visakanv

selfsense1. not tired but knotted

“Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thought And not wa

resonance over coherence

update: published in May 2023 https://visakanv.substack.com/p/resonance-over-coherence/ This is an abandoned Substack draft fr

unsolicited advice

“I’ve noticed a few recent tweets that seem to deviate from your ‘brand’. If you want to continue to g

nyc

sometimes experiences take a while to really blossom into their fullness. i finally visited nyc for the first time in february

reality

This post was a stub that evolved into “reality is unrealistic” substack essay a few months later. “But please r

self-bullying

(og tweet) idk if i’ve framed it like this before when talking about trust and freedom etc: a person who bullies themsel

FAN thesis take 1

All right, hey friends! So what I’m going to be doing is I have a speech that I’m giving in a couple of weeks. Tod

iron FAN

One of my favorite blogposts by Venkatesh Rao was about the Iron Man movies. He describes how Tony Stark had two problems –

take note, notice

I take a lot of notes. I also have quite a lot of thoughts about note-taking. I could probably keep going. I also have a lot o

public intellectuals

This is a substack draft where I just thread all of the tweets that I’ve written with the word “public intellectual”. I

how to write good comments

✱ Alright bitches and motherfuckers so what constitutes a good comment? It’s 5am so I gotta go to bed but i’m leaving th

everything is sexual

(og thread) maybe this is jarring for me to say in context here because i inhabit a different vocabulary entirely but i think

thinking in dominos

One of the best memes i’ve come up with is what my friends know as The Dominos Meme – an expression of earnest, ambitious

2000s

an interesting thing about 2004 was that both Mean Girls and The Incredibles had scenes where white women were frustrated/emba

internal conflicts?

movie/media reviews

I have a folder in my notes app called “reviews”, where I throw in notes that I’ve put together about stuff I’ve watch

reintroducing myself

Maybe delete, here are my guiding thoughts for myself as I introduce myself again: I can’t possibly expect to say everything

do not leave your longings unattended

<folders pic> the point of this post is to have some wistful energy, some liminality… i should be feeling it right now wh

real social media has never been tried

I tell this story a lot when talking about the promise of social media. The title feels like it should be the title of a hendr

in other words

This world has lost its glory / Let’s start a brand new story now, my love… “The limits of my language are the limit

oceanic?

Words spill out of me. Every day I wake up and I write a bunch of tweets. I don’t consciously plan these. They just happen.

pave the desire paths

A desire path is a path that’s created by people using it, rather than by top-down design. The path is proof that people wan

220,000 tweets later / twitter overview

I started putting this together because it seemed like Twitter had a non-trivial chance of dying. If I’m being honest a part

comedic influences

Sometimes I just like to investigate things on Wikipedia. Today I’m curious about some details about immigrants. I start by

the problem of atomized thinking?

Not sure how i want to phrase it I want to talk about arrogance and humility and how people get that wrong lots of mistakes yo

sweet spots

I got distracted halfway when writing this because of a pradyu tweet about asian kids complaining. but then afterwards… nah

status notes

I’ve been wanting to write some stuff about social status for a long time, but I never quite had the right framing or contex

a man from each century

BCE Pythagoras Pericles Herodotus 0-999 Paul the Apostle Plutarch Marcus Aurelius Faxian (337 CE – c. 422 CE) travelling mon

scene sketches

One of my favorite things that I periodically do on Twitter is what I might call exploratory nerdposting – it’s when I sta

Advanced Stupid

to labor together

a project is anything that requires collaboration, even if only with yourself My secondary school motto was “Nil Sine Labore

be not not-yourself

Sometimes double-negatives can be very helpful. “be yourself” can be endlessly frustrating, but I believe that

palm leaf manuscripts / tweet grammar

(2023jul15) Let’s dive right in. I trust that you already know what Twitter is, you know what tweets are, I don’t really w

writing used to be easier for me / logjam

Writing used to be easier for me. When I was a novice, when I was younger, when I perceived myself to be a nobody with nothing

incorrect estimates

I had this nice fantasy when I published my second book that I would then churn out a nice essay every week. If I had done tha

Scheherazade

my debt to scheherazade – this is kinda poetic but it’s more of a chapter/subheader than the actual title. this is mea

chasing the feeling with no name

A part of me is always chasing a particular feeling. Sometimes I call it “aesthetic resonance”, though that’s not the wh

men of letters / write your way out

“If my humors happen to please some worthy man… he will try to meet me. I give him a big advantage… for all

Against Flanderization

As a creator, you might feel like it’s your job to give the audience what they want. In practice, this turns out to be a

a love letter to my process

ios/substack draft A love letter to my process Feels a bit tacky to write so much about writing. But this is an internal fee

culture2, notes

One of the victory conditions in the Civilization video game series is “cultural victory”. A funny quote that happens is w

luckmaxxing

we’ve come too farTo give up who we areSo let’s raise the barAnd our cups to the stars Longevity of songs One of my favori

scenius: with love comes criticism

(abandoned substack draft) I used to be a very active member of my local music scene. I’d attend a lot of shows. I wrote com

irritation with others

(og thread) i hold on to my irritation with other people in large part because i want to think of everyone as peers i want to

mysteriously winning

(og thread) When you’re starting out, it feels like you don’t have a lot of value to contribute. but as you get be

culture1- singapore, stereotypes, seeing, crossroads

Alright, Chinese New Year is a good topic since it’s CNY in a couple of days, and it’s a useful entry point for thinking a

Iron FAN, mk2, out of the cave

(abandoned substack post) solutions that extend beyond One of my favorite blogposts by Venkatesh Rao was about the Iron Man mo

aesthetic conformity vs being distinctive

(og thread) a lot of recommendations on how to look/sound better goes something like “here’s how to conform better

map of human conversation

“art is never finished, merely abandoned” – da vinci “every book is a failure” – orwell From time

scenius2: Write my way out – men of letters / erasmus,mersenne, stein

(abandoned substack draft – this one I’ll probably actually revisit and work again) “If my humors happen to plea

free agent reflections

its been about 4.5 years now since i’ve worked a “proper job”, in another year or so i will have been a free

eggshells

(og thread) in my 30s i’ve been coming around to learning that most people are quite forgiving. i got burned really hars

aesthetics of earnestness

Aesthetics of earnestness Earnestness doesn’t have to mean you pick up the language and aesthetics often associated wi

artful incompleteness

(abandoned substack draft) No piece of work can ever fully contextualize itself, you’ll go mad trying. But what if things we

Oral history of 2010s

Point of this doc is to situate myself, feel more grounded… It’s going to be a substack post Game of Thrones decade, 2011-

we are all Vincent Adultman

Social fabric is woven with polite fictions. One of the major threads in that fabric is the idea of a unilateral self. The ide

recharge your talismans

(abandoned substack draft) meaningful objects matter because we’re all gonna die tend to them, attend to them, they are

how to fckn read

(abandoned substack post) I have been very helpful (1) to a lot of people in a lot of ways. But I can’t help you if you can�

twitter drafts 2022oct7

power: people who feel powerless seldom want the responsibility that comes with power. to a surprising degree, power is grante

new guy navigating group norms

(og thread) every group of people develops some set of norms, and there is typically friction when a new entrant joins the gro

abdication

(oct2022 thread) a thing I haven’t quite been able to connect the dots on properly, but have an increasing felt sense of: th

external meaning structures

(og thread) people who are bad at generating their own meaning get much more troubled by disruptions and turbulence in externa

behavior change requires addressing copes

(og thread) vague intuition that a critical factor of why behavior change/redesign is so unsuccessful so often is: insufficien

power

(original thread) experimenting with a frame, not sure if I’m entirely behind it but let’s see how it feels: iR

plaintext

Some shit about written language. Cuneiform. Rewatch that extra credit video. Hyper literacy ✱ i love to be a wh

paula scher

🔥 Paula scher City of signs Typography everywhere Painting with words “More ways to make type talk” Distinctive b

mediastudies 1

(abandoned substack post) feel like the title of this post should be a quote about polaroid I’ve always wanted to research a

transcendent incompleteness / in media res / media studies2

(Abandoned substack draft) how do we find joy in an existence within constraints? how does art break through the bandwidth lim

solitary mann

notes when i look through my references when i take photographs it’s just to take a note of the moment that i see, kno

how to talk to people

(abandoned substack draft) how to talk to people most people are doing it pretty badly. god, so badly. it’s so fucking i

trivia

Erasmus Mersenne Jadav Dashrath Wang yinji abdallah Chola Jane jacobs, mixed uses, wealth creation, sidewalks, strangers

100 greatest products of all time

Work in progress.

you can just not do the thing

(og thread) “The entire internet gaslighting itself into watching Morbius is one of the most hysterical things I’v

how to be a self-directed indie scholar

Here’s my backstory, my approach, my beliefs. First, I believe the core thing is that you have to have a personal set of cur

language

A big part of why I write is so I can think clearly without all of the inelegant clutter of most people’s words, and mo

filters and boundaries

(og thread) i dont feel like anybody ever talked to me about filters and boundaries in the way that i’d have liked to he

broscience stress theory

(original thread) my big broscience medical conspiracy theory is that tonnes of things are downstream of stress (which have to

branching paths (jump cuts)

(abandoned substack draft) There’s a lot I want to talk about, but I will need many tries to begin to get it right. So here�

words smoosh concepts smoosh memories

(original thread) there’s something interesting that happens when you void the warranty on your received indoctrination

frodo

(source thread) when i was a teenager I had an older friend who was a dick to me all the time I would write these long, rambly

socially inherited bloatware

(2019nov thread) had several conversations w/ friends who’ve been incapacitated by the burdensome bullshit obligation to

naming ceremony

this was me just freestyling and jamming about my substack Naming ceremony This is an associative exercise, just listing out t

wooten

Transcript of Wooten’s TEDx talk: Well, thank you very much. And it’s true. I was born into a band. Very literally

taskmaster: do you deserve joy?

(og thread) looking back, one of the major anxieties of my teens and most of my 20s was caused by this unhelpful, unhealthy be

2050 predictions

I was asked by @mold_time to make some predictions for 2050. Now, that’s a wack thing to do, because 2050 basically 30 years

hyperinflation

everybody owes each other stuff, we call this society then people invented coin to represent this debt and trade it around, we

better explanations

(dec2021 thread) throughout my life I recurringly find myself thinking the thought “nobody explained this to me the way it o

calendar rehab, aversion to containers

(original thread) might as well talk about it out loud: i experience a deep aversion to putting stuff to do on my calendar (ot

better explanations

(2021dec3 thread) throughout my life I recurringly find myself thinking the thought “nobody explained this to me the way it

my compulsive people

(og thread) hypothesis: a thing abt “my people” is they each have some way in which they are oddly compulsive, at

al-mamun

Al-Ma’mun was the 7th caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate (786-833 CE). I think of him as “the Pericles of BaghdadR

maniac

probably worth examining why sometimes i feel like working on this and sometimes i don’t. it’s like i don’t quite rememb

mayor

This was Aug2021? doesn’t seem that long ago. Was discussing with malcolm how we would do things differently. It’s m

In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell [1932]

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ Bein

Pericles’ Funeral Oration [~431 BCE]

(VV: Emphasis mine.) Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our ot

just hit your target

This is the same core principle for starting a business or becoming an author, or anything really just sell one product, then

coleridge moment

(og thread) Just had a Coleridge moment. i took a nap, and in that nap i was on vacation, and on that vacation i was perfectly

prioritization defeats anxiety

observation: A person who is prioritizing is still not succeeding at the impossible task of doing everything they want to do,

how to scenius, draft

(scenius thread) a more general version of this is my dominant preoccupation, so here are some riffs and thoughts broad stroke

kurosawa

Aspiring directors #1- expensive, hard, you must learn and experience things, it’s not easy But if you genuinely want