h. Play

I live in L.A. and the weather has been straight up bizarre this year.

Lots of forms to fill out.

Rollin

They are, obviously, hatin

I’ve been getting more and more into a couple materials in construction:

Corten Steel

There’s something very static yet actively protective about it. I love the colors and tones varying with time and rust patterns. Earthy. And the best thing about weathering steel is the zero to low maintenance of it (in a desert climate, it doesn’t do so well in humid settings).

Polycarbonate

Its properties of being able to let the light in while blocking the light out, is amazing. Privacy, yet openness. I wouldn’t use that for a house, but for a workshop? Absolutely. Working with natural light while being inside is a huge plus.

I’d use corten steel on a house, here and there, as an accent and additional, external protective layer. If I was ending up in the desert desert though, I would use it more, like my dude Rick Joy.

People ask me what I think about the rather big strike in Hollywood.

I don’t think much about it. It feels like it should have happened when streaming took off, over ten years ago. When the crews, the workers were in demand and could have re-negotiated those rights because they had leverage then.

But everyone believed that they would make it, move to West Ho, work for Netflix, and “get rich” in overpopulated and temporary creative fields.

Those contracts were bad then, and now they’re rotten. CEOs still make that much more than everyone else but now everyone is broke, tired and mad. Hence strikes.

Solution? Again, UBI.

L stands for Living room, D for Dinning room and K for Kitchen.

Still going through thousands of architectural layouts from all over the world and through time.

Historically, the three of them were separated but as we went through time, they started to blur.

First L and D kind of merged because we like to have food where we live. Having separate rooms didn’t make sense anymore. And we had given up on maids as well.

Then K slowly merged with the other two thanks to “islands” and “bars”. Again, it totally makes sense: we’re together, we like having food together and we can do it all in one room with variations of space.

Technology enters the chat.

I’m realizing right now designing my kitchen of the future that thanks to technological innovation, the kitchen is disappearing. An air fryer/pressure cooker combo, an electric kettle and a couple induction cooktops —three devices, allow you to make quickly and effortlessly all the meals in the world. Outside of the mandatory fridge, the kitchen is more and more reduced to a flat surface to prepare food, and a sink.

L/D/k I guess. Financially and layout-wise, this is great.

Sleep deprivation due to moronic tenant is beating my ass my right now.

Time to mtfo.

I spent summer going through it! I hadn’t watched it since the 90s.

I remembered the song when Trunks arrives, it was dope to hear it again so long after the first time.

I had totally given up on the Cell arc, beyond stupid and not making sense at all after Freeza (robots? Really???). Listen, it made sense to go from a kid who can drill a hole in a car with a Kamehameha, to fighting a destroyer of planets. After that Cell and Buu simply don’t have the drama and sense of urgency that Freeza’s arc has. It just drags on forever and the added humor with Mr. Satan is foul to me. But OK!

The sound design triggers nostalgia. When I didn’t know how to make those sounds. Now I do! “filtered slap on a slab of meat + filtered kick drum + filtered white noise through delay and a slight synth (probably MS-20) layer with pitch-bend.” And there you have your fist impact in the enemy’s face. I wouldn’t have enough of those sound effects growing up. Big subconscious sound design career push, right there.

Even though I felt like having a wide variety of settings in hands (European, 70s 80s and 90s comic books) in my fictional worlds, Dragon Ball still brought something different and still does today. I think it’s the Big Asia’s influence designed by Akira. Brown and black bystanders, beaches with palm trees, high technology and traditions. Akira drew his inspiration from the East of this planet; Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Korea of course Japan. It is still fresh to a Westerner like me. Love that.

When it comes to the importance of RSS to me, it is moral, almost spiritual. That might sound like I’m overstating it, but hear me out.

There is lots of interesting content out there. For an individual to develop themselves, they need free reign to information. RSS allows and enables an individual’s learning about reality (on the web).

The reverse is mediated information. Corporations/governments would rather steer you to where they want you to go – to the sandboxed areas, the paddling pools of the internet. Many people think the internet is just youtube, facebook, instagram and twitter. These are social mediating platforms.

RSS is probably the most anarchic technological development of the internet we have had. More important than crypto or mobile phones. Continued unmediated access to the information you are interested in, without being distracted is what every individual should be striving for.

No wonder Google bent over backwards to try to kill it.

Truth.