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mid-year roundup

note: favourites in color & askterisked

current affairs

The Real Reason Israel Attacked Iran by Ori Goldberg

social commentary

why is social media not fun anymore? by Mina Le*

A cure for individualism by Tim Connolly

The Importance of real Things by Ted Kutina

the rise of conservatism in gen z by Madisyn Brown

Our diverse togetherness by Chelsea Wallis

Antisocial Goods by Tell the Bees*

Why Social Media Screen Time Is So Bad for Sleep by Brian Chin

How America Keeps Its Citizens Uneducated by ashley viola

The TRADWIVES of TikTok by FunkyFrogBait

What about the men though? by Caro Clarke

Humble by Catherine Shannon

science

How Nostalgia Keeps Friendships Alive by Kuan-Ju Huang

Why People Feel More Energised with Less Sleep by Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

books

Notes on Her Colour by Jennifer Neal

Foster by Claire Keegan

Yellowface by RF Kuang

Nightcrarwling by Leila Mottley

films

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)*

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

12th Fail (2023)

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (2022)

When Harry Met Sally (1989)*

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Past Lives (2023)

Dunkirk (2017)

Uptown Girls (2008)

Darlings (2022)

documentaries

Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke (2025)

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I’m begging of you even if you disagree with Israel (rightly so), do not fall into the enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality. Do not forget the atrocities that the Islamic Republic has committed and is committing against its own people, including children. Do not forget Mahsa Amini and Nika Shahkarami and the millions killed by the Islamic Republic.

Sincerely, an Iranian.

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OMG YOU'RE ALIVE

I'M ALIVE!!

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of uni and coffee breaks <3

the only good thing that comes out of being in college is drinking coffee in cafes and pretending like you give a fuck about what you're studying when ure literally just here for the vibes

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the only tolerable thing about summer is that everything is lush green — thankfully my apartment is under the shade of a chestnut tree.

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return from the dead (?)

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30 Days of Productivity: Day 12🤎

07/28/2024

Hey Besties! ✌🏾 here’s Sunday’s recap:

Honestly not much happened today. I haven’t been feeling well, I think it might have to do with me not getting enough sleep and it’s possible I may have overexerted myself in the gym. I do plan on going to the doctor soon, so we’ll see what happens 🥺

Despite being exhausted and out of commission for most of the day, I finished up a painting I started on Saturday. I made an emotional support Matcha latte and organized my assignment schedule for the rest of the summer

So far I have As in both of my summer classes which I’m really happy about. It looks like the sleepless nights are sorta paying off 🥹

I also filled out two job applications before I wrapped things up and now I’m in bed! 

I really hope I get well soon because I miss going to the gym and I hate not having the energy to do anything. Also, the anxiety of not knowing what’s wrong with me sucks😓

Anywho, Gn besties! ✌🏾✨

🎧 - Melt by Kehlani

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babycat makes it so very difficult to get anything done but goodness she's the light of my life (ft. old medieval hist notes)

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Third week of April's series "Flowers for Strong Women" is inspired by Miley Cyrus' grammy-winning song 🧡 yes she's a nepo baby, but she sure has come a long way too 🏵️

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🍞 편한 인생 (comfortable life) Going Challenge (36/82)

내 다음 찰렌지에 벌써 설리다 🤭 이 포스트는 스포일러를 있어, 찾고 수 있어요? 👀 보지 않아! 🙅‍♀️ 여기에 보는 것 없어~ 🙈 난 너를 놀랄거야 싶어요! 💝 (i'm already excited for my next challenge 🤭 this post contains spoilers, can you find them? 👀 don't look! nothing to see here 🙈 i want to surprise you! 💝)

🇰🇷 한국어의 집중의 날, 시작! (Korean Focus Day, Start!)

넌 내 한국어 인스타를 따라서? 👀 내 공부의 계획을 포스트를 있었어요! 지금 난 비밀한 꿈의 직업에 대한 쓰고 시작해요! 🤫 그래서 확실하게 따라해요! 하고 다음 포스트를 만이 기대주세요~ (are you following my Korean-only IG? 👀 i posted my study plan! now i'm starting to write about my secret dream job! 🤫 so make sure to follow and please look forward to the next post~)

내 한국어로 듣지 연습은 민이몬이 뮤식 다시 봤어요! (Mini & Moni Music rewatch to practice listening to Korean!)

+ 아침에 요가 😌 왜냐면 그 에피소드가 진짜 길었어요 (morning yoga because that episode was really long)

너무 많이 한국어 수업들와 시험들, 난 진짜 미쳤어해야 (so many Korean lessons and tests, i must be crazy)

고잉 세븐틴랑 한국어 배웠어요~ 지금 난 더 알아들 것이때, 언니의 비디오는 더 재미있어요! (learn Korean with Going Seventeen~ now that i understand more, unnie's videos are even more interesting!)

📚 달의 여신의 딸 읽했어요 (read Daughter of the Moon Goddess, tn: in Korean, the title translates so cutely, you'd pronounce it as something like "dal e yoshin e ddal" 🥺 it's not just me, right? it's really cute, isn't it? 🥺🥺)

난 이 책을 진짜 빨리 끝나서 🙈 (i finished this book really fast 🙈)

너무 좋았어요 ☺️ (i really liked it ☺️)

다음 책은 얻해야!! (i need to get the next book!!)

캐릭터들와 이야기는 진짜 대박있네! (the characters and story are really awesome!)

+ 그리고 내 가족랑 이 책을 말했어요 ㅋㅋ 🏕️ (i also talked to my family about this book, hehe 🏕️)

✈️ 일본의 계획을 만들었어요!! (made plans for Japan!!)

세시간 동안 우리는 세날의 계획을 만들었어요 💀 (in 3 hours, we made plans for 3 days 💀)

이건 너무 길은 했다 (this is taking too long to do)

힘내!! 넌 일본에서 갈 거에요!!! (cheer up!! you're going to Japan!!!)

💌: 계속 열심히 일하자, 여러분!! (let's keep working hard, everyone!!)

bonus: thank you @againtodreaming and i'm forgetting who else tagged me somewhere in this game but i think it was @winryrockbellwannabe 💜 i actually made this picrew when i was first tagged i think because i already had it saved 👀 maybe i did play before but i really don't remember, anyway! i'm just listening to RM's album on repeat 🔁 (teasers and his commentary linked in the first section above if you're interested!)

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🍚 swing of things Going Challenge (35/82)

🗼 今日も大丈夫です✨　私は家族と良いです☺️　難しもし、これは私ただは続きできます!💪 (today was also fine ✨ i'm happy with my family ☺️ even if it's difficult, i can continue with this! 💪)

⛩️ Japanese lessons (2x) + unit exam

+ スパイファミリー (Spy x Family) 🕵️‍♀️ which is really so gratifying to watch now that i can recognize more words!! it's also really good for influencing me to start thinking in Japanese more (although i invariably end up defaulting to Korean, but it's a start!)

+ does reading 4 more chapters of The Guest Cat still count when it's an English translation of a Japanese novel? ( @tokidokitokyo it looks like i'm going to be a perpetually tardy member of your book club, すみません🙈 でも今私はこの本を良いです!)

🍲 in my chef era~

this took up most of my day to be honest, but it was incredibly satisfying to cook not one, but two healthy meals today for my whole family ☺️

first was a thick beef stew with lots of vegetables too!

second was ginger chicken breast (okay, i technically also made ramen to go with this, but it was too perfect a combo to not do and everyone ate well, so sue me 🙈)

🏕️ i have this (perhaps mistaken) mentality that i'm not the best at bonding over conversation, so cooking is my main excuse to hang out with my parents, who are also more "acts of service" types anyway, so we understand each other like this 🙏

🏞️ spend time in nature!

🏕️ another great excuse to hang out with my parents 😅

💞 btw, @valiantcoffeelove i remember you mentioning doing house renovations with your grandpa and how gender affirming it felt, and i get it now because i have two brothers who are physically bigger than me, but today i became the first non-professional my dad trusted to mow the lawn for him, hehe 🙈

😌 mowing the lawn is also a surprisingly meditative activity

💪 amazing full-body workout 😛

the air was just so fresh today too! 💐

🍃 i feel more into the swing of things with the whole "focus" part of this new way of being productive (hi anon who asked me about toxic productivity a while back, this seems to be a good replacement!) maybe i swung too hard though, because i'm ending the day with a heat-stroke(?) induced headache, so i'm going to sleep extra early tonight bye~ 😴

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give it a chance 🌝 Going Challenge (34/82)

🙈 i am really struggling to focus and go deep on things like i said i would, like i just wanna watch all the backlogged videos i have for learning Korean with Going Seventeen and learn more recipes and start my Chinese lessons again, but i know my brain will thank me later on. my attention span has gotten abysmal and i want to fix it so bad. so far, despite my little struggles, i pulled together today too 💪 oh, i also slept insanely well last night after my reassess and regroup yesterday! 💤

💸 personal finance class~

+ learning about budgeting

+ learning about diversified income streams

+ just a lot of self-reflection and personal realizations and how talking about money and economics is never really just talking about money and economics, which of course, i journalled about because keeping all that in your head is taxing... 📒

🇯🇵 Japanese lessons (3x)

+ listened to my favorite Japanese Seventeen songs and realized i could pick up on a few more words i'd learned ☺️

+ N5 JLPT listening practice 🍱 even though i hate tests, it's a good way to measure my progress. it's still difficult and i don't understand all the words / how they fit together, but i do understand quite a bit for only getting really serious about Japanese for this past month roughly, so it's reassuring and motivating 💪

+ Spy x Family 🕵️‍♀️ it's so gratifying to actually understand more of what they're saying since the last time i watched it!! and i'm really savoring the episodes lately 🤭

📚 read the first 2 chapters of Daughter of the Moon Goddess

it also rained today while i was reading on the way home and it really set the mood just so, reminding me of my cozy, slow childhood summers at home during the monsoon season and everything 🥺

+ journalled about how much i love it as soon as i got home 📒 like, oh my goodness, how tantalizingly delicious this book is, i miss the fantasy genre so much and this book is good good 😋

+ also journalled about my love-hate relationship with An Incomplete Revenge which i finished the other day 📒

🗼 今日の終わりでは楽しいです!　それで、頑張って! (today was fun in the end! so, do your best!)

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the switch up 👀 Going Challenge (32/82)

ℹ️ trying something a bit different where i continue to work towards my goals, but going more by "feel & focus." does this feel good for my body, mind, soul? does it allow me to focus in on one thing at a time? can i be present, intentional, and show up to the task and to life as my best self? it's not perfect, but i think i will prevent burnout from being always on the grind this way!

📝 Rules:

max. 3 focus areas per day — reflect on quality of focus, emotions, insights, etc.

use my phone as a tool — no scrolling. period.

listen to my body — don't skip meals, remember to drink water and incorporate movement throughout the day

😌 Jay Shetty's ON PURPOSE podcast w/ Tom Holland

+ yoga 🧘‍♀️

+ laundry 🧺

so apparently i'm super bad at not multi-tasking, but to be fair, it is a podcast and i did watch most of it with my full attention because it was just that captivating, didn't even have the urge to scroll for another video to watch

you know when you watch, listen, or experience something that just alters your brain chemistry?? there were several points in the episode where i just thought to myself, "hold on, i gotta write this down"

don't let the in-your-face click-bait-aesthetic thumbnail sway your opinion, it was actually such a genuine conversation filled with goodness and good will

i'm not even super into sports, which was half the conversation, but i still freaking loved it

+ really fruitful journaling session afterwards!! 📒

💸 calling my insurance and health care providers and other medical professionals

skskskkskskskskksksksksks

i am so annoyed

this ongoing saga has to be one of my worst stressors lately

is this how product managers feel all the time

talking to like five different people who won't talk to each other because if they did, there would be nothing to manage anymore, but also they just don't want to??

also resisted the urge to scroll social media while they had me on hold, yay~

🏁 driving test

+ one last lesson 🚘

i passed!

i thought i would be happier and more excited, but really, life just goes on and i'm mostly relieved that i can now move on too...

the important thing is that i have more mobility and independence and can also be depended on for more now ☺️

i do want to get an international license for when i go to Japan, just in case i need to rent a car while i'm there! (probably won't since public transit is amazing over there, but you never know!)

⏩ in the meantime, this is me officially entering my chauffeur era ✨

🗼 皆さん、私は知りたいです。。。旅行のパッキングはいつはじめますか?　今私は始めるほしいです! 🤭🙈 (guys, i want to know... when do you start packing for a trip? i want to start right now! 🤭🙈)

bonus: found this cute and short moomin character quiz and wanted to share hehe @winryrockbellwannabe @megumi-fm @whenmemoriesfrost @a-fox-studies @ilonar0 aaaaand i really wish Tumblr would stop breaking the links if i tag more people 🥲 if you see this and want to try the quiz, just say i tagged you 😉

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week 3 / small commitments challenge “There is no race to win. Only a stroll.”

Yes, emerging adulthood is a privileged phenomenon. But with great privilege comes great responsibility and I sometimes feel the need to know exactly what I want in life from career to friendships to romantic relationships to family and how I will handle challenges in each of those domains that may have a chance at or will definitely come my way in order to be responsible. But that's an impossible ask at this stage of my life. I don't even think I can know all of what I want in life for decades to come. I keep changing. And it would not be wise now to run around in circles, chasing my tail, coming to no conclusions, or to rush the decision making process and come to conclusions that aren't well thought out. Sometimes I feel like I should make these decisions faster whenever I see others in my life around my age making them or having made them already or just generally progressing faster in life than I am. And other times, for seemingly no reason at all, I pick up the issues again from the backburner in case this time I stop chasing my tail...but that hasn't happened yet.

We all have different experiences that lead us to our varied and valid conclusions. Perhaps my peers have just experienced enough to come to theirs. Which means I just have to keep exploring different options until I feel informed enough to make those decisions for myself. And when I've made those decisions, I'll have to commit to them fully (well, 99.9%) so that I can be free in mind to become as good as I can at whatever I decide to do. This doesn't mean I'll stop re-assessing my circumstances periodically as that's how one spots better opportunities and improves themselves, but equally important is only changing direction when there are objectively good reasons to, not just because strong feelings of FOMO or self-doubt pull me so (those feelings can and have been useful in telling me when smth is genuinely wrong about my current situation but they can also be to my detriment when they arise primarily because of the voice in my head whose sole purpose is to be a pessimistic nay-sayer/bully).

hours spent stu(dying) 😭 tomato garden (50/10): M: 🍅🍅���🍅🍅 Tu: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 W: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅+(1/2 🍅) Th: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 F: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 (so tired, i had to take a nap 😪) S: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 Su: 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

In other news, the ochem midterm was this week. I studied as hard as I could for it all week, but that meant I didn't start on the new module (not covered on the midterm) for this week, hence the absence of a true weekend 😭 3 more weeks to go (including 1 week JUST to review for final woohoo!! [no that isn't sarcasm, i genuinely need that time lol]) and then we're NOT doing any more ochem at uni (self-study, maybe, but istg never again in a squished timeframe like this 😭). (Also wowwww can you tell i'm tired by the number of times i repeat the same words and emojis in a short paragraph... Adrenaline [or is it the sun? 😒] had me waking up before my alarm all week, averaging 7 hours of sleep a night 😭)

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✏️ Going Challenge // Day 30 of 82 🚋

🗼予定がありますか? はい! でも私の予定を使いません 😅 (do i have a plan? yes! but i don't follow my plan 😅)

🏕️ caught up with friends!!

🍲 cooking class~

⛩️ Japanese lesson

🏕️ hang out with my family!!

🕵️‍♀️ read a chapter of An Incomplete Revenge

😌 morning yoga but in the afternoon because this was not a day for doing things on time -_-

🚘 driving lesson (in the rain again but i was calm this time!! 🌧️)

✈️ randomly found a podcast on jetlag with interesting tips i hope to incorporate 👀

🍱 Japanese listening practice (新しい先生! new teacher! pro-tip: turn on auto-translate subs as they're pretty good and if you're learning the language anyway, you can fill in the gaps when it's slow to load 😜)

💌: 私の家族と友達ととても愛です 🥺 (i love my family and friends 🥺)

p.s. 友達 by RM ft. Little Simz MV is out today and i still can't believe he featured her 😭 like omg i've loved her music so much for a while now and today i got to hear her rap not just in her iconic rhythm but also in Korean (one line at the end of her verse but still!!) like— just— skskksks i'm such a happy clam right now ☺️

p.p.s. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is still my favorite album of hers atm if you want to have a listen to more of her stuff, hehe

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💞 Going Challenge // Day 31 of 82🌷

🦋 私の机コーナーのその上 (above my desk area) ft. debuting my questionable handwriting 🙈 [translations of words from pic: 힘내 — cheer up/stay strong, 日本 — Japan]

❓ randomly decided to replace the uninspiring sticky notes of reminders above my work desk that i don't even look at anymore with some things i'll actually enjoy looking at that can give me strength throughout the day 🥺

❓ randomly listened to this interesting podcast on mental health (from an asian perspective, but i believe it can extend to anyone at different times in their life) and might start reading the book at some point... right after i finish all the other books i've started and not started but have been recommended...

😌 morning yoga

💪 Chloe Ting ab workout but i only did half because i'm tired, it's fine 😮‍💨

🍲 cooking class~

🕵️‍♀️ finished reading An Incomplete Revenge

🏕️ chatted with friends~~ ☺️

🚘 driving lesson

⛩️ Japanese lesson

📒 journal in Korean

💌: 一緒にゆっくりに行きますよう 🦥 (let's go together slowly 🦥)

bonus: thank you @winryrockbellwannabe for tagging me ☺️

💛: @megumi-fm @tea-tuesday @dreamstudies @tokidokitokyo @ink-stained-clouds