h. Play

Okay one last quote:

“Perhaps a third of the population of Classical Athens was enslaved; they were integral to the city-state’s economy. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing, not only necessary, but expedient, wrote Aristotle; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

Only a minority, the adult male citizens, could vote in the assembly. Just as women’s work at home gave men free time for public life, slavery provided the material basis for Athenian Democracy; the philosopher Bernard Williams argues that ancient Greeks were unable to imagine civilization without it. The effect of the necessity was, rather, he wrote, that life proceeded on the basis of slavery and left no space, effectively, for the question of its justice to be raised.”

Enslaved people and women have enabled our western opulence as much if not more than inventors.

We have a lot of enslaved-lite people now; part time gigs, warehouse madness, delivery nightmare. OnlyFans, Patreons and Substacks too I guess.

Enough money that it’s worth doing the work, not enough to keep doing it. Ad nauseam.

And women at home, still! I’m sorry y’all (not with me though, stay safe).

Sure enough, we’re in the world of machines being dedicated to us now. Right?

So if we depend on machines more and more, and we sure do, the question of justice rises and needs to be answered once and for all. Productivity’s gains since the 1970s thanks to tech have never been properly re-distributed. Let’s start there.

We can’t help ourselves through individual capitalism. Every single family in America has two or three vacuum cleaners, right? There’s nothing to buy, really. Homeless folks streaming music with ads, it’s a new world. Tech is going all in with subscriptions, leaving no space for anyone starting a business. VC money can’t just float everything up. And, the craziest think to me is how everything is so volatile: all new markets or ideas become commodities in like, 18 months these days.

Please discuss those UBI ideas with your friends and families. We need a government that makes sense and acts on that. There’s literally no other solution.

(watched without knowing a single thing about the plot or what it is about)

Brave: pretty cute.

Monsters University: good fun.

Inside Out: so original and well done. A few tears.

Finding Dory: classic.

Cars 3: global illumination is now straight up perfect.

Coco: ama-zing! Got me all in my feelings. Lots of tears at the end.

Toy Story 4: those Mission Impossible bits in the small scale world will never get old. It was great.

Pixar has the daunting task of appealing to kids, parents, non-parents, the four corners of America’s culture and the rest of the world simultaneously, keeping up with society, while technically pushing the envelope. That’s really, really hard to do.

They pull it off pretty much every single time.

I recommend.

“Kant’s vision of peace has come closest to being realized by the EU, in a form of cosmopolitanism founded on free trade. Born in 1951 as common market to unify the coal and steel industries of France and Germany—to make war materially impossible—it has since expanded from six to twenty-seven nations. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Over the past sixty years, the European project has shown that it is possible for people and nations to come together across borders, the president of the European Commission said at the ceremony. That it is possible to overcome the differences between “them” and “us.”

lmao.

Nonetheless, it was a big thing to switch to Euro, the money. All countries ditching their centuries-old money to unify? That was pretty cool to live, right before the 2000 bug.

Now Europe is more to each his own than ever, I guess.

“The Syrians complained of the others who’d crowded into Europe when the border had opened for their sake. The Afghans were bitter that the Syrians got more sympathy, when their own war had lasted decades longer, but were quick to say that Pakistanis were not real refugees. An Eritrean told me how much he resented West Africans, who weren’t escaping a dictatorship like him. And the Pakistanis and Senegalese could retort that everyone had left Turkey for the same reason: a better life in Europe.

Prejudices based on color or creed had existed back home, but in the camp they were animated by a new logic, one which justified the way of the world. The migrants were learning to see themselves through Western eyes.”

It’s a great book.

Juxtaposed to my own migration, Ukraine and its 8.4 million refugees since February, Eritrea (5,000 leaving each month), the fact that Syria and Afghanistan have never known peace ever since both my countries France and U.S. have invaded them, the 2015 Paris attacks (two attackers passed for refugees through Greece), what I read about EU-funded prisons for immigrants in North Africa…

It is a lot and it is an infernal mess.

But it’s vital to understand the world and gain some perspective around our first world problems (and why we should be able to solve them very easily and quickly, tf you mean).

I’m telling LeBron:

1. You got us a ring

2. You got us Westbrook

3. You gotta go

(it’s just business)

Because WordPress has so many nesting and sub-categories abilities, I’ve always toyed with the idea of making more categories or hashtags. #lol or #deepshowerthoughts #gamestobuy etc. Curation.

But then people only follow one thing, and miss the rest. Aka, the rest of you. AND you burn yourself out, pressed by the popular specialization.

When I started following people with RSS, it was quite on a specialized basis. When authors would talk about something else, at first, I wasn’t a fan. But then I realized that it’s actually rich.

You realize that you’re not following a topic, you’re following a person. That person is interesting for their specialty AND who they are, in a more general sense. That will also give you all kinds of insights and perspectives, fine tuning your opinion about things.

I think it’s crucial to stay connected to actual people online, and not bot farms and algorithms.

Because it’s not news, it’s people reporting. It’s not #gamedev, it’s folks coding and Perforcing and stuff.

It’s important to minimize losing connection with humanity, when using computers.

The more we specialize the more we virtualize humanity, abstracting it, and that’s usually not good in the long term. Let’s be bold; even in the short term.

Anyway don’t specialize, stay an awesome generalist who loves rabbit holes and comes back, with connected dots.

“today I smoked out of a glass pipe I made. I can’t smoke out of my level 80 night elf druid.

Nor can I combine my level 80 night elf druid with my Diamond IV rank in Halo to get a compounded return. Those two games and skills are isolated. But I can combine what I read in John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy with glass blowing to make interesting things that bring me joy (I.e. replicating experiments of John’s at home with purpose built glassware)

It’s not just production for productions sake, or production for the sake of society. It’s increasing my capacity to produce for myself. I feel like I’ve grown in a way that I can build on tomorrow after a session of practicing this class of hobby.

Maybe the distinction truly is arbitrary – but something about this path feels significantly more fulfilling the further down it I go vs. the literal years I spent in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds the potential felt roughly constant while these hobbies feel like they have an ever expanding horizon of potential.”

Well said (sorry, I often only copy the comment but those are mostly from HN).

I keep thinking of a friend who told me “well, my brother and his son have been playing Call of Duty for a decade, and there’s nothing else in their lives”.

Oof.

As great as virtual worlds are, they never compound. But everything in life does. Balance that I learned on my skateboard, is balance I use when standing on a thin beam, fixing a roof. Spices that I enjoy with a take-out meal, can be retrieved and bought at the grocery store. You get the idea.

The compounding effect is what makes life so interesting, growing, spinning. Otherwise, everything just feels flat and boring quite quickly.

Which leads me to talk about general VS special.

Social media really is destroying any kind of reason, focus and persistence. Sucking up the energy of all, like a brand new Dyson on high speed.

It’s making people loose any sense of control. Imagine Harriett reading on her phone like “bet” and then proceeding through the woods with LEDs flashing on her and a trumpet in her hand. That’s what social media is doing, switching people from being relentless and quiet to loud and scattered.

In crisis we’re supposed to move like lasagna, not like a circus.

Social media in the first place is one of the main reason for Roe vs. Wade to be overturned; petty games online for years, ending up with a party punishing the other more than believing in the decision.

Social media is cancer. The bad one.

gets confused and switches keyboard shortcuts from volume up/volume down to forward/rewind.

I am disgusted, Google.

Seth wrote:

Smart is no longer memorization. It’s not worth much.

Smart is no longer access to information. Everyone has that.

Smart is:

• Situational awareness

• Filtering information

• Troubleshooting

• Clarity of goals

• Good taste

• Empathy and compassion for others

• The ability to make decisions that further your goals

Although good taste is quite relative, the rest is solid.

Far too many people think that memorization and access to information are de facto making one smart. Nope.

Overall I think I’m doing pretty well here.