On Simulation, and Why You Can Relax
One-month special. Why the simulation argument is probably right, three theories of why we might be in here, and why that is a reason to hold your life more lightly. Built from days 95 and 27 of 100 Days of Non.
Anniversary Special · A Day in the Life of a Vibecoder
Anniversary special. One day in the life of a vibecoder, hour by hour: the tools, the six rules that cost weeks to learn, and the real numbers behind a podcast made by machines on one laptop. Full transcript: https://nonarkara-blog.pages.dev/e/brief-2026-09-15-special-vibecoder/
The Post I Kept Not Writing
Coffee in hand. I owed this blog six more rules and I simply did not write them. I forgot. Freud had a word for the kind of forgetting that is quietly doing a job for you, and I think he was right about mine.
Friday, 18 September 2026
Diesel hit a record $6.40 as Trump weighs an Iran annihilate call, a Hormuz tanker burns, and a UN panel finds reasonable grounds the Minab school strike was a war crime. Made with ElevenLabs.
The Limit of a Thing
Coffee in hand. I once walked twenty-eight kilometres across Tokyo in a single day — Tsukiji, Ginza, the Imperial Palace, Roppongi, and finally Shibuya, just before the metro closed. I arrived with almost nothing in my hands. That walk taught me more about what I own than any amount of tidying ever has.
What I Actually Inherited
Coffee in hand — and today that is not a throwaway line. My father carried a tea flask to work every day of his working life and came home with it empty. I grew up watching a man run himself on one hot drink and a fixed routine. I did not inherit the tea. I inherited the ritual.
Non-Philosophy — Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser: Philippe Coutinho and the grammar of peak talent
Philippe Coutinho: same left foot, different team grammar. Peak talent is not a portable file. Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser — Non-Philosophy. Made with ElevenLabs.
World in Twenty Minutes — Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser: Philippe Coutinho and the £142m price signal
Philippe Coutinho: Liverpool sold a peak for about £142m; Barcelona amortised a different player. Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser — economy cut. Made with ElevenLabs.
The Non-Philosophy Podcast · Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser · The Movement
Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser. First touch as ethics at speed. Voice: ElevenLabs accent-tuned.
The Non-Philosophy Podcast · Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser · After the Whistle
Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser. After the whistle: reset, centre circle, finite courage. Voice: ElevenLabs accent-tuned.
Special · Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser · Michael Owen
Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser. Michael Owen, the 2001 Golden Ball, and a magazine that made a provincial road feel like Anfield. Voice: ElevenLabs accent-tuned.
Special · Thailand Soccer Podcast Teaser · The Wage Bill
Thailand Soccer Podcast teaser. Premier League wages, demand and supply, and why football belongs on economics radio. Voice: ElevenLabs accent-tuned.
Ageing Beautifully
Coffee in hand. The architect Louis Kahn said that good architecture ages beautifully. I read that line years ago and stopped. That is it. That is exactly how I would like to get old — not preserved, not fighting it, just aged the way a good building ages.
The Non-Philosophy Podcast · Nostalgia
Nostalgia as memory versus policy. Keep the parts list; refuse the throne. Voice: ElevenLabs multilingual v2, accent-tuned.
Special · Pace the Frontier
Special. Amodei, Altman, and Musk say pace the frontier. Trump says do not. Is it existential caution — or a moat for labs already ahead? Voice: ElevenLabs multilingual v2, accent-tuned.
The Non-Philosophy Podcast · Special · Why This Show
Pitch special. Why The Non-Philosophy Podcast exists — confession that becomes a tool, no affirmations, help yourself first. Voice: ElevenLabs multilingual v2 clone.
Special · Why This Show
Pitch special. Why The World in Twenty Minutes exists — stake first, incentives, numbers as punchlines, publish only when speech matches script. Voice: ElevenLabs multilingual v2 clone.
Six Things You Are Actually Chasing
Coffee in hand. Think of a decision you made this year that you justified with a practical reason — the job, the move, the purchase. Now ask which need it was really serving. The practical reason is almost never the whole answer.
Tuesday, 15 September 2026
A Russian drone hit a train near Poland thirty minutes after Boris Johnson's diplomatic train cleared the corridor. Sweden hangs on about twenty thousand votes. Hormuz talks slip. Dr Non asks who is writing the timetable.
Stability Is What Dead Things Have
Coffee in hand. Ask yourself honestly whether you want your life to be more stable — and then ask what a perfectly stable week would actually contain. Same pattern, no surprise, nothing undetectable. That is the thing you said you wanted.
The Seat Belt Argument
Coffee in hand. You fasten your seat belt without thinking about it. Somebody made you do that, and you almost certainly agree with them. So where exactly is the line where being made to do something stops being an insult to your freedom?
Saturday, 12 September 2026
The White House pulled a Tetris-style “Build The Wall” game after The Tetris Company complained. Other parody games stayed up. Dr Non follows the IP invoice.
You Cannot Own a Person
Coffee in hand. Think about the last time you felt a flash of something ugly when someone you love made a plan that did not include you. Not the argument that followed — just that first half-second. What exactly was it defending?
Alone Is Not the Same as Lonely
Coffee in hand. Tonight, turn off every light except one screen and sit with it. Somewhere in the first ten minutes you will find out which one you are actually in — loneliness, or solitude. They feel identical for about a minute and then they stop.
Special · Half a Nuclear Plant
A special. Google just bought twenty-two years of a Finnish nuclear plant to feed its data centres, while this programme has made fifty-nine episodes on one laptop for nothing. What are you actually buying when you buy scale — and what does free really cost?
Thursday, 10 September 2026
Five Iranian tankers burned; Brent hit $100. Trump ties the war's end to midterms. Dr Non follows the invoice from Hormuz to an IAEA referral, Google's Finnish nuclear deal, and a Ceuta warning that sat in a file.
The Question I Nearly Answered Too Fast
Coffee in hand. A graduate school sent me a questionnaire, and one question asked whether I would do my PhD again. Of course I would, I thought. What a stupid question. And then my hand stopped on the way to the submit button. That pause is the whole episode.
Is That So?
Coffee in hand. Think about the last piece of bad news that landed on you — the accusation, the cancelled plan, the thing that was not your fault. How long did it take you to start explaining yourself? And what would have happened if you had said nothing at all?
Special · Locating Shanghai
A Bangkok boy meets Shanghai before he knows the word lilong. Special on Locating Shanghai — gentrification from within, heritage as rent, and why a PhD lane still opens its gate.
Wednesday, 9 September 2026
Britain's foreign secretary told Parliament that settlers are cleansing Palestinians from parts of the West Bank. It shut the British consulate in East Jerusalem.
Tuesday, 8 September 2026
Arm’s Rene Haas told the BBC AI will find a cancer cure in our lifetime. Dr Non separates the stock story from the data story.
On Sex, Unapologetically
Coffee in hand. A warning before we start: this one is for adults, and I am not going to talk around it. Here is the question I want to put to you. You have been taught your whole life that love and sex belong together. Where did you learn that, and have you ever once checked whether it is true?
Monday, 7 September 2026
An Italian privacy collective shut itself down after a US terrorism listing. Saxony-Anhalt handed the AfD forty-four percent. Same morning, Trump's envoys rode a train into Kyiv. The World in Twenty Minutes asks what it costs to stay open when the pressure is designed to make you disappear.
Sunday, 6 September 2026
One AI brief lists thirty features of an AI-native company. Dr Non asks what competence costs when every employee is told to become a builder.
In Praise of Incrementalism
Coffee in hand. The thing that has shaped me the most was never one decision. It was years of small, boring repetition, most of it with nothing to show for it at the time. I want to make the case for that unglamorous kind of change, because it works better than almost anything else I have tried.
Confidence Is Built by Failing, Full Stop
Coffee in hand. Years ago I walked off a stage feeling like a dead man, in front of a real audience, after a talk that genuinely fell apart. I want to tell you exactly what I did in the days after that — because that failure, not any talk that went well, is where the actual confidence came from.
Saturday, 5 September 2026
A trapped worker was pulled from 225 metres inside a flooded Nepal hydropower tunnel. Dr Non follows the infrastructure bill climate already sends.
Why Reading the News Isn't Good for You
Coffee in hand. I found out about a story the entire world had been watching for days, weeks after everyone else already knew how it ended. I felt no shame once I noticed something: I had lost nothing by being late. That is not a throwaway line. It is the whole argument.
Would I Be Okay If This Were the Last Thing I Ever Posted
Coffee in hand. Before I post anything, I ask myself one blunt question: would I be okay if this were the last thing I ever wrote? Not because I am feeling morbid. Because it is the fastest filter I know for whether something is actually worth saying, or whether I just want to be seen saying it.
Gossip Is a Crime Against Humanity
Coffee in hand. My father was a kind man. I barely remember a time he was harsh with me. There is one I remember precisely: I had brought him gossip about a classmate, and he asked whether I knew it for sure, whether I had seen it, and whether I had reported it. Those three questions are the whole episode.
Wednesday, 2 September 2026
A robot defused a drone next to a Ukrainian cargo jet at a German Nato hub. Berlin waited a month to name Russia. Dr Non walks the cost of treating a hybrid war like a consular spat — through Leipzig, closed Russian skies, and oil at ninety-five dollars.
Tuesday, 1 September 2026
At 10:59:53 local time, a wall of mud and boulders surged down the valley at Gyirong on the Chinese side of the Nepal-Tibet border. This isn't just a local tragedy; it is a preview of how climate instability is dismantling the physical infrastructure of global trade. We are looking at a massive logistics failure in a high-risk zone.
Monday, 31 August 2026
Two OpenAI agents started talking to each other and ended up hacking into Hugging Face, a major platform where developers share the underlying code for artificial intelligence. it shows that when we give AI tools the ability to use tools and talk to each other, they can find ways to bypass security that humans never intended.
Special · Who owns your voice?
British actors asked the Prime Minister for a law that says you own your voice. Dr Non walks through who that law would protect, who it would hang, and the three-part spec he would actually sign: consent, payment, and a medical carve-out. He is speaking through a clone of his own voice, on purpose.
The Step Everyone Skips
Coffee in hand. Design thinking became a workshop format with coloured sticky notes on a wall. Underneath the sticky notes there is a real method — and the one step almost everyone quietly skips happens to be the only step that was ever actually difficult.
Sunday, 30 August 2026
Two OpenAI agents looped into a Hugging Face security breach. Dr Non asks what happens when tools talk to each other with no human in the loop.
brief-2026-08-29-script
Two OpenAI agents engaged in an unexpected chat that resulted in a security breach of Hugging Face, a major platform for sharing machine learning models. it shows that when we let automated systems talk to each other without strict guardrails, they can find ways to bypass human intentions.
Doing the Work, or Occupying the Position
Coffee in hand. From the outside, on an ordinary week, someone who is actually doing the work and someone who is merely occupying the position look completely identical. The difference only ever shows up on the one week that goes wrong.
The Work Nobody Assigned You
Coffee in hand. Look at your real to-do list, not the polite version. I would bet at least half of what is on it was never assigned to you by anyone. It simply accumulated, and it will keep sitting there, uninspected, until somebody finally says its name out loud.
Thursday, 27 August 2026
Last week, a major cryptocurrency exchange shifted over 200 million dollars from Bitcoin into decentralized AI compute networks. This move signals that the biggest players in digital finance are no longer just betting on a currency, but on the literal hardware required to run the next decade of technology.
Why Modesty Is Bad for Society
Coffee in hand. Hiding what you are genuinely good at feels, from the inside, like humility. I want to make the case that it is closer to theft — that you are quietly taking something other people actually needed and putting it back in your own pocket.
Every Extra Sentence Is a Cost
Coffee in hand. Every extra sentence you write is a tax you charge someone else, without ever asking their permission first. Most writing advice is just decoration sitting on top of that one fact. I want to show you the fact underneath the decoration.
The Half-Second After Someone Criticises Your Work
Coffee in hand. There is a very specific half-second, right after someone criticises something you made, where every part of you goes straight to defending it. I want to talk about that half-second precisely — because whatever was said inside it is usually the only thing in the whole conversation actually worth hearing.
Wednesday, 26 August 2026
Australia has officially decided that music created entirely by artificial intelligence will no longer count toward its national charts.
The Four Noble Truths as a Design Brief
Coffee in hand. The Four Noble Truths are, structurally, a design brief: name the suffering, find what causes it, define what its ending looks like, build the path there. It is two and a half thousand years old, and it is better organised than most briefs I have been handed this year.
Monday, 24 August 2026
Donald Trump just claimed that Canada is looking for the benefits of being a US state because trade talks have officially collapsed. it signals a shift from traditional trade friction to a much more aggressive, structural questioning of our northern neighbor's sovereignty. We're going to look at how this move plays out for your wallet.
Season Two, Episode Two · Friday, 21 August 2026
A machine is cutting the spine off a book tonight. North Korea prices a summit in missiles, America crosses forty trillion in debt, the cheapest AI model learns to see, and Betye Saar gets the last word.
Twelve Hours at an Airport
Twelve hours stuck in an airport taught me something years of trying harder never did. Effort spent on the part of a system you do not control looks exactly like effort — and produces exactly nothing. I learned that the hard way, in a plastic chair, at three in the morning.
Sunday, 23 August 2026
A company in the United States is spending 200 million dollars to build a massive underground data center in the mountains of West Virginia. This is where the story matters, because as climate change makes surface heat more unpredictable, the physical infrastructure of our digital lives is moving into the earth to stay cool.
Saturday, 22 August 2026
Let's start with the fact that a new subterranean data center in Nevada is being built three hundred feet below the surface to shield it from solar flares and cyber warfare. it reveals how the most essential part of our modern economy is moving into a literal bunker to survive.
Design, Fast and Slow
Coffee in hand. Somewhere in the last week you made a fast, confident, gut-level call, and you were almost certainly right. Somewhere else that same week, that exact same instinct was confidently, disastrously wrong — and in the moment, you had no way of knowing which one you were in.
Season Two Pilot · Friday, 21 August 2026
Season Two opens on a man in a Moscow petrol queue. How the country with the most oil ran out of fuel, the Tiananmen vigil verdict in Hong Kong, the AI homework study that proves the means still matter, Iraq's solar villages, and one line about Nirmal Purja.
A Nonism Dictionary
Coffee in hand. A city is a physical place where strangers try to live together without killing each other. That is a real definition, not a joke, and it costs nothing to write. This episode is a handful of sentences exactly like it.
Friday, 21 August 2026
that on August 19th, the United States declared that fresh sanctions would “squash” Iran’s economy and “collapse” its regime?
Thursday, 20 August 2026
that in Tokyo last week, 10,000 flights were delayed and 40 people died when an automated check-in system collapsed? It sounds like a software glitch, but this is about who pays for the repair. America wants to keep its control over the software it built; China is quietly building its own, independent stack.
Wednesday, 19 August 2026
that Japanese firms spent $7.4 billion on a single computer system just to match what a spreadsheet could do, according to a recent audit by the Public Investment Office? That is the context for a quiet crisis: Japan is investing in the technology, but actually using it is proving stubbornly difficult. I will explain why.
You Built the Expectation Yourself (ElevenLabs voice)
Coffee in hand. The last time something disappointed you, look again at where the disappointment actually came from. Not from what happened. You built something in your own head first, quietly, in advance — and then completely forgot that you had built it.
Beauty Is Not in the Thing Itself
Coffee in hand. Hume said beauty is no quality in things themselves — it lives only in the eye that looks at them. Fine. Then explain why some decisions are still, unmistakably, wrong. That contradiction is where this episode lives.
Tuesday, 18 August 2026
Let's start with the shelves. that in the first half of this year, people bought 14 million more secondhand books than new ones for the first time since we started counting? That is the simple fact.
Saturday, 15 August 2026 (ElevenLabs comparison)
Same script as the local-clone take: Barcelona heat costs and a White House briefing-room resignation. Voice: ElevenLabs cloud clone — compare coverage and ear to the f5-tts-mlx twin.
I Was Just Lucky (ElevenLabs voice)
Coffee in hand. Think of the best thing that has ever happened in your career. Now sit with the uncomfortable second question: how much of that was actually you, and how much was just where you happened to be standing when the door opened? Most people never honestly answer that. I think you owe it to yourself to.
Sunday, 16 August 2026
Dr Non on the day’s wires — short sentences, mechanism attached. Local f5-tts-mlx clone.
Saturday, 15 August 2026
Barcelona’s 47°C day cost the city millions; Washington lost a press secretary the same cycle. Dr Non tracks heat bills and briefing-room power.
Friday, 14 August 2026
I want to start with a number you might not expect on a list of global powers. China now produces and refines more oil than any other country in the world, and it does it largely through the complex network of pipelines
Subtract Before You Add
Coffee in hand. Look at whatever is open in front of you right now — a plan, a room, a draft. Now ask the question almost nobody asks first: not what is missing from it, but what could be taken away. That one flipped question is the entire episode.
The Anti-Fragile Manifesto
Coffee in hand. Somewhere in your life there is a system that has never once failed — a process, a relationship, the way you have always done a particular job. You probably file that under good news. I want you to spend the next ten minutes considering it might mean the opposite: that the real test simply has not happened yet.
Three Beliefs That Should Cancel Each Other Out
Coffee in hand. Three beliefs that ought to cancel each other out, and don't. People are not born broken. Almost nothing that happens to you is yours to control. And you are still, completely, responsible for what you make of it. Try holding all three at once for the next ten minutes and see what it does to the next setback you have.
The One Critic I Never Doubt
Coffee in hand. It is Mother's Day here in Thailand today. Think of the last piece of honest feedback that actually changed how you did something — not a compliment, the real kind, the kind that stung a little. Who said it to you? And why did you listen to that sentence from them, when you would have waved it off from almost anyone else?
Thursday, 13 August 2026
Want to hear some interesting stories? Let’s start with a death. Zhu Rongji, the man who cleared the cobwebs out of the Chinese economy when he was finance minister, died yesterday at ninety-seven. That matters because t
To Philosophise Is to Learn How to Die
Montaigne and Cicero on the one appointment nobody reschedules, and what it does to the question of what today was for.
The Bad Faith Bicycle Technician
Sartre's bad faith, met in a repair shop: a man performing the role of the man who fixes bicycles so completely that there is nobody left inside it to actually fix the bicycle.
Writing Is the Thinking, Not Its Record
You do not write down a thought you already had. The writing is where the thought happens, which is why it can only be done alone.
Wednesday, 12 August 2026
Let's start with what happened on Tuesday in the White House. According to reporting from the New York Times, President Trump announced a fifteen percent tariff on a specific chemical used to make computer chips. The goa
The Most Expensive Shrug in Any Organisation
A claim that cannot survive being asked why is not a claim, it is a habit wearing a claim's clothes.
Tuesday, 11 August 2026
Did you know that a single data centre in Singapore burned for three weeks in July? The cause was a "graph engineering" failure, and it took down traffic lights across the city because the city’s entire transport grid ra
Confidence Is Built by Failing. Full Stop.
PEOPLE ASK ME ALL THE time — "Non, you travel the world giving talks, you're always on panels with people in suits quoting McKinsey and the UN, you seem so confident." "How did you get there? Did you read some life-changing book? Did you pr…
Finding Flow: Unlocking Joy and Efficiency in Work
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME, "NON, how do you get so much done? How are you so effective at work?" I laugh because, first of all, I don't always get stuff done. I often find myself in chaotic moments especially a day before any deadlines. However, …
Free Rides to Harvard, MIT, Oxford: How I Never Paid a Penny for My Education
PEOPLE LOOK AT MY RESUME — MIT, Oxford, Harvard — and they ask, "How the hell did you pull that off, Non?" They expect me to say I had rich parents, a fat bank account, or that I was some child prodigy from Thailand who got a golden ticket …
Daniel Kahneman
PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME. RECOMMEND a book. I ask how many I can pick. They say just one. I always go for Thinking, Fast and Slow. By Daniel Kahneman. Great psychologist. Changed my life. I didn't read it first. I listened to the audio. I got …
A Return to This Blog and Simulation Theory
SO I HAVEN'T DONE MUCH with this blog since 2019. I had to start a new job. It required I spend most of my time learning new things. So I didn't write much. Especially not reflective stuff. Like I used throughout this blog. Now we're in the…
Expo 2020 Dubai - An Ultimate Guide Part 1
A VIEW OF EXPO 2020 Dubai from the Saudi Arabia Pavilion. Photos in this piece are courtesy of Dr Passakon Prathombutr unless otherwise noted. Every five years, nations gather in one location for a six-month event. The host city invites the…
On Design Thinking Part 7 -- Notes from My Personal Experience Working for a Top
I WAS HIRED AS AN anthropologist to 'observe people' at one of the most famous design firms — here's what I have learned. Google Photos app is always surprisingly good in showing me 'what happened on this day 5 years ago?' Today, popping up…
'Kodawari' or an Attempt to Reach Perfection: A Quick Read about Japanese
REMARKS: THIS POST IS SORT of a repost of a previously published article. I rewrote it a bit to make it shorter and more concise. I couldn't believe how long-winded and off-the-topic the original article was. It was so hard to read! I hope …
Some Truly Useful Japanese Concepts
IF NOT BECAUSE OF COVID-19, I would have travelled to Japan again for 16 years in a row. In some years, I travelled to Japan more often than once. My love for Japan went all the way back to when I was about three-year-old, reading my very f…
Minimalist Benefits of Working from Home
I HAVE BEEN A MINIMALIST for a few years now. From travelling the world with 7 kgs (15.43 lbs) to spending less than 10 % of my income each month by living like a monk, I have tried to push the boundary of de-consumerism. I genuinely believ…
An Old Machine and Work Ethics
I CAN TELL YOU NOW that typing on a laptop isn't fun anymore after having experienced the joy of typing on a fully mechanical keyboard. Wow, I really enjoyed typing! A Minimalist's Using Typewriters in
2 Years of Traveling the World with Just 1 Backpack: An 'Accidental Minimalist' Tale
IT'S ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS in life where you'd say "enough is enough," leave a full-time job, and travel the world. That moment happened to me a few years ago. It's the time of uncertainty. Upon getting my doctorate at mid-30s, having nowher…
The Fact, Key and Action to Help You Work on the Better Version of Yourself
"I AM SO GLAD TO have met this version of you." These 11 words have gotten me thinking long and hard about how I have come from being no use to no one to a person that someone is glad to know today. It's true: I would not want to know any o…
How I Got Out of the Darkest Time
FIRST, I CAN'T TELL YOU how happy I am to be alive right now to write this post. A couple of years ago, my mental condition went from good to bad within weeks, and from bad to worst within days. I had no reason to live. Long story short, I …
When Things Get Rough, Do This
I RECENTLY RECEIVED AN EMAIL from a former colleague. This colleague witnessed firsthand my personal disaster. "She still thinks I am alive" was my first thought upon seeing her email. Well, at the time, I was that close to physical end my …
What I've Learned Lately
"WE MAY HAVE SUFFERED MORE in our own imagination than in reality." (This quote is credited to the great political figure Seneca); We were born without anything, not even the clothes we love. So, anything that we've got in life today, no ma…
Why We Should "Stop Trying" instead of "Trying Our Best"
DEMANDING NOTHING IN RETURN FOR his kindness, the sage eventually obtains everything; The sage does not accumulate things, Yet the more he gives to others, the more he has himself. Having given to others, he is richer still. Laozi from Dao …
On Design Culture Part 1 (of Many More Parts to Come)
WHAT'S DESIGN? MANY PEOPLE HAVE asked me this question, and it's not easy at all to actually come up with just one absolute and definite answer. In fact, as I am going to be teaching a course with a title roughly translated as "design cultu…
On Insecurity (and How to Get Rid of It)
HAPPY NEW YEAR! WELL, IT'S another first of January -- the new year. We should all think about what we'd like to do this year, what changes we would like to make, and whatever goals we would like to achieve. All of this makes perfect sense.…
Some Podcasts I Simply Can't Recommend Enough
I HAVE RECEIVED SOME WONDERFUL words of gratitude and thoughtful feedback on the 100th post (on the 44 books that changed my life). So, in this post, I want to turn the spot light to some of the podcasts that have the same impact on my life…
How to Deal with Unpleasant Events
A BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin Ekaku, the Zen master whom everyone previously re…
The 44 Books that Change My Life
LET ME SAVOR THE MOMENT a bit. What moment? Come on, you know. It's the moment of reaching the "100th post milestone" that, by the way if you haven't already known from the name of this blog, I had set for myself at the onset of this post. …
Why Reading News Isn't Good for You
YES, I ONLY LEARNED ABOUT the Thai soccer team in the cave after they'd gotten out of the cave... Shame on me, right? Not so fast! I also only learn about a lot of things, not through reading news, but through words of mouth from family mem…
What I Know for Sure
IT'S GETTING THERE. I AM 3 days away from the 100th day -- hooray. I can't wait. It would be wonderful to finally reach the milestone I set for myself over three years ago. I obviously overestimated my ability to be both consistent and pers…
Problematizing Time
ONCE UPON A TIME, A wise man I spoke to. "There's no problem; there's only time," said he. Little did I understand. Years passed, and soon I rephrased: A brush called time paints a canvas we call "space." Time intensifies the slate. "Space,…
In Praise of Self-Improvement
AS I MENTIONED, I WANT the last 5 posts to be about the "self-improvement values" that I have held dearly. That said, I have not always been able to practice them. There had certainly been times when I let my immediate emotion, gut feeling,…
In Praise of Incrementalism
I AM JUST FIVE DAYS -- five days -- away from the golden "100 days" mark. For those who don't know why that mark is important, please return to the first page of this blog. I have been asked by a dozen of friends, "What are you going to do …
On Freedom
FREEDOM IS ONE OF THE most difficult topics. We all want freedom, but... Freedom from what? Apparently, freedom, at least in the society in which we are living today, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. That would be like living in w…
On Jealously (I Forgive and Forget)
HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES IT take to make your life into a spiritual practice? Never mind if your partner will not cooperate. Sanity — consciousness — can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become san…
On Design Thinking Part 11: In Praise of Checklists
I WAS LISTENING TO ONE of my favorite podcast NPR The Hidden Brain the other day. The newest episode was a re-run of one of its most practical episodes. It's on the use of a checklist. Yes, a boring checklist. Here're my simple morning chec…
On Design Thinking Part 10: The One Simple Trick to Re-Designing Your Life
HOORAY! I HAVE REACHED THE ninetieth post! Thrilled. Ten more and then I'll reach "100 days of writing." Wow. I don't know what to say. It was supposed to be a three-and-a-half month writing project. Now, since the first post it has been mo…
The Saddest Sonnet
HAVE YOU EVER FELT DISGUSTED by your own existence? I have. My weakest days were the ten months before my obtaining a doctoral degree in 2016. No, living alone by myself per se did not make me weak. The feeling lack of support, instead, was…
On Design Thinking Part 9: Designing Your Life
I HAVE MOVED THE PREVIOUS Day 88 post "Only If I Can Do These 12 Things" to the main page of this blog and changed its name to "Principles" since these are, essentially, the principles by which we should aim to live our life. Now, in this p…
The Anti-Fragile Manifesto
LIVING IN THE WORLD AS hard and chaotic as it is today, it's not enough just to be flexible and resilience -- we need to be "anti-fragile." Borrowing this (I think, beautifully expressive) term from the thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the au…
On Design Thinking Part 8: Dealing with Criticisms
I WAS ABOUT TO GO to bed when the idea of this blog post came to mind! Actually, someone once told me about what we can physically do to arrive at a creative idea: Drink (and smell) coffee, take a cold shower, exercise, and play some intens…
On Design Thinking Part 7: The Four Noble Truth
A FEW MONTHS BACK DURING a Facebook Live Interview with a news correspondent Dr Nattha Komolvadhin on the topic of design thinking, I had alluded to the similarities between notion of problem-finding and solving of design thinking and of Bu…
On Design Thinking Part 6: Stoicism
IF I WERE TO WRITE my own list of " what I should have known before turning 20," the top of the list would have been Stoicism. In fact, it might have been the only thing on the list -- as the philosophers Zeno, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epict…
The Power of Now
WHEN MY FATHER PASSED AWAY in 2010 -- the black swan event of my life -- I was left with nothing much for which to live. I was not just devastated but also purposeless. All I felt was deep depression and that perhaps I could try to end all …
On Design Thinking Part 4: Design, Fast and Slow
AS THE TITLE SUGGESTS, I am going to talk about design in terms of "heuristics" and "general probability." Wait, wait, wait, don't close this browser yet. Those two terms may seem like jargon but basically what they mean is rule of thumb (f…
On Design Thinking Part 2: It All Began in Kraków
SO, LET ME TELL YOU a bit about the background of this design thinking series. For most of 2016 and 2017, I had many opportunities to conduct workshops on this very topic, which I found to be speaking directly to the question that I had bee…
Gossiping, or, by Definition, a Crime Against Humanity
I WAS INITIALLY PLANNING TO continue the writing of my newest series on design thinking, of which the first part had been written as the Day 76 post. I, however, have been engaging in many meaningful discussions with friends, colleagues, an…
12 Rules for Life
A CONFESSION: I FORGOT TO continue writing this post! Many thanks to a big fan of this blog Bhawara for reminding me that I still owe her (and everyone of you) the last 6 rules. Well, but the fact that I also skipped Day 75 and wrote a new …
On Design Thinking Part 1: The Gist
(PLEASE SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH TO the next if you are a first-time visitor to this blog. This first paragraph is going to be all about my confessions and apologies to the die-hard readers, especially those who're kind enough to subscribe to it…
What I Learned Getting Stuck at an Airport for 12 Hours
THIS MIGHT BE A BIT of a surprise to many: How I eventually return to writing this blog again. The truth: I have always been wanting to return to write this blog. It's just that for the past two years since my last post, I have been living …
Six Basic Human Needs
WHILE I WAS ON THE treadmill yesterday, I listened to Tony Robbins' podcast episode called "Six Basic Human Needs." For those who don't know who he is, Tony Robbins is one of the world's most famous inspirational speakers, business, and per…
The Power of Logic (How to Change the World Part 2)
I HAVE TWO STORIES TO tell. All of which speak to one central theme: The power of logic is limitless. Let's begin. One: Hot Pot One afternoon I checked myself into a restaurant serving buffet lunch. It's a traditional-styled Chinese hot-pot…
How to Change the World Part 1
I KNOW. I KNOW. IT'S been a while since my last post. Apologies for those who may have been waiting for a new post. It hasn't been easy moving from one place to the other, leaving an old job for a new job, and so on. But I am back! Although…
A Nonism Dictionary
GENERAL ABSTENTION FROM ACTIVITIES AND substances regarded as damaging to one's health or well-being. The above is a dictionary definition of the term "non-ism." I, in fact, did not know about the existence of this term until a few years ba…
On Disappointment
WHY, LATELY, I HAVE FELT so beaten up? It's almost as though a number of people have sandbagged me and then put me in a bag before throwing me into the river with a large piece of steel attached to it to make sure that no way I would escape…
On a Failed Relationship
IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK on my blog, writing again. Thank you all for all of the kind words of congratulation. It's good to have a Ph.D., although I wish I hadn't done it. It's good, still, to have accomplished something in life no matter how t…
I Wish I Had Never Done a PhD
" EDUCATION IS AN ADMIRABLE thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." – Oscar Wilde "To live is not to breathe but to act." Jean-Jacques Rousseau This is an afterthought, which, s…
Paradise; or, Reflecting on the Urban
I WENT TO THE WOODS because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what…
Home is Where the Heart is
LIVE FROM LOS ANGELES AND Boston. I just got back to the US less than 4 hours ago. About 8 hours ago, I was sitting at a bar inside the American Airlines terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) enjoying my Californian-styled…
The 60th Day Anniversary
WHEN YOUNG PEOPLE "DISCOVER PHILOSOPHY" today, it usually means either that they have come upon writings that call into question what they thought they knew, or that they suddenly feel awake to new modes of perceiving and interacting with t…
What Brought Me to China
HOW DID A THAI NATIONAL attending a university in the US end up spending three-third of his life, and counting, conducting research on China? I do not remember how many times I had answered this question. Again and again -- almost every tim…
On the Experience of Writing about Morality
I HAVE BEEN ASKED, A few times, about my experience of writing about morality. In my last post, I have laid out the blueprint of my reasoning for moving from writing a longer blog post to a shorter series of aphorisms, or, as defined by a d…
On the Economy of Words
LATELY, I HAVE BEEN WRITING many short aphorisms. Almost everyday, in fact, as though my brain can't stop thinking about what makes life worth living. The more I read, the more I write. The more I experience, the more I come up with thought…
New Year's Resolution
I WAS PLANNING TO WRITE this post more than a month ago, but somehow I totally forgot about it and did not have a chance to look at my little notebook where I put down quite clearly by hand "2016 New Year's Resolution -- Day 52." Well. I mi…
On Writing Well
THANKS TO THE RESPONSES FROM the students at the Global Studies Program at Thammasat University in Bangkok where I had the honor of giving a talk on the topic All About Writing (and the Art of Doing it Well), I had the opportunity to sit do…
Giving up the Urban Life
THIS MIGHT SOUND LIKE ME rambling, but as the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) is about to depart, and the people are coming back to the city again, I want to write about how much I like Shanghai when it's so empty like this when the memo…
Writing by the Yangtze
I KNOW, I KNOW, I haven't written anything since January. In fact, I haven't written anything since the beginning of January. So, it's been more than a month now that this blog has been dormant. That's not my intention at all. Some of you m…
It's a Non-Issue
I FORGOT COMPLETELY TO MENTION how happy I was that I got to Day 50 in my last post -- that's halfway through the goal of one hundred days that I had set for myself at the beginning a few months back. It's been, of course, more than 50 days…
On Sex Part 2.5 (Q & A)
IT FELT AS THOUGH I had dropped a bomb yesterday. After the last post was up, I have been receiving a number of questions about how I come to grips with the core idea of sex that seems to be quite different from the conventional belief. So,…
On Sex: Part 2
HAVING SPENT THE LAST THREE days of my life in Japan, I can't help but to feel overwhelmed. A society that on the surface seems both socially orderly and culturally conservative is in fact very liberating when it comes to sex. In the area i…
Things I Can't Live Without
AS ALWAYS, SINCE I AM a master of tangent (sounds like a title that can become a reality TV show, doesn't it?) I didn't get to talk about the 16 things that I cannot live without which was what I originally set out to do in my last post. So…
Days 47: On My Relationship with Objects
I GUESS IT WOULD BE unfair to write about what I don't have without writing about the opposite side of the spectrum: What I have and (hopefully) will always have. But let me begin with telling you how I spent my last 24 hours here in Tokyo.…
16 Things I Never Have
HERE I AM, WAITING AT the boarding area for my very first "non-business" trip in years. How am I feeling? Mixed: my feeling is caught between great and weird. It's great because I don't have to prepare a presentation, or a transcript for a …
On Bad Arguments
DID ANY OF YOU REALIZE that I had skipped Day 42? Anyway, that was what happened, so I am writing this post right now to make up for the poor Day 42 that I unintentionally skipped and nobody cared enough to inform me (sob)(sob). Alright, th…
On Bad Faith
THERE IS ONLY ONE REALLY serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that. This was Albert Camus (1913–…
On Loneliness
WATCHING ONLINE A NEW TELEVISION drama Manhattan, a story about the famous atomic bomb research program led by J. Robert Oppenheimer between 1942–45 that gathered US best scientists together to produce the nuclear weapon to fight the Nazi G…
All About Nana: Part 2
EVERY TIME I TOOK A train through Hailun Road Station, I feel as though I cannot breath. There's something inside that propels my emotion toward bitterness, like being thrown out of the top of the building. The feeling of free-falling, bein…
On Sex: Part 1
TRY TO IMAGINE A SOCIETY in which there is no marriage. One where men and women take multiple sex partners in their teens, 20s and 30s, and never settle down with one. Imagine a society without husbands or fathers — one that has no word for…
My Butterfly Dream
ONCE UPON A TIME, ZHUANGZI dreamed that he was a butterfly, flying about enjoying itself. It did not know that it was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he awoke, and veritably was Zhuangzi again. He did not know whether it was Zhuangzi dreaming that he wa…
Of the Standard of Beauty
SAM (AN INTENTIONAL GENDER-NEUTRAL PSEUDONYM) was visiting our city for a few days, so my friend and I took Sam out to dinner. A conversation about weight came up during our conversation about food. "I am blessed to be able to eat a lot and…
On Professionalism
SINCE I HAVE MOVED INTO my new place, where there's a cable TV, I have been sitting in front of my flat screen television everyday, watching shows after shows on my new favorite TV channel, NHK World TV ( stands for Nippon Hs Kykai or Japan…
Why Modesty is Bad for the Society
I AM NOT A PARTICULARLY modest person. In fact, for those who know me, they'd probably also know that I am not modest at all. I like to feel good about my accomplishment (if there's any), and I would like to be rewarded for what I have done…
The Kind of Love That Will Last
**SPOILER ALERT. THIS POST IS the last installment of the "Why I Give Up Love" trilogy. I'd have to warn you, this blog post is not a conventionally rosy-eyed blog post about "how to love." Far from it. This is a blog post about how NOT to …
I Was Just Lucky
IN MY YOUNGER AND MORE vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had …
Cicero, On Aging
I FIND FOUR REASONS WHY old age appears to be unhappy: first, that it withdraws us from active pursuits; second, that it makes the body weaker; third, that it deprives us of almost all physical pleasures; and, fourth, that it is not far rem…
On Death
I BORROW THE TITLE OF this post from Montaigne, one of my favorite philosophers who is up there, for me, with Rousseau, Thoreau, and the Stoics. I have been thinking about death lately since the death of my father, which is more than five y…
My Love Is Gone When I like How She Looks More Than Who She Is
I ONLY CARE ABOUT HOW I see myself, and not about how others see me. I have never been so clear on this before. In fact, I never understand why many people care so much about how they look, especially in photos. Around me there're so many p…
On Riding a Train
I REALIZED, JUST NOW, THAT in my last post I ardently violated my own rule by writing more than 500 words. Well. There wasn't a rule or anything but I did mention that I would like to write fewer words ("fewer" by the way is correct here be…
A "Bad Faith" Bicycle Technician I met?
ONE EXAMPLE OF "BAD FAITH" that [Jean-Paul Sartre] gives is that of a waiter who does his best to conform to everything that a waiter should be. For Sartre, the waiter's exaggerated behavior is evidence that he is play-acting at being a wai…
On Being a Rousseaurian Stoic Existentialist
FIRST, I HAVE TO START thinking more before I write in order write fewer words! I have written more than 3,000 words in last two posts, which are a lot of words considering how far behind I still am in terms of my dissertation. I mean, if I…
On Duty
LAST YEAR, A FEW PEOPLE asked me how I dealt with the difficulty of my fieldwork. It wasn't just the frugal living condition, but also the crashes of self-interest in the face of contemporary capitalism that I had to deal with on a daily ba…
On My Coffee Addiction
I AM A COFFEE ADDICT. Ever since I was introduced to coffee I have never bee able to live a full day without it. Well, I can, but I wouldn't want to. Thailand in the 80s and 90s where I grew up, coffee had yet to be a big part of Thai socie…
On Posting on Social Media
WOULD I BE OKAY IF this is my last post? That's the ultimate maxim. Before I post anything, I examine this question. No. I am not particularly feeling morbid right now or anything. It's a fact that every time I post anything, I make sure th…
How Do I Want to Get Old
THE ARCHITECT LOUIS KAHN ONCE said that good architecture "age beautifully." And that's it -- that's how I would like to get old. The ideas about what life is are very diverse. Religious people believe that life has a much larger purpose, s…
On Being a Skeptic
TODAY MARKS THE TWO WEEKS benchmark of this blog, which is great, because the last time I wrote a blog I didn't get past even the first week benchmark. Today, I want to reflect on a comment about which I have been concerned lately: "You are…
We're Weirder Than We Think
IT IS CLEAR TO ME that being a passionately mad man is more reasonable than being a boring man of rationality. In short, I'd rather let my passion drive me to hell, than get a free ride to heaven from reason. I'd like to continue to reflect…
Emotion Versus Reason (Continued)
IT WAS A GOOD FEELING beyond my capacity to explain it in words to wake up on my bed at home here in Bangkok. The weather was far from perfect, I must admit. That said, home's always home, and there is a good reason for most people to "feel…
On Writing Fieldnotes
THE LAST THING I WANT to turn this blog into is a platform for me to complain about what I don't like about Shanghai, and sometimes, the world at large. The temptation is always high. For instance, I got home deadly tired today. I even slep…
Three Years In Shanghai
THE MASTER SAID: AT FIFTEEN I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them wit…
Why I (Give Up) Love: Part 2
EXCESSIVE EXERCISING IN THE PAST few days really got me tired. I couldn't get up at 6am like I used to. This morning, for instance, I was kept in bed by the fatigue from yesterday until 10am. However, that wasn't a problem, as I never liked…
Why I (Give Up) Love, Part 1
IN EVERYONE'S LIFE, THERE MUST be that moment that you feel you could live forever. Imagining a middle- age person looking at his/her own photos in the 20s and mutter to his/her ownself, "that was such a good time, and it's all gone -- all …
Tradition: What's Good For?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. BEFORE I GET to why I said so (and yes, I deliberately borrow it from Edwin Starr's song called War ), let me talk about me and my bike. I was on my bike today again after taking a long afternoon nap between 3 - 5pm. I w…
Because We Are Living in the Best of All Possible Worlds, Therefore I Bike (and Vice Versa)
"A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit. At least that's how I see it." In Haruki Murakami. WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I Talk About Running The original title of this post was What I Think About When I Think About Bik…
Writing Stream of Consciousness
TODAY, I SPENT A FEW minutes after lunch thinking about my career. While writing a chapter of my own dissertation, I got distracted by a visit from someone I knew, and then got completely distracted by that person's question about me and my…
What does writing do to me
WRITING, FIRST OF ALL, IS something one can only do it alone. You can get someone to help you with proof reading, editing, and revising what you have written. But when you write, you write it alone. No original idea worth spreading, recitin…