeff Bezos —and all the folks like him— sees the world as something to conquer rather that something to adapt with. And they conquer all right! But they’re quite alone in their conquest and the world kind of despise them: you don’t conquer without destroying.
Now imagine Amazon has been hard at work housing people for the past decade not with ridiculously low wages that look good in the Midwest, but with true collaborative power, involving all actors and housing people in sustainable buildings. Imagine that an entire generation of our society grows in near-perfect environment that respect Nature. Imagine what that generation would invent to live in space. They probably wouldn’t care about it like Jeff does in 2020 (they wouldn’t understand the point of trying to live in the most unfriendly environment known to human beings, rightfully so) but if they did, they’d probably provide a shit ton better technology to live outside earth that this ridiculous Blue Whatever thing Jeff Bezos is toying with these days.
He’s about to make those flights a tourist activity, up to thousands of astronauts a year? Imagine the amount of fuel and material waste used to amuse very wealthy folks for 3 minutes in zero G. Conquer, destroy, repeat.
Understanding instead of power goes a long way. Gains are not quarterly, true. They’re immense, though.