h. Play

On June 22nd sometime in the past, I was born in Paris and given the name Harold.

On June 22nd today, I officially became a US citizen in Los Angeles. 22/22.

While waiting in line for security, it started raining. It hasn’t rained in LA in months and the heavy humidity in the air felt like a perfectly rendered Parisian summer.

It’s amazing, weight lifting off my shoulders. I feel free, ready. Next plateau, let’s GOOOO.

It’s fucking emotional right now.

Why Phoenix Suns star Deandre Ayton can’t live without video games.

Bro, everyone online jokes that you look 53 while you’re actually 23. It’s because you don’t sleep. Go to sleep, regenerate your cells. Focus on your main job. All that energy spent on trash talking online? Keep it. Channel it.

And then go win a title with the Spurs. I’m just sayin’!

I was looking at Pixar movies because I haven’t watched one in a million years.

I saw The Incredible 2 and didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. But it’s just me, right?

Well, looking at the box office, it seems like Pixar is doing terribly these days:

First four Pixar movies cost $355M and brought in…$1.8B.

Last four Pixar movies cost  $700M and brought in…$364M.

That’s pretty much horrendous. Disney could close Pixar really quickly at this pace.

Things are super fragile in creative productions. It’s all about projects and teams. Money is important but it’s not everything.

Pixar has had issues with its management and parent company Disney for over a decade, for what I see online. So it’s not a surprise that movies are impacted. And yes, competition from Netflix to Fortnite.

This CGI animation, visual effects West coast world—ILM were so big in my teenage mind. I hope they can turn it around.

3D animation is the most liberating medium ever made.

Well, I don’t think she would get sponsored by anyone.

Nice, unique fit though.

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.