h. Play

Sorry, I got some racial stuff to put out.

Ta-nehisi’s article is amazing and good and powerful and real. But,

An unsegregated America might see poverty spread across the country, with no particular bias toward skin color.

I don’t believe this would happen. In some ways, segregation is the only way for communities to live together without ending up killing or ignoring each other. If racism exists and has made a community stronger than the other, which is the case across all multiracial societies and nations, the absence of segregation will not change anything. Segregation is one solution.

There is no segregation à la Chicago (you can replace that city with any multicultural US city; people try to make it like it’s just a local problem) in France. But racism is alive and the same terrible abuses happen, just at an atomic, individual level.

Which is very nasty. No one knows anything. Black people get robbed of rights thinking they’re lucky. There is no black community, black people in France are just fishes getting caught in nets they don’t understand. The only way to make it for a black man in Europe is to forget about yourself, your feelings, and coon and coon and coon. It’s one solution.

I don’t think anything will change at this point. White people, even the most against racism profit from racism, it is just a fact of living in a society all together. So you guys will never step up on this issue, you’d rather step up for animal rights. Those will not make you lose or pay anything.

Add the fact that global capitalism makes it really hard to anyone, if you try to tell struggling white people that they need to share because of centuries of abuse on black people, they will certainly not give a single fuck and will get mad (although they should get mad at questionable billionaires more me think), which is what is happening a bit everywhere.

Guilt is the least-efficient societal engine.

Re tech companies diversity and "meritocracy". Guys, it’s all about culture and ethnocentrism.

At equal skills set and experience if the team hiring loves indie rock, between a candidate that listens to Radiohead and another one that listens to The Whispers, the former has way more chances to get hired. It’s called affinities. You heard about bromance right?

There are black people in tech, they just move on to other careers once they see that they will be in a corner all their lives at best, barely surviving and taking so much shit at worst. Fourteen years in a 1.5% black field, I know. It is hard. And I only survive because I’ve been living with white people all my life, otherwise I would have quit, unable to fit in.

Every time I hear a white person being like, “dude, I was the only white person for like an hour!” I smile and feel insanely strong before realizing that my resilience just doesn’t matter and is not valued at all. How come? It means I have integrated many cultural codes and experienced which ones are universal, isn’t that valuable? It is, not for most white people in power unfortunately.

White tech guys never see diversity as an opportunity to grow they see that as an annoying deal breaker, unless you’re Asian or have tits or both. White guys are down with Asians and breasts, that’s about the only diversity they genuinely embrace. And that’s the problem.

It’s about being threatened, I think. For some reason, sharing power and money with black and brown people makes so many white people and especially white guys super sweaty and uneasy. I don’t know if it’s because of guilt, because for instance most drugs are used by white people but black people go to jail way more for that than any other ethnicity. Maybe it’s because of the prison system that put hundreds of thousands of black men behind heavy walls or maybe because some tech companies owe much to black people (EA and sports games, Google and its cheap ass Android tablets), I don’t know.

Maybe that too.

It is annoying though. Especially with all that BS about “think different”, “think out of the box” ‘”yay generalists” mantras, how are you supposed to think out of that white box when you all are the same? You can’t and I think it’s one of the main reason why tech is stagnating. Also, we’re supposed to be smart by now, as a species. Why do I have to explain this? Because of comments. Which make me think of that:

White people searching for a job: “but I’m more than just ticking all the boxes on a job listing!”

White people on lack of diversity at Google: “they should tick all the boxes, period.”

Yeah, already in the middle of the third but a lot happened. That second week was a lot of stress and pain, even though I was living mostly alone in an awesome 550 meter square loft downtown LA, right by the LA Game Space. So many things done and cancelled and postponed. Hustle. Humiliation. Charm. Friends and family backing me up, damn it feels good.

I just love this city, that hot concrete slabs kingdom filled with delicious things and people. You have to search for them, to know them. I have found and met great people and it’s only the beginning. Thankful.

Hitting the 10 West for new adventures. Thanks for your kindness, DTLA.

I have no idea how to fix it. I’m hoping you’ll tell me how to fix it. But we should do something to fix it. We can try a hundred different things. You people are designers; treat it as a design problem! How do we change this industry to make it wonderful again? How do we build an Internet we’re not ashamed of?

Great talk of what is going on with technology today.

I think saying we have no idea how to fix it is bullshit. We know what works or what needs to be done. Let’s take an example. Rian writes:

So, sure. Let’s continue to publish on our own sites, and shout loudly about the virtues of doing so. But let’s not make people feel like unwanted newbies when they dream up a different web. We need them as much as they need us.

What we need is way, way, simpler tools for people to self-publish, exist, control and connect from their own web. People suck at computers and it’s OK because computers suck too. So developers, there’s a problem to solve right here.

WHERE ARE THOSE DAMN TOOLS. Developers don’t think about empowering people anymore that was the 90s, when programmers had grown up in the 70s, flower power and shit. Developers today are kind of egoistic greedy dicks, I’m sorry.

Facebook should be subscription based and not ad based. No algo. Users have full control. Mark you’d still be a billionaire and people would love you, isn’t that better?

Twitter should have gone the WordPress way and we all know it (the way they treated their ecosystem that made them what they are? So gross).

To register a domain name and linking a website, editing it, adding stuff to it should be as easy as using mobile apps or linking contacts on a windows phone. Mobile apps are popular because that’s the extent of what people can do with computers. It has nothing to do with mobility, almost.

RSS, torrent technologies, micro transactions, should be flourishing and be all the rage because they are changing the world and the internet, making us stronger. Instead, Snapchat and Pinterest.

Any service that we use everyday or very regularly shouldn’t be ad based, store our activity forever or fuck content providers over yes I’m looking at you, music streaming services.

We know what to do, we know what we should have done. It’s so annoying to witness.

Tour guide: “And what happened in 29?”

Students: “…”

Me, immediately: “Financial crisis…”

I know I’m older than you but damn, it’s your country you guys. Anyway, here’s the house’s story according to the website:

Seventy-five years ago, in Los Angeles, with a no-interest loan from Dutch philanthropist Dr CH Van Der Leeuw, Viennese-American architect Richard Neutra built a radical "glass house" with rooftop and balcony gardens on Silverlake Boulevard. He called it the VDL Research house, after his benefactor. It was designed to accommodate his office and two families on a small 60 x 70 foot lot.

Maybe a bit small for two families but it’s interesting to me to look at a modest modern house, there are usually such gargantuan palaces. The layout is very interesting, maybe a bit too many little corridors on the right. Despite a busy Silver Lake Blvd, it is very calm in the back (best acoustic shield is stuff + air + stuff + air, works every time).

There’s a lot of different textures and colors and material inside even though you don’t notice it at first. It must be a nightmare to maintain but it does add to the charm quite a bit (thinking about that tiled door that disappears into the wall). The built-in design is the same, it adds so much to the tightness and neatness but have you ever tried to fix a wall mount toilet? It’s horrible. The challenge is really to find a good balance and we should be able to achieve that with today’s technology. Nevertheless, 75 years ago Neutra was at the top of tech and beyond (the motorized panes that you see on the right move accordingly to the sun).

I wanted to see what a lot of glass does when you’re behind it, inside and of course it was quite hot but, we were like 30 people in small rooms with the 11am sun on us. And most of the glass can slide open to let the air come in so, it’s not that hot. Plus in winter in Cali? Yummy.

Tour guides were super cool and chill even though the older lady gave me that “nigga, you are lost” look at first but once she saw how excited I was and that I knew my shit, I was allowed to not take my shoes off, ha!

You see that Cantilevered roof? The edge is probably made of at least six different material. If not ten.

It is a lovely place. So zen. Well, one LA modern house visited, 7,654 to go.

Monday night I was in the NoHo Art District, listening to some French Opera, watching a magician, short movies and beautiful pictures.

Tuesday morning, making my lungs feel like cardboard walking through melting downtown Burbank.Tuesday night I was out eating ridiculously good Juicy Pork dumplings at Din Tai Fung. Thank you so much, Jim.

Wednesday morning I was hiking. In the afternoon I had an interview. Wednesday night after some lovely Vietnamese food I was on the move again. Daniel and Melanie, I love you so much.

Thursday morning I was showing my one time German roommate Sandra Silver Lake. Thursday afternoon, shopping the area before chilling in Griffith Park. 40°C. Thursday night Banh Mi in Atwater looking at this wonderful sky. Also, 1st quarter of NBA playoffs.

Friday morning, on the move. You’re the man, Brandon. Bye Burbank, hi Metrolink, hello downtown LA. Hello homeless people, 90% of you being black. I’m sitting at Union Station, pondering over and over.

Saturday morning. in Silver Lake to contemplate Neutra’s VDL house, very inspiring. Saturday afternoon oh god very soul and heart crushing.

I wish somebody was dead and somebody else wasn’t, it would have changed everything about my now. Maybe her brother would have had the words to convince her to wait a bit, maybe I could have told him. Maybe everything would be different. For the life of me I can’t see how I could have done what I did and am doing differently trying to make shit work with insane patience and control, costing me near everything. I can’t get over that fact and being ice burned to the inner core emotionally really, really doesn’t help.

Time for anger.

I was listening to that song when I embarked my SuperShuttle at 10:20pm, after 11 hours in the sky.

We leave LAX, I look at the buildings, Square Enix, DirecTV. We hit the famous ramp that makes you overlook downtown. I smile, closing my eyes and feeling the cool breeze from the open window. Hi, convention center! Now we are heading to the North, we pass that bridge that I did so many times on my bike, looking down at the freeway. Dodger Stadium, 2 miles. On my way to Burbank/Glendale. Modern architecture here and there, my eyes catching them as much as I can while the woman in the back wonders “’the fuck is he looking at outside?”. A young couple is kissing on a bench in front of a Del Taco. 24 hour CVS drive thru pharmacy, Ha! I have arrived. My host is so good to me. I can’t sleep, I much prefer landing in the afternoon, my body doesn’t have the time to understand that it just spent half a day in the air.

My body is hard. I literally moved tons and tons over the past six months. Last week alone, took my old mattress down, got the new one up, alone. Moved my parents’ kitchen to my grandma’s house, mostly alone. Unmounted my home studio, moved all the heavy bags of dirt from the attic. When I take my heavy suitcase in the car mom is like, “you’re out of breath!” and I kind of wanted to tell her, “bitch, when was the last time you did any heavy lifting on your own?” but that’s rude. I know she didn’t mean anything. That’s my weird family, three days before leaving mom didn’t know that dad couldn’t give me a lift. They all live in the same house but I swear, it’s like they aren’t. Meanwhile I make sure to do as much as I can to help them out, like waking up early on Sundays to paint some stuff because they can only complain about it, even though my sister, dad or mom could have done it. Now it’s done, BAM thanks Harold. I love fixing stuff. I just love tightness. I love caring and see that everything in my reach is all right and if not, that I can change that.

I’m dreaming of going to LAX in a couple of years and pick up anyone who would come to visit me and say to them, “It’s so good to see you! Welcome to Los Angeles”.

We don’t know what to do with my grandmother’s house. My grandmother is totally alive, waiting in her retirement home for death to scoop her up and of course, it’s out of question to touch anything in her crib. My mom doesn’t care about that house (my grandmother working, a nanny raised my mom there). I have great memories from there.

The house is aging and starting to cost money –it’s a miracle it didn’t start earlier- and of course, I’m going to have to go sometime this week there to fix some shit. It never ends.

It seems obvious to sell it or rent it. Sell the furniture we don’t want, share the money, that could cover some down payment for some land in California I DON’T KNOW, stuff. Because it’s just property that my grandma will never see again and that we’re dealing with while we don’t care, it’s ridiculous. Of course, we will wait. Morally, ethically and respectfully understandable but terribly inefficient and pointless. 

Property. It’s a weird thing. You will not go away with it. It stays here. So you should share, that’s what I’ll try to remember if I end up in her situation. I’d rather be in the situation of dying in my beloved home, happy, though. Kids would burn my skeleton, sell the house or live in it because it will be the shit, I don’t care. I’ll be gone and free from that madness that property is.

It’s a deep blog post.

#6 is the tough one for me because I haven’t lost and I’m not completely wiped out but damn I feel/felt the heat for the past few years.

#9 is something I use all the time when in a game design mood. Because you can do absolutely everything with your game and so many things can sound cool at first but suck after a month of building them, weeding out all the bad ideas first makes sense. Then you have an idea that whatever you do to it, still works. That’s the one.

#10 is Louis CK’s skit on how older people are smarter. It doesn’t mean they’re always right but they are worth listening and pondering. Which is hard because respect is often not mutual.

#7, I think about it so that I don’t go into a depression loop when I read stats like this and so much more awful reality.

#5 #3 and #4, design principles when producing audio and music.

#2, how I managed my computers through the years. I use Windows, never had any automatic backup and never lost anything so I guess it works. Just copy paste your stuff to another hard drive, those are cheap.

#1 and #8, my life.