11:59 PM

Reinforce your stocks. And wait.

You don't need to be angry, anxious or sad to be useful

I was having a disagreement with an old friend about this recently. Smart guy, doing a PhD in AI (hi!). This made me realise that I should take a public position on this, as there are many other people I respect that seem to embody this position at various degrees.

low confidence predictions for 2026

Unprincipled predictions for 2026 based on vibes. I'm no superforecaster. Lots of it ended up being about AI because that's the big meta right now. AI and technology * more technology is going to be draped in "organic, homegrown farm-to-cup" aesthetics * this is in reaction

Rude Slop Behaviour

This essay aims to introduce social stigma around certain types of AI use, or at the very least, reduce the amount of slop I receive. What is slop? I like the deepfates definition: Watching in real time as “slop” becomes a term of art. the way that “spam” became the

my pointless history of putting things on the internet

I've been putting things out on the internet for a while. old tech blogs circa 2010-2012 I was a child. I wrote articles about technology news (and reviewed whatever old used phone I had, posted them on youtube and x-posted to these blogs). I used "website builder&

second person birds

I was in MoMA, watching Barnett Newman's intensely red canvascape (Vir Heroicus Sublimis) stare back at me. Most paintings have a subject. And a bunch of objects. This one had a large bright redness, punctured by vertical lines. My mind, in search of a subject that's

A bundle of comments

Comments to articles around the web, on my turf. Bengawalk There's a lot of whining about Bengaluru's broken and crumbling infrastructure. Pravar, the creator of Bengawalk takes a refreshing and productive approach and demonstrates that clear articulation can improve things on the margin. His video review

the man who gave us nothing

A totem (from Ojibwe: ᑑᑌᒼ or ᑑᑌᒻ doodem) is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. A conceptual thing humans have is symbolism that provides

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How to write more? The bottleneck is psychological. There's a natural censor in your brain that blurts out objections and reprimands as you start to write. To remedy this, practice enough mindfulness so that you can catch the censor every time it blurts something. Eventually your head becomes

Sloptimists, Sloperators and Slopportunism

In the grand taxonomy of human endeavor, three species have emerged from the primordial soup of late-stage digital capitalism: the sloptimist, the sloperator, and their shared philosophy, slopportunism. These are not merely portmanteaus born of linguistic laziness—though that would be appropriately on-brand—but rather, they represent a complete epistemological

What am I getting from the internet?

What am I getting from the internet? The answer to this used to be self-evident back when I accessed it from a dial-up connection in 2009. There was the real world context that I inhabited, and the internet was a portal where I would access information from distant worlds. Today,

Quality, and the cutlets of enthusiasm

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was on my reading wishlist for a while. From the title, I assumed the book would be something like a tasteful self-help book, a quirky blend of kōanic mysticism applied to motorcycle maintenance, with a nudge and a wink for the reader, who

nyc vignette: overslept

I was walking across a really long passageway to change trains at the Times Sq-42 St subway, one of the busiest subway stations in the world. Among the usual informational boards, I see a peculiar message. OVERSLEPT, I walk more, and there's another board. SO TIRED, It keeps

Experience Report: How to find a flatmate in Bangalore

After having spent over a decade in Marathahalli, I decided I wanted to live in Bangalore [1]. So I found myself a 3BHK flat in central Bangalore [2] a couple of months ago. Of my two flatmates, one of them got a new job that required them to move cities.

The Internal Lever

Advice I would have given myself 10 years ago. A lot of people don't attend to "the internal lever" enough when dealing with life. This lever exists in you and not out in the world. It's easier to alter your inner world than it

Vocal fry and illusory unravelments

A friend recently pointed out that I have a discernable vocal fry. I had to look it up—a short description immediately made me understand that I had it. Vocal fry is the lowest register (tone) of your voice characterized by its deep, creaky, breathy sound. It's the

We, the Citizens and systems thinking

“No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or

The Best Advice I Have Received (is often stupidly obvious)

The best kind of advice I have received in my life is so obvious that it feels stupid to say it out loud. Advice like this is often ridiculed online for being simplistic (and thus useless). I used to share this sentiment. But I don't anymore. Turns out,

2023

In memoriam of the year that won't exist anymore. <!--more--> Quality of life improvements (feel free to steal) * Writing more—enabled by this low-friction-to-post platform (writefreely). * Coffee brewing as a hobby for fun and mindfulness. You may substitute this with anything culinary. * Picking up Masala Lab

Charcoal

It was value education period (shortened to V. Ed.), sixth grade. The format deviated from the usual years where a teacher would be assigned to make us open our V. Ed. books to imbibe ourselves with holistic values to become good citizens. V. Ed. was weird as it was. I

I like Clojure

Programming language discourse is silly. It gives the impression that the language you use is the one important parameter with all the leverage when most people are working with hundreds or thousands of parameters. The art of software design is a quest to make robust analogies that transcend computation substrates

"A Pattern Language" explains why urban spaces disappoint me.

A Pattern Language is a beautiful tome on architecture and urban design that I found in my company's physical library. It had a pale yellow minimalist cover, a small form, and some blotchy typography accompanied by evocative photographs and lively doodles explaining the essence of its ideas. I

A caution against ephemeralization

These days I derive little joy from my possessions of necessity. Knowledge workers, over the last couple of decades, have traded the engagement of our senses for an upgrade in flexibility. I shall elaborate. Let's take a phone. Here's a rough chronology. Notice the gradual loss

Just the right amount of unpleasant

There's a pattern of things I predictably like—which I shall now call "just the right amount of unpleasant". Some examples to follow. Food and Beverage * Fermented, funky stuff—kimchi, kombucha, certain cheeses and curd have just the right amount of "spoilt" sourness to