Where I write about stuff that have become somewhat coherant in its breath and depth at that moment. Also other stuff worth adding to the internet.
"Human nature"—that is a blanket answer after "Capitalism" we often hear from disillusioned environmentalists and self-serving sociopaths to explain all the shits that are happening in this world right now. I'm guilty of this too. My blog posts say to that effect. This misanthropic view not only attracts me to the ideas along the vein of authoritarianism and benovolent dictators in order to cut…
Background I used to recommend Mailgun for a personal project . But as with any commercial products that is generous with free stuff, there's always a catch and it will come back and bite you one way or another, and Mailgun is no exception. Now their free-tier offer is very similar to ALL other email services such as Postmark , Sendgrid and Resend that allows only hundreds of free emails per day…
To scale is to go big; it's to reach an economies of scale where your enterprise will be profitable; it's to dominate the market; it's to win; it's to crush your competitors. This is music to the ears of those who are accustomed to the internal logic of today's system that obsesses for growth and competition at all levels in the world. Why is it the way it is? For 97% of human history, we'd lived…
We often hear about tech startups disrupting the status quo. Are they really though? What was the status quo in dispute? It was the old-economy, how it was inefficient, slow, bogged down by red tapes - all in all, an environment not ripe for: innovation, creativity, progress and growth. These are words we hear all the times. We can't stop thinking, talking, and acting upon them, because: We are…
On 16th June 2022, I paid Mount Bromo a visit. I got into the caldera free via this tip I got from this WikiVoyage article You can hike down the jeep trail, but you will be charged the steep entrance fee. "Secret" hiking trails exist that bypass this entrance. The main path is well marked on Maps.me and Gaia. At Cemera Indiah Hotel, find the narrow dirt alley along a fence that leads to the back…
Today I'm going to show you how to make my mom's favourite cake - Pandan Chiffon Cake. My mom would buy this for us growing up in Taiping. To make this cake again - and taking a bite of it - is a way for me to relive a past that's simpler, happier, and most importantly and paradoxically, present. This is the original recipe I googled to begin with. And this post adds to that in terms of visual…
I recently did a solo 10-days Annapurna Circuit Trek(ACT) in Nepal. I went there ill-prepared and didn't die. So this is an idiot's guide to hiking ACT along with mistakes I realized I'd made as I walked deeper into the mountains. A bit about ACT Annapurna Circuit Trek (View on Google Map) ACT trail starts from Besisahar at 820m altitude. Altitude go up as you go, culminating in Thorung Pass at…
My last post was about unlearning the gospel of 'efficiency' while remaining 'civilized'. This post is about unlearning the 'civilized' part itself in a global industrialized civilization that's imbued with colonialistic force against all life on earth. Human activities in recent decades have egregiously disrupted the earth's life-supporting systems from which all forms of life—including human—had…
The world is out of control. Humanity — from individual to groups to nation-state level — is doing all sorts of preternatural activities in the name of ‘innovation’, ‘competitive disruption’, ‘economic growth’, ‘self-help’ etc. They are not natural from the perspective of our millions years of evolutionary history. Since the industrial revolution almost 200 years ago, our biological and…
Lately, I have read stuff that have made web development a lot more of a nuanced craft for me. It mostly concerns ethics, sustainability, web standards, and the open web platform itself. From surveillance capitalism to impending global climate collapse, questions of ethics and sustainability have become more prominent in public consciousness lately. Increasingly, they need to be taken into account…
This article doesn’t contain any ‘pro-tips’ or ‘methods’ or ‘analysis’ on gaining from the stock market quickly. No, rather, this is an investment guide for average people who don’t — or won’t or can’t — participate actively and emotionally in the stock markets. I will try to articulate few of my current thought patterns that have guided me on managing and thinking about my personal finance. So…