I was close enough to smell the grass. The lights turned the evening into day. Thousands of fans were screaming in unison, drumming my ears into a brown hiss. The players made their way to the field, and I was looking for one person. Just one person. When he entered the stadium, even the opposing fans screamed his name: Gabriel Batistuta.

In 2002, the Embassy of Burundi in Cairo found itself with five spare tickets to the upcoming game of AS Roma vs Al-Ahly. My friends and I salivated over the opportunity and went to see the game. And yes, we saw Batistuta. One of my friends swore that after Batistuta kicked the ball, he could still steer it into whatever direction he wished.

At the stadium, a few seats behind me, there was an idiot. I understand football fans can take it a bit too seriously, but this one was not watching a game. He was watching a battle between enemies. If his team had lost, he might have done something regrettable.

Any time AS Roma got the ball, he would get visibly mad. He would get up and scream—not uncommon in a stadium. But this guy would also kick chairs. At one point, Ahly fumbled a corner kick, and this man grabbed a bottle and threw it into the field. Luckily, the bottle was open and spilled its content before it fell limp on the grass.

All eyes turned to the man. The guy on his left smacked him on the head. The guy on his right pulled him back down into his seat. They physically dominated him, and he knew they could overpower him in an instant. He remained in his seat. We turned back to the friendly game.

Now he started screaming obscenities. Mind you, he was loud, but of the reported 85,000 people at the stadium that day, maybe a dozen or so people paid him any mind. His screaming went from just an annoying fan rambling to a madman making disturbingly graphic threats. I turned around and saw the four or five people surrounding him, grabbing him, and drowning his voice. Not a minute later, Ahly scored the first goal.

After the celebrations, I turned back and the man had turned completely normal. In fact, it was hard to say that he looked crazy only a few minutes before. The game ended 2-1, with Al-Ahly victorious. I was disappointed. But the rumor at the time was that the Egyptian government wined and dined AS Roma and asked them to throw the game. That second goal that Batistuta missed was totally suspect. And of course, Totti had a "training injury" and couldn't play. But isn't that what everyone says when their team loses?

This was more than twenty years ago. As far as I can tell, the event with that idiot was never documented. I can't even remember the exact words this man was yelling. All I remember was being shocked. Who knows, he probably is a changed man today or isn't even into football anymore. So this is the only account of the event. Other than the dozen or so people around him, no one even saw it happen.

But if this were today, the man would have probably tweeted his comment. As insignificant as it was, writing the words down would have amplified his voice in a way that forced the equivalent of the entire stadium to pay attention. There's no equivalent of smacking a tweet on the head. Instead, we'd argue about free speech.

The web is fast and loud, but when you slow down, you can hear every single individual voice. The smartest voices are drowned out by comments from the gut. While this event faded from collective memory, a foolish tweet stays up forever. It can be a time sink, and sometimes it can even destroy the author who might have since changed.

In these new times, we need to develop skills suited to our circumstances. In an age of real-time public communication, the ability to pause and think before speaking—or tweeting— has become crucial. Restraint can be a powerful tool, and sometimes, the smartest move is knowing when to stay silent.

AS Roma game

The premise is simple, when you are being watched, you change your behavior. Imagine a survey that tries to collect data on extra marital affairs in the US. It asks, have you been faithful to your spouse? The answer, whether positive or negative, is unreliable. The whole point of an extra-marital affair is that it is a secret. Only a very small minority will admit it on paper.

Every interaction we have online is monitored. Whether it is talking with a friend, scrolling, or typing a search query, everything is monitored. Not only for nefarious reasons, but it is the medium by which the internet works today. This transparency of our lives is "breeding a society where self-censorship and risk-aversion are the new normal." (socialcooling.com)

This sounds true in theory, but what does it actually look like in practice? There is a video that resurfaced recently that fascinated me in more than one way. It showed that this social cooling is not only already happening, but kids are growing up with this as the new norm.

The video is of a hunter passing through a neighborhood after killing a deer. Some kids and their father confront the man in his barbaric ways. This is all too normal. Most people have a hard time reconciling that the fresh meat we eat comes from an actual animal that was alive. Where I grew up, it was custom to slaughter a few lambs in our backyard a few times a year. These were animals that I had played with before they met their end. I quickly became accustomed to it.

But the interesting part of the video wasn't that the kid was sad to see a dead deer, it's this statement that he made:

You are using a weapon to un-alive an animal.

I had to watch it a couple times before I grasped it. This is a child out in the real world, not creating content. In fact, the kid was in an extreme emotional state where he was dropping F-bombs. Why did he choose to censor himself at that moment? Un-alive? Was he trying to make sure the algorithm doesn't flag him? Why is he saying "un-alive" instead of kill? It's like he was optimizing for SEO out in the real world.

I'm not very much in touch with pop culture these days, but clicking on the trending tab on youtube will give you a good view of this trend. Where the SEO optimizers of yesteryear kept their tricks a secret, the youth openly say why they avoid certain words. They don't want to be demonetized. I felt old trying to decipher words like SAed, grape, and PDF.

But still, this kid was not the one filming the video. He was not an activist fearing of being canceled for voicing his opinion. He was not "creating content". He was merely voicing his emotions and right then and there he decided to self-censor. 15 years from now, when he is looking for employment, his future employer will find this video but still hire him. All because he didn't use the word "Kill."

Social media is full of people posting how awful dating apps are. I wrote about what the dating app I won't build will do. Instead of swiping, the goal will be intentional. Put users on training wheels and help them navigate the world of relationships. 

But I quickly gave up when I started asking questions to my friends in the dating market. One answer in particular threw me off-course. “I like this app, I had some pretty good dates there.”

By definition, a good date should be final, right? But not only was it not final, the same person had several good dates. My premises were wrong. My definition of dating was incorrect. The more people gave me this answer, the further I steered from my original goal. It is still true that people are having a hard time in the dating market, but it is a different market.

Rather than training individuals how to date, we need a cultural shift. We need to consider that online dating is the only option left for a majority of people.

It's still useful to help people navigate through ghosting, first interaction, no interaction, or hookup culture. However, what will be more effective is explaining the importance of our immediate surroundings. We go online to look for strangers while we are surrounded by people. It's harder to approach people today. It's scary. Mainly because we don't know anything about them, and we can't tell if they are interested.

There is an appeal to packaging people in a neat box we can filter by interest. We then swipe left or right as if the nutritional info will tell us all we need to know. You may look for drinks with sugar content less than 10 grams in your area, but the main and only ingredient for people is Natural Flavors. Nobody knows what natural flavors are.

The cultural shift is making people less afraid of each other. Now that is something I don't have an answer for. However, it doesn't hurt to learn how to talk to each other... in person. Let's call it Speak Dating.

Ah, the Westinghouse Radio Hub. An Internet connected radio, cd player, and weather station. I was unboxing merchandise at an old job when I arrived at this box. I stopped on my trail and contemplated putting it aside for myself before any customer sees it.

In our upcoming sale, I spied on customers eying my device. They picked it up, read through the plethora of internet connected features, then put it down. I made several prayers that were all answered because every single one put the box back on the shelf. When the sale ended I used my 10 percent employee discount to get this marvel of technology.

At home, I placed it in my closet then somehow forgot all about it.

A long time later, I was rummaging through my closet when I found this box buried under old clothes. I stopped on my trail again, interrupting whatever else I was doing and opened the box. How I wish I had a picture of this device to show you. It’s nowhere on the Internet.

When I took it out of the box, I was stunned by the elegant design. A silver cylinder with flushed speakers on each side behind a soft black fabric. On the top, the disc reader opened futuristically on the press of a mechanical eject button. On the front a tiltable 5 inch back lit LCD screen. Jony Ive would have been proud.

But then, my first disappointment. This internet connected device wasn't wireless. You had to plug an ethernet cable to enjoy its promises. But this was the 2000s, of course I had an unfathomably long ethernet cable laying around somewhere.

Plug it to the router, plug it to the power, hit the power button and the screen lights up with one word: Initializing.

When you have waited long enough, the screen changes to Network error. Must be a problem with my router of course. I unplugged it from the router, then connected it directly to the modem. Nothing beats raw unfiltered Internet data.

Initializing... Network error.

I unplugged it from the modem, then plugged it back on the router. I loaded my network debugging tools and started my investigation. The domain it was attempting to connect to was no longer resolving.

So much for the Internet features for me I guess. At least it was still a Radio and a CD player.

Let's tune in to the radio. Automatic station search. Apparently, that requires the internet as well. After you wait long enough, Network Error.

Well let's go with CDs then. I was a big fan of Linkin Park. Pop the disc housing open, Hybrid Theory goes in, close it and the cd audibly starts spinning.

Album info... Oh you don't have an internet connection? Network error it is. Then the disc stops spinning.

I spent months trying to get this device to work. It became a night project where I'd sink my precious time that could have been better spent sleeping. The device served as a conversation piece on my desk for some time. But one day, out of spite, I threw it in the garbage.

Can't have long lasting hardware with Internet Powered Nonsense!

The job post is auto-generated, the interview is auto-generated, and the final decision is automated. Every step of the way is automated, from the job post to the final decision, to auto scale the hiring process.

No human required.

It’s only natural that candidates outsource the process, automate themselves into a company, and get a ping on their phone when they land a new job. I check my inbox and I see an email from a real company looking to hire. I plug the content into chat gpt and it generates a response that places me on a schedule to interview.

My lines are fed, the video feed is analyzed, and I am auto-rejected. It’s only a matter of time until my video feed is auto-generated, then I will only get a ping on my phone that will tell me I have a new job with a steep increase starting Monday.

Great questions are dumb questions in disguise: they have been refined.

I often tell programmers to formulate their questions to get yes or no answers. The first iteration of programming questions never make sense. They contain unnecessary elements, they contain frustration, they are designed to fail. That's exactly how they are supposed to come out.

The trick is to take the time to refine the question. Trim the fat, go straight to the point, state what your expectations and your result. A well written question answers itself.

In 2011, I joined a company and one of the first things my manager asked was my chat email. I sent them my yahoo email. Few minutes later, everyone in the team had added me to their chat. My coworkers all used a different handle. There was AIM, facebook, google, yahoo, and some that I don't even remember. After a few months working at the job, I switched to Empathy on Ubuntu. I didn't have to let anyone know, I just contacted them directly from my new handle.

Chatting and the protocol that makes it possible was solved.

But today, I face a new challenge when I meet new people. They ask for my Snap, request my Instagram handle, or "Are you on messenger?" I don't use any of these platforms for chatting. They may request my presence on Facebook, WhatsApp, or some other obscure application that I am not aware of. The only way I can communicate with them is if I join whatever walled garden they are part of.

Interestingly, SMS remains the one sanctuary where we can communicate without the constraints of exclusive platforms. Yet, SMS remains under constant threat, with tech giants like Google casting a long shadow over its future.

Also as a bonus, I have a record of my chat history in every company I have worked for. It's great material if you are writing a book about work. But not so much since everyone switched to using Slack.

I don't know if it's because I'm becoming older (in developer age). One of the hardest things I have to do is dismiss front end performance. I came of age in a web where everyone had a crappy device that could barely run JavaScript. Add too many lines of code and the device crashed. Add several libraries and the page visibly crawled as you scrolled. Load that extra script and now you have excluded all IE8 users.

After each deployment at work, I opened and tested the pages on IE tester. An application that could run several versions of Internet Explorer. Then I'd open the pages on my HTC Evo mobile phone. Other devs will test on their own respective device. We made sure it worked everywhere. It was a pain.

Today, I'm still afraid to deploy JavaScript code because it might fail in an unexpected manner on some device. On my brand new phone, some pages still seem like they are loading with difficulty. Especially those built with React. But one thing has changed in the way we deploy our code. Almost nobody cares about how our code performs on the client side.

In fact, I worked with several companies that have no way of knowing how their website is performing. They don't check which browser their customer uses, and they don't track performance in any way.

Is this it? Did devices evolve in a way that we don't need to check on them anymore? Maybe so, but I'm still skeptical.

I've come up with the perfect combination of sounds to get my children to sleep. Noises.online was the top website I visited for two years straight. I'd start with light rain drops. Then I'd add a bonfire, with the sound reduced to almost nil. I like the occasional cracking, almost like splitting a small branch. Then, I'd add the ocean waves.

Play this combination just right, and the twins fall asleep. But when they are asleep, I want to hear when they wake up, so I gradually reduce the volume and eventually turn it off. It came to a surprise one day when I turned it off and the sound kept going. I didn't pay too much mind, I barely got any sleep so I just went to bed exhausted.

The same thing happened again the next day. I turned off the sound, but it kept going anyway. In fact, the ocean waves were even louder now. I assumed that I had inspired the neighbors with the beautiful sounds. They started using it to put their kids to sleep as well.

Again the next day. This time, the ocean waves were crashing down the shore. It was very loud, but who complains about ocean waves? I went outside to see who was playing it. I couldn't tell. The sound was coming from everywhere. I went to my wife and asked her. "I don't hear anything" she said and went back to sleep. I thought she had gone deaf. At this point it was turning into noise. It felt like I was right there by the beach, only the breeze was missing. The volume was dialed to 11.

I ventured outside once more to investigate. A neighbor stood at her door, scanning her surroundings, clearly puzzled by the persistent noise. As the unbearable sound continued, I retreated indoors, grabbed my earphones, and started playing my favorite audiobook, 'The Lord of the Rings,' an epic rendition complete with immersive sound effects. I drifted into sleep between Bilbo and Gandalf sitting by the window, looking west onto the garden.

I woke up in the middle of the night, my earphones tangled on the floor then I noticed something. Right there is the bathroom, the ocean sound was just as loud as in the bedroom. I walked through the living room and into the kitchen. It was just as loud. I covered my ears, and to my surprise I could still hear the ocean waves crashing onto the shore. The sound was not coming from outside. It was coming from inside of me. I laughed.

I was glad to have figured out where the sound was coming from, but it was unbearable. Imagine hearing a constant sound, with the swashing of water and crashing. Non stop. All day, all night. I could no longer sleep. I went to the doctor and all they told me is that it was going to go away eventually. It took several weeks before the intensity of the sound went down. After a couple months, it went away.

It was a terrible experience. Tinnitus is terrible. I'm so relieved it went away.

What do you say when you have nothing to say?

Nothing!

Silence is not void to be filled. There are moments where words need not to be uttered. There is a difference between silence and awkward silence.

Awkward silence is not a situation where a person runs out of words. For the most part, you find yourself there when you think you need to lead a conversation but you can't find what to say. You feel like you have to entertain the other party, but you can't come up with a cool subject on the fly. If you put yourself in this position, the only way out is to prepare yourself.

One of my favorite speakers is Alain de Botton. But if you've listened to 2 or 3 of his seminars, you've listened to them all. As natural as each of his talks sound, it is the same idea, the same jokes, and all in the same order. He doesn't stutter or run out of things to say because he has rehearsed what he is going to say.

So if you are going to meet someone new, find yourself as a host, find yourself as the entertainer. If you want to carry a conversation, don't wait until you find yourself in an awkward silence. Rehearse.