Twice Bitten, Never Shy, Hold Your Breath and Kiss the Sky

Everything just feels a little bit off.

I'm a little worn down.  I'm tired.  No, I'm more than that.  I'm exhausted.  I'm a zombie living less than an existence.  All about the $$$ and you'll see where that leads.

This is all a trap and none of it's real.  But we buy into the fantasy.  We literally buy into it.  What a strange concept. 

Do you ever regain the magic of what's lost?  I was thinking about this the other day, and I can recall things from when I was younger and easily made happy.  I remember playing pool with the other at someone else's University hall.  I played terribly, but we had a good time.  I remember being at a family friend's house in the middle of nowhere.  They had a Linux computer which I had to learn how to use.  And we found some VCDs (haha what an old format now, who remembers them!) and we watched The Lost World: Jurassic Park on a tiny monitor, sitting on the bed away.  The quality was dodgy (definitely an overseas pirated copy), and the movie is pretty average, but I loved it.  We must have started watching it at 10pm, and for kids that's pretty cool. 

Ahh what good times.  But now they're all very few and far between.

Something is really off with these blogger stats.  Why do we have so many hits from Russia, Ukraine, Chechnya, and Poland?  We have no material of any interest to people in those countries.  Something just isn't...right...But if you're here for legitimate reasons, welcome and enjoy!  I hope to visit someday.

What else is news?  I'm getting back into guitar very slowly.  Oh my god, my skills!  Where have they gone?  You really do need to practice.  Or you'll suck.  I'm learning more scales and trying to improve my theory at least. 

I'm done.

Joaquin out.

New Wave Poster Glaze

Blogger is doing some weird shit. Logged in and saw zero information against any of our posts. No views or anything. Sure that’s not right. Anyway.

Startling realisation for today: I’m concerned that my life is sliding far down the tube to resemble American beauty day by day.

What a thought.

Joaquin out.

Chuppa Chupp Buttercup

Back at the helm for a bit.

It's actually hard to get any time these days!  I just wanna blog, and like I've said before, I have some notes, but not actually the time to elucidate further and actually type this shit up.  It's a shame too, because blogging is cool, and very underrated.  Other forms of 'social' media are more aimed at instant gratification, and fakeness and acting according to other norms.  Blogging is just who you are, and people can take it or leave it.  No likes or follows or subscriptions here.

I did go a bit into the backlash against social media in the last post.  But I should provide some more detail now.  There's a fair amount of studies (and media) about social media being a contributing cause to poor mental health in young people.  I'm inclined to agree.  There's a lot of comparison and sizing up why your lives aren't like others.  I am very glad I grew up in a time before this crap.  At least I know what is and isn't normal. 

People just need to detox.  These companies don't really care about you.  If they did, they wouldn't go public, they wouldn't be trading in your data like you're a commodity.  It's a bit glib (and wrong to say), but this is the new slavery.  You provide the content and the data, they analyse it and sell it to advertisers (or just pass it on to the Government), and profit.

This year is going by way too quick!  Almost half of it gone already!  Blink and it'll be 2019.  That's our lives, gone in an instant.  Is there any relevance?

I'm trying to read more and get back into guitar.  I've lost a dreadful amount of skill unfortunately.  I used to be pretty up there with theory, but now it's pretty much back to basic and bullshit playing.  Need to remedy that ASAP.

I've seen a lot of commentary on universal salary lately.  It's a concept where the state no longer pays out welfare, and instead, everyone is guaranteed a certain salary.  This is great in theory, as there is the possibility for maintaining some work-life balance, but this is inherently incompatible with free market capitalism (and insane right wingers who benefit from the system despite not working hard, and will defend it, no matter the cost).

Think about it this way, if you want to generate the best possible return, you would factor in fixed costs.  If you knew everyone had an additional 10k up their sleeves, wouldn't you increase your prices accordingly?  Everything in society would increase in price accordingly.  And who profits?  The same bastards profiting now.  It's just another way of distributing wealth in the same inequitable ways, just with the fallacy that it's going to middle income/low income earners.

The system only works with price regulation, and price regulation is failing in every market in the West.  Nothing is affordable unless you are upwardly mobile middle-class.  This system is failing.

The system needs to be destroyed.

Joaquin out.

For the waste of our lives...

We all end up in the same place anyway.

It will be an effort to try to blog a bit more often than I was before anyway.  Luckily, I have had a few blognotes to get through - even though I don't seem to have a file for them on my computer anymore.  Instead, I've just been e-mailing ideas to myself.

What I'm annoyed about these days is the lack of a proper blog client for ios.  I've tried android and it sucked, so I'm back using a decent system.  But now there's no more blogger app, and blogging through the chrome app suckssssss.  Why make things harder?  It's not fun to pay for an app and then have it disappear a few years later.  Oh well, that's life.

In terms of social media, it's a funny thing.  Blogger used to be huge.  Now people are on tumblr, instagram, and vlogging through youtube.  Blogging in this form is a lost art I guess.  People have no patience for reading and have to interact through the world with no imagination anymore.

Social media as a whole is a bad thing.  The instant comparison and focus on externalities - other people's lives, has made people more obsessed with what they don't have and what they can get, they have lost sight of what they already have, and that it is sufficient.  I'm glad we are seeing a blacklash to that now - I pity the young minds that have to grow up with this kind of pressure on them now.

What was the other thing I wanted to talk about?  Network security?  Privacy?  I don't know, I might have to come back to that at another point.

I was checking the stats on the blog again, and it was interesting to see how many Russian and Ukrainian hits we have.  Are these all bots looking for a point of exploitation?  Food for thought. 

There's no time for anything anymore.  Ok.

Joaquin out.

The Root Of The Problem

Is now that I have a lot of things to say, but so little time to say it.

I should really get back to typing up blog notes. They were great for my memory.

A lot of great ideas but no time to actually develop them or write about them.

So here we are, yet again.

Joaquin out.

Technical Illiteracy

Sorry about that! Have just been mindlessly procrastinating when I realised I should be posting on here!

Haha it’s a terrible habit to break but I have a number of competing addictions running at the moment.

I’ll do my best to make a change here for the benefit of the blog.

But that’s all for now. This is just a reminder.

Joaquin out.

This Little Corner Of The Internet

Belongs to us. Don’t you forget that.

I almost forgot to post today but I’m not gonna let that happen again.

Isn’t it weird how the audience has fragmented?

Communications theory is very big into centralisation/convergence of technology and larger participation as developing nations are able to access technology for cheaper.

However content creation and competition has completely decimated the audience. While in the 90s we had tv with 7 or so channels so market share was enormously concentrated. Now we have digital channels, streaming content and so on. The same is true for music and film. There is just so much content out there and different ways of accessing that information.

As a result we will never see the large audience shares that were once experienced. What does this mean for profits and content sustainability in the long term? It’s interesting to think about.

We will keep fragmenting the audience and diluting content. Will we ever reach consensus again? What will water cooler conversation revolve around when we all have different viewing or consumption habits?

I guess in the end all you can do is create content for your little audience and hope they enjoy it enough to sustain you and you can grow modestly from that.

The past is gone.

We fracture in the middle.

Joaquin out

Nobody Has The Answers

Nobody ever did.

More to come I hope.

This is hopefully not just a temporary return.

This all use to mean something.

Who are all of you?

Who am I?

You already know.

Joaquin out

You Can Kill A Phoenix

Or can you? I don’t know. Wow, what a terrible period. Not a single post over an entire year and a bit! What has become of us? I don’t know.

Time: it has a way of getting one over all of us eventually. Maybe things are happening and I will finally have some time to be more productive on the things I actually want to do.

Anyway, there’s a lot that has been on my mind. Just not a way to say it.

But I am here. 

Maybe you are too.

Joaquin out