One of my eternal ‘wants’ in life is to one day have my own library at home – wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with books, curated through a lifetime of reading. To me, “making it in life” comes partially in the form of having discretionary money to spend on one’s genuine hobbies, which in my case concern…
Not long ago I was wondering how much of the Internet is now taken over by AI. Apparently people now use LLM chat bots in place of search engines; we’ve come a long way from non-sensical word like “googling” entering the mainstream vocab to, oh I don’t know, having “gpt” as a verb soon, perhaps.…
Two questions for you: How close do you think we are to successfully managing the climate crisis? And how long do you estimate we still have to try to do so? I suspect there are no correct nor definitive answers to these, and whoever you ask will have a different perspective informing their answers (don’t…
In a recent New Yorker commentary titled “The Battle for the Bros”, the author breaks down how the Democrats (or “the left”) in the US lost a voter base among young men to the conservatives in recent years. In short, the leftist movement of “wokeness” apparently offended so many of them that it seemed altogether…
When reality feels like a flaming dumpster, some may see utopian thinking and daydreaming as just escapism at best, or maladaptation at worst. Well, I happen to think it’s pretty essential, not as a coping mechanism, but as a rope to get out of this quicksand. Burying our heads in the doom and gloom has…
If you know me in real life, you might know that I read a lot. At the same time, I don’t often make reading a social activity. I leave my book reviews and takeaways here and there on the Internet, but I rarely seek out a space to consistently read alongside others or nurture conversations…
Wouldn’t it be nice if there existed a tight-knit community of idealists, where idealism weren’t shut down immediately for a lack of pragmatism, and where people with a shared vision could actually pool their minds together to forge concrete paths towards it? Wouldn’t it be nice if these idealists, instead of being told their utopian…
During the month of December, I traveled around with just one small backpack and one handbag. This brush with minimalism left me with some thoughts and reflections. When I was an adolescent, I had a phase where I would idolize the minimalist lifestyle to the point of committing to a black-and-white “personal uniform” just to…
I once read a piece of advice about writing the same way one talks. Essentially, the simplicity of spoken language not only feels more natural and genuine, but also appears to be more effective in reaching a broad audience. I understand the appeal of this advice, because I occasionally can only tolerate simple writing that…
I have taken some time off from being active online and engaging in digital correspondence with friends for a few weeks now. Somehow, it has felt both like a condensation and an expansion of time. During this period, I have stopped some activities I used to spend much more time doing (reading books, writing this…
“Children on social media” may conjure a few different things: young teens populating TikTok trending ranks with their quirky dance moves, or pre-teens clicking “Agree” to social media websites’ terms of service even though they are under 13 years old and technically not allowed to have an account. And then, there are the babies –…
I was a teenager who would eat up all the contents about minimalism and decluttering. Over ten years ago, when I was barely out of middle school, I made it a point to only possess a certain number of items, to eliminate the “inessentials” from my life, and to not buy things I didn’t need…
The age of social media seems to birth and nurture a phenomenon of constant social comparison. Measuring oneself against an external yardstick has never not been a staple of society. We, just like previous generations, are held hostage by an unbendable urge to live up to certain standards and earn validation from others. Unfortunately, with…
At the start of every year, I usually sit down and draw up a list of fifty or so books that I would like to get through during the year. Even though I have never managed to read even half this list, the mere idea of planning my read list in advance helps me push…