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well hello there!
A warm welcome to Glyphs & Graphs friend. These are my words, but feel free to wade into them.
Read the welcome note2024
1 essay
on the significance of communicating about processes
imagine processes as systematic forces bringing about change beyond/beneath individual human scales of comprehension. processes are not descriptors that are associated with the object being observed, they are the system itself. the name of the system is merely a tag for discovering all relevant processes.
2022
5 essays
· Poems
magnet poetry: there is yet light
as the shadow of summer aches on we sing delirious in our bare garden let the love of beauty mean there is yet light
· Reviews
The Future We Choose - a climate activist's primer
The Future We Choose is written by Christiana Figueres (a personal hero who architected the foundations for the unprecedented Paris Agreement), and Tom Rivett-Carnac (founding partner at Global Optimism).
2021
11 essays
· Reviews
Peter Pan: a Jungian exploration of the metamorphosis of a child into an adult
I’m just going to come out and say it - I unabashedly love this 2003 rendition of Peter Pan to bits. Everything from the casting and score, to the screenplay and special effects, comes together in a beautiful self-contained bundle of movie magic.
· Reviews
Curb Your Enthusiasm: litigating the social contract one unwritten clause at a time
I've been binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I think is really funny. But when my wife asked me where the humour was, I couldn't really give her a clear answer. So in this essay, I'd like to explore that for a bit.
· Reviews
Finding the fable in WW84: seeing through the lies of wetiko
I assert that WW1984 is trying to tell an interesting postmodern fable: namely that the wisdom required to know oneself deeply, and the discipline to face the truth and the courage to follow through with the consequences, are all elements of the heroic path.
The truth is and will always remain a pathless land
The sole task of the truth seeker is thus to learn to recognise truth when they see it, and not be deceived by prettier illusions. The truth is and will always remain a pathless land.
· Reviews
Squid Game - putting a price on human dignity
Yet another Netflix viral sensation has landed - I'm talking about the Korean psychological-thriller series Squid Game. With funding and creative freedom from Netflix, Squid Game pushes the boundaries of the “Battle Royale” genre, with a steady-handed maturity at handling its core themes even if it doesn’t surprise its viewers with sheer novelty.
the best stories are lies
the best stories are outrageous lies the best lies tell bitter truths
· Reviews
The Revenant - exploring the psychology of survival
I just had the pleasure of re-watching The Revenant, almost 5 years since its initial release. All those memories and impressions came flooding right back.
· Reviews
Sleeping Dogs - Hong Kong Gang Sim
I was pleasantly surprised at how good Sleeping Dogs really is. The quickest way to describe Sleeping Dogs is to say it’s a lot like Grand Theft Auto but set in Hong Kong, with a story about an undercover cop embedded in the local mafia. This description would be good enough for most gamers to figure out what to expect from the gameplay.
Thoughts on Digital Originals
I wrote the following response to a email from a VC friend in 2016, about an idea involving special limited edition digital e-books that could be sold at a significant premium on a blockchain. In some sense, this is directly comparable to the recent buzz about NFTs in the art world. Have a read!
A visual impression of a psychedelic trip
Put together a few of my pieces in a “chronology” of sorts to visually impart the various stages of a psychedelic trip. YMMV :P
looking out from Borges' library
Lately I've been feeling this overwhelming sense of obviousness, for lack of a better word, accompanied by a complete lack of surprise. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing...
2020
6 essays
· Reviews
A review of The Outer Worlds - a memoir from my unlived life as an accidental terrorist
The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment brings back the best elements of the genre of deep immersive role-playing games (RPGs), and then goes a bit further. Let's be honest, The Outer Worlds is better marketed as an interactive novel - very much in the same vein of Choose Your Own Adventure books from decades past.
My climate story
An interesting question that comes up in the Climate Reality training I’m currently doing, in essence asking “what is your personal story that is at the core of your environmentalism?”. I found the question to be refreshing and evocative. The following is my answer.
3 reasons why the overpopulation argument is ecotrash
Not a proper beginning-middle-end essay, but a compilation of thoughts on the topic of overpopulation as a diagnosis for climate change.
· Poems
the fleeting point of language
A poem inspired by meditating on asemic art, which is “a wordless open semantic style of writing which often appears as abstract or illegible writing.”
2019
15 essays
· Poems
what will the collapse look like?
what will the collapse look like? will the ground finally give way and devour us in its cosmic maw?
· Poems
a letter to a young doctor
Wrote a quick poem to congratulate a friend for successfully defending his PhD thesis.
· Poems
wedding eve apostrophe
Why do they say you fall in love? As if you just happen to stumble into a void, no doubt lured to the edge by some trick of the light that catches your eye, or so it seems at least.
Caveats to democracy as we know it
Democracy is as the joke goes, the least worst option. I'm cynical not because democracy is inherently flawed but because it represents a kind of cognitive outsourcing of long-term large-scale planning to the hands of the many. There is serious work required for a citizen to have an opinion, and honestly we are *not* seeing that at this moment.
· Design
On the design of social interventions under complexity
The wisdom of the dictum “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” holds true. Thus the PATH methology is recommended as a systematic method to design, test, measure, learn and scale working solutions in an evidence-based manner.
The simplest definition of a meme
Today's train of thought is the idea that "sending a message" is perhaps the simplest identifier/definition of a meme. A meme is anything that is involved in sending a message - carrier, payload, by-product, catalyst, parasite, medium, agent...
what is the clock
A short meditation on the relentless advance of time, made visceral in the form of the clock.
Thoughts on complexity
I thought it was fairly well-accepted that all models are wrong, some can be useful. Conceptually we should indeed be comfortable with the notion that there are inextricable interconnections and unknown unknowns and if that weren’t enough, the dynamics of how other agents will respond within the system over time.
All I want is a little...
I’m going to say this here because I don’t know where else to say it. I think we and our society are animated by our questions, but that is both our gift and curse. Where are our questions leading us, and what questions might we ask to get to where we want to be?
· Poems
there is no i
Yet another short poem on the age-old pitfalls of samsara. Meant more as a note to self than anyone else.
· Reviews
RYSE: Son of Rome - a fable for systems thinking
My review for RYSE in one sentence: come for the spectacle on the surface, stay a while to reveal the fable within. And what a strange surprising fable it is - a tale illustrating the necessity of systems thinking. How? Read on and find out.
· Poems
sing weave and dance
A poem inspired by the endless horror of reading day after day the effects of man’s actions on Earth in the Anthropocene.
2018
6 essays
· Reviews
The Good Neighbour
I recently watched a documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbour?”, whose subject is a certain Fred Rogers. What was surprising to me as a long-time fan of the man even though I’ve never seen the original programme myself, was the depth of the subject matter discussed in each episode and the philosophy that underpinned the core message.
· Reviews
Atlanta - looking blackness in the eye
Atlanta is a TV series which eschews the steady pace of a narrative arc for irreverent non sequitur explorations of various themes within the thematic context of being black in America.
Why write reviews, or the art of the double take
If we can agree that most reviews have a shorter lifetime than the media they reference, then is there any benefit to taking the time to review something? I think so. We might ask what drives a person to write a review in the first place? Or maybe we should inquire what makes a reader seek out a review instead.
Project ComplexCity: a manual for collaborative complexity engineering
Between May and October 2017, The Global Challenges Foundation ran a competition requesting for proposals to improve the framework of global governance to meet the increasing stakes of the 21st century. I was happy to take part in this competition with a diverse and global team, submitting an idea which we call “ComplexCity”.
superboys last all century long
This story is from my archived old blog - posted as-was-originally-written almost a decade ago. A bit emo, but I think I was mostly exploring if a narrative can be carried in a stream-of-consciousness monologue without back-and-forth banter.
2017
3 essays
Project Q - Rethinking Queues
Here is one application for the blockchain, that is not about reimagining financial instruments. Rather, I would like to solve the problem of queues. Yes queues. Like when you queue up to buy tickets for the cinema, or fast food, or to see the doctor. I believe solving this would fix one of the fundamental traits of capitalism…
· Poems
you can always hate me tomorrow
I stand witness to what happened in Charlottesville in August 2017. I was compelled then, there was really no choice in the matter, to dedicate this poem to the brave woman who died preaching love for the fellow man.
2016
15 essays
Democracy dies when people stop fighting for it
I just read a headline reading "Democracy is dying as technocrats watch". I find this ludicrous. Democracy *is* dying but it's not because Donald Trump won. It would have still been in terminal condition had Hilary won or Obama stayed. Why?
Where is the Netflix for news?
This is a pet peeve I've had for so long, but it has been made more urgent given the proliferation of fake news and ad-spam, even as traditional news sources are downsizing from decreasing revenues. Let me present a possible business model to pull this off.
As always, the beginning is nigh
The news of Donald Trump's presidency has been so singularly distressing that I absolutely had to take time out to come to terms with it, make sense of it for myself, integrate it into my understanding of the world as it is (and not as I would like it to be).
A go-to answer for climate denialism
A response to a climate denial claim about geological records, scientific evidence, and the speed of climate change.
The fascinating psychology behind climate denial, and how to sow the seeds of clear-eyed hope
In a book entitled “Introduction to Lacan”, Slavoj Zizek tangentially refers to the ecological crisis of our time, and why we have been thus far unable to meaningfully engage with it. Specifically, he suggests that this failure can be explained by psychoanalysis. In this essay, I try to break the illusions of these faulty modes of response.
Thinking about global energy demand
Some shower thoughts on the ever-growing energy demand of the world. How much energy is adequate for the human race, at which point we might consider reducing our energy demand or at the very least, prioritize energy expenditures between the essential and trivial.
Ode to Werner Herzog
I've spent more time poring over media describing Werner Herzog himself than his body of work. Why does he fascinate me so much? Here is a man who has never compromised when it comes to his art.
· Reviews
The priest, the cynic and the scientist - a review of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker
Finally made time to sit through Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979). Definitely on the long side just short of 3 hours, and not necessarily because of the number of plot twists. I figured I might spend some time reflecting on the film since I think best when I write.
Religion & Discipline
I’ve always had a strong affinity to language. Language is the one thing I’m most proficient in, and of late, most passionate about. But I’ve come to realise, just as language is a whip I wield, it is also the whip that tames me.
Baby steps to transhumanism
A nebulous prefix to an already nebulous base-term, trans-humanism is a concept that sparks lively debates on both sides of the gallery.
Inventing a language
Consider the notion of telepathy. What would that entail exactly? To communicate with another without the senses, a purely mental approach to communication. Suppose there are 2 hypothetical individuals in possession of mental modems capable of communicating with each other sans sensory means.
the things that drove him silent
Blink. That pregnant moment of first light entering weak eyes. His first impression is that the world is upside down; as blood rushes to his head the newborn babe starts life with a splitting headache. Gasp and cue the high-pitched wails.
How I became unpatriotic
Funny story, that. It all started with my family emigrating from India to Singapore when I was 7. New country, new languages, new friends, a whole new genre of food and fruits, what's not to like? Unfortunately, it didn’t take… the grafting process must’ve been flawed somehow. Cue slow plodding passage of time, flash-forward 11 years.
Science and Policy 101
This was a supplemental essay I wrote for a Masters application in the Technology and Public Policy area. The task was to craft an layman essay that would introduce anyone not familiar with the field, to what I intend to do specifically.
Astrobiological caveats to the Drake equation
Notes I quickly jotted down from Prof. Guillermo Gonzales' short primer on astrobiology, delivered at a guest lecture when I was doing my Bachelors in Singapore. It was an eye-opening look into the intricately connected coincidences that seem to have conspired to allow life to flourish on this planet.
2015
2 essays
Why the paper book is now irrelevant
The explosion of digital content (to the point of infornography) and the promising future of digital displays, lead me to the natural conclusion that eBooks are here to stay. To me, eBooks represent the next step in the evolution of information dissemination. And here’s the killer feature: CTRL–bloody–F.
· Design
Evidence-based design
I ghostwrote this essay with my mentor from Kwamecorp to evangelize a quantifiable approach to design, inspired by the software engineering methods of Silicon Valley. Have a look-see.
2014
2 essays
The beautiful ripples
The heat of European summer revs melancholy into melodrama. I cycle past canals exuding the awkward charm of a multitude of boring things. Goaded by the breeze, dry leaves, fresh petals and sweet glinting pollen find themselves grooming the very air with perfume and hayfever.
Beauty in Science
Two books reviews in one, this article was written for a Philosophy of Science & Technology course during my Masters at TU Delft. The two books being reviewed were Ian Glynn's Beauty in Science & James McAllister's Beauty and Revolution in Science.
2013
4 essays
The beauty of melancholy
Ever felt like this right now is the best time in your life? Ever wished that time itself would just freeze this very instant? I guess what I’m asking is, in a nutshell, have you ever looked longingly at the lucky inhabitants of a snow globe?
Worldly Magick
Magic is a funny word. The dictionary claims it stems from supernatural or otherwise mysterious forces, but I think the dictionaries are missing the point. Magic is not a power, it’s a quality, do you see?
What defines you?
I occasionally drop by the local Rants & Raves forum in Craigslist; usually there is inane banter and idle discussion. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are some thoughtful questions, of which this was one. What defines you, the anonymous poster asked.
The future of conflict resolution
A tenuous line of reasoning stumbled upon while pondering the difference between Man and other apex predators. The implications of diplomacy as a function of intelligence, itself a by-product of selective evolution, and possibly an alternative to the archaic solution we call war.
2009
1 essay
DIYBio - a look at citizen scientists hacking genetic engineering in their garages
An essay that was written as part of the Human Practices section of my team’s entry to the iGEM 2009 competition. Specifically in this essay, I cover the then-budding DIYbio movement, where a group of amateur enthusiasts were attempting to hack genetically engineered organisms outside the confines of research laboratories.