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finding the right angles

I’m a good conversationalist. But I wouldn’t say I’m a natural at it. It’s something that I actively set out to get be

content marketing

I’m not sure what the current state of content marketing is today, but when I used to do that for a living in 2013-2018, the

flow garden

A similar visual I have in my mind is how a bit of food coloring spreads through clear water. I kinda wish it was a gif instea

lorelai

It’s 1046pm. I’d like to write and publish something. I have many unfinished drafts in various stages of disarray. It ofte

nothing contextualizes itself

The very first essay I published on this substack in 2022 was titled We were voyagers, and it was subtitled “On Nietzschean

universal cursed artifact

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

hyperion and lazarus

There’s something very funny about how i’ve been spending the past 2 years struggling to figure out the container for my c

improvisation

while helping my ~1yo son go to sleep I was clicking around on YouTube and I ended up watching a rick beato interview with Vic

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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)

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

2023 worklog

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

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

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

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

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

blogosphere

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

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

taskmaster

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

how to market

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

unstuck

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

unsolicited advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

paula scher

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

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

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

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

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