embarrassing myself

Social and independent media, writer, storyteller, liar. My writtings are on the toilet doors of the pubs around Ireland. Can't start a fire without a spark. L'oreal... because I'm worth it

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PEOPLE X TECHNOLOGY - WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME

A predictable film script would point the robots at the evil role. And during some time, it used to make sense watching Terminator 2, thinking “Go Schwarz, kill the machine”. But times, they are a-changing, since before Dylan wrote that song. 

In her article on The Guardian, on 20th June, Sarah Jeong was talking about the real innovator’s dilemma of nowadays: breaking down the industries and hack human behaviour. She pointed the cosmetics industry, for instance, that was not always kind to women of colour, and recently they were forced to face a very powerful competitor: Mink - the 3D Printer for make-up, with a big spectrum of different colours, able to satisfy the consumers and cause a bit of discomfort to the factories used to ignore the needs of an economic minority.

Now, if the cosmetics companies want to keep their customers, they will have to adapt themselves, because they’ve always had the women’s needs, but only now they have a strong competitor, and since profit is the main focus of the old-fashioned industries, when the wallets get empty, things might change a little bit on their production.

What I think we have to consider nowadays is that we came to a point in time where either Technology helped us to change our minds about the old-fashioned world, or we toughed Technology how to be the a nice guy to us, and not just come to this film to take our jobs at the supermarket (Go, Schwarz!). The old story of who came first: the egg or the chicken. Despite this doubt, the answer for this question doesn’t really matter – we live in a world where Technology makes possible solving old issues, breaking down old structures. So if we are willing to change the world for better, it’s pretty much on our hands.

Maybe we just have a new kind of business man nowadays, because we also have a new man in general (hopefully). It’s Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher who said “our relationship lives in the space between us”, not inside me, not inside you, but in this subtle invisible space that full fills our interactions. If you want to keep this relationship, you need to take care of this invisible space and cross the bridges.

Google, and others, might have just realized that this space is the flowers on the garden. It’s possible to keep us loving Google for all of the facilities for free, because they know that they can do profit with other services and still bring something to the majority that is an economic minority. We want services, Google wants us, each one gives a step and we meet in the middle of the bridge.

I might just being naïve as well, they might be selling all of our data to evil machines (Go Schwarz!). But until we see on future that I’m wrong and the glass is actually half empty, we could take this as a lesson to learn and start to think about to take the responsibility for the relationships we build up as well, minding this fragile space, with our customers, partners, society, lovers, friends… We can bring much more value to the world if we don’t always ask “what do you want from me? what can I get from you?”.

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GOODBYE GERRY CONLON, AND WHY IRISH PEOPLE WERE GHANA

              I just arrived home after the match Germany x Ghana and came to know: Gerry Conlon was dead. Finally reunited to Giuseppe, as many people said.

             Back in 70’s, Gerry, his father and more two people were wrongly convicted for something they never did. The English justice system took their youth, health and life.

He spent 15 years in prison and saw his father dying in there. More than 30 years later, England again took another life wrongly – Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian guy that was killed without ever being a terrorist.

             Back to present time, many of Gerry’s compatriots were watching Germany x Ghana in the pubs while Gerry himself was living his last minutes.  I saw many of those irish people, young, old, women, men, and they were all Ghana. I asked an old lady while we were drinking our cider “why are you Ghana?”. She said “I’m black and I’m proud”. We laughed, she was as white as her hair, big blue irish eyes. We said “yeeeeeah. Slainte!”

             No explanation was needed. We understood intuitively why we were Ghana.  Most of the people in the pub, they had more in common to Germans: they are European, white, someway wealthy enough, a similar economy and lifestyle, but…  Ghana was applauded for putting Germany down many times and we screamed to their goals, because when Africa plays, it's always especially political, and we like to see those countries where the misery lies down beating big rich (and sometimes truculent) countries.

The invisible forces that connect people are stronger than our ability to name them, but some way we were all underdogs there. We knew we were all Ghana because at the end, we are all Gerry.

#RipGerry

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ARE WE LIVING IN A SIMULATION?

I was living my life in the peace of the ignorance, when... not long ago, scientists and philosophers like Nick Bostrom came up with this idea that we might be living in a simulation. the whole argument, my friend, is here for the ones that want to know more about it.

it's crazy, but not really original, cause we saw this before in matrix and vanilla sky. and sci-fi hollywood never lies so hard that you can never ask yourself "why not?"

then I started to think about it, and ended up finding loads of reasons to not just agree with Nick, but to show to hollywood that no matter what they say, life itself might feel much more simulated than the films. it's just a life that doesn't feel right. have a seat!

WE DRIVE OUR CAR TO THE GYM, SO THERE WE CAN START TO WALK OR CYCLE TOWARDS THE WALL.

WE TAKE OUR FAMILY OUT FOR A DINNER TO EAT HOMEMADE FOOD.

WE LOCK OURSELVES INTO THE SUN BED FOR 10 MINUTES, SO THEN WE CAN LOOK LIKE WE STAYED OUT IN THE SUN FOR 1 WEEK.

WE TAKE ECSTASY TO LOVE OUR FRIENDS. AND WHEN WE CALM DOWN, WE HATE THEM MORE THAN BEFORE.

WE  WEAR MAKE UP TO HIDE THE DISGUSTING DAMAGE THAT THE MAKE UP DID TO OUR FACE.

WE GET A JOB SO THEN WE CAN BUY A CAR TO TAKE US TO WORK.

WE LEARN TO HAVE SEX WITH THE PORN INDUSTRY, BUT THE PORN INDUSTRY DOESN'T KNOW REAL SEX, AND WE BECOME THE FILM OF THE FILM

WE GIVE WIFI CONNECTION AT THE RESTAURANTS, THEN WE BREAK THE WIFE CONNECTION. just have a look on those couples that you feel sorry for, each one connected to their own world sharing a plate of loneliness for two.

AND WE WASTE OUR TIME WATCHING SERIES ABOUT PEOPLE LIVING THEIR LIVES THE WAY WE WOULD LIKE TO DO...

IF ONLY WE COULD LEAVE THE COUCH.

WE HAVE THOUSANDS OF FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK BUT WHEN LIFE GETS HARD, WE HAVE TO CALL THE SAMARITANS.

WE HAVE VERY MODERN PHONES SO WE CAN TAKE VINTAGE PICTURES BACK TO 70's.

and that's not all, we compare ourselves to our own simulation, and the simulation looks better, so we get jealous about OURSELVES?

i don't know about the whole universe, Nick, but yes, we live in a simulation here in planet instagram, where it's always sunrise and always sunset at the same time.

x on the shoulder.

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WHAT DO YOU WANNA DRINK?

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are you sure you don't wanna drink?

oh come on, drink something

do you wanna a pint?

tequila?

2 tequilas and one pint here!

you're just gonna have 1 tequila? i'll get you a pint as well

  you might be pregnant, sick, be the pope or a priest.

IN IRELAND, YOU - WILL - DRINK!

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SUMMERTIME IN IRELAND FOR THE UNLUCKY ONES

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you have 20 minutes to do this

then... 

you start to remember summer '95

those were the days

the lads organize a trip to Spain

you can't go

BUT THEN.... HEATWAVE

and the festivals

but you have to work

what do you mean work?

maybe you don't have to work

then you go out enjoying the sun... and meet someone from your job

you are fired

but you don't care... because... FUCK IT! YOLO! IT'S SUMMERTIME!!! 

and that is the day that the heatwave goes, and the rain is back