“I hope we think of each other at the same time.”
— Unknown
“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
— Dalai Lama
As a feedback on the ability to achieve: bad omen.
As a feedback that in life you have to stay positive and there is little point to cry over spilled milk? awesome.
Life is all about perspectives.
Today I realised I don’t fully care about what people just do. Like “I play football” is great and I’m happy you told me. But why football? did you try volleyball? and if you never tried, why? beside hobbys… how do you spend most of your time? I remember when I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time on the couch or on my bed, staring and thinking. One day my step-mom walks by, door was open as usual “what are you doing?” I reply “I’m thinking.” she goes, after a dramatic pause “what the fuck are you thinking about, you are 13 ffs” (in fairness I don’t remember the exact age, but I’d bet it’s around that). Laying somewhere and thinking stayed as my number one favourite activity. I do all sort of things while I stay still: I replay life in my mind, I replay mistakes, wins, words, etc. Not just mine, everything I know can get a replay. Recently, while reading a book by Hannah Critchlow, I realised she suggests an exercise I kinda do.
In general I would say “Replay stuff and see what’s going on”. IF you replay things very slowly, you learn a lot about you, and the situations. So today I was speaking with somebody at launch “so what do you like?” and after skipping through hobby none of us did… we arrived at talking about the most beautiful of things people can do (for me). spend their time trying to find narratives. Love you, new friend.
It's funny how most every cyberpunk story or setting thought that due to technology taking over people's lives and humanity, computer literacy would become commonplace enough that the very term would disappear. Everyone in Night City or whatever is super into hacking or can at least give you the difference between hardware, software, antivirus, spam, etc. To not know the basic gists or cybernetics and cyber security is paramount to not knowing how to count or how to read.
In reality we're about to enter an age where knowing how to create a folder or a zip file is back to being ancient lore inscribed in tablets that only the 30 year old who works at your IT office knows how to do. Phones and the growing marketability of easy-access no-customization technology means kids just don't use computers anymore. And it's crazy how fast it happened.
When I was in kindergarten we still had "computer class" once a week, and it was objectively useless for everyone in my class. Regardless of our age or interests, all of us had casual PC time either at home or in cyber cafes, all of us knew how to do things the teachers many times struggled with. The moment typing machine class became keyboard typing class, computers were already dominating most of our time. I learned how to navigate a computer the same way I learned English; by myself, because it was vital for my own interests.
And between highly streamlined video games, single umbrella closed OSs and everything being a fucking app, a 14 year old nowadays is lucky if they know what quotation marks do to your Google results. It's genuinely harrowing how the future is tech-dependent, yet we're becoming completely tech-illiterate.
The worst part is that it's completely on purpose by the tech industry. Much like not being able to fix your own products when they break, if you simply don't know what your phone or your computer can *do*, it's much easier to sell you a borderline identical one a little earlier than you'd actually need it. Phone updates are already pretty much semantic; you can't even see the difference between new models and old ones anymore, unless the visual difference is the point. And it all just gets more and more expensive for less and less bang for your buck.
We never expected the cyberpunk dystopia to be dull, and to rely on making us dumb. Crazy how well it worked.
I haven’t read good cyberpunk stories in a while, and this one is terrifying and dystopian, although I don’t particularly agree on 100% but I guess it’s pretty pointless to say.
“Sometimes you end up losing yourself trying to hold onto someone who never cared about losing you. Know when to let go.”
— Unknown
Well played, Eminem. #8mile
Warning: I lose all inhibitions when I'm alone with someone I desire.
*if I even think about someone I desire.
“If you hesitate between me and another person, don’t choose me.”
— Unknown
I long for times where poetry wasn’t about love to oneself.