h. Play

It’s Pride month.

Skateboarding has always been one of the most open culture out there yet, we still can do better.

I was reading a thread on queer skateboarding rising up the last few years. Folks writing and being like “bro, it was SO hard to skate in the 80s/90/00s and being LGBTQ+ like, it was impossible to be myself AND love skateboarding.”

It’s always powerful and educational to read about someone in pain with something you take for granted.

Skateboarding is a culture that still struggles so much to include women. We need more effort.

So there’s There Skateboards and they have released a great full-length video this year:

Gathering people around something they love while simply using the space around you? That’s beautiful and peak humanity, in a way.

If you want to read more about non-traditional skateboarding stories, check out Quell Magazine’s archives (and hopefully they get back on publishing soon).

And go. Skate. No. Matter. What.

I’ll say this about IE11: it was the best web reading experience I’ve ever had. All that was needed is Ublock Origin. Everything else was just fine. Heavy on privacy –no JS-, excellent rendering. Bliss.

IE innovated a lot at first (even I didn’t know it was that much). It’s interesting how those facts hurt the narrative that MS is bad, as if you couldn’t possibly be “bad” while making good products, which happens all the time in many fields.

The problem now, is that we have one single browser engine controlled by one single company.

Good job, everyone. We just achieved what we didn’t want to happen. Sigh.

“Nothing is intolerable until an alternative exists, if only as a dream. When Maryam, pregnant with Omar, had fled the Soviets, the limits of her horizon were Pakistan and Iran. Now her children were linked to a diaspora that stretched from Long Island to Melbourne, and the screens in their pockets brought them images of how life could be elsewhere.”

The Naked Don’t Fear The Water by Matthieu Aikins

Super intense and eye-opening book. Read it, and acquire perspective.

It was a classic TV production day. I had picked up talent in LA and drove down to San Diego for the show. Production is always looking to cut expenses so I was paying attention to the expenses I was making for this dude.

Upon our arrival, we are early. He asks for Starbucks. This is the second time.

My manager is in my walkie like “get him a latte” and I answer, a bit preoccupied for the budget, “HE ALREADY HAD A SKINNY SOY LATTE”. And get it anyway, of course.

Later that day I go back to HQ and my managers have blurry eyes. They tell me that they hadn’t been able to stop laughing about me telling them that the dude had already gotten his caffeinated beverage.

Anyway. I still can hear myself, frustrated, walking down a big hall, panting and talking about refusing someone a skinny soy latte.

I mean, I wasn’t wrong.

60s apartments and homes.

70s freedom.

80s imagination.

90s connection.

00s technology.

10s fun.

All wrapped into one 20s package. Let me sudo install it, please.

Seeing gas at $6.79

Thinking Rafael Nadal won a good seven French open when it’s actually thirteen

Half the year of 2022 is gone and it’s basically Christmas already

Derrick White going 2/10 all season but it’s the Finals and you need him to hit 3 difficult shots and he will swish those

Social media from afar

Stay safe y’all.

The death line up of A’ja Wilson, Jackie Young, Kelsey Plum, Dearica Hamby and Chelsea Gray is lethal. They are starting the season 9-1, which is pretty good.

They can all create their shots, they can all shoot from anywhere, they’re super quick. A nightmare for other teams.

What’s so great about this team’s season is their new coach, Becky Hammon. She’s from the Spurs galaxy and as you might know, the Spurs have basketball culture like almost no other franchise.

It’s so good to see Becky thrive in the WNBA, after not getting the job in the NBA despite her qualifications.

I can already see her influence with the heavy passing and running going on for the Aces.

Let’s go!

Okay, I found this gem of a YouTube channel, about John Lautner’s houses.

The narrator and creator of those videos is a Dutch guy with talent, drawing floor plans and foundations and doing guided tours of the famous architect’s output.

It is fantastic, full of facts and smart assumptions. I knew 90% of it and still learned great things. For instance, I didn’t know that Silvertop was the first house with an infinity pool in the world.

I hadn’t really realized that John Lautner really was into architectural challenges, choosing hard sites to build the most amazing structures.

And how much he broke the box. We live in square boxes and pretty much none of his work resembles anything boxy. You change an angle from 90 to 110 degrees and your brain breathes. So dope.

Always pulling people to Nature, and using technology to alleviate issues and not for the sake of said technology.

That’s a design stance that is quite timeless and that I can follow.

I want non-boxy homes for all. Period.

(I visited the Sheats-Goldstein house a couple times, it’s mine now; The Wolff house too. And Arango, you will be mine at some point as well, I didn’t make the rules)