postratmusings

“Trying to sell ebooks to not have a job” well first of all, yes, I don’t want a job. I personally hate jobs. Second: in

i miss writing

I just had the thought that I miss writing. Which is a funny thought to have, considering how much time I spend every day twee

FAN reader takeaways

Quotes from the book in normal text. My thoughts in bold. (JR) “FRIENDLINESS is about being a nourishing presence. It’

the invitation: stop fussing

There are few things I dislike more than people telling me what to do. So this is not a directive. This is an invitation. You

naiise

I have been too tired/busy with other things to do very much these few days, but I promise I will never shut up about the stor

The Making Of A Public Intellectual, Devoney Looser [2017]

Summary: The author is an expert on the subject of Jane Austen. She was interviewed by CNN when the Bank of England placed her

how to become a sword guy

@alphaanomics asked, “How one can find people with the same set of interest/ideology/work ( Nerds) on the internet?̶

The Problem Of Excess Genius, by David Banks [1997]

David Banks, Department of StatisticsCarnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213 The most important question we can ask of

no scolding

(og thread) I seldom articulate this explicitly but one of the cornerstones of my approach to peopling is “no scolding&#

arrogance

(og thread) When I was a teenager, the dominant criticism my closest friends had of me was that I was too arrogant, and they w

leadership and responsibility

prev: do whatever the fuck you want I didn’t grow up wanting to be a leader. I grew up wanting to have fun. And leadership o

Do Whatever The Fuck You Want

(written ~Dec 2020?) When I was a teenager there was a Singaporean band that I really liked called Ronin, and one of their son

gender stuff

I wanna try tweeting like my most straightforward honest feelings about gender stuff; my thinking itself seems to be convolute

never forget: the chainsaw wants to eat you

remember to feed the kids don’t put your eye at laser beam height do not rub the belly don’t negotiate against yourself fo

turning 30, 31

30 I just turned 30. I kinda try to do an update every year, though I’m not sure if I’ve been super deliberate about that.

handover protocols

“Political visions are fragile. They appear—and are lost again. Ideas formulated in one generation are frequently forg

how to weave a hyperthread web

“Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.” – Lord Krishna to Arjuna, Bhagavad-gita, Chapter 7.7 In hi

pre-installed personalities

(original thread) with each passing year I get more and more convinced that people are practically born with most of their per

mkt1000

1000 blogpost ideas. There may be a few repeats. 0121013243069365911100013371000000s1d1st2010s2020s2nd3d3rd48laws4chan50s50sha

psychographs

(original 2019 thread) You know how people sometimes go to sleep thinking about a problem and wake up with the solution? I wen

dismantling obsolete beliefs

(2019 thread) there’s a sort of bullshit detector in my brain, which contains a set of beliefs about how the world works

aesthetics (junkyard of notes, links)

I want to persuade people that it’s worth their time and effort to experiment with their aesthetics. Why? I can start by

sensitivity

sensitivity is a superpower – IMO sensitivity + smarts + strength is the holy grail. We have many cargo cults that worship s

Narcissism

many cultures have anti-narcissist defenses that, kinda unfortunately, seem to end up discouraging everyone except actual narc

Top 10 things I’ve had to unlearn

Slingshot

The following post is a copy-paste of a Twitter thread. It will take some time before it turns into an essay of its own. I’v

make friends

Warning: This “blogpost” is currently just a messy, meandering collection of thoughts and notes. If I can only pic

threads

Here are a list of my threads.

everyone loves to make a great introduction

I think the big secret of social life is that everybody loves to make a great introduction. If you can become someone that peo

the world is not kind to those who are tacky

Late night thought: “Don’t be tacky (unless you know why you’re doing it)” is a surprisingly powerful heuristic for me

@visakanv’s top 10 lifehacks

(Originally posted on Twitter) 10. Do 1,000 of something. Anything, it doesn’t matter what. Really. When was the last time y

magic is just persistent curiosity

I’ve been circling around a few thoughts recently, and it’s about the idea of “magic”. I guess also se

memex

People keep asking me about the memex in my Twitter header. You can download a PDF of it if you like. Make friends. It is dang

assemble the mindcity

(original thread) Now that more of us are playing the threading game: As we compete+collaborate effectively articulate things

sf friends

I was going through my photos and I wanted to keep track of all the people I met. Unfortunately sometimes I met someone and di

Where does money come from, really?

A question that made me anxious when I was a teenager is “where does money come from really?” Most people tend to be s

blogroll

In the old days, people used to have lists of links on their blogs to other blogs that they liked reading. Here’s mine.

A letter to my younger self, on the trip of our life

Dear Visa-17, Visa-29 here. So I recently got on a Singapore Airlines plane (I know, finally!) and flew across the planet to S

How to get my attention

I have a happy problem. I have over 10,000 Twitter followers. I’d like to think that I’d like to meet every last o

mkt content ideas 2017

Origin Stories I’d like to do a post exploring the origin stories of all the popular marketers and marketing thought lea

economics of dating

I’ve always been quite fascinated with the economics of dating. Louis CK had this interesting bit about how there are some p

you can’t get everything you want

getting what you want isn’t always a good thing “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they e

first day of work

This was me on my first day of work. It’s been 4 years now.   Here’s what I remember… I was terrified. It was

Turn curiosities into essays

This is an old note that’s interesting because it was from a while after I left my job, but before I started really succ

the boy who wouldn’t behave

“Why is nobody helping me?”  Amos Yee isn’t the first person to say the things he’s said. He isn̵

battery low

I got curious about exploring this metaphor because of how I felt during a trip, thinking about how tedious and annoying it wa

lsd quotes

LSD quotes “Psychedelics […] dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and informa

the context of ambition

the context of ambition this is really old – what was the point of this? this was pre-Purusha… 2017-ish? Venkat alread

the logic of violence

so i’ve always thought that this is interesting but i don’t see myself writing an essay on it very soon… it’s like…

make friends

— 1 — You can spend years arguing with idiots, or you can spend years making friends. The idiots aren’t going to be

Memex

I saw a picture of “Bay Area Memespace“, and for some reason I felt compelled to put together my own “@visak

2019 twitter

January strategy/marketing/biz/career stuff: threads about me questions: takes: observations: aphorisms: trivia / random inter

Relationships are challenging + a lot of work

Preamble: Hello everyone! This post has been getting shared a little bit, so I thought it might be worth taking some time to p

‘Smart Writing’ is about cultivating taste, suspending judgement and chasing your curiosity

I saw someone tweet “I wish smart writing came to me as easily as dumb tweeting” — and so I am here to share my strategy

The public is insufficiently educated on how to be a good public

The public is insufficiently educated on how to be a good public. I think this is civilisation-specific (ie not an issue for e

2018 bookmarks

📱 media / internet best tech reads https://substack.com/profile/2417812-packy-mccormick/note/c-14475201  what do you h

salaryman suspicions

my 6-month hiatus from salaryman life has confirmed a lot of my suspicions about myself there are many layers to this I was wo

hire me (2018)

Hire me (Check 2019 notebook for more details) What I can do for you Speaking engagements I have emceed several weddings, co-w

1000wv: adulthood

0093 – transitioning to adulthood, maladjustment I was doing some reading (blog.asmartbear.com today) But then a swarm of sc

flirting is about signalling interest with plausible deniability

What I tell my nephews: flirting is basically this – give moderately strong signals of interest with plausible deniabili

We need to get better at dealing with assholes if we are to progress as a species

— 1 — As I get older I feel this subtle-but-strong pressure to become more “professional” – more “civil”, mo

LKY

Friends from abroad often ask me for suggested readings re: Lee Kuan Yew. I recommend starting by reading The Art Of Charlie C

writer master plan

Oct: Writer Master Plan I’ve been doing some soul-searching and I’ve concluded that the one thing I want to do wit

rationalbros are mainly interested in scoring points in the rationalbro game

This is a collection of notes and tweets I have about the times I’ve used the phrase “rationalbro”. I may so

different hours = different worlds

It never gets old: waking up at different times feels like inhabiting different worlds. Now I’m thinking of God of War. Did

#StrugglePorn – is it painting a false picture?

good conversation started here with Nat & Gary I’m not personally a fan of Gary’s overall brand, but I appreci

Singapore

I’ve somehow found myself in an interesting position of getting to be the only Singaporean in a room full of foreigners

my life in pictures

This post exists to help me, at a glance, get a sense of my own life over the years. 1990 – 1996 1998 2001 2003 2004 2006 20

The Statement / JIBABOM! story, so far

Statement is a t-shirt company that we started in 2011. I posted some ideas on Facebook, and they were pretty well-r

I used to be a picky eater

I saw somebody make fun of picky eaters on Twitter, and I felt compelled to write about my own experiences. I was like this my

men can and should creature nurturing spaces for each other

My wife pointed out to me recently that there are so few spaces for men to gather and talk about their feelings. We could crea

our metaphors for god adapt to keep up with our technology

Most of us inherit an idea of God as a “world craftsman”. If you think about it, this idea could not predate craft

minorities have to be extra-sensitive

(these were thoughts in response to Sarah Jeong being called out for being racist towards white men) I think one of the rules

women’s perspectives are criminally underrepresented

As I get older and hear more about women’s experiences, it gets clearer and clearer to me that movies and TV are dominat

mansplaining is sometimes (but not always) innocuous

If I had to do a “the difference between men and women” type of standup set, I think I would focus on the phenomenon of ma

many women want to have sex

my wife was telling me something interesting about an all-women FB group she was in women very often want to have sex with men

menworld: a way of considering the patriarchy

(Clarification: for the whole of this thread, when I say Men, I’m referring to the subset of straight men who live &

“I only like Chinese girls”

There is some nuance in the space between having a preference and articulating it. Lots of dudes are utterly incapable of walk

Speaking

I thought it would be interesting to make a list of notable events where I’ve spoken at. I’ve emceed 2 weddings. I

naughty boy ideation

(2024: I believe this was a wordvomit i tried to write but gave up on halfway.) Starting a second vomit hot on the heels of th

Breakfast AMAs

Every so often I have breakfast alone, and I ask Twitter to ask me questions. I enjoy it a lot – I find it to be a great way

Punching nazis is probably good, but never be gleeful about violence

There was a period of time where people on Twitter seemed very gleeful about punching Nazis, and the idea of punching Nazis.&n

cultural cosplay: a broader framework for thinking about cultural appropriation

I’ve never quite been satisfied with the overuse of the phrase “cultural appropriation” in all sorts of cont

Talking about cultural things means getting things wrong.

I think cultural things are the most interesting things but they’re also the hardest to talk about with other people A b

different people have different mental models

People typically have high-res models of their own lives and lower-res models of other people’s. We are all born clueless wi

People are tired, and this leads to suboptimal outcomes on many fronts

A thing I didn’t appreciate as a kid, but understand better now, is why so much of the world is suboptimal – it’s no

do you know what you want?

What do you want? Do you really want what you think you want, or did you inherit it from your parents, your peers, from societ

lessons from reflections

2006 sigh im back, may 07 the thoughts that inspired \(n_n)/, Oct ’07 What makes a show? Oct 07 performer’s insecurity, no

Attempting A Reading Into Indian History

What is India? What is Indian? I like to start with words. The name India is derived from Indus, from the Old Persion word Hin

electricity

How electricity works We live in an electric world – lightning is electricity, electric currents run through our bodies. ele

Why I stopped blogging in 2013, I think

Before I start with this, I want to take a moment to summarize a 2014 blogpost, “Why should we blog?“ It allows fo

tedtalks

TED talks

Books I’d like to talk about

I used to have a really old version of this blogpost that was tattered and patchy, until eventually I got sick of it and decid

Narcissist PR works because we can’t shut up about it

WIP I tweeted a more cautious version of this blogpost in July, and it’s been on my mind so I wanted to take some time t

Most people over-tolerate assholes, which lets them get away with it

[Original thread] As I get older I feel this subtle-but-strong pressure to become more “professional” – more “civi

WWE

I remember when I was a young child – maybe five or six years old – when I first watched WWE on TV. (At the time it was ca

Hypothesis: people with uncommon names are likelier to develop uncommon identities

Here’s a nominative determinism flavored hypothesis: I believe that people with uncommon names are likelier to develop u

Helm Of The Arse Gods

Oddball confession: one of my first life-shaping experiences on the Internet was lying on a video game forum (Darkstone, Delph

Bangkok [2013]

India [2016]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7