h. Play

USB-A is BAE

“The Hook with sites like Reddit, HN, etc is that they ARE addictive. Actually addictive in the sense of gambling. In gambling addiction the gamblers aren’t addicted to winning, they are addicted to losing, or "almost winning". Now if they never ever won the addiction wouldn’t form. If they ALWAYS won the addiction also wouldn’t form.

The old thing was email that people were addicted to checking because you MIGHT get an interesting email. It’s the same way with training a dog. You don’t always give them a treat for behavior. If you only randomly give them a treat, they are more likely to perform the behavior because they don’t want to miss the reward. If they know they will get the reward then they know the exact opportunity cost and can weigh that against performing the behavior.

That’s how social media and more specifically sites like reddit and HN are addictive.”

The gambling era. It is absolutely everywhere:

• A Dutch court just allowed lootboxes in FIFA

• All US States but six, allow sports betting now (It used to be only Nevada)

• In 2021, US casinos had their best year ever ($53B profit)

• Unvaccinated, maskless people. That’s pure gambling

• Notifications on our devices are acting like lootboxes

• All social media, pushing us to gamble in many ways

In a world that makes less and less sense, it does make sense that people straight up throw spaghetti on the wall to see if those stick.

What bothers me is that the spread of gambling normalizes impulsivity and makes it part of life just like a 7/11 at the corner of a street is. It makes poor control of oneself an integral part of being, as if it was the answer to living a good life. Kids growing up with this paradigm… I don’t think they will ever be happy about anything. They will gamble for more, as this is what they know. This is not really something good.

“I think it is a learning mechanism. The real world is very deterministic, if a process has seemingly random outcomes then most likely there is something about it you don’t understand, so you repeat it over and over trying to make connections to understand why the different outcomes happens.

You can see this a lot in gambling addicts trying to find different ways to beat the system etc, trying to predict which number will appear (even though it isn’t possible) and so on. Our brains just aren’t made to deal with lotteries since lotteries isn’t a thing found in nature. Some things look like lotteries, some nuts might be bad after you open them so was a waste of time, but then you open many nuts and think hard trying to predict which nuts will be bad, and then you no longer need to open the bad ones saving you lots of work. But the artificial nuts are just random, there is no system to solve, so people just get stuck.”

Would gambling be a learning mechanism hack destined to make us lose the plot about life in general? It could be the case. I mean, it’s effective. People keep playing.

Personally, I have never felt the need to gamble. I blame my adoption for that; it made me fully aware out of the womb almost, of what “odds” are and how being a bit lucky, means that you don’t overplay.

I also learned that no matter what, the house always wins.

Head lettuce was 69cts to 99cts. It’s now $2.59. I saw gas in West LA at $6.79 yesterday.

I work three jobs and can barely hold myself together.

South Korea had around 8,000 deaths from COVID since the beginning. They just got 2,000 new deaths in the last month, after relaxing all precautions.

Here in the US, we’re still over 10K deaths a week. That’s before the mask mandates disappear totally.

It must be wild to be Russian and against Putin since the beginning. Witnessing the West embrace him for twenty years, trying to survive in this crazy giant country by doing a lot of work online, and losing it all in ten days after every single western company stopped being active there. Confusion. Anger.

Meanwhile, we’re still importing Russian gas. And while the western media pokes fun at the Russians, it looks like they are moving fast and steady.

Europe. It’s lost the UK and now France and Germany are as awkward as ever while Germany is boosting its defense by the most ever since WWII. The rest of Europe has barely any power over European decisions, and it shows. But they know how hard it was to get into the EU –Greece remembers- and now they get to witness Ukraine, Moldavia and Bulgaria get on the VIP list, maybe about to get into the EU through a fast lane. Confusion. Anger.

It’s hot.

My booster shot hitting my body like

I will sleep tonight. I sure will.

There’s tons of hot takes about the Lakers, probably.

But the main lesson is very simple: basketball is a team sport, and the bigger, stronger the team, the better.

My Spurs are tasting blood, losing close games or winning with poise. They’re not doing so well but the team spirit is alive. It’s visible from YouTube highlights.

The Clippers have been phenomenal. Winning a back to back game down 30 points on the road? They did that. With basically their third unit. That’s a deep team. They hustle, play hard, progress.

The Lakers are a bunch of individuals making way too much money.

I still can’t wrap my head around what’s going on over there. The West acting like we didn’t welcome Putin at every opportunity since he came out of Russia lol.

It must be wild in those darknet/hacker/nsa streets right now.

This morning I was at the French embassy, reminding me that I was technically in France, reminding me of borders and stuff. When you become international, borders make even less sense. So war for territory? Just visit, bro.

We are so inter-dependent. Ubisoft having studios in Ukraine for instance. If aliens exist, they must be rolling on the floor right now. “those animals don’t even realize that they’re shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, these mfs have NO memory LMAOOO”

It’s really harsh to experience how progress is so not linear. We get apartheid and the Berlin wall out, next second we have 20 years of occupation in Afghanistan while the Queen, Occupation OG #1 is still here!

I just read this headline:

“The US Space Force plans to start patrolling the area around the Moon”

For what, skaters using the parking lot? WHAT IS GOING ON

In 2020 my neighbor across the street had a baby. He would go out in the morning with his son in his arms. Then the baby was in a stroller. By the end of the year, the baby was walking.

This man never looked away from his phone. Pretty much the whole time.

I keep being horrified by the memory. That first year of development in a child is so freaking amazing, unique and short. I’m mad at that man and engineers crafting that pull to scroll. We came to accept the neck-down-the-phone behavior and that was a wrap.

There’s no presence anymore.