h. Play

Politics are so insane, surreal and awful that it’s not possible to say anything interesting about it these days.

It’s incomprehensible.

This is a magical place to me.

32 hours of travel, 10 hours on freeways over 5 days. Family, friends, rain and mosquitoes.

• There’s always apprehension before a long ass flight across half the planet.
• And yet it really feels like the bus to me. As I said before, same folks, same gates, same planes.
• I end up having 3 seats to myself while being on the window side. Bliss.
• Always a treat to look outside and see the US ground.
• Then it’s Canada at night and then it’s Europe in the morning, with its rugs of clouds. You can’t see the ground, most of the time.
• I land in the rain. Not sure why I’m disappointed and annoyed, this is on-brand.
• Still, it’s July and I wanted to land in the sun, goddamn. It was 35°C/95°F for the past 3 weeks.
• Jetlag, chocolate croissant and coffee, hello y’all!
• Not cooking and having constant great food in my mouth is the vacation.
• It’s raining in the afternoon. Not all the time, but not a little bit either. It is pouring. Orages.
• I catch up with my friend A. who I haven’t seen in 10+ years. Dining at my favorite brasserie.
• I take public transportation and giggle at how I’m not missing that shit at all. So much waiting.
• People either smell good (perfume) or bad (sweat) in Paris. In LA it’s more like neutral (clean).
• We take off the next day for family reunion, taking turns on the freeway.
• Our AirBnB is cool af, we’ve been there before. So good to see my sister.
• We eat. We drink. We laugh. They go to bed. I stay up.
• Rum shots with my cousins. I walk back to the AirBnB with the stars and an immense dark sky.
• Amber lights in the background from the little village out there. We need to get back to those in America. The high security prison “public” lights have to go.
• Next day we’re partying, tongues are unknotting, and some mild passive aggressiveness shows up.
• Nothing beats 60 years of marriage though. We’re all happy to be there and hugs and smiles are flying left and right.
• It’s the next day already and I have to leave to rejoin my foster family, my second family, the first one timeline-wise.
• Freeway, fast, Playboi Carti, on repeat.
• I see my foster mom who’s been in bad shape this year. Well, she’s not too bad! 88. Her smile, her voice and her laughter are still as contagious and strong as before. She has pictures of all her kids, grandkids, and I on top of her furniture in the dining room.
• I can’t stay long as I have a few more hours to drive to my parents’ new home they’re building.
• I arrive in the super dark, stormy weather that makes you frown unconsciously.
• My sister gives me my birthday present from a couple years ago: a custom skateboard! She made the art. It is absolutely gorgeous. I’m not sure I want to tailslide it.
• We leave the next morning to get back to our Parisian suburbs. The pastries are hitting hard.
• Tiger mosquitoes as well. Fuck those! In 20mn I get 3 bites, kill one on my dad’s ankle and a couple trying to land on me. They’re relentless, active during the day. Wtf.
• Andouillette for lunch (smells like armpits, doesn’t taste like armpits). So happy.
• I drive to the store to get all the goodies: French salt, French cookies. I forget mustard.
• Time to go back home. Dad’s doing great at 75. I cherish our eyes making contact while we smile confidently when he drops me off. See you soon, tall fella.
• I transition back to being an American at the airport. After 5 days, it feels good not to have to translate nothin’ in my head.
• My driver back to the crib is using a Tesla car. Those cars are terrible inside. My ’99 Suzuki has seats more comfortable than this pretentious BS.
• I chop it up real quick with my brother and the dream vibe starts.
• I’m in the gorgeous, L.A. backyard setting with diverse plants and hummingbirds. I’m on the swing, recharging my batteries with the sun on my naked back and some sirens in the distant background.
• I’m sad. I’m happy. I’m thankful. I’m frustrated. I’m impatient. Did I dream all of this? I know there are photos.
• It’s been a couple days and my suitcase is still 50% full, laying on the floor.

Back to work.

Thinking a lot about that aspect of life. We like to act like we’re not alone in this world, but we kind of are. No matter what.

We are born alone and we will die alone.

No status prevents your from being alone.

Will Smith, despite his superstar status, is alone. My foster mom, despite her numerous children and grandchildren and I, is alone facing difficulties to move around her house. My cousin, despite her husband and family support, is alone facing cancer and biopsies. A skateboarder, despite his homies and words of encouragements, is alone in his own head when trying to land a trick.

It’s a paradox. We are together and can’t live alone. But we’re also not together and are facing things by ourselves, all the time.

AI doesn’t need to make money because AI is like dams: they cost enormous amounts of money, barely make any money back, and they just exist.

Once you’re navigating Billions daily (billions of GPUs, billions of customers, billions of cubic water, billions of dollars), the old revenue/costs == profit doesn’t really apply.

Once you’re in billions, you’re big enough to do whatever you want. Amazon, Netflix and Meta show it daily. They lose enormous amounts of money, make some back, invest into some stuff that sometimes makes 20X the money they spent (Meta bought Insta for $1B; Insta makes $20B annually off of selling your info now), it doesn’t really matter. Netflix can have a $50M show that generates 300 views, they do not care. Here’s more money for you to make another one.

AI is an economic moat which can work, learn and improve literally 24/7. It is the absolute perfect slave. There’s no need for a business model.

We, AI and our current world are passed that. People keep trying to reason within the capitalist framework on how AI can fit, this is futile. It doesn’t need this.

Which is why I keep slamming that we need UBI and earth-friendly homes. That’s the truest understanding here.

It synthesizes knowledge. It approximates. It emulates. It models.

Synthesizers are not new! We’ve been using them in music for 50 years. When they appeared, they seemed very odd: you’re telling me that this machine simulates notes and tones? They’re not actually created by air and real world physical friction? Gross! Also what’s the point??

50 years later most people have cried over music made on synthesizers. Most hits of the past 30 years have been made with synthesizers. Many of them entirely made with synthesizers. Some wonderful music has been made with synthesizers.

AI is also an automation tool. Do you know what we automated right quick? Piano playing.

Back in the days, not long after the end of slavery, thousands of musicians were making a living playing the piano in bars. The first self-playing piano was a reality by 1896. 129 years ago.

Since then we invented the jukebox and DJs. Do you know how many musicians playing instruments with their hands and souls have had their musician career automated by technology? A huge number over a hundred years. Imagine the city, society, if we had had musicians everywhere. A lot of things might have been smoother and flowing better, and there would be way less pretending (you can’t fake playing an instrument well), I think.

My point is: music and audio showed the future decades ago. And we will survive this AI thing too.

We need UBI though. Lock the fuck in on that, folks. We are in post-work society.

Movie poster:

Me to the poster:

I’m Done With Social Media

RSS and blogging are the best, always have been!

It is quite far. It is pretty awesome. I didn’t need no GPS. That’s how much I’ve had it in mind.

Looking at the site and thinking about tackling construction of a home feels daunting. But also very much exciting. Especially if pre-fab and assembled onsite as I plan to do. Let’s Fucking Go!!!

So I’ve been mentally imagining life over there for the past couple days. Commute. Logistics. Potential worst case scenarios.

Some caveats. But some long-term benefits too.

It is a privilege. A pilgrimage for me at this point. It goes like this:

It is very, very quiet. No cars. Just the sound of the wind. I am walking.

Extremely luscious jungle on a hill at the end of a very sinuous road. First you enter the courtyard and there’s that:

A perfect hoop within a perfect jungle. Next to it is a small, low-rise structure, the house itself:

You enter by the intriguing, diagonally cut wall on the left by the white car (note the diagonal continues in metal in the ground and joins a water drainage grille not on the picture.). And then you meet him, John Lautner:

A statue by a French artist. Perfect landscaping, always. Then you walk over a koi pond and you either see the dining/kitchen to the right:

Or you go straight and sit down in the quite famous living room:

No air conditioning. No fan. Gentle breeze from open glass doors. Perfect temperature. Birds and soft sound of water running from the fountain feeding the pond. The living room continues outside:

The sun is warm. The view is this:

Just breeze, silence and soft chatter in the back. No right angles, just diagonals, home comfort and luxuriant nature. There’s something so liberating yet so anchoring. It’s absurdly powerful to me. Flowing between rooms and spaces that are not square? You have to experience it to understand. It feels so good.

This is the second pool built recently and there’s a new sculpture garden going on down the jungle on the steep side of the hill.

The point is not that this house is outstanding, it is that outside of a few fancy things it’s just a matter of good design and taste. Plenty of custom things (diagonal wood flooring following the slope, for instance) can be done by owners themselves. Actually, the few hundreds mini-skylights on the concrete roof were made by one of the owner’s children! Planting plants and watering them is something anyone can do.

Built-ins and minimalism work well together, stand the test of time and this house is the best representation of that. The original house is small by today’s “standards” but it is a perfect size for human life.

I am fortunate to be in the city where this home exists and that I know some people. This house is still inspiring me and I’ll be back as many times as I can. Because every single time, I see new detail and under breath I’m like “gatdaaamn they carefully thought about this didn’t they”