I just thought of this wonderful aphorism by Franz Kafka: "Es wäre denkbar, daß Alexander der Große trotz der kriegerischen Erfolge seiner Jugend, trotz des ausgezeichneten Heeres, das er ausgebildet hatte, trotz der auf Veränderung der Welt gerichteten Kräfte, die er in sich fühlte, am Hellespont stehen geblieben und
Literature
I noticed a lot of people are reflecting at the end of the year on life and living, and how to move forward. It reminds me of a quote from the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This comes at the end of the book, after a riot in Harlem, where
Literature
The song “Sports car” by Tate McRae drew me in when I first heard it. The catchy beat and rhythm, the sexual lyrics, and the seductive tone all formed a perfect storm of “stuck in your head”-ness for me, for lack of a better term.
Philosophy
“What is philosophy, or the love of wisdom?” I would ask you: What is questioning? And more importantly, why should we even care?
Philosophy
When AI first started to get advanced to the point where people started to form relationships with chatbots, the immediate reaction by many people was evoking Skynet: an advanced AI from the Terminator series that becomes self aware, self-replicating and takes over the world. The reason why AI will
The Old English word “wyrd” is often celebrated by English Literature nerds and is a very specific word with a very specific meaning roughly translated to “fate”. It is more useful to understand it in terms of stories: It is used for example in the Old English Elegy The Wanderer,
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I used to live in a gated apartment in Los Angeles, near the LAX airport. There were all sorts living there; We had a group of Irish stewardesses who loved to party, for example. They would rage for three days with all the neighbors then head off to man a
“…underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed, and that therefore it is also an appearance… occasionally regarding men and things as mere phantoms and dream-pictures…” (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy 1) Nietzsche proposes a barbaric, contrarian mentality to counterbalance
Today I’m at “Tiệm Cà Phê Sài Gòn Xưa” - an old cafe in Saigon. When in a new culture, I find it takes awhile to “find one’s footing” in a new place. You need to figure out not just where you are, but how to orient yourself. Sometimes
I once saw a post on a blog by a man with a picture of himself sitting on a fence, wearing a pair of Wrangler’s. He now wore premium, Japanese selvedge - the photograph was a throwback to his younger days. You could see a young, fit, good looking man