firstwordproblem

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Limerence, they write, radiates from an overwhelming desire for emotional reciprocation, and is driven by the uncertainty of obtaining it. As in addiction, receiving a “hit” of an LO’s attention—the suggestion that they just might feel the same way—can feel euphoric. After a while, you need this level of attention just to feel “normal.” You spend a great deal of time strategizing about how to get the next “hit,” and experience physical symptoms when it’s not forthcoming. As with OCD, a person experiencing limerence engages in compulsive behaviors, or “mental acts,” to reduce the uncertainty—talking incessantly to friends about LO, rereading their texts, walking past their favorite spots. They know that none of this is healthy or rational, but they just can’t stop.

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A person shouldn’t have to be a UX designer to navigate the web just to avoid dark patterns, confusion and manipulation. That isn’t a fair web.

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the way robinrendle.com lists their pages by using the subtitle of every respective page as its anchor text is brilliant. it reminds me of this book that I got a few years ago that uses similar idea on its cover.

book: Whiteboard Journal Open Column #2

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In Maltese, ‘the sun’ is ix-xemx, said ish-shemsh. The initial consonant of the noun xemx warps the definite article il into ix, blurring the sounds together. Not all consonants have this effect: notice that il-qamar (the moon) preserves the il (which is the equivalent of al in Arabic).

Accordingly, we call nine consonants – ċ, d, n, r, s, t, x, ż and z – the sun letters of the alphabet, and the rest, including q, moon letters. How fitting for a language spoken by sun-drenched islanders, the moon with its tides caressing the shores.

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How often have you been on the phone with a friend, trying to describe how to get somewhere online? Okay go to Amazon. Okay type in “whatever”. Okay, it’s the third one down for me… This is ridiculous! What if, instead, you both went to the website and then you could just say: follow me.

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— Gwen Windflower, embodied.computer

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"A diary that cannot keep pace with life is its own sort of statement, but unfortunately it isn’t enough simply not to keep a diary. Quite the opposite, in fact, since it is only against the background of his prodigious diarizing that Kafka’s silences hold any meaning at all."

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I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

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"I was talking to S about this recently, and she mentioned the danger of idolizing alternate lives as a form of self-pitying. And the Multiverse Mapper can make it all too easy to intellectualize alternative paths and never attempt to live them. You get the reward of knowing what might be without having to do the work to see what life will actually turn out like."

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i watched Whisper of the Heart (1995) for the first time about eight years ago and it was one of my best film discovery ever. it has everything that i like: bookworms, libraries, cats, violins, vintage stores, houses on a hill, trains...

today i'm thinking about how Shizuku stays up late every night to write her story despite being a final-year student in exam season. i remember doing the same thing when i was in school. there's a story that i began writing right before final exam in junior high, and i keep writing it until i graduate senior high school. i tend to have intense writing sessions during exam season, especially final exam. in senior high a few weeks before the final exam, i remember laying on my bed with lights already turned off and writing the story on my phone as an email draft every night. that was when i began making digital draft of the story which has been handwritten only before.

why is this film so real?? i thought it wouldn't occur to anyone to write a story depicting what Shizuku and i did, but somebody did wrote it! is it more common than i thought, then? does anyone else suddenly feels like they need to have a project near exam season completely unrelated to final exam?

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i need to go out and do something with someone. i need to live a life that is not alone. the clock malfunctions when i'm alone. i blinked and suddenly it's been one year