why were you late?
Here’s a story that I often tell people, and it’s useful enough that it’s worth writing up to share with more people. I started my first real adult job in early 2013, working in marketing for a software company. I think both my ex-boss Dinesh and I would describe myself similarly: 22-year-old Visa was a […]
the world is big
“Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Arthur Schopenhauer “Your personal experiences make up <0.0001% of what’s happened in the world but 80% of how you think the world works. When experiencing a fraction of what’s out there but using that to explain everything […]
happiness
The following is a transcript of the above video, edited for readability. I think there’s a sort of mainstream understanding of how happiness is almost all-inclusive and elusive and just kind of ephemeral. Kind of vague, kind of general. There’s a lot of different ways to conceive of happiness. I would say that I don’t […]
seek excellent peers
Whenever people ask things like “your best advice in 3-4 words” etc, I always go with “seek excellent peers”. Because when you surround yourself with good people, they have a positive effect on everything else in your life. Some people find this directive too vague. “How?” Well the first thing is to evaluate what you […]
Most People
I’ve been sharing this set of notes more and more as time goes by. I suppose you could say most people care too much about what most people think. I don’t expect to be able to change most people’s minds on this. But I’m interested in getting to know the people who really manage to […]
📚 the library ethos
John Locke: “Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them… with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind that they have a way of dealing peculiar […]
🙏🏾 how to ask for help
One of my new personal rules for myself is, if something annoys me, I’m going to funnel that into content that I can reference the next time I encounter it. Today I am annoyed by a very spammy, solipsistic request for help, that was effectively just “plz subscribe to my channel bc I need more […]
🍀 the 4 kinds of luck
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – apocryphal quote typically attributed to Seneca I’ve been thinking long and hard about luck for many years. I’ve done lots of experiments, big and small. I think I’m pretty decent at getting lucky. Some examples of me getting lucky: I’m sure I’m missing out lots of […]
➡️ pay it forward
When I was a broke teenager, my older friends often insisted on paying for drinks or meals. I used to feel a potent mix of gratitude and shame at this. I deeply appreciated the help, but I often also felt embarrassed, like I was a helpless “charity case”. A few years later, I got a […]
🇺🇸 San Francisco [2019]
Dear Visa-17, Visa-29 here. So I recently got on a Singapore Airlines plane (I know, finally!) and flew across the planet to San Francisco, California. It was, in my opinion, the best two weeks of my life. I have so much to say about it that I don’t know where to begin – until I […]
👫 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 put together a bit of context? This blogpost is basically a “cleaned-up” or “unrolled” post of 5 of my Twitter threads. I put this together because I think it’s a useful thing […]
🤓 ‘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 for using the latter to precipitate the former. [original thread] The first rule of smart writing is you must recognise what smart writing is. Sounds simple enough but most […]
#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 appreciate his willingness to engage and listen I think part of the mess is– there’s no generalizable advice that works for everyone; different people need different things I’ve personally experimented with several different attitudes and perspectives […]
🍱 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 myself (picky eater) until I enlisted in the army and had no choice but to eat unfamiliar food or starve. Then I decided to teach myself how to food, and it […]
🙏🏾 an oral history of my relationship with religion
Thought I’d write about my thoughts about religion, and how my perspective on it has changed from my childhood to the present day. I was raised in a Hindu household. We didn’t eat any beef. We went to the temples on special occasions. My mum had an altar with a pantheon of gods, and she’d […]
👀 when arguing, strive to understand context
— 1. When arguing, seek to understand context — [Published 2016] Roughly between ages 13 and 23 I was thoroughly convinced that best thing an intelligent person could do is to get obsessively good at evaluating and crafting sound arguments. Rationality! Debate! Wisdom! I rearranged a lot of my life around that wishful ideal: that […]
an analysis of power and social dynamics in ‘Mean Girls’
Theory: The movie has such enduring power and is quoted so much because it sheds some incredible light on real sociological phenomena. It’s compelling because it’s believable. It feels real. It might seem like a show about teenage girls, but it’s as nail-bitingly exciting as Late Night Poker, because it demonstrates decision-making, with stakes. Let’s […]
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. I’ve tried to follow his own principles to make his words sharper and clearer where I can. This is meant as a supplement to the original essay, not a replacement. English is suffering, and we’re not doing […]
⛰ 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 with elaborate games in the face of inevitable death and meaninglessness. What’s additionally absurd is that we go through a lot of trouble to avoid facing up to this fact. We avoid discussing it with children […]
💀 the heat death of the universe means legacy is ultimately futile
Pup Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe, (c) Drew Weing (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 reference. I also referenced this idea on Quora and HN, and in word vomits 0124, 0227, 0351 and 0540.) In […]
🔖 bookmarks that I often share with friends
Disclaimer – I find these reads interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with them. 2024 update: I’ve moved the last version of this bookmarks page to visakanv.com/archives/bookmarks because this was starting to feel cumbersome and I wanted to have a fresh start. I’ll now update this list every time I find myself sharing a link with […]
🤝 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. Here are a list of things that I recommend reading if you’re interested in communities. Read about the evaporative-cooling effect by Xianhang Zhang – “If anyone can join your community, […]