flâneur

Janet Guo

56 followers · 43 following · 2259 views

on the atlas — 36

highlights — 108

  • Though I have heard that when you hold your breath for too long, your vision starts to narrow into a strange kind of tunnel.
    Counterfactuals - queuEY
  • It's more like a fear---the fear that deliberate focus is what defines me; the fear that without following the ideal of the solitary intellectual academic I'd blur into a dull, shallow mush of dilettantism; the fear that keeps me minimizing decision-theoretic regret every step I take.
    Counterfactuals - queuEY
  • A couple weeks ago a couple friends visited me in NYC, and I visited the Museum of Modern Art with them. W
    Counterfactuals - queuEY
  • mourning the worlds you could have occupied, that are now forever lost in the garden of forking paths of your life.
    Counterfactuals - queuEY
  • In “Bay Area Baby,” André Margatini pulls off the show’s best vocal performance as a plotting Bankman-Fried, who laments that as a “Palo Alto nepo baby extraordinaire”
    San Francisco's 'Luigi: the Musical' shot me through the heart
  • On a visit to Steinway Hall in New York City in 1959, the chief piano technician at the time, William Hupfer, greeted Gould with a slap on the back. Gould was shocked by this, and complained of aching, lack of coordination, and fatigue because of it. He went on to explore the possibility of litigation against Steinway & Sons if his apparent injuries were permanent.[54] He was known for cancelling performances at the last minute, which is why Bernstein's aforementioned public disclaimer opened with, "Don't be frightened, Mr. Gould is here ... [he] will appear in a moment."
    Glenn Gould
  • According to her, "There were a lot of misconceptions about Glenn, and it was partly because he was so very private. But I assure you, he was an extremely heterosexual man. Our relationship was, among other things, quite sexual." Their affair lasted until 1972, when she returned to her husband.
    Glenn Gould
  • The weird, jarring, hilariously bespoke racism of a place were until recently almost everyone was white.
    The Deep South of the Pacific Northwest - by Some Guy
  • Sin is in all of us, but goodness is in us even deeper, always there even if we try to shy away from it.
    The Deep South of the Pacific Northwest - by Some Guy
  • It is easy to mistake status-seeking for curiosity.
    A funny thing about curiosity - by Henrik Karlsson
  • to me, design is part-science, part-whimsy. creative, psychological, perhaps even tied to some fortuitous form of honeyed human-reading.
    aileen's 2024
  • This task — the task of continuing to live — would be nearly impossible without beauty, or narrative, or interpretation, or divinity, or whatever else you choose to call the process by which we assign meaning to the objectively absurd (although the assumption that anything can exist objectively beyond the interpretation of an observer is a heavy one, and not one that I instinctively hold true). We tell ourselves stories, as Didion would say — or, as she writes a few oft-ignored sentences later, at least we do for a while
    against narrative - by rayne fisher-quann
  • Danna texted and listened to lo-fi beats and watched Instagram stories and checked the weather and looked at photos from May 2018 and November 2017 and searched StreetEasy for one-bedrooms under $3,500 in Fort Greene Park Slope Crown Heights Prospect Heights Gowanus Williamsburg Greenpoint Carroll Gardens Columbia Waterfront District Brooklyn Heights Clinton Hill Windsor Terrace Prospect Lefferts Gardens and checked the stock market and opened TikTok and watched a TikTok of a dog licking a baby’s head and one of a woman talking about being diagnosed with stage four cancer while pregnant and on…
    Bitter North | Alexandra Tanner | Granta
  • The world is too big and beautiful for your life to revolve around SPARC, or communities similar or adjacent to SPARC. (Or any one community.) You don’t always have to be an outsider. You don’t have to take that as a permanent label.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Simple conclusions stick. Those compressions of reality that we use to grasp complexities—they can become what we genuinely believe if we live with them for too long.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Less “most people aren’t interesting,” and more “if you find someone uninteresting, you might not be talking to them about the right things, or they might be wary of sharing more of themselves with you for some reason, or you or they might just be kind of tired, or even something else.”
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • You have a physical body that exists in a physical world.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • There are people in my life whom I love very much, people that I am glad have power over me. Good friends; a few select mentors; my younger sibling; and even now, my parents, still. They are deserving of this power. I accept the lows with the highs, because they have proven themselves over and over again.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Keep track of what you (think you) value, and write it down for yourself. Be aware of who in your life can make you feel strong emotions. Question yourself if near-strangers can compel you to irreversible action. Be skeptical of sages and gurus.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • So here’s how I choose who to give power to: I find people who really listen to me, who are willing to try and see things the way I do, not just filter my words through their own lenses.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Not every friendship has to be close and personal; there is value without vulnerability. Hell, not everyone has to be a friend.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • When you speak with parents, mentors, or close friends—people with power over you—you (often unknowingly) accept that these people can influence the way you think, feel, and act for a long time.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • You are allowed to listen to your feelings and emotions. You are allowed to sidestep arguments you don’t feel like engaging with.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Some people are very, very, very good at puppeteering words, at twisting reality until all you see is what they want you to see. There is something missing. If all you have to defend against an argument is a vibe, not all evidence can be verbalized.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • One more important extension: arguments are generally expressed in words. In fact, the aforementioned arguments are but one form of evidence—a much more general concept. Words are necessarily a reduction of reality—reality is too high-dimensional to capture fully.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • And if for some time you fall out of love with that one thing, what is there left to do? These days my cares and interests and loves are broad enough, stable enough that the relinquishing of any one cannot induce a crisis.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Your identity doesn’t have to include only things you’re good at. Your identity can include things you suck at. Your identity can include random fascinations. Your identity doesn’t even have to be about “things.” Your identity can be as broad as you want it to be. And beyond having a broad identity, acknowledging and reiterating the broadness of your identity is self-defense.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • I’d constrained my identity, staked it upon two large-but-not-all-encompassing facets of myself, and when I lost one I drifted for years, uncertain and afraid, unable to commit to taking another direction seriously.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • If I’d lost my love for piano, or if even worse, it was taken away from me (through injury, for example), what would I be then?
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • “Athlete” was for classmates speeding through sub-five-minute miles; I slowed down each year of cross-country. “Humanities person” was for classmates brave enough to take AP European History and Shakespeare. Those were things I was not. So “math and music person” made even more sense.
    Six Selections on Self-Defense - by Andrew Wu
  • Getting to L6 at Google; having 2 children; saying true things; retiring at 50; being kind. This is a lot. It is more than most humans who ever lived achieved.
    What's stopping you?
  • I used to find a lot of comfort (and fear) in statistics: that 9 in 10 adults suffer from the loneliness epidemic, that as you grow older your closest friends are literally just your college friends, that you’ll end up alone if you don’t marry someone now! But you don’t have to be a statistic because, in the most annoying way possible, you are different.
    ephemerality - by Claire Wang - cold brew blog
  • Sometimes, I find myself worrying I’ve attached too hard to someone, and suddenly, it’s time for me to run, to leave, to convince myself that no, really, I don’t actually care. I find comfort knowing I have “choices” beyond just them out of some mysterious fear (or belief it’ll end sometime, so I should have a backup)
    ephemerality - by Claire Wang - cold brew blog
  • coming to terms that I’d somehow, reluctantly, arrived at the “real world.”
    ephemerality - by Claire Wang - cold brew blog
  • Now, a few years later, I see that I was always more drawn to the “work hard” aspect of TKS than the “make impact” aspect. Sure, I was entranced by emerging tech, but it was the only thing I had that felt “real” and meaningful. I idealized San Francisco because it was where I could be a nerd and work hard, and I just ate up the “impact” dogma that came…
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • Praise, praise, all this praise for shallow, legible “growth,” neatly packaged into nuggets of faux-wisdom.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • One salient point is that students interpret and remember teachings incorrectly when social status is in the mix. “Deep conversations are valuable” becomes “people who have shallow conversations are superficial.” The TKS directors may have not told anyone to push away their feelings, not explicitly anyway, but that’s what many students did.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • Don’t be so uptight about spending your time in the most efficient way. Who cares, you’re 16. Work hard and you’ll get things out of TKS. There are many gems to be uncovered.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • eople will tell you that you have to do interesting, innovative, and impactful things, and this is the way you have to do that. It is not true. There are many paths to God.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • The kailao war dance of the Wallisian people and the Samoan cibi are two examples, but the best-documented tradition is the haka of the New Zealand Māori.
    Music in Human Evolution | Melting Asphalt
  • and soon we’ll pack up and move across the country, say we’ll call more than we do, and slowly forget what it feels like to have flowers to water in the first place.
    hazelnut bong bong - Nina’s Substack
  • hours of packing and for what? a loss of the life i’ve grown to love?
    hazelnut bong bong - Nina’s Substack
  • We fill our days with notifications and to-do lists, mistaking motion for meaning.
    Too Busy for Friendship. It’s a Tuesday afternoon. You’re in… | by Shreya Ganeriwala | May, 2024 | Medium
  • it turns out being complete on your own is more difficult than my 20-year-old self imagined
    the dog days are coming - by vincent huang
  • all i can really do with dogs is pet them and stick around until they feel at peace; all i can really do when i am with you is listen and linger long enough to lull you to sleep.
    the dog days are coming - by vincent huang
  • While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
    “The Third and Final Continent,” by Jhumpa Lahiri | The New Yorker
  • Like me, Mala had travelled far from home, not knowing where she was going, or what she would find, for no reason other than to be my wife. As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.
    “The Third and Final Continent,” by Jhumpa Lahiri | The New Yorker
  • A bare window overlooked Massachusetts Avenue. Car horns, shrill and prolonged, blared one after another. Sirens and flashing lights heralded endless emergencies, and a succession of buses rumbled past, their doors opening and closing with a powerful hiss, throughout the night. The noise was constantly distracting, at times suffocating. I felt it deep in my ribs, just as I had felt the furious drone of the engine on the S.S. Roma. But there was no ship’s deck to escape to, no glittering ocean to thrill my soul, no breeze to cool my face, no one to talk to. I was too tired to pace the gloomy co…
    “The Third and Final Continent,” by Jhumpa Lahiri | The New Yorker
  • in the processing department of a library at M.I.T. The salary was generous enough to support a wife, and I was honored to be hired by a world-famous university, and so I obtained a green card, and prepared to travel farther still.
    “The Third and Final Continent,” by Jhumpa Lahiri | The New Yorker
  • oaked our dirty dishes in the bathtub.
    “The Third and Final Continent,” by Jhumpa Lahiri | The New Yorker