flâneur

April Cheng

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on the atlas — 38

highlights — 88

  • So, if someone asks me, What’s the point of it all? My answer, now and always, is having fun.
    Radical fun - by Ava - bookbear express
  • But citizens in a democracy should care about outcomes, too. As Abundance emphasizes, well-intentioned process is not enough. Clara and I brainstormed about startup-style metrics dashboards for our own city governments. What’s the current GDP of San Francisco? How are we doing on homelessness targets each quarter and year? Let’s keep free and fair elections, but why can’t we have the data to inform our votes? The alternative scares me. It’s untenable to have such low expectations for our leaders, and young Americans are increasingly blackpilled on their rights—what good is free speech if the g…
    jasmine sun's visit to china
  • “In China, everyone believes the state will ultimately succeed, but no one knows whether they'll be the victor or the price paid for victory.”
    jasmine sun's visit to china
  • Chinese solar companies battling to the death? Involution. High schoolers spending Saturdays out-prepping each other for the gaokao? Involution. Six hotpot restaurants side-by-side on a single mall floor? Involution. Boba delivery that somehow costs less than pickup? Dance, dance, involution.2 Involution initially seemed like a uniquely Chinese phenomenon. But the more I thought about it, the more I noticed involution in modern America as well. AI model providers pouring billions in to outcompete each other by 0.1% gains on benchmarks that consumers will never see, college graduates applying t…
    jasmine sun's visit to china
  • i dream that in my useless lungs blooms a precious garden of flowers and that i cough up this unrequited love in bloody petals
    i was just a child - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • . Right-wing commentators, meanwhile, presented El Mordjene as a sort of edible Trojan horse, meant to smuggle foreign values into France. The hype on TikTok, they claimed, was actually a concerted campaign of “Algerian/Muslim proselytism,” while the haik-clad woman on the jar recalled members of the Algerian National Liberation Front, “responsible for the deaths of innumerable French.” The far-right site Boulevard Voltaire vowed, “Tonight at our place, it’ll be andouille sausages and Nutella crêpes!”
    How a Hazelnut Spread Became a Sticking Point in Franco-Algerian Relations | The New Yorker
  • You could almost trace the Franco-Algerian relationship through food, among the most primordial forms of exchange: the seized lands; the stripped fields; the introduction of non-native wheat, transforming Algeria into “the breadbasket of France” and degrading the soil; the hundreds of thousands of tons of oranges, clementines, lemons, and grapefruits produced for the delectation of consumers from the metropole; the Algerian wine-producing regions that never appeared on French pedagogical maps; the spoiled tomatoes and rotten eggs that Europeans in Algiers lobbed at the politician Guy Mollet in…
    How a Hazelnut Spread Became a Sticking Point in Franco-Algerian Relations | The New Yorker
  • if everything you ever loved about the morning was left there by the moon then everything about me worth loving was brought forth by you and what does that say about us now when i still look at those same stars with these eyes that have seen far too much and i wish we were still children
    river ballad - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • i adopt the attributes of the people i care most about into my own being until it becomes homogeneous with the rest of me.
    friendships, play, and love | arielle lok
  • just because something is socially constructed doesn’t mean it’s not real.
    Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality
  • The important distinction here is that Rich’s framework defines heterosexuality as an institution – much like patriarchy – rather than a natural state of being.
    Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality
  • “There is fundamentally no way to do this that doesn’t end up treating women’s bodies as a tool.”
    The End of Children | The New Yorker
  • all the words i have ever wanted to say have already been said. all i can do is regurgitate them. variations on a theme, an endless tale. and yet….perhaps i write because i’m afraid i’ll forget. perhaps i write to lay my words to rest.
    (in conversation with you) - by gray
  • the one before everything that came after. a lot happened afterwards. a lot happened that summer too, but also nothing at all. it was the summer where everything in my life started to change, first for the worse, and then, years later, for the better.
    (in conversation with you) - by gray
  • it is always a little devastating. but i reread them, maybe not often, but on occasion. enough to remember. enough to not forget. is that enough, yet?
    (in conversation with you) - by gray
  • urvivorship bias, maybe. everything that remains in my archive of a childhood room tells one story. everything that is no longer there tells another.
    (in conversation with you) - by gray
  • i could disappear — and the world would keep turning on its steady axis. and in spite of it all, this would just be our secret, this forgotten place where she’d hold me close.
    (in conversation with you) - by gray
  • So success in writing, to me, means honesty—not in the sense that I’ve been factually accurate but in the sense that I’ve painted a world that reflects something that was really inside me.
    what makes fear worth it - by Kai - golden blue
  • innovation occurs on time scales that are now shorter than individual life spans and are predicted to become even shorter as populations increase and become more connected
    Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities
  • . The specter of experiencing a traumatically awful relationship, or even just a less-than-perfect one, need not overdetermine our behavior. There are lines that must never be crossed, but there are also people who make us feel that some rules are worth breaking. We understand most viscerally what we kind of love we want by experiencing it
    all's unfair in love - by john d. zhang - ordinary instants
  • But how do you know in your bones that you are worthy of love until you’ve experienced being loved, along with all of its attendant risks?
    all's unfair in love - by john d. zhang - ordinary instants
  • It strikes me as unusually brave to admit that one’s feelings of love toward someone can and do persist, even after that person does objectively awful things to you and to others.
    all's unfair in love - by john d. zhang - ordinary instants
  • Life is so dull if it’s just “like” or “dislike.” Maybe the movie is riveting but you still hate it. Can you find “begrudging enjoyment?”
    How to like everything more - by Sasha Chapin
  • notice every beginning—like, every new drum hit, or every new color that hits your eye when you scan a scene.
    How to like everything more - by Sasha Chapin
  • So, having a better vocabulary for a given medium doesn’t just make you sound smart, it increases the resolution of your enthusiasm.
    How to like everything more - by Sasha Chapin
  • A good horror movie will have digestive effects: can you watch the movie with your stomach in mind, or appreciate the sweatiness of your palms? I get a cool tingle of intrigue in my midsection when I look at The Red Boy, how about you? When you’re hungry and you take a bite of food, can you notice all the parts of you that are relaxing — in your neck, or your lower body?
    How to like everything more - by Sasha Chapin
  • I used to love people as friends, or siblings, or romantic partners. Now I have found that I can love you in an infinite number of ways: as a human might love an angel, as Graham loved Erdos, as Tereza loved Karenin.
    how useful is narrative? - by Kai - golden blue
  • Can we get a story about found family, about a menage a trois that actually works out, about your best friend falling for you? Can we get a story that crafts a new tradition, that tells us how to reach for a happy ending together?
    how useful is narrative? - by Kai - golden blue
  • Is that what I search for when I try to fit my relationships to popular narratives—the perceived stability which allows for individual quirkiness, the comfort of pattern-matching to a happy ending? Sharing a narrative can fill the same purpose as signaling, after all. They got me flowers, they surprised me at work—how romantic, the lines they follow that reassure me we are thinking of the same story.
    how useful is narrative? - by Kai - golden blue
  • i picture the violent radiance of a slow sunset, the way the muted yellow-orange hues clash with the indigo-blue sky as it darkens, and iridescent fuchsia and violet burst forth in their wake, dry brushstrokes limning fringes of the billowing clouds. and yet the sun rises anew at the turn of every new day. the clouds continue meandering and at every cusp of dusk, the sky unfailingly alights in color once more. no two sunsets ever the same, and therein lies the beauty, doesn’t it?
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • it isn’t something soft or tender, kept nourished and tendered and nurtured within me. it’s something else altogether, borne from the sheer struggle against despair. but it’s still hope. and i’m still here. and that’s enough.
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • to remember the will to live in a more violent and visceral way
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • the child in me still yearns for the familiar fire and brimstone that was once all she knew
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • and i long with all my heart to go back to a yesterday that didn’t chafe as badly as the last, one that still felt familiar, still mine. sometimes the skin slips perilously from my seams and there is nothing to do but to stitch together all the missing pieces and phantom pains, patchwork angel hanging on by a thread as the clocks drone on and on and on
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • i grappled with feeling like i would never be enough to fulfill the image they had of me, that there wasn’t enough space in their world for all the things that filled mine.
    life worth living - by gray - from my mind to yours
  • Of course, the body, beautiful as it may be, finds its true expression not as the source material for idle critique, but through the raw act of living.
    touching me, touching you - by brit - booritney
  • Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is?
    The Case Against Travel | The New Yorker
  • But the greatest hater of travel, ever
    The Case Against Travel | The New Yorker
  • love is just reassertation, choosing something over and over. Do it one more time & watch mundane repetition become something transcendent.
    how to avoid half-heartedness - by Ava - bookbear express
  • you place “love” as being something that is outside of you when the reality is that you cannot see, create, or experience on the outside what you are not already.
    how to avoid half-heartedness - by Ava - bookbear express
  • If you want to be loved, find something you love. People can sense it when you have something you’re dedicated to. No one wants the burden of being the answer to your dissatisfication. When you’re unsure of yourself, it’s easy to be obsessed with the idea of love—the idea that happiness will arrive when someone else loves you.
    how to avoid half-heartedness - by Ava - bookbear express
  • I don’t know if there’s anything I believe in more strongly than this: People can find love that feels good to them, and they deserve to, and they shouldn’t feel ashamed for wanting it. Please don’t numb yourself out because caring is painful. Your capacity for sensitivity and commitment is the best thing about you.
    it's okay to care too much - by Ava - bookbear express
  • Maybe it’s a matter of gut feeling. And perhaps that feeling is derived from an incorrect lesson you didn’t choose to learn.
    I was not acting like me, are you acting like you?
  • my nervous system learned a lesson that wasn’t 100% wrong, but certainly not as granular as it could’ve been. My behavior was crudely adjusted to avoid downside, and this was probably net negative.
    I was not acting like me, are you acting like you?
  • include the bottom of your feet in your conscious awareness
    50 things I know - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'
  • the arbitrary sense that your perceptual home base is a golfball-sized hole in the middle of your head
    50 things I know - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'
  • you should be able to state your needs without explanation
    50 things I know - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'
  • You might be breathing too high up in your chest. To correct this instantly, pretend you’re breathing through your asshole.
    50 things I know - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'
  • the people who will make you feel warm and fuzzy when you’re sad, and the people who will give you brutally honest feedback, are usually different people
    50 things I know - by Sasha Chapin - Sasha's 'Newsletter'
  • Instead obsessing over a hypothetical gatekeeper in the Queer/Not Queer binary world, let’s think about queerness as a spectrum of epistemological experience. It’s obvious that a woman who just has a same-sex crush has a different epistemic experience of her sexuality than someone who’s actually kissed her crush, right? The question isn’t about whether the first woman is “queer enough,” but about what kinds of revelatory queer experiences she’s had. And that woman probably wants to actually kiss her crush and find out what it’s like, instead of merely thinking about it.
    how to change your life, part 1: l.a. paul's transformative experience