truly the coolest people are the ones who are just unashamedly into their interests. passion is sexy. practice is sexy. not giving a shit what anyone else thinks is the sexiest thing of all.

i'm literally begging people to relearn how to use earbuds and headphones. i don't wanna hear your fucking tiktok while im waiting for my flight.

100% this.

i have so many hobbies and interests but each day the four horsemen (instant gratification, shortened attention span, procrastination, exhaustion) grab me by the throat and shake me until i collapse in my comfy bed

from rayne fisher-quann’s latest substack post

Plain text: The process of becoming yourself is not a corporate desk job, and it is not homework, and it is not an unticked box languishing on a to-do list. You do not have to treat your flaws like action items that must be systematically targeted and eliminated in order to receive a return on investment. You have no supervisor; you should not be punished when you fail. Your job is not to lock the doors and chisel at yourself like a marble statue in the darkness until you feel quantifiably worthy of the world outside. Your job, really, is to find people who love you for reasons you hardly understand, and to love them back, and to try as hard as you can to make it all easier for each other. 

It’s hard, certainly — it’s painful and exhausting and fundamentally terrifying to rip yourself open and leave the guts at the mercy of the people you choose to love. But if I know anything, I know this: It’s better than being alone. 

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle Vincent van Gogh, Garden at Arles (1888)

The song choices for S.Coups, Wonwoo, Woozi, and Dino...yeah yeah yeah.

The social attitude regarding age is consistently getting weirder. You’re not ‘pushing 30’ you’re just in your late 20s. 30 is not old and neither is 40 while I’m at it. Growing older is an enormous privilege and displaying that age is a gorgeous component of life. Spending your days trying to reverse that grace breeds an eternally wasted life.

My Year of (Educational) Podcasts

I spent 12,000 minutes this year listening to podcasts according to Spotify. No, I do not listen to alphamale or girlboss or true crime podcasts– I mostly listen to history, philosophy, and literature podcasts i.e. educational podcasts. Here are 12 fun, well-executed podcasts I’d recommend if you’d like to learn more about your favourite (Humanities and Social Sciences) topics.

The Holdovers (2023)

when tablo said “if you don’t grow, growing pain is just pain” and when tablo said “the door i was knocking on turned out to be a wall” and when tablo said “they say ‘be the change you wanna see in the world’ but it’s only i that have changed and the world stands unmoved” and when tablo said “even if i try to jump higher it’s just a ceiling / the ground i step on is destined to sink” and when tablo said “our smiles always wither away before even blooming” and when tablo said “even heartbreak will grow into a piece of my heart” and when tablo said “even if the whole world welcomes you, that same world will abandon you so you gotta let go” and when tablo said “this world scares me / people scare me the most” and when tablo said “even in happy times the silence of an empty spot is louder than laughter” and when tablo said “it’s just that the world made me swallow countless thorns and as i tried to push them out of my body, i became a cactus” and when tablo said “on the arrival card next to ‘purpose of travel’, i can only write three dots” and when tablo said “i don’t know why but i’m addicted to struggle” and when tablo said “it’s a cold world, i’m the only one stripped off” and when tablo said

the entire problem with this current generation’s mindset of “we don’t need or care for idols to sing live and would rather have a great performance” or a fantasy sold, is that people do not see any value in live singing and do not care about the sincerity of live singing. they do not understand that a live-sung performance can already be a great performance, and it doesn’t need any more than that to be a great performance. they say they would rather have a fantasy conveyed through performance when the entire medium idols are using to do that is song. lyrics set to music. that has to be sung by someone, who should be able to be at least decent at the very skill at the core of their craft. absolutely insane and detached to say there is no need for that in kpop, as if this entire empire is not built around concerts, music show performances, albums and singles.

and don’t get me started on the mindset that no one is allowed to criticize idols, who are doing a very public job, as if you are not allowed to expect someone to be at least passably good at their job? that they have trained for for years? if you are a singer who cannot sing, you are in the wrong profession, point blank. become a variety performer or a tv show host or a model, then. if you are a singer who cannot sing and you refuse to improve yourself, then you are in the wrong profession, and you should not be surprised if people call you out on it.

ten, twelve years ago, groups would have members that would have never been primarily considered as vocalists, and these members would go and put in the work to improve themselves, and learn how to sing. i mean, look at 2pm. they started as a group with a focus on their athletics (with a literal counterpart debuting that was a vocal group, like) and yet, all members have steadily worked to improve as performers, as vocalists. and the hard work has paid off; they literally performed 4 hour long concerts entirely live as recent as last year. because that is part of their job description, and they are aware of that. i would rather take an imperfect but dedicated singer than one who doesn’t try to improve at all. this laziness and coasting on visuals that kpop stans excuse and eat up these days is deteriorating an entire genre, and an insult to the hard work of performers of the past who have done all the work to even allow kpop to become as big as it is now.

there's no greater betrayal than finally starting to read a book you've had sitting for months on your shelf or your desk or your nightstand and then finding out it's bad. like. i gave you a fucking home.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle Vincent van Gogh, Garden at Arles (1888)

oh my god. most of life really is about the little things. a good haircut, a nice playlist, trying a new recipe that turns out well, a poem that hits home, a comfortable spot in the sun, spontaneous messages, a pen you enjoy writing with, tea with the right temperature to drink, buying that thing you’ve been eyeing for a while, a warm bed. yeah. im so grateful for the little enjoyments

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

- Simone Weil

"Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope."

- Vincent van Gogh