Joseph

I came to New York because it’s amazing, but also to scope out the idea of a possible move. I’m almost certain I will, though some of the logistics are tough. But I’ve toured several apartments and it should be doable. Just tricky.

My work is fully remote now. I still need to clear it. But I’m guessing it will approved.

I’ve walked at least 10 miles every day for the last 3 days. So much to do.

Hello Brooklyn

Heading to NYC for a week

Saw Geese last night at the Fox Theater in Oakland. Great show.

…except for when a really high dude fell back into me and and passed out. He was fine tho 🙄

In Society of the Spectacle, Debord discusses how the worker transformed from a tool of labor into a consumer. With the Industrial Revolution we began to fulfill needs and transition to a focus on creating wants. The same argument of Baudrillard. We consume for the social meaning, for the Spectacle.

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“When economic necessity is replaced by the necessity for boundless economic development, the satisfaction of primary human needs is replaced by an uninterrupted fabrication of pseudo-needs which are reduced to the single pseudo-need of maintaining the reign of the autonomous economy.”

AI is, in theory, meant to serve labor, and yet the entire economy serves AI

AI does not make us free, it makes us dependent. Insofar as it makes our labor easier, we lose our freedom.

Debord: “Thus the present ‘liberation from labor,’ the increase of leisure, is in no way a liberation within labor, nor a liberation from the world shaped by this labor. None of the activity lost in labor can be regained in the submission to its result.”

“the technical equipment which objectively eliminates labor must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity and as the only source of the commodity…”

The tool that eliminates labor will create more hierarchy than we can conceive, and jobs become even more prized, as commodities, as new workers struggle to find work.

And Automation has always played a key role in this, such that it is logical that AI is where we find the economy simultaneously breaking apart and held together by the this one same technology.

Debord writes: “Automation, the most advanced sector of modern industry as well as the model which perfectly sums up its practice, drives the commodity world toward the following contradiction:”

Baudrillard’s doctoral committee consisted of: Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu. Wild.

Thankfully the execution of Nadal Hasan will not be televised. But this kind of sick spectacle is very much the sort of logical conclusion of where we’re going unless there’s some serious change

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“…it is precisely at the same point in culture we are trying to technologically eliminate it, that it will make its return on the screens… But at the same time, it returns as a pseudo-event, because - and this is the irony of all these experimental masquerades -“

“parallel to the multiplication of these spectacles of violence grows the uncertainty in regards to the reality of what is being viewed. Did it or did it not take place?”

Thankfully the execution of Nadal Hasan will not be televised. But this kind of sick spectacle is very much the sort of logical conclusion of where we’re going unless there’s some serious change

In his work Telemorphosis, Baudrillard predicts “Soon, following the same logic, we will have snuff films and televised bodily torture. Death as well must logically enter onto the stage as an experimental event.”

Went canvassing for DSA’s Oakland city council candidate, Nate Adams this evening. generally went well! Except for when that guy pulled a knife on us. Anyway, Vote Nate! Also don’t stab me, please.

This was a guy in an apartment building who REALLY did not like solicitors.

In the past couple of months, I have had 3 women tell me on dating apps that they needed a break from the app-- and give me their phone number instead. What are men doing to these women ffs?

I think the bay area is kinda fucked. I blame AI, both as a writing tool and a source of mind warping income.

I'm sensing a theme.

Made baguettes. #breadsky

Getting better but I want to improve the crumb.

If Johnathan Chait thinks Hasan Piker using the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” means he’s anti democracy, I’ve got some shocking news about W. E. B. Du Bois.

First time making Shakshuka. Went hard with the harissa.

Baby gem lettuce with charred eggplant yogurt, smacked cucumber, and harissa. From Falastin #salad

Ok I actually used hearts of Romaine, but close enough

“The immense profit from this new exploitation and world-wide commerce enabled a guild of millionaires to engage the greatest engineers, the wisest men of science, as well as pay high wage to the more intelligent labor…”

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“And the rebuilding, whether it comes now or a century later, will and must go back to the basic principles of Reconstruction in the United States during 1867-1876-Land, Light and Leading for slaves black, brown, yellow and white, under a dictatorship of the proletariat.”

- W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

“The world wept because within the exploiting group of New World masters, greed and jealousy became so fierce that they fought for trade and markets and materials and slaves all over the world until at last in 1914 the world flamed in war.”

“The fantastic structure fell, leaving grotesque Profts and Poverty, Plenty and Starvation, Empire and Democracy, staring at each other across World Depression.”

“and at the same time to have left enough surplus to make more thorough the dictatorship of capital over the state and over the popular vote, not only in Europe and America but in Asia and Africa.”

On my Covid shit

Seeing that notification like Shrödinger’s text.

You want to get Angry? (Ignores replies) Zillow: What is the average rent in San Francisco, CA? Updated September 8, 2026 average rent for all property types in San Francisco, CA is $4,720. Average rent $4,720 Month-over-month change +$220 Year-over-year change +$1,040 Available rentals 1,413

nyti.msSan Francisco Mayor Declares Rent Emergency Amid A.I. Housing FrenzyMayor Daniel Lurie wants to combat evictions in the city, which has the nation’s highest rent increases.

bsky.app/profile/nyti... I mean, as I was saying. An average $1000 increase in rent prices is a bit of an issue.

The New York Times@nytimes.com

Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco on Thursday declared a rent emergency and proposed several actions to combat evictions as residents face a deepening housing crisis amid the A.I. boom.

The best grift is a millenarian saying some disaster or salvation is just around the corner. Keeps people in a perpetual state of panic and frenzy, glued to your feed.

Of course, sometimes we are the precipice, like the Cuban missile crisis. But regardless, a huckster has every incentive to tell us we just need to wait a moment longer for things to pay off one way or another.

BTW: This is for Studio Apartments: