you can look it up
The idea for this post came up mid-conversation with @neuranne when I was telling her about how inspired I was by an audio essay @ronenv spoke for me about the history of TV. Ronen spoke for at least an hour telling a very compelling story about the history of media, some of the major players […]
discourse cycles
placeholder post for future updates (2024dec28) currently revisiting this post while editing my blog and there’s a raging firestorm of discourse going on rn on twitter about H1B immigrants in the US. strikes me as something that’s going to cycle and loop back around repeatedly. Also recently there was news that Christopher Nolan’s next movie […]
journalling
I am always recommending to people that they ought to journal. Keep a diary, write your memoirs, it doesn’t really precisely matter what the form is. Keep a vlog if that’s what you prefer. Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages works perfectly: 3 pages, in the morning, for your eyes only, about anything, done by hand. A […]
attention metrics
I usually bring up this thread/idea when talking with people about things like optimizing for views or follower counts. The thing I’m always trying to get people to see is that not all views or viewers are equal. (original thread) the flattening of attention metrics is something that seems to trip up even the most […]
joke about outcomes you want
one of my riffs on Twitter that’s taken off and embedded in other people’s minds is the idea of “joke about outcomes you want”. (It’s worth noting somewhere that this is a subset of “focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of“). I have a lot of tweets about this, […]
psychofauna
@BenRatkaj said he wanted a psychofauna bestiary. Etienne Preamble to a Psychofauna Bestiary Khalil Durkheim on the Nature of Psychic Megafauna // Set of notes for future reference. Egragore? Oh, you mean psychic megafauna. our ancestors got picked off by megafauna, our peers get picked off by psychofauna [screeching digital pterodactyl swoops in and just […]
write your memoirs
(2024nov update/comment: while doing some recategorizing, it struck me that this post fit in almost every single category I have on the blog. It really touches everything. It’s very central. It really helps to know the story of your life so that you can tinker with it. It’s a source of great power, in my […]
ayy lmao
a lot of paradoxes might be best resolved with a sense of humor. (eg: dicking around can be productive, but if you’re anxious about *being* productive, that typically ruins the whole thing). the conflict creates a vortex that can be anxiety-inducing, until you see the joke. once you see the joke and you can laugh […]
comms is lossy
It’s amazing that any of us are able to understand each other at all. Communication is lossy. (“Lossy” is a concept usually used to talk about data compression – images, audio, video. But I believe it’s useful when talking about all communication. We try to express complex thoughts and feelings, but we struggle to convey what […]
oblique approaches can achieve what directness cannot
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind — – Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) ✱ If you have a truly revolutionary idea you’d want to be careful to state […]
memed into existence
This page is a collection of instances of the phrase “memed into existence”. I’m collecting them out of nerdy academic curiosity. Some of these examples are silly, others can be troubling. Be warned. ✱ “We memed alt-right into existence” – 2016 Richard Spencer interview, Vice (youtube.com) You Must Meme Your Dreams Into Existence (medium.com) Meme […]
🎨 everything is a remix
Everything Is A Remix [37:30] is a video by Kirby Ferguson. It’s one of the most powerful videos I’ve ever watched in my life. It dramatically reduced my creative anxiety, because it made me realize that there’s hardly any point in trying to be original. Everything we do is a remix of what we know, […]
🗽iconography
I think about iconography a lot, I have multiple twitter threads about them. I’ll eventually expand this into a blogpost and probably subsequently do a youtube video about them too. The core thing that makes me obsessed about iconography is the idea that you can reverse-engineer successful icons, and create icons in the public domain. […]
aesthetics
A loose set of notes about aesthetics. What are aesthetics? Why don’t you just say beautiful, or pretty? Why use this… pretentious word? I hear you. If there were a simpler word that worked, I would go with that. But I haven’t encountered one yet. And I mean something quite specific when I talk about […]
talking points
This is a slightly edited repost of a twitter thread I once did at 520am in the morning to try and recap all of the things I talk about a lot, off the top of my head. Do it 100 times. Write 100 songs, cook 100 omelettes, talk to 100 people. It never seems like […]
word magic
— 1 — I have always been very passionate about words. As I said in the library ethos, I grew up reading books and have strong feelings about them. Every word has a family, and a history. Lots of words are made up of other words, or parts of other words. Every word has more […]
magic junkyard
just doing the thing where I coin a phrase and then track how it spreads “We’ve been called everything from”the Superhuman of Notes” to a “Magic Junkyard for connecting your ideas.” – Roam’s AngelList page “there’s a reason people call it a magic junkyard.” – reddit comment Mentioned in A Taxonomy Of Notes, this Medium […]
🗣 talking to people makes you a better writer
A friend asked me for some advice on a massive writing project that he’s had on the backburner for a while now. It sounded like something huge that could take years to finish. I suggested that he start with shorter essays. “But how do you scope them?” he asked. The answer – which seemed obvious […]
🤓 ‘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 […]
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 […]
☕️ Is Ya Kun Kaya Toast “Authentic”?
Originally posted on Poached Mag. I was having kopi with some friends at Ya Kun Kaya Toast. A friendly auntie spoke to us in cheery Singlish as she cleared our table. Someone remarked later that Ya Kun feels really “authentic” — not just because of the familiar butter-roast of the arabica beans, but because of aunties like […]