Novelty at Home
There is an unusual landmark a 20-minute drive away from our home: the Pulgas Water Temple. With classic Roman architecture and a grandiose name, you'd think this was a monument displaced halfway around the world, built by…
Latest Posts
Too Long; Still Read
Since its launch in 2008, I've been an avid user of the read-it-later app Instapaper[1]. In 18 years' time, the app has saved some 47k articles, which comes out to around 7.2 articles…
What I Got Wrong about Grief in Video Games
Video games evoke a broad range of emotions. Satisfaction, when you get past a particularly difficult section. Frustration, getting sniped from across the map for the nth time this round. Excitement, from unlocking a new character and envisioning the new…
Under the Courier Helmets
This year, our family summer vacation took us to Guangzhou (GZ), my spouse's hometown and the manufacturing capital of the world. Compared to Shenzhen or Hong Kong, it's an older city; most of its growth in…
The Last Two Pixels
I run dozens of bespoke little Mac apps: scratch notepads, screen resolution tuners, and even a mini-dashboard making use of that little bucktoothed notch atop MacBook screens. A simple but critical utility is an alternate app switcher—the default…
The Wobbly Tower of Financial Abstraction
As the kids get older, they are increasingly inquisitive about money. The curiosity reveals itself in their questions, which are usually naïve but occasionally insightful. Like: how do credit cards work? Or, why people choose to live where they do,…
