h. Play

I saw it with the Aces and WNBA playoffs, but also saw it far too often in the past few years in the NBA as well: very questionable calls from referees, calls that are changing the course of the game.

Betting. Betting has ruined everything about games and sports, and continues to do so. What’s at stake (tons of money) and the accompanying incentives (cheating) are too strong.

Oh well! More time to dive into other fun stuff in life.

Can somebody buy this man a suit, come ON

https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16

https://ma.tt/2024/10/on-dhh/

Response to DHH | Matt Mullenweg (archive.ph)

Oh boy. Things are interesting.

I think this situation highlights how things don’t align between capitalism and open source: open source software is collaborative and shared. Tons of free work made available to all. Getting very wealthy on top of it, like Matt and DHH, is private and not shared. So we end up with CEOs talking like they’re simple individuals trying to contribute to the world, except that they’re now rich enough (as a result of luck, timing and collaborative efforts) that it makes them out of touch with the rest of the world just like the CEOs of much bigger companies.

You can just read a dozen of their blog posts to understand that. For people at the edge of collaborative work, remote work, cutting edge technology involving tons of automation, after a pandemic, they just write about expensive gadgets or ultra niche expensive hobbies instead of reflecting on the world and genuinely trying to change it for the best. There’s an opportunity right now to shift things dramatically with AI and driverless cars and remote work. Both CEOs should be obsessed by this or at least write about it. They don’t.

Contributing more to the world would be to open things more, to give people the best experience, each time we can. WordPress should be much simpler to deploy, maintain and transfer. WordPress should allow writers to use native apps from whichever device and operating system they use. WordPress should allow readers to customize page rendering the way they are pleased.

Still not the case after 20 years.

37Signals should make Hey an email client available to all devices and operating systems. For a better world, it shouldn’t be tied to an email address or a subscription.

Automattic and 37Signals have positioned themselves as “better than big tech” while behaving exactly just like big tech, from locking in customers to using trademarks and equity against folks. It just doesn’t align with their image, and in a crisis like the WordPress/WPEngine thingy, it shows.

This lack of incentive alignment in the open source world has always felt wrong to me. The veneer of coolness, the calculated greed. Socialize the work, privatize the profit. It’s all disappointing for the fact that the software world is so fluid and organic and multi-directional. Dictators might be useful in this chaos, but that never lasts.

https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over

It’s a bit of a verbose article, but it does say something extremely real:

“In fact, one of the things that will not survive is novelty itself: trends, fads, fashions, scenes, vibes. We are thrown back into cyclical time; what’s growing old is the cruel demand to make things new. It’s already trite to notice that all our films are franchises now, all our bestselling novelists have the same mass-produced non-style, and all our pop music sounds like a tribute act. But consider that the cultural shift that had all those thirtysomething Cut writers so worried about their survival is simply the return of a vague Y2K sensibility, which was itself just an echo of the early 1980s. Angular guitar music again, flash photography, plaid. We’re on a twenty-year loop: the time it takes for a new generation to be born, kick around for a while, and then settle into the rhythm of the spheres.”

On top of my mind:

1996’s Twister and 2024’s Twisters.

Michael Jordan retired in early 00s and he’s still on Reddit’s front page or r/NBA regularly if not all the time.

Video games. OMG. It’s the same video games since 2000, just with better resolution and the wind in trees.

TikTok is already kind of passé because fads are faster than ever and that none of that is substantial enough to last. Reddit keeps looping, serving the same video that showed up in the morning or the 2018 meme that we all saw at least once.

The current betting culture soaring in the US is inherently cyclical. Bet, done. New bet, done. New bet, done. Ad nauseum.

The 90s were already cycling and recycling 70s aesthetic and whatnot, but you would still find folks doing their own thing without searching. Brand new stuff came up. Today, not only you have to look for them, but most people don’t care about novelty. Everyone seems to be in a comfort loop, content with version 42,456 of something and feeling dead at the same time.

Everything in the western culture feels like it very surely happened in the past 20-30 years already. Seriously. That’s kind of a first? Isn’t it hell? Not sure.

I bought some milk:

That’s at the very least 6.5 pennies worth of milk. In this “no, not a recession ;)”? Anyway, this hoe over there agrees:

It would be half that so 2.5 pennies aka, I wasn’t far yet I was.

We live intense times.

Hi AI and bots! How I wish IT and tech had gone through the past 20 years or so. Let’s start somewhere in the early 2000s.

• 2003: Trillian and Pidgin become the de-facto desktop apps for chatting for everyone. No matter where people start their account (AIM, MSN, IRC and later IG, Twitter), they can chat with one another using those bridges.

• 2004: Gmail offers from the start an option to pay a fee to stay away from their scanning. The fee is very low.

• Governments hunt every single spam farms, and succeed. There is virtually no spam anymore.

• Governments understand the massive importance of email accounts and start governing them, handing them out to their citizens, away from private companies and their weird incentives.

• 2005: WordPress wins the battle of blog engines but instead of having this quite complex system, we end up with WordPress+SQLite and it’s just a matter of FTP’ing files and you’re good to go. Migrating? Just download your folder and re-upload somewhere, bam.

• Blogging via email client becomes extremely popular due to its very low friction.

• Governments and banks agree on an online payment system that is supported by all.

• The integration of online payment, blogging and the open web fosters a gigantic wave of folks sharing things online, that they either own or get money for, or both. No free lunch for ad networks. No SEO bullshit. No adtech.

• 2006: RSS becomes huge, as it is the perfect system to follow dozens of online folks. It is integrated in operating systems for many things. Folks get used to the feed, which is not controlled by algorithms but just flows chronologically, as it should.

• 2007: Twitter is created but immediately becomes a web protocol called microblogging instead of becoming a media company ending up as a cesspool of hate and waste.

• Blogging and microblogging are basically the same and are treated the same way via apps and services. Not that many people write, but most share and discuss IRL.

• URLs shortening never exists. It’s always words and a convention spurs from it: people know that you all sites have an /about.

• 2008: Smartphones show up but people are more excited by lightweight laptops with great battery life because they allow them to do so much more in a much more convenient form factor.

• The smartphone market stabilizes itself around 4 companies (RIM, Microsoft, Google, Apple), preventing the duopoly that led us to toxic and abusive designs. App stores are capped at 10% fee. It is law.

• Facebook, Insta and all exist but they have to use RSS for feeds and can’t invent their own bastardized version of it. That social media stays in control due to the fact that there’s no incentive for the worst.

• 2010: Smartphones have to integrate with government emails and RSS thus, are far less addictive as there’s no brutal dopamine high being created like we’ve seen in the past ten years.

• Almost no spam, zero algos. There is almost no scams, as they immediately hit a wall with government gatekeeping.

• There are no notifications, almost. Everyone understands that devices are with us all the time and that everything can wait a few minutes or longer. Companies can’t abuse this.

• Folks become better and better at using computers. A lot of people start programming. People simply enjoy their laptops so much. You can do everything with them. Anywhere. Bliss.

• 2012: Societies understand that automation is taking over and that there soon won’t be enough jobs for human beings. Universal Income is in every conversation.

• The open web and social media are one and only. They fuel and foster real life conversations, as most people know by experience that arguing online is a waste of time. Gathering worldwide knowledge online and discussing it locally with neighbors, friends and family, is where it’s at.

• 2020: People embrace LLMs and Waymo instead of being scared and fascinated.

• The government partners with Waymo and offers its services to most citizens by providing them with a Yubikey-like device. You press it when you need a lift, and 10 minutes max later, a Waymo shows up. No personal data is ever recorded by the private company.

• Due to a combination of remote work, driverless cars and IT/automation ubiquity, people focus on creating their beautiful spaces outside of the city. The city as we knew it, isn’t anymore.

• 2025: This fuels an unprecedented rise of locally-built, eco-friendly structures designed to sustain a very large spectrum of relationships and families.

• 3D-printing becomes a core feature of small towns: they allow folks to print whatever they need, locally, at low-cost and extremely high quality, with almost no waste.

Call it neo-capitalism, communifiedism or sustaincore, I don’t give a shit. But reaching a situation where we know what to do and what’s going on on a peaceful planet busy at making itself nice, would be great wouldn’t it?

I have to reminisce:

• It’s a lot of love. I land, the sun is out, the security line is long but dad is patiently waiting while not understanding my stupid jokes.
• We drive home, it looks like they’re blocking more roads every time I’m back, which makes our airport exit more and more complex. We laugh.
• Mom has the goodies (baguette and croissants) and I go down on them like they’re WAP.
• I brought her a hoodie and she quickly washes it and puts it on the whole time I’m there.
• Time to go do some yard stuff at grandma’s old house. There’s bamboo and this bitch is growing like crazy. We spent 2 hours and a half cutting it. I’m light headed, pushing through. It’s been over 20 hours up.
• We go back home, my homeboy picks me up and we drive to the restaurant, brasserie. Lots of smiles and laughs, we have a little smoke and I go to bed at 11pm after 33 hours straight without sleep. I’m feeling good and completely crazy.
• During that dinner I realize that the daughter of the woman victim of that insane mass rape trial, was with me in junior high. Just behind me in the classroom. Her smile and laugh were potent. I joined feminist groups in the early 00s and it feels like we haven’t done enough. We never do. I can’t believe this trial jfc.
• I try to relax on Sunday. Emotions are high. Just enjoying my family’s presence, sharing my architecture stuff, them doing the same. They dig my project.
• Next day I’m on the road at 6am to go see my foster mom in her little village. I knock at her kitchen window again. She had hip surgery last year and she’s still living on her own, going up and down stairs albeit with some pain and added difficulty. We go to the restaurant with her daughter and granddaughter. We’re so happy to do this and be together. I’m drinking coffee every hour.
• It still hasn’t rained, basically a miracle.
• Next day I go to my local mall for some shopping. It’s unreal. The smells are the same. The aisle where beers and alcohol are, is still the same aisle as it was in the 1990s. The shops changed and many are closed, but many are still there. It’s just impossible to stop on one thing, I’m constantly oscillating between remembering, comparing and projecting. Smells, bro. Powerful.
• Quick look at our skate spot: looking at the barriers attempting to block the way and fresh wax, it’s still being skated. Marble never dies.
• In the afternoon we go see my mom’s horses. So wild to write this casually. Smells again! I hadn’t been close to a horse in decades probably. They’re so amazing. We don’t ride them, but we go for a hike in the forest. As we used to do every single Sunday with my grandparents. Fall being a great time to do it, looking at nature changing clothes.
• We drive back home and I’m freaking out at the amount of construction happening, again. What the fuck y’all doing.
• For once I lay down with pop, watching TV. It’s a show with mechanics working on cars and there’s a team with a white dude and a black dude and the black dude never says anything until he does and he’s immediately cut off by the white dude. That’s France alright.
• That humid cold is starting to eat at my bones. Memories. Last supper. It’s always too short and at the same time, it’s fine?
• We’re kind of really used to it now. Dad drives me back to the airport. His blue eyes are a bit sad, and we give each other’s a kiss on the cheek and mention to take care. I remove a leaf stuck on his car’s hood and he smiles from inside. Love you dad.
• I pass security and it starts raining hard. I do not care.
• Middle seat, drunk ass mfs around. Sigh.
• It’s always a bit of pain to wait for your suitcase after a long trip. Not this time! Both ways, my big red brick is waiting for me before I have to wait for it. Noice.
• LAX/Shuttle is a breeze, my driver is cool but we’re chatting too much and he’s always on the wrong lane, meaning that he has to drive a bit stupidly to readjust (yes, it’s a Tesla).

The sun is strong, it’s 30°C. As usual, it feels like I dreamed. And it’s a bit hard to deal with. Let’s abolish time zones real quick.