318 into the simulation, out of the disinformation

January 30, 2021

File under: I don't really believe this, but some scientists do

Every once in awhile I trip out thinking the world is a simulation or I'm living in some kind of computer program. It was this kind of trip that turned into my novel Swimmer.

It usually happens when I'm leaving the studio I work in after a day of creativity. I'll walk through the hallway that leads outdoors, and I will trip out thinking I'm changing apps. I'm going from the daytime working app briefly through the outdoors app and then going into the home app.

And then every once in awhile, when I'm outside, walking on the sidewalk, which is marked with a grid, I get this same trip of being in an app. And sometimes the app gets upgraded or changed and I see the world as if it's new. Like everything is changed.

Right now this whole face mask thing is tripping me out. I feel like the app, the simulation, is about to get an upgrade. We're in this dark phase where they're tinkering with the programming, and something messed up. They had to go with blank faces for a while.

So now we have the mask but next is going to come some kind of crazy upgraded new face. A better mouth experience. I don't know.

So here's what Apple CEO Tim Cook has to say on the subject (loosely):

File under: purple vs. you

Last night as I was making dinner, Deb was reading something on the internet and said, "Maybe we should just have two countries."

That made me put down the food for a minute. I can't remember the exact words I used, but there were basically two points.

First, this whole red vs blue narrative is false. It's created by the media and people in power in order to stir up support among the little guys. Everything that we "feel" about this big national political issue, that's because we've been told to have those feelings.

(Not that racism and shit isn't happening, but why are people racist? Because we're born that way? Or because we've been fed a bunch of baloney?)

(Oh, but that baloney comes from friends and family, not the media? Uh huh. Yeah, and I didn't learn about the confederate flag from watching Dukes of Hazzard.)

Second, the scary people on the other side of the red/blue divide? That's your brother. (In Deb's case.) Do you really want your brother in another country? Are the differences between us so great that that's necessary?

The answer is clearly no. We live in SF surrounded by SF thinking and supported by SF money. He's lives in Florida, surrounded by Florida thinking and Florida money. And he's going to go to school, and get a job, and be an American, just like us. And he's going to walk around looking at the world like blue people are idiots, just the same way we think red people are idiots, but the truth is, we're both getting played.

It's the rich people, and everyone else. That's all. Everything else is just us rats fighting over their crumbs.

The squeeze that we're all feeling? That's called wealth inequality. It's what happens when you lie, and cut taxes on the wealthy, and say the money will "trickle down." It doesn't. Money trickles up. It's really the only thing in the world that rolls uphill.

File under: speaking of money

No Citadel didn't bail out the GME-indebted hedge funds and then tell Robinhood, to whom they provide 35% of their income, to shut down trading on GME. Absolutely not. No, sir. That would be, um, insider trading, wouldn't it?

Listened to this Vallejo artist who has blown up over the past couple years. Not super danceable, but I found a little spot in Mark Twain's Barbary Coast Revue for a reference.

At top, a busy corner along Page Street at the Wiggle. The picture doesn't do it justice, the intersection was busy with cyclists and runners, and the one car going through had to be super careful. It was awesome.