visakanv

universal cursed artifact

I keep wanting to write a post titled ‘universal cursed artifact’, that’s obviously about smartphones. when

blogmap

i was in the middle of a substack draft about continuity when i suddenly felt the impulse to go over to visakanv.com/blog/ and

consolidation meta

(written in substack) I can’t help myself, I love to go meta. Earlier this evening, my wife took my son out for a walk, givi

sort my notes with me

How do you know if you have a problem? I’m thinking particularly about my notes, but you could also talk about say, a drinki

notes on structure

instagram

It’s 11:05pm. I’m freshly showered and I just got in bed. My 11mo son is fast asleep in his cot nearby. I have a decision

richest man in babylon

i’m finally reading The Richest Man In Babylon – I’d seen in recommended several times in multiple contexts over the yea

on messes

I had a moment last night when I did this at my desk (evaluate my situation), and the first thought I had was “obviously I s

anguished voyager

guilt > hunger > desk > messes > I have 48 ‘live’ drafts on my substack account, and I have the equivalent of

fasting

I experimented with fasting once. I had a chirpy colleague who was a big evangelist for it, and I was feeling laggardly, and s

diablo

i’ve known for a long time that i want to write something about diablo i could do the memoir thing but really i think i want

literacy

what is my conclusion? I think… ultimately it’s not possible for any one person to do everything, so it’s prudent for in

heroes3

I remember the first time I encountered Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999). I was 9 years old, at a birthday party of a frie

the history of tv, as told by @RonenV

The following is my (VV) copying of @RonenV‘s telling of the history of TV. Ronen spoke the whole thing out verbally (fu

frame studies

I’m changing the title of my substack from “voltaic verses ⚡️” to “frame studies 🖼️”. Should I explain? My

witcher3

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to properly scope a project. Take The Witcher franchise. The Witcher today is famo

youtube

this is a collection post to collect links to other posts with transcripts of my youtube vids

50 opening lines

I have a lot of drafts. tbc

incompleteness and digressions

22jul2024 distractions I’ve been kind of embarrassed, maybe even ashamed, to note that there have been many instances now wh

simcity

2024sep4: I started playing a new game of Simcity 2000 in my browser, mainly out of nostalgia and curiosity. I never really un

undertaker

In Sylvester Stallone’s Netflix documentary, Sly, he talks about how, early in his acting career, he would get typecast

alice

i finally watched disney’s alice in wonderland (1951) for the first time a few weeks ago. i haven’t yet read lewis carroll

alice

live-noting the movie What was happening in 1951 who was Lewis Carroll why did Disney choose to make the adaptation? Walt live

hard

I’ve been rediscovering lately that I’m too hard on myself. And I don’t mean this in the tedious interview question sens

hades

2024sep11 One of my favorite games in recent years, and honestly one of my favorite games of all time, is Hades (2020), by Sup

CDs

backstory: I bought my first couple of CDs when I was about 12 years old, and over 20 years later I still consider them to be

chaotic monkey mind

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a chaotic monkey mind that’s been both a blessing and curse. When I stop to think

fake games

what is the portal in this essay? i think the wild thing is that we play fake games with ourselves. we cargo cult ourselves. w

tiles

one of my recurring curiosities is about… tiles “The word is derived from the French word tuile, which is, in turn, from t

himym

i try to notice things the opportune time to publish this post would be on the 20th anniversary of the book’s release, septe

babel

Historyproj… SG1990… Tamils…India…nonamerican… multipolar world… sidenote on english… gumroad readers… 3rd cul

afterimages

asdf a this might be surprising to some people– i feel like it shouldn’t be, but people get surprised by all sorts of thin

grieving lost media

The Temple of Juno in Agrigento, oil on canvas, Caspar David Friedrich (1828-1830) this feels like an important essay to publi

cigarettes

really an essay about addiction, coping mechanisms, behavior change PSA: i’m going to be talking about cigarettes a bunch in

working episodically

magazines, chiarella, mens health, bloggers, herb caen, julie & julia… talk about tv? ✱ When I was a teenager I used t

OK Computer

babysleep I just put the baby to sleep. We were listening to Radiohead’s OK Computer, and he fell asleep at track 7: Fitter

containers

i’ve had a puzzle that’s been bothering me for about as long as i’ve been writing, though maybe i didn’t begin to prop

kenny werner

I’m gonna throw it open. If you have a question on anything involving anything in the world, I can answer it. You know,

essay drafts

i just feel in my bones that there are about 5-12 essays knocking around inside me that if i just get out of my system i will

essay teasers

i just feel in my bones that there are about 5-12 essays knocking around inside me that if i just get out of my system i will

lentil

it’s been almost 2 months since my last post and I just wanna spend maybe 30 minutes writing something and hitting send with

vannevar

just for fun, collecting mentions of vannevar bush’s as we may think (1945) tbc

rereading old writing

reading my old writing and it’s striking how i wrote about so many of the same things, but far more tediously. writing i

beautiful noisy messes

i’m tired and i don’t have much time. i need to publish something or i’m going to go mad. i have a lot of tabs open. one

contemplate

I’ve spent a lot of the past two years thinking about how to do these substack essays. Recently, I was getting so frustrated

win_loop

have a draft of an essay i’ve sort of lazily idling on titled “win loops” and i might as well just tweet it

all the channels 2

all the channels 1 i wrote a whole book about introspection, in part because i believe i’m pretty good at it, and i believe

packaging problem

I was doing the dishes last night and listening to some year-old youtube vlogs of myself doing my monthly status updates. One

behavior change

One of the central questions of my life is, how much control or influence do I have over my own behavior, really? A lot of my

writing on commutes

writing on commutes From 2013 to 2018, I used to write diligently on my phone on my commutes. I’d write both on the way to w

aladdin

I woke up from a dream that was set in something like my brain’s remix of the old video game, The Prince of Persia. It remin

kwml

I heard about this book a long time ago, but I can’t remember where exactly. I do remember it being mentioned by Elliott Hul

writing involuntarily

I have fond memories of times I used to write. Right now it’s 755am on a Sunday morning – it’s the day of my wedding ann

dadposting

transcribing.a series of twitter threads i’ve written reflecting on being a dad I. feeding my kid at 5am sets off a seri

blog overview 2023

I feel compelled to go to the start of my blog and start commenting on it. Visa Reacts to his own blog. (this is a janky mess)

bookstores

want to spend a substack post thinking out loud about my experiences with bookstores. I’ve already established before that l

let it happen

The big lesson that my life seems to be trying to teach me lately is: stop trying to force things to be some way other than it

relationship with technology

This was for an interview with Sublime 1) Your work is remarkable for the way in which it uses digital tools and platforms in

nanny diaries

15aug2024: My wife and I brought our 9mo out for his first train ride. He’s still a little too young to really appreciate wh

wildest dreams

I have to laugh sometimes at how my life has turned out. In some ways I am living a life that is beyond my wildest dreams, at

felt sense of freedom

I wanted to write a substack post at some point with this prompt but I got tired wanted to remind myself to include this pictu

2023 worklog

dec23 very productive day deleting and merging blogposts on /blog/, then reading about ulysses dec9: earlier, thread about ppl

all the channels

variable rewards Today was a fairly typical day in which I spent most of my time in front of the computer, clicking around, ty

help me understand

The word belief originally meant something like “hold dear”, or “to care for”, or “to have faith in”. It’s since

2023jun5 status update

I used to write on my phone on my commutes to work. I think I initially did most of it on an Android phone, in Evernote. Neith

improv

I like writing, so here I am. I don’t have a particular thing in mind that I want to write about, so I’m going to improvis

what’s the point of voltaic?

Maybe let’s do a quick roundup update of how this substack has been coming along so far. I started out with the generic name

suffering from misunderstandings

i tend to start in the middle was watching some stuff about toyota on youtube been thinking about processes lately. Particular

can’t or won’t?

what’s the difference between unwilling and unable? lots of people do have poor reading comprehension and are lousy list

give it a minute

It’s been 4 months since I published my last substack post. Is that a long amount of time? It depends on how you see it. I t

covid

i took this pic in feb 2020 and i knew it was going to be interesting/relevant somehow

chaos surfing

(tbc) A thing I get a lot is “visa seems very good at being extremely online and yet remaining somewhat well-adjusted, emoti

one-foot introspect

I wrote a 300-page ebook titled Introspect that I’m really proud of. Over 2,500 people have bought it so far. I’d estimate

one-foot FAN

Throughout history there have been “exceptional” people who seemed to have the near-mystical ability to ‘walk through th

histories

draft/notes thing? For starters, I recommend everybody watch bill wurtz’ history of the entire world, i guess for a nice ove

recent history

It used to be so normal for people to smoke cigarettes everywhere. Old photos of NBA games and boxing had a blue haze – you

get your motor runnin’

Get your motor runnin’Head out on the highwayLooking for adventureIn whatever comes our way Yeah, darlin’ gonna ma

attention whores

I’ve been wanting to write something called Attention Whores, thinking about how that used to be an insult that was thrown a

mcluhan

Malcolm McLuhan has been on my radar for a long time, but I’d always been kinda avoiding him, the way I had previously avoid

repetition

simplistic but feels right: good repetition is mindful, bad repetition is mindless meta: mindless repetition isn’t all that

scope your problems

Scope your problems Why Twitter is more fun than other things- utterances are well scoped Why writing essays and books a

wretchedness

[3:39 PM, 5/21/2023] @visakanv: have i told you about the blessed/wretched thing? it’s another one of my long-stewing pots.

disregard previous instructions

(This post was kicked off by witnessing a younger version of myself struggling with something about permanent records.)

internet

(2023jun1 thread) in response to the time war story, bigolas dickolas: I’ve told variations of this story several times but

blogosphere

collecting some tweets and notes… Neilsen blogosphere study 2012: Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Bl

drafts aug2022-may2023

drafts from time to time people ask me something like “what have you changed your mind the most on” and it’s

ayy players

someone asked what I mean by A+ talent I personally define it as the ability to step into a situation, figure out what’s

the dynamism problem

(abandoned substack draft) “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as se

taskmaster

“Talent. The talent of some men appears slighter than it is because they have always set themselves tasks that are too

kohai vs senpai

Kohai: I need help. I’m stuck. Knotted. Trapped. Overwhelmed. What do I do? Senpai: What do you want to do? Kohai: I want to

bro just describe things

Here is some advice for myself. Just describe things. Get back into the heart of yourself, feel what you feel, inhabit your bo

stressin’

(abandoned substack draft) I have seven different tabs open right now, each with a different draft of a different substack ess

junkyard of vague intentions

Earlier this morning I wrote 1,500 words, and then I dumped them in my junkyard (below, lol). I feel pretty good about it. Tho

how to market

“How do I market my <community> substack? There are thousands of <community>-curious people out there and only a t

Bill Burr

on male bullying/bonding: “This is how it works with guys. Anytime you do anything remote sensitive, heart-warming, anything

jeanette winterson

quotes “Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include.

writing from the heart

(abandoned substack draft) It’s funny how the bog of life’s troubles can creep up on you. Even when you’ve done the read

how to name things?

(abandoned substack draft) how to name things thinking is easy, information architecture is hard Noticed several of my creativ

aesthetic resonance

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS FUCKING ESSAY. I WANT YOU TO CONSIDER YOUR AESTHETICS. BUT NO RIGHT NOW MORE IMPORTANTLY I WANT TO A

unstuck

(original thread) meant to write an essay today but got distracted by twitter lol and now its bedtime so maybe i’ll blur