Beware the moral failing fallacy

SELF-LOVE AND THE “MORAL FAILING” FALLACY: Here’s something that’s taken me a long time to be able to

pics

Language news Good typography The message has to suit the medium: Recurring theme of brooding over cities how people make refe

SeeingSpaces

Stone tools, computer mice, bricks and smartphones are all designed to fit the human hand. people looking ridiculous SeeingSpa

Parable of Shitty Choices

OVERALL TLDR/SUMMARY: Effective decision-making can be counter-intuitive. You assume that a good decision is supposed to look

Keyboard shortcuts

For Mac. Cmd + ctrl + space – Emoji keyboard Ctrl + click – Right-click Cmd + Shift + 4 – Screenshot area (+ Ctrl – sa

The Seductive-Destructive Siren-Song of Fame

In 2010, I wrote a blogpost about Justin Bieber. In 2018, I want to expand this post into something broader, about celebrity a

Death

I believe that it’s important to properly come to terms with death in order to live well. This is something that’s

Goals are a way of making sense of the chaos around us, giving us a vision of the future to live into

2017 update: This post is hilariously vague. I need to add some measurable, achievable targets to prove to myself that I have

Adulthood is about taking responsibility

The following are selected quotes from @1000wordvomits. -1- “What is “this”? Whatever it is that distinguishes me fr

Ways in which I’ve been a misfit + how that’s shaped who I am

I made this post because I want to make sense of who I am. I’ve had a funny relationship with being a misfit. Initially,

Concepts

Guiding ‘Principles’ Beware the Guilt-and-Shame Ego Trap. Alternate names: Self-flagellation trap, beating yoursel

Drogon vs Balerion size comparison

Hypothesis: Artists perceive differently than regular folks

I have some kooky hypotheses about how people like this (and folks like Van Gogh) experience reality differently from the comm

Realizations I’d like to be reminded of

There are some things that I realize from time to time, and I wish I could be reminded of regularly. This is an attempt to con

What does it mean to be Indian in the modern world?

WIP “To be an Indian writer in this society is to face, every day, problems of definition. What does it mean to be ‘Indian

Fashion is omnipresent and inescapable; we are all making fashion statements whether we realize it or not

Why does this post exist? I think fashion is interesting and important. I’d like to develop a better sense of my perspec

Institutionalized

Local man gets released from prison, quickly proceeds to attempt to throw himself into path of bus to extort money from driver

making sense of bullshit-ville

To be born into modern human civilization is both a great privilege (for the safety and opportunities it provides) and a rathe

Jokes perform social functions and sustain social orders

Lol so we should just stop appreciating comedy in general… (cos every joke/skit is inherently poking fun at some facet o

work learnings

The following is a list of things that I personally learned. Work in progress. One on ones. It’s very important to have

Feature Requests

Spotify Problem: Overplayed music Suggestion: The simplest, bluntest way this could work is a block/ban list. “I donR

DR wedding speech

Thank you everybody for being here on this pleasant day, to witness our friends writing the next chapter of their lives. 

Predictions are a good way to test your understanding

Preamble Originally on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9325637  It’s always interesting to look at old predic

Mind-expanding stuff

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-universe-is-scary  Wait but why Neil Tyson’s the universe is in us, we stopped dre

Sanjay’s Super Team

I’m thinking about Sanjay’s Super Team, and Ratatouille, and overcoming ‘villains’. Overcoming cynicis

What’s up with yoga?

I think there’s something interesting about how yoga went from being a spiritual way of being to becoming a commodified

precise

The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918-19) Lecture 1: Facts and Propositions By Bertrand Russell (The following articles ar

Food is an intimate window into everything

Food studies Alcohol Coffee / Caffeine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Nicotine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Dopamine [1, 2, 3, 4] Serotonin [1] Sugar Y

Tools I use

I’ve been meaning to write reviews of all the tools I use. Chat / communication tools HipChat – This is what we use as

Baby abandonment

People are usually quick to demonize the mother in these situations. It’s interesting (and sad) to me. There’s a v

pursue your curiosities

Oct 2016: Am currently in the process of shuffling these around to fit headers, so things might not make sense for a while. Is

bestof @visakanv hacker news comments

Singapore Is Taking the ‘Smart City’ to a New Level Writer’s block What is your writing process like? slack as ̵

Politics and the English language [2016]

The following is my attempt to update George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language [1946] for modern reading.

taste is the beating heart of all creative value

This post is a work-in-progress. It’s really just a set of notes for now. I’ve been finding myself sharing it with

Taste is the beating heart of all creative value

This post is a work-in-progress. It’s really just a set of notes for now. 1 I was re-reading Playboy’s 1994 interview

Life Basics

Haven’t written in a while. I feel a little tired and bored of the 1000wordvomits project, like it’s not going any

One must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing

Life, particularly in modern civilization, is an absurd circus. We’re all clowns living in boxes trying to amuse ourselves w

Travel

I’m not much of a traveller. I’d like to change that. So far, I’ve been to… Johor, Malaysia Batam, Ind

Fitness

I’ve developed an idea in my mind about how to use my blog moving forward. I want it to be an extension of my mind, that

The Body Is The Mind

From reddit thread about walking around during phone calls; This is a specific case of the general phenomenon. Lots of people

Pondering the heat death of the universe

(I wrote this in 2013 in a a conversation with a friend, and decided to tidy it up a little and publish it for future referenc

Advice for a JC1 Kid

“SO, do you have any advice for a JC1 kid? :p Like a “dear 18 year old me” kinda thing haha” Sure, you

My journey from underachieving student to moderately competent adult [2016]

An older friend told me that a parent wanted to talk to ‘learn about my educational journey’ and ‘understand

referrals

I like making referrals whenever I spot the opportunity to, and I rarely care about the benefit to me (unless it’s absol

life-summary

1990 – Born 1994 – St Hilda’s Kindergarten 1997 – Opera Estate Primary School 1998 – Burnt hand 2000 – St Hild

A list of people I find interesting

This is a “quick-reference” blogpost of high-quality people. These are “all-time-greats” type folks, m

How To Self Regulate

I think the solution to the problem of self-regulation will begin with really little things. If you suck at self-regulation, y

1000 index

self-observations 0408 — tendency to talk in explanations – I get neurotic when I try to explain everything, includin

writing

0546 – the future of my words 0543 – writing as joyful self-correspondence 0533 – the next steps of my writing journey 0

Guilt is a feeling that should inform action, not paralyze

Originally 0532. Guilt is a feeling. It’s often a legitimate feeling, and it’s a signal from the mind/body that something

word vomit notes

Practice Stoicism (0010) Keep your identity small (0094) Avoid heartbreak warfare (0006), petty arguments (0076) Be random fro

Words are vessels of meaning; to investigate words is to discern meaning

I have loved letters and words for as long as I can remember. I love their shapes the way a painter might enjoy the smell of p

Sex is ubiquitous – and it’s shamed and policed as a tool of social control

Sex: http://slutever.com/sex-is-normal/ Clever use of pictures to communicate. Bloomberg – Has internet culture ruined love

history is an underrated source of insight

I think history is interesting. It’s like binge-watching old seasons of current affairs – we get to go through a lot

Advice To A Younger Self: How To Manage Yourself

1. Hit the gym. We live in the real world and physical strength has real benefits. Get fit and you’ll look fit, and peop

Bookmarks that I often share with friends

Disclaimer – I find these reads interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with them.  #Bestof / Most Shared These are li

beware self-flagellation

Here’s something that’s taken me a long time to be able to identify and an even longer time to express succinctly: Very of

How to build and maintain communities

This blogpost started out as a bunch of notes and links, and I found myself sharing it with people over and over again so much

We are all miseducated + need to rethink education from scratch

We are all miseducated. My education journey 0129 – future of education 0461 – we are all miseducated – accepted it and

Surprises reveal the limits of our expectations

I started smoking again. Thought I would’ve quit for good. (Quit again in 2016) people are stupid. keep assuming that th

Meditation is mind-maintenance. If you believe that the mind is important, meditation is, too

Clear the gunk off your windshield so you can focus on the present moment, what’s in front of you right now. Jon Kabat Z

the body is inextricably intertwined with the mind

I’ve been overwhelmed in recent times with the realization that I don’t really know my body as well as I thought I

Why do hard things? It’s about the people you meet along the way, including a better version of yourself

I’m somewhat intellectually convinced that it’s worth doing hard things in life, but I don’t always live as

Why do I argue with people on the internet?

I wrote this because I wanted to make sense of a habit that I have, and to modify it so it serves me better. I think the impor

The XAB method – Get person X from point A to point B without overextending yourself

This is a draft of a blogpost I’ve been meaning to write, articulating what I’ve learned from a few years of being

The media is critical to how we make sense of ourselves and our reality

Why does this post exist? I think the media (in all its forms) is a very important part of what it means to be human. It’

Schools are powerful, outdated tools of social programming

Why does this post exist? I haven’t been in school in over a decade, but it had a debilitating effect on me and I want t

What makes something “authentic”? It’s about passing for others

The goal here is to explore what we mean when we say something is ‘authentic’, ask who gets to decide, and how we

How to facilitate interesting interviews / conversations

If I were an interviewer. 1: I think it’s important to get all the preliminary questions out of the way ASAP. Most dialo

Making sense of my childhood and how it shaped me

I was born on June 6th 1990, in Singapore. George HW Bush was President of the USA. The Berlin Wall fell, East and West German

Procrastination is a solvable problem

On putting things off [HN] I’m very passionate about the problem of procrastination, having suffered terribly from it a

Movies I’ve watched and liked

Movies I really loved and would rewatch Lord of War – depiction of bleakness of arms industry Moneyball – I really appreci

TV shows I’ve watched and liked

blog > reviews > TV TV Shows that I really loved, recommend and would rewatch Arcane Andor The West Wing – great conv

Creativity is just connecting (and remixing) things

  Everything Is A Remix (Full Video) [30 mins+] How To Steal Like An Artist, by Austin Kleon (Google him for Twitter). P

Motivation is anything that compels you to take action

Hello, World Finished Not Perfect [1:30] Why Do We Fall [6:13] Unbroken [5:57] Dream [6:20] Les Brown: You Gott

Stuff I’ve written about writing

Stuff  I’ve written about writing: Minimum Viable Content Copywriting Content Anxiety “Do you have any writing ad

An oral history of the games I’ve played

What’s the first video game you ever played? I’m not entirely sure. I recall watching my brothers play games on th

boredom is a 4-part bug of the mind; it can be resolved

2023 update: I ended up writing Introspect in part because of my obsession with this question. I feel like I have a good han

Quotes I’d like to be reminded of

2023 update: This feels like a very dated post now. I think my goal moving forward is to weave all my favorite quotes into my

“What are you passionate about” might be better framed as “what are you willing to suffer for?”

A younger friend told me that he gets asked this question a lot, and that he doesn’t know how to answer. So he asked me how

ambition

Jayne asked on facebook, “what are your dreams and ambitions?” I could talk to you for hours about this because th

Cebu [2015]

I went to Cebu in March 2015. It was a pleasant experience. Hung out in Ayala Mall. Bought some books. Ate Lechon. It was real

Annual Checkups

Jan 1 2010: Inflated sense of self-worth Nov 18 2010: Resolutions for 2011 Jan 1 2011: Mandatory New Year Post July 5 2011: W

todo

(feb2015 draft of a page from @1000wordvomits) I think one of the things that keeps me procrastinating is the fact that I have

ev

A journey on the information superhighway – evan williams Hello friends. I want to talk to you today about the Internet, jus

Most of my thoughts about education, school, university, learning.

When you’re still in the early stages of your formal education, you have a pretty good idea about what the next year will br

Tweets from 2010

run was totally worth it. body is a furnace. ear drums are pounding. fresh night air tastes so good. cut 2 minutes off my 3.6k

My Answers To Mark Manson’s Life Purpose Questions

http://markmanson.net/life-purpose 1: What is your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive? (What pain

Why I Am A Marketer

This is a quick and dirty draft I wrote while at work. There’s this Italian guy on TED- Ernesto Sirolli who said there are t

Why should we blog?

It’s always been self-evident to me, but let me try to spell it out. A blog is the intersection of conversations and boo

Your frustration is valid, but your response isn’t helping you.

Visakan Veerasamy’s answer to: If you could write a 10 note to your younger self, what would you say? Your frustration i

The Tao of YungSnuggie

I loved YungSnuggie so much that I pulled out his best answers, formatted them a little (tried to make it easier to read witho

words that are pretty and useful

puerile magnate marquis credo quasar savant vehement ostensible irrevocable celestial sobriqueted veritable pervasive eviscera

A year of content marketing.

I started work at ReferralCandy in February 2013. It’s easily been the most interesting, exciting and challenging year o

Summary of entire blog, part 4 (2012)

Continuing where I left off in Part 3… Personal Development: How to live, and other final 2011 thoughts. Worried about m

summary of entire blog part 3

In part 2 (over a year ago!), I summarized my blog up to the middle of 2011. Let’s continue. Singapore: The danger of

seth godin

CHOOSING COLOR: People desperately want to believe stories. Even if that story is just a few drops of ink on a plastic sheet.

Notes from Seth Godin’s talk at Google

I was watching a talk that Seth Godin gave at Google in 2007. It was uploaded on jul 16, about 3 weeks after the first generat

notes from Anthony Robbins TED talk

Immersion why, what is your motivation today? invisible force of internal drive emotion is the force of life effective people/

notes from 4 hour body

Ginger & Sauerkraut for muscle experimentalists keep theoreticians honest- Michio Kaku Separation of expertise means both