This is a half-baked thought I’ve been preheating for a bit. Technology has changed the way we consume and create media has evolved, and considering all the benefits against the drawbacks, sometimes it doesn’t feel like a net improvement to me. Or maybe it’s just that things evol … | Continue reading
I’ve been a little less online lately, but not to worry, I have just been living my life :) Several weeks ago, I gave notice at work and left. Some people in my life were surprised, because it was a good job at a good company, I generally enjoyed it, I got to work with wonderful … | Continue reading
Last month Katherine called out the tension inherent in a “personal” website which is that it is both public and personal, and one’s public (or professional) persona is often different from that of their personal life. Robin Rendle riffed on the concept and said that it’s totally … | Continue reading
I spent a lot of time and energy in my life worrying about things I felt like I had to do for one reason or another. Either everyone else was doing the thing, or specific people were pressuring me to do the thing, or I never saw real examples or models of people who didn’t do the … | Continue reading
For the last several months I have been experiencing something, first in the background and now very much in the foreground, and that thing is what many people would describe as a midlife crisis, although it doesn’t feel so much like a crisis mode and is in fact both exciting and … | Continue reading
I love sandwiches. Below are some of my favorites and why. First, a few constraints I will impose to keep it to a reasonable number of sandwiches: these are limited to New York (not that I haven’t had amazing sandwiches elsewhere), sandwiches I’ve had at least 3 times, excluding … | Continue reading
I made this: The internet used to be fun I feel like more people these days are starting to reject the notion that the internet is made up of Big Websites that represent Big Companies that are trying to take either the attention or the money of their visitors while adding minimal … | Continue reading
One of the main reasons why I would find it hard to leave New York is that I have grown accustomed to having what feels like infinite food options and over the years have cultivated my list of good food spots in the city down to a tee. “Good” is a super subjective designation, es … | Continue reading
I made some minor CSS tweaks on mostly spacing here that have bothered me since the beginning (though not enough to get me to fix them until now, hehe). This is extreme minutiae and probably doesn’t even warrant a note here but I did spend over an hour working on this so I feel l … | Continue reading
I am reading and hearing a lot of discourse about AI, machine learning, and more specifically, ChatGPT. It seems like a lot of people have a lot of opinions and things to say, and, like ChatGPT itself, they seem to be often wrong but never in doubt1. From what I can tell it seems … | Continue reading
After I quit medicine and went corporate (as corporate as tech startups can be, which I guess depends on your vantage point; for me it was and is extremely corporate coming from doctoring), I got really into it and became particularly fascinated to learn how business leaders oper … | Continue reading
In addition to my attention span, another pandemic-related loss not immediately obvious to me (probably because I was too worried about all the other losses, like the human lives, and the general erosion of mental health, and the ability to pretend that the institutions holding u … | Continue reading
When we lived in Tribeca, I could walk to Chinatown for breakfast. In general I am a morning person who avoids crowds and noise where possible1, so I especially enjoyed being in the usually crowded and noisy neighborhood when it was on the quieter side with mostly just the reside … | Continue reading
I made a changelog. This was a fun little morning project for me. I’ve seen others do a thing where the changelog is simply a list of all commit messages in reverse chronological order, so I decided to try it. With any “small” coding project, I find that I generally grossly under … | Continue reading
One of the many open tabs in the browser of my mind is to find an effective way to track the television shows I watch. Unlike tracking books read or movies watched or music listened to, for which there are several good options for products to use1, I haven’t been able to find a g … | Continue reading
when visiting my parents a few weeks ago, i picked up one of the books on my mom’s bookshelf, the first of barack obama’s presidential memoirs. i started reading it, but it was kind of hefty and i was only going to be there for a week and didn’t want to start a book i couldn’t fi … | Continue reading
Sometimes I walk around and do other things while brushing my teeth (which I know I’m probably not supposed to do but I do it anyway, like using Q-tips to clean my ears) and the other night I was winding down for the evening, brushing my teeth and zoning out while walking around … | Continue reading
During the darkest parts of pandemic lockdown there was not a lot to do or look forward to so I put a lot of time and energy into making elaborate meals entirely from scratch. (It’s on my neverending to-do list for this website to make some sort of photo gallery of all those meal … | Continue reading
As promised, here’s the second part of my year in review. To recap: I audited where I spent my time (loosely) and where I spent my money (incredibly precisely) this past year, in an effort to understand what I really value and to be more mindful and aware of where I’m spending th … | Continue reading
Note: if you have published a similar 2022 in review on your site, I would love to see it! You can email me a link at kwon(at)fastmail(dot)com. How did 2022 go? All things told, it was… a year. In reflecting on how to reflect on this past year (I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but … | Continue reading
Lately I feel that more often I’d rather re-read a book I’ve already read before (and enjoyed) than pick up a new one. Maybe it’s a form of risk aversion (I don’t know if I’m going to like a new book, so I’d rather read an old one). Maybe it’s something that comes with aging. I’v … | Continue reading
I spent some time in the Bay Area this past week and did a vigorous hike (among other things). I was made to believe it would be more of a “nature walk” but this one, Mission Peak, had a steep grade and full exposure to the elements, and ended up being about 3.5 hours and close t … | Continue reading
Well, Covid got me again. I’m recovering from a second bout after having had it in April 2020. That feels like a different era of fear and confusion—testing was nonexistent, we were running out of toilet paper and Tylenol, and the general guidance was to isolate but go to the eme … | Continue reading
I’m getting worn down by all the digital noise. By digital noise I mean the constant barrage of alerts, notifications, pings, email subscriptions I didn’t sign up for, email subscriptions I DID sign up for but regret doing so, all the inputs that come through my connected devices … | Continue reading
Several years ago, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City made a major change that affected every subway and bus ride overnight, but not many people noticed. What happened? Announcers were trained to avoid using gendered language, such as “Ladies and gentlemen,” and … | Continue reading
I read that Noah Grey, the creator of the blogging software Greymatter, recently resurfaced on the internet because he was losing his home to foreclosure and had set up a GoFundMe. I went into a little bit of a rabbit hole reading about Noah and what he had been up to, and it mad … | Continue reading
I signed up as a beta user for an AI art generator that uses keywords (text) to create images. The first image I asked it to make was one using the keywords korean queer mermaid liminal space and these are the four options it generated: Four queer Korean mermaids, drawn by a mach … | Continue reading
We joined the food co-op. I worked my first shift the other night (after work work). You choose from available shifts and sign up for the kind of work you might want to do. I chose cleaning. I had been somewhat apprehensive about working the shift, not because it was work, or eve … | Continue reading
Coffee is so good. In addition to being physiologically and emotionally dependent on caffeine, I genuinely enjoy coffee. I have accumulated too many coffeemaking implements over the years, including but not limited to a French press, burr grinder, espresso machine, pourover cone, … | Continue reading
It’s the good part of summer right now, the part where it’s warm and sunny and the days are long but it hasn’t gotten too humid out. I went on a nice bike ride yesterday morning along a route I used to take years ago when I first moved to Brooklyn that I haven’t done since. Truth … | Continue reading
I have been doing a Thing™ lately where I let the morning light wake me up instead of an alarm. Currently I am on an approximately two week streak of waking up at sunrise, and because the bedroom faces east, this means I have been waking up around 5:30 am. (Voluntarily!) I wish I … | Continue reading
As an adult I still sometimes have to trick myself into eating my vegetables. I made these roasted 고추장 (gochujang) honey Brussels sprouts yesterday that really did do the trick: 고추장 (gochujang) honey Brussels sprouts Here’s my incredibly imprecise recipe. 고추장 (gochujang) honey Br … | Continue reading