h. Play

“How did the human species ever happen to think of building their homes so that the whole roof space was wasted.”

From a Neutra’s client’s letter to the famous architect.

Girl, I don’t know. I miss my old place because I could enjoy its flat roof at ease, chilling, and it was magnificent. I’ll never forget those views and the peace coming from receiving a nice breeze in the face with 360° of sky enveloping me.

Attics are quite stupid. Storing things for storage. Memorabilia is real but we ought to do better and keep what’s really important.

No attic means you have to make choices and align your past, present and future instead of deflecting.

That’s a positive. That’s work though. I don’t mind.

You can also build a small storage unit in the backyard somewhere, if you can’t help yourself.

Audiobooks outsell print. AI can turn text into speech. People scan, they don’t read.

Writing is organized thinking on behalf of persuasion.

Writing is your opportunity to stand out, to pitch in and to make a difference.

And you don’t need a permit or equipment. You don’t need an insider’s edge, or money either.

Writing may be the skill with the highest return on investment of all. Because writing is a symptom of thinking.

Seth Godin.

Writing for 15+ years now, I realize how much it helped me being organized. To keep calm with heavy, burning thoughts. Once you break them down and start writing them on a screen, it’s just easier to understand and deal with them.

Talking doesn’t do the same at all. We indulge in drama and get lost in what point we’re looking for. Writing gets you there and allows you to move on.

It’s dope.

It’s just TORN CITY. Understand:

Kawhi doesn’t play with the Spurs, is injured while the Spurs try to get him on court, when they’re known to rest their players more than anyone else.

He goes to the Raptors, who trade DeMar, who loses in the first round with the Spurs with bad defense.

The Raptors become champions on outstanding defense, beating a Warriors team FILLED with bad injuries.

Patrick McCaw threepeats three years in a row, with two different teams, beating the first one with the second in the finals. Without playing.

I’m torn and awkwardly happy and sad with all that shit. Everything loops in wild ways.

Lots of lessons for coaches out there.

I want to change the world, but real problems are hard. There are huge opportunities, in transportation, energy, computing, healthcare, manufacturing, but none of them can be solved on the kind of timelines and expectations that the startup community have. So many companies I see have great ideas, but aren’t realistic and serious enough to realize them. I worry that we wont solve these solvable problems, because everyone just want to party like its 2009.

Eskil.

I think people also want the glamour and social desirability from 2009 VC startup stuff. People build or want to build things that will look cool and make them look good.

Yes, things are that shallow these days.

Real problems that hit most people –like housing- are not necessarily hard, but they’re tedious. They require humility (housing is a different problem in every single climate, for instance). They require to take time to understand and listen. VC folks think in brute-force mode: throw money and more money, and at some point it just works.

Silicon Valley sold the idea of a single-solution-rules-them-all concept to far too many young bright minds who end up believing in it. There are other bright minds, thankfully.

Back to problems and huge opportunities and to me, everything is telling me housing is the root.

Transportation: what’s the problem with it? We have superbly efficient vehicles. Maybe people travel too much (work, cheap vacation). Just do that less, then (telecommute, less traveling).

Energy: what’s the problem with it? We know everything about how to minmax this. We could do a million time better with housing and buildings, that’s for sure. That’s a housing problem, then.

Computing: not sure what’s the problem here besides the fact that we have far too much processing power to do nothing online. It’s ridiculous. Moore’s law is done. No one cares about 4K or 8K. We have reliable computers that can run for 20+ years without breaking.

Healthcare: well, if we had better housing we would have a shit ton less healthcare problems. We could retrofit houses and buildings with great insulation. That would reduce humidity which reduces the risks of contracting a pneumonia for instance. From being able to wheel in and out elderlies to providing babies with a clean and safe space to grow, to drastically reduce anxiety and stress for people paying bills/rent/mortgages, housing is 80% health to be honest. It’s easy to be healthy in an enjoyable, stress-free environment.

Manufacturing: I don’t know what’s the opportunity here either. We buy and consume too much. We ship everything from everywhere, using boats that are burning 75.6 tons of fuel per day. We have over 50,000 ships that consume that amount of dirty ass gasoline and they run 365/24/7 to ship us a pair of shoes and a damn phone tomorrow. We’re absolutely insane and disgusting. Manufacturing needs to happen locally, providing for local needs. That’s not a huge opportunity per se. The biggest solution is buying less.

To change the world requires two things as of 2019: less consumption. state-of-the-art housing.

*drops mic*

What people want: technology that doesn’t change constantly.

Incentive: super tired of re-learning how to do something that we already know how to do, for decades on.

What companies want: technology that changes constantly.

Incentive: selling more hardware, keeping and controlling users inside a system, economies of scale, justifying positions and salaries.

Companies’ incentives are strong. Yet they don’t make sense in a way: selling more hardware for what, I see homeless people with three devices. Justifying workforce, well maybe you should save money by laying off expensive executives, I don’t know.

People’s incentive is legit, obvious and hitting everyone of us at some point. But, money.

My mom just emailed me to tell me that she’s tired of update problems on her computer. So no video call today. Technology is exhausting and fucking up our lives now.

It’s really bizarre to follow a basketball player for years, to know that he’s amazing and then being kind of mad that he’s doing so well with another team.

I’m not surprised that Kawhi took those Raptors to their first NBA finals ever. I’m not surprised he’s been looking like an extremely efficient and versatile version of MJ, hand fake, midrange and so on. 17 rebounds.

I saw him get better for years, while everyone was like “whatever”.

Kawhi is so good. I couldn’t wait to see that Leonard/White/Murray/Aldridge/Gay bullshit. We would have a game 7 western conference finals right now.

And I just love his dedication to the game and how he clearly doesn’t care about that stupid ass media circus, giving them the coldest answers lmao. It’s just adorable.

Interesting finals coming up. Will Lowry and Van Vleet be able to clamp Steph? Will Klay clamp Kawhi? Will KD need to show up and go thermo-nuclear? We shall see.

In Evicted, Desmond writes that low-income people looking for housing or work are often assumed to be "more or less ‘rational actors’ who recognize trade-offs and make clear choices." Through his research, however, he saw people wear out from long, fruitless searches for decent apartments or jobs. The people he encountered could better be characterized as "’exhausted settlers,’ who accept poor housing in a disadvantaged neighborhood or a dead-end or illicit job after becoming depleted and disheartened from trying and trying and failing and failing."

Chicago’s eviction problem.

Shelter should be a basic right. You can’t do much without it. It starts there.

The fact that private companies can be landlord and never have to answer anyone about anything, should be completely illegal and never be allowed ever again.

There should be some kind of teaching and self-reliance over services for buildings: I’ll cut the grass around and I’ll teach the teenagers how to do it. Don’t charge me shit. Same with clogged toilets etc. The money saved should be re-invested by the landlord  into heavier work, in partnership with the state, the city (sewer increase so that toilets don’t overflow).

The problem with everything being “solved” with money is that no one gives a single fuck. That leads to the stronger getting away with everything and the weakest losing everything, ending up in the streets.

It frustrates me to no end that we know and have all the solutions in the world and we just let people rot. Goddamn.