drafts

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

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

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

scope your problems

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

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

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

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

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

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-

twitter drafts 2022oct7

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

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

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