The nearness of you

Facebook friends. Instagram followers. Discord groups. We are building systems that help us optimize for separation. While claiming to further connectivity, these algorithms and their frameworks teach us to quantify our personal value by audience engagement versus through actual human affinity. They keep us hooked by gamifying social interaction, rewarding performative likability in place of […]

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On being less full of it

Listen to anyone offering lifestyle advice these days and you will learn that to be successful at anything, you need to be mindful. This can’t be a casual thing either. You need to regularly practice mindfulness. Being mindful will help you to become present and grounded and perhaps afford you better boundaries. Soon, you’re on […]

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A confining moment

中文 As social animals, people generally don’t respond well to confinement. That’s why it’s our primary form of punishment. It’s really the best disincentive to bad behavior we’ve come up with as a species. Lashings, public humiliation, attending traffic school, nothing makes people think twice more than the threat of being locked up. Which is […]

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The perfect you

Everything is perfect and there is always room for improvement — Shunryu Suzuki. For those suffering from self-induced pressures of striving to be perfect, here is a reprieve. It doesn’t involve daily affirmations that we are already good enough and should embrace our shortcomings as part of what makes us special. Nor does it reject […]

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