VVM The Visakanv Megaweb The Visakanv Megaweb

Welcome to theVisakanv Megaweb

Since 2008, Visa has been thinking out loud on the internet, sharing his ideas with the world. The result: a quarter-million tweets, more than a thousand essays and blog posts, and hundreds of videos. The Visakanv Megaweb collects all of it, plus the books and media Visa keeps recommending, into one archive, organized so you can find your way through. Pick a place to start.

262K
tweets
1,251
essays & blogs
459
videos

An archive of Twitter postsby Visakan Veerasamy

Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) has been posting on X (formerly Twitter) since 2008, racking up more than a quarter-million posts across dozens of topics. The Visakanv Megaweb organizes them into a single archive you can browse without friction. Explore Visa’s most popular posts, favorite themes, and online network via curated lists. Looking for something specific, or want to browse the archive your way? It’s all here: filters for date, length, and more, plus search across text and handles.

262K
tweets
26K+
threads
36
themes
01↗

Best Tweets

A list of his 1,000 most-liked posts and thread-openers. The place to start.
02↗

Best Threads

Visa's most-loved threads: the 1,000 best by likes. Start here, then page through to the full archive.
03↗

Longest Threads

Visa's biggest megathreads, ranked by length: his longest unbroken sequences, up to 200+ posts.
04↗

All Tweets

The complete archive of every tweet from @visakanv’s X/Twitter account. Filter by type (replies, quote-tweets, originals), theme, date, and popularity, with full-text search to locate any post.
05↗

All Threads

All of Visa’s X/Twitter threads in one place: 26,000+ since 2008. Sort by likes, length, or date, and search for specific posts.
06↗

Themes

The 36 themes that recur throughout @visakanv’s posts. Open one to explore its most popular tweets and search within the category.
07↗

Recurring Posts

The top 1,000 posts Visa quotes and reshares himself. Enter to explore the ideas and themes he keeps coming back to.
08↗

Visa’s Network

The accounts Visa engages with most, measured by quote-tweets and replies. Dive in to see the extended Visakan Veerasamy online universe and follow their conversations.
09↗

Retweets

Every post and account Visa has amplified: 10,711 retweets since 2010, self-retweets aside. A map of who and what he points his audience toward.
10↗

Stats

The shape of @visakanv’s 262K+ tweets: replies, quotes, posts and retweets, volume by year, the themes he returns to, and the all-time records.
11↗

Wander

Land on a random tweet from the archive, pulled from Best Tweets and the top posts in each theme.

An archive of books and mediareferenced by Visakan Veerasamy

Visa is a prolific consumer of art and media. Over the years, he has referenced, reviewed, and recommended thousands of books, essays, articles, comics, and videos. The Visakanv Megaweb pulls his collection together in one place. Each item carries a link tracing it back to the mention.

About the Megaweb

The Visakanv Megaweb is a public archive of everything Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) has put on the internet: a quarter-million tweets, more than a thousand essays and blog posts, hundreds of videos, and the books and media he points to.

Visa has been thinking out loud online since 2008. The result is one of the largest bodies of personal writing on the web, but until now it has lived in scattered places: threads you unroll by hand, blogs on separate platforms, videos spread across years. The Megaweb pulls all of it into one place you can read and search.

What’s inside

The archive is in four parts. The Twitter Archive holds his posts, threads, replies, and quote-tweets. The Writing Archive collects his essays and blogs across three collections. The Video Archive gathers his vlogs, talks, and readings. The Library is everything he points to: the books, essays, articles, and videos he references in his own work.

How it’s organized

Each part is built to be browsed on its own terms. Read a theme from top to bottom, sort by what is most-loved or most-recent, narrow to replies or originals, or search the text directly. Every item keeps a link back to where it came from.

A note on the data

Counts, excerpts, and rankings are drawn from Visa’s public posts. Sourcing and update cadence are still being finalized.

Writer and internet builder, known online as @visakanv. Here are his books, where to support his work, and where to find him.

His books

FAN Friendly Ambitious NerdOn becoming a kinder, bolder, more curious version of yourself.Gumroad →Goodreads →
INT IntrospectAn inward hero’s journey to earn your own trust and self-respect; a remix of Nietzsche, Emerson, Watts, Campbell, and Jung.Gumroad →Goodreads →

Support his work

Become a patron on Patreon →

Find him online

X / Twitter@visakanv ↗ Instagram@visakanv ↗ Facebookvisakan.veerasamy ↗ Substackvisakanv.substack.com ↗ YouTubeyoutube.com/visakanv ↗ Websitevisakanv.com ↗
An archive of Visakan Veerasamy’s online work.
Set in Fraunces, Geist, and Geist Mono.
Built by Mars Code Factory.
The Twitter Archive›Best Tweets

Best Tweets

Many tweets from Visa are popular, but some are more popular than others. Browse the 1,000 most-liked top-level posts in Visa’s Twitter archive.

The Twitter Archive›Best Threads

Best Threads

Visa is known for megathreading, and has written more than 26,000 threads since 2008. Explore his threads, including the longest and most popular. To page through every one, browse the full list →

The Twitter Archive›Longest Threads

Longest Threads

Visa's biggest megathreads: his longest unbroken sequences, up to 200+ posts. See the best-loved →

204
tweets in the longest thread
7.3
years, longest-running thread
84
tweets, avg. length

The Twitter Archive›All Threads

All Threads

Every thread Visa has written: more than 26,000 since 2008. Search the text, narrow by year or length, and sort however you like. See the 1,000 best-loved →

26,381
threads
2021
peak year
102,048
tweets in threads
Search
Length
Year
Theme
26,422 threads

The Twitter Archive›All Tweets

All Tweets

Here is every reply, quote-tweet, thread, and standalone post from Visa’s Twitter archive, more than a quarter-million in all. Retweets aren’t included here. Browse all his retweets →

Search
Type
Theme
Year
251,277 tweets

The Twitter Archive›Themes

Themes

Visa’s tweets have common threads and narrative arcs if you look closely. Explore the themes he’s focused on across his years on Twitter, and the tweets in each.

Search
36 themes
The Twitter Archive›Recurring Posts

Recurring Posts

Visa is known for quoting and resharing his own tweets, often to resurface an insight or reinforce an idea. See every time he’s quoted himself or brought an old post back into a conversation.

34,006
self-quotes
13,033
distinct ideas
339
most resurfaced
Search
Year
Theme
4,874 recurring ideas

The 1,000 most-resurfaced posts

Posts @visakanv quotes and reshares himself, most-resurfaced first. The full set of 4,874 is at /llms/recurring-1.md and /llms/recurring-2.md.

  • if we play our cards right — resurfaced 339× · 2,088 likes · 2020-04-30 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • this is the heart of philosophy, all else is commentary 🧐 — resurfaced 224× · 5,058 likes · 2021-09-29 · Philosophy · on X
  • There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people I’ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to “support” the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can “mis-support” them by agreeing stupidly — resurfaced 155× · 2,337 likes · 2018-09-11 · Internet Culture · on X
  • focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of — resurfaced 149× · 5,762 likes · 2020-11-07 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Everyday is a new opportunity to assign value to things, to decide what is important, what is beautiful, what is good, what is deserving. In this regard you are truly the Monarch of your life, first of your name, bla bla — resurfaced 127× · 744 likes · 2019-08-12 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • 1/ It's very interesting and useful I think to apply the MVP model of product development to personal development. http://t.co/ef1dY1UNr8 — resurfaced 117× · 1,199 likes · 2014-11-23 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Questions I Keep Getting About My Threads, The Thread — resurfaced 113× · 0 likes · 2019-04-14 · Internet Culture · on X
  • the big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor — resurfaced 94× · 1,044 likes · 2020-08-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @michaelcurzi Plans are worthless, planning is priceless. Spend a day making elaborate plans and then disregard them completely to make whatever you think is most compelling. Repeat monthly or quarterly — resurfaced 91× · 804 likes · 2020-11-30 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • My favorite essay of all time was written in 2011, and pretty much predicted the inevitability of today's culture wars (because it happened throughout history over and over again with the advent of each new piece of new media tech) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-information — resurfaced 85× · 1,660 likes · 2018-01-25 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • One of the biggest tells that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about: glossing over addressing resource constraints, or saying things that imply infinite resources. Effectively everything is resource-constrained, & seasoned practitioners are especially sensitive to this — resurfaced 85× · 1,063 likes · 2019-04-02 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • Wife and I were laughing about this last night: the thing nobody quite tells you about marriage is: you’re choosing the person in life who’s going to upset, disappoint annoy and frustrate you more than anybody else — resurfaced 82× · 2,384 likes · 2018-11-07 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • My goal in life is to be a word artist-magician. Words are proxies for thoughts, and a master manipulator of words is a skilled navigator in the tumultuous ocean of meaning. Moana, but the ocean is the mind of humanity — resurfaced 81× · 351 likes · 2018-07-12 · Writing · on X
  • latest version some people have asked for a PDF (idk why, but ok) you can have that one here: https://t.co/SY3Oi82hF5 — resurfaced 80× · 555 likes · 2019-07-04 · Writing · on X
  • Goo for my prickly friends Prickles for my gooey friends — resurfaced 74× · 385 likes · 2018-12-15 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Thank you Mario! But the root of our problem is in another castle! — resurfaced 71× · 0 likes · 2021-09-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • me: I love you wife: how much me: why this obsession with quantification wife: what gets measured gets managed — resurfaced 70× · 3,876 likes · 2016-04-16 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • Meeting internet friends from around the world is always a huge highlight of my life and fills me with a lot of gratitude. Despite the wanton amounts of rampant fuckery on here, there are good, fun, kind, interesting people worth hanging out with — resurfaced 68× · 894 likes · 2018-05-31 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • whenever we have a disagreement, the first thing I want to understand is: how have your experiences have been different from mine? — resurfaced 63× · 585 likes · 2019-02-19 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • @sonyasupposedly @SHL0MS one day people will write about how this part of twitter was legendary for all the overlapping origin stories — resurfaced 63× · 373 likes · 2021-03-17 · Internet Culture · on X
  • twitter_rpg_strategy_guide.txt — resurfaced 62× · 1,441 likes · 2019-02-10 · Internet Culture · on X
  • thinking is easy, information architecture is hard — resurfaced 62× · 718 likes · 2018-12-26 · Writing · on X
  • THE USER EXPERIENCE WILL BE DEGRADED UNTIL METRICS IMPROVE — resurfaced 60× · 857 likes · 2019-11-17 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • here's a 10-minute attempt to summarize my 300 page book @introspectVV into ~500 words. didn't precisely meet the brief of "in one breath" but i'll try again multiple times — resurfaced 59× · 1,393 likes · 2023-06-14 · Writing · on X
  • are you also a fidgety boi? you may be interested in my draft notes for Constructive ADHD: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZDV-0WS8DrBDebF3fvUFj9aXQvLnwFc7optFgL1MpFk/edit?usp=sharing — resurfaced 55× · 681 likes · 2021-10-14 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • one of my recurring talking points to anybody who's willing to listen: any small group of people loosely-but-truly aligned on something can create powerful vectors by producing public-facing work that's directed at each other talking about the creation of scenes, basically — resurfaced 54× · 1,143 likes · 2019-07-23 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I’ve basically taught myself to manage my ADHD with notes and threads. My “schedule intelligence” (deadlines, calendars, checklist) is terrible but my recognition and web-jumping is fantastic, so I spent something like a decade using the latter to build an elaborate mind-palace — resurfaced 54× · 417 likes · 2018-12-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Interesting conversation with a writer friend earlier about the fragmentation of information. We both agreed that fragmentation isn't actually a bad thing - what's missing & needed is better threading. Twitter threads are a specific instantiation of a solution to bigger problem — resurfaced 53× · 234 likes · 2018-04-18 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Mean Girls clarified a lot about the world for me, more than probably 95% of books I've read. I often amuse friends by quoting it when talking about international relations (you can't sit with us!) — resurfaced 51× · 1,008 likes · 2018-02-28 · Film & TV · on X
  • in this world / we walk on the roof of hell / gazing at flowers -kobayashi issa — resurfaced 51× · 870 likes · 2012-12-15 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Stage 1: Do unpaid work for yourself Stage 2: Use that as leverage to negotiate a position where you get paid to do work for others Stage 3: Save up enough so you can be free to do more, higher-quality unpaid work for yourself <--- I am currently here Stage 4: We’ll see — resurfaced 51× · 831 likes · 2018-07-07 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • In some ways, my life's work is abt assembling a sort of tavern for psychonauts, explorers, wanderers, vagabonds, tinkerers, polymaths — resurfaced 51× · 317 likes · 2017-11-06 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • The public is insufficiently educated on how to be a good public — resurfaced 51× · 261 likes · 2018-09-26 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Alan Watts really changed my life when I was inhibitingly depressed around 2014/2015. Life just seemed so bleak - even with a job I liked and a wife I loved, existence seemed like a jail sentence. Alan helped me see that it was funny, in a hearty and nourishing way https://x.com/alanwattsdaily/status/1080201331464380416 — resurfaced 50× · 383 likes · 2019-01-01 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • we already live in a boring dystopia — resurfaced 49× · 111,396 likes · 2018-04-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • @MsHortonTweets people don't wanna make better choices, they wanna make shitty choices and then complain about the shitty outcomes — resurfaced 49× · 404 likes · 2020-02-14 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • A long term tension in my life: I don't feel qualified to lead, but I don't see anybody really worth following, either. When, where and how did I inherit these annoyingly perfectionist standards and ideals? — resurfaced 48× · 287 likes · 2018-04-04 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • someone in my DMs asked who my biggest influence is, and they were surprised when I said Hayley Williams so... time for a Hayley thread — resurfaced 48× · 251 likes · 2019-08-17 · Music · on X
  • periodic reminder (more for myself than for you) that I tweet for 0.1% outliers in optimism, thoughtfulness, creativity, kindness, competence, ambition, drive, curiosity. all are welcome to read and hang out, but I won't dilute my writing trying to be "more accessible" https://x.com/visakanv/status/1360222712124219392 — resurfaced 47× · 368 likes · 2021-07-24 · Internet Culture · on X
  • The most powerful IRL interview/conversation/flirting skill isn’t asking good questions nearly as much as asking good followup questions - it’s being sensitive to interesting micro-reactions. When you ask a question and they respond “😂... no”, and you go “Why 😂?” Etc — resurfaced 46× · 1,057 likes · 2019-05-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Story: You suck at something It bothers you, so you work hard at it & many years, through lots of pain and failure You are now good at the thing & it comes easy to you You look around and you see that most people suck at this Why don’t they just get good?? Being good rules! — resurfaced 45× · 1,068 likes · 2019-02-07 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • people are really not used to dealing with someone who's well-prepared — resurfaced 44× · 714 likes · 2020-06-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Thread of books I'm reading in 2018. Deciding that I'm going to focus on optimizing for "books started" (which is fun and interesting) rather than "books finished" (which for me has a sort of masochistic, completionist connotation I'd like to be free of). — resurfaced 43× · 284 likes · 2018-01-23 · Books & Literature · on X
  • — resurfaced 43× · 276 likes · 2020-11-10 · Random · on X
  • *taps mic* people wanna be fuckable more than they wanna fuck — resurfaced 42× · 2,451 likes · 2019-02-13 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • if you ever think someone isn’t creative you should look at their excuses — resurfaced 42× · 1,336 likes · 2021-05-12 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • so you're a weirdo, huh — resurfaced 42× · 362 likes · 2019-12-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I want to do a thread of video snippets that have moved me deeply over the years This bit from Neil Tyson was at the heart of my motivation to stay alive ~2013 – the idea of expanding human consciousness via space travel — resurfaced 41× · 623 likes · 2019-01-12 · Science & Technology · on X
  • hypothesis: if you do barely anything with your life but take little notes every day, journal, diary, whatever – snapshots of your opinions, impressions, perspectives, predictions – and then you thread these notes over time, say, 10 years... — resurfaced 41× · 566 likes · 2019-01-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I saw someone tweet “I wish smart writing came to me as easily as dumb tweeting” and I am here to share with you my strategy for using the latter to precipitate the former — resurfaced 40× · 540 likes · 2019-01-24 · Writing · on X
  • dad: don't crash into the tree! son: — resurfaced 40× · 524 likes · 2021-12-15 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • in a few more words: — resurfaced 40× · 294 likes · 2020-04-30 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • Now that more of us are playing the threading game: As we compete+collaborate effectively articulate things we all care about, And weave each other’s thoughts into our respective webs, The desire paths will assemble a mindcity paved with the best individual thoughts — resurfaced 40× · 211 likes · 2019-05-27 · Internet Culture · on X
  • titty — resurfaced 40× · 175 likes · 2021-02-19 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Sermonposting without shitposting gets you pedestalized, which is dehumanizing Shitpost too much and nobody takes you seriously, which is also kind of dehumanizing You can nerdpost forever quite happily, but it can be a lonely and frustrating experience The flow is the point — resurfaced 39× · 640 likes · 2020-05-29 · Internet Culture · on X
  • — resurfaced 39× · 211 likes · 2020-07-31 · Random · on X
  • I think a lot about how Feynman got his Nobel Prize from “piddling around with wobbly plates”. I’m always looking for wobbly plates to piddle with. And of course the point isn’t to get the Prize, but to enjoy the piddling — resurfaced 38× · 506 likes · 2019-02-18 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • until I listened to Alan Watts (around 2015), my attempts at improving myself, fixing my personal issues, etc were compromised by the language of coercion. I made my best effort to be some kind of authoritarian dictator over myself. I made "progress", and fell into a depression — resurfaced 38× · 430 likes · 2020-08-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I just wish that I'd get some sort of intrinsic reward for it. That I'd feel like I accomplished something. I don't feel it. I feel empty. — resurfaced 38× · 74 likes · 2015-01-17 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • here is a bit of my summary of @pmarca's 2007 blogpost about James Austin's 4 kinds of luck, from his 1978 book Chase, Chance and Creativity 1. blind luck 2. add variability through tinkering 3. add discernment 3. add unique frame of reference — resurfaced 37× · 664 likes · 2020-04-24 · Philosophy · on X
  • People typically have high-res models of their own lives and lower-res models of other people’s. We are all born clueless with incredibly low-res models of the world - then we tweak and upgrade our models. Different people do this to different degrees depending on many variables — resurfaced 37× · 404 likes · 2018-05-22 · Philosophy · on X
  • Twitter is the fucking coolest note-taking app. It’s like Evernote with a slot machine attached. Sometimes you get incredible feedback or a response that gives you 10x more value than you expected, and sometimes you get people discussing your genitalia! So exciting — resurfaced 37× · 389 likes · 2018-09-14 · Internet Culture · on X
  • @webdevMason Feynman is my gold standard here. Once you get past the nausea of “oh my god there’s nothing stable to stand on”, it’s quite liberating and zen, like surfing on waves — resurfaced 37× · 389 likes · 2018-05-12 · Philosophy · on X
  • So tomorrow is the 53rd anniversary of Singapore's independence from Malaysia, and since most of my followers are American, it feels like an appropriate time to maybe do an oral history thread about my city? Let me (badly) sing you the story of my people — resurfaced 37× · 315 likes · 2018-08-08 · History · on X
  • I love these oil painting cityscapes by Jeremy Mann, they take my breath away every time. When you make art, I think it's always useful to ask the question, "What is it about this medium that lets me do something I can't do with any other medium?" Jeremy has this figured out — resurfaced 35× · 732 likes · 2018-05-19 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Interestingly, when Steve Jobs met Bob Dylan, he worried that Dylan ”wouldn’t be really smart anymore, that he’d be a caricature of himself, like happens to a lot of people.” — resurfaced 35× · 231 likes · 2019-02-16 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • under-followed accounts ❤️ @rmbalt @maybegray @marionnjoya @cosimia_ @made_in_cosmos @iiiitsandrea @danlistensto @QiaochuYuan @emmalsalinas @diviacaroline @temujin9 @p_millerd @SrahHernandez @lehoczkyescobar @regancodes @auderdy @Aryeh___ @anomiseditrix @davidklaing @m_ashcroft https://x.com/emmajp9_/status/1203343615164080129 — resurfaced 35× · 157 likes · 2019-12-07 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • This is Uri Buri of Akko, and when I grow up I want to be him. Uri Buri has solved the game of life — resurfaced 35× · 119 likes · 2019-02-25 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I think about these two pictures from @joulee a lot – very succinct and powerful way of describing how professional creatives have a more structured process, and how that isn't necessarily limiting – you actually get to try more things this way — resurfaced 34× · 652 likes · 2018-05-21 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I may have gotten a little carried away but I certainly had a lot of fun doing it — resurfaced 33× · 315 likes · 2019-02-18 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • the flattening of attention metrics is something that seems to trip up even the most thoughtful of people 1 follow or view from the right person is worth 10,000 casual randos, maybe 100k. this is hardly ever reflected anywhere in practice it’s a kind of sliding scale but still — resurfaced 32× · 1,166 likes · 2021-07-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • you can’t think your way out of a courage deficit — resurfaced 32× · 723 likes · 2020-02-02 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Can’t sleep, time to do a fresh reboot of VV’s talking points — resurfaced 31× · 1,410 likes · 2020-11-23 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • literally any decent piece of advice can be weaponized in some way to justify getting back on your bullshit — resurfaced 31× · 322 likes · 2018-11-08 · Philosophy · on X
  • its ok if u unfollow me on twitter,,, i know u are still following me in ur heart — resurfaced 31× · 119 likes · 2019-02-06 · Internet Culture · on X
  • feeling quite morose that I can't splay out all 58,400 of my tweets onto a giant 360 degree superdome, with all the threads visualized, and then wave my hands around Minority Report style to delete the clutter and rearchitect the best into a megaweb of megathreads — resurfaced 30× · 388 likes · 2018-12-09 · Internet Culture · on X
  • When I was 13, I flunked out of the gifted education program in my country. I was told that my failure was a disappointment to the Indian community. On retrospect that was a really shitty thing to say to a child, and also very myopic, and selfish — resurfaced 30× · 317 likes · 2018-11-04 · Education & Learning · on X
  • some sage elder wisdom from Steven Pressfield (78yo) — resurfaced 29× · 531 likes · 2022-02-16 · Writing · on X
  • "You will lose everything. Right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground. Impermanence has already rendered everything [...] worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar." - @WonderOfBeing — resurfaced 29× · 408 likes · 2018-09-30 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • pewdiepie being unseated for #1 most subscribed channel by an Indian brand is a little teaser for the giant bollywood-themed steamroller that's going to dominate english-speaking global culture in the coming decades the average english speaker will be likelier indian than not — resurfaced 29× · 356 likes · 2018-10-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • ~50 years after Erasmus came Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), an ordained Catholic priest who was called "the post-box of Europe". He was mutuals with Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Galileo, Huygenes. If you wanted to get something to someone, you sent it to him, and he'd reroute it https://x.com/visakanv/status/1430451542746800133 — resurfaced 29× · 128 likes · 2022-01-09 · History · on X
  • I have conversations with and comment on past selves in the marginalia of my books - so if you borrow my books you don’t just get to read the books, but my comments, and my arguments with myself, meta-comments... I am Extremely Online even when I am offline — resurfaced 29× · 79 likes · 2019-01-22 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Repeat after me, if you feel like it: Life is hard, and full of rejection and failure. But. I will never be the one to count myself out. I will never take up arms against myself. I will never be the one to sabotage me. I’m on my side and I root for me to succeed. — resurfaced 28× · 1,119 likes · 2020-11-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • One of the reasons narcissist PR works is that we can’t shut up about it — resurfaced 28× · 230 likes · 2018-07-10 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • But all of the fun in life - play, conversation, flirting, sex - is what you do when you’re playing *with* the rules. But that doesn’t mean you *break* the rules. You tease around them. While paying close attention. That’s the fun!! Oh my god. People don’t know how to have fun — resurfaced 28× · 195 likes · 2019-06-10 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Somebody Feed Phil is possibly my favourite show on Netflix. It’s so heartening and wholesome, this guy just going around the world & eating beautiful food with kind, warm-hearted, funny, lovable people. The food is a head fake; the whole point - the meaning of life - is friends. — resurfaced 28× · 195 likes · 2018-07-26 · Food & Dining · on X
  • I think a major theme of my life’s work is going to be “how do we coordinate effectively to solve the asshole problem”. — resurfaced 28× · 166 likes · 2018-11-21 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • a person is a system is a science is a mind is a language is a city is an organism is art — resurfaced 28× · 161 likes · 2011-03-05 · Philosophy · on X
  • “By middle/high school, the average student has learned how normal people talk. The resulting language is underwhelming and predictable - the safe regurgitations of a thoroughly socialized consciousness.” https://t.co/5evo3vYThl — resurfaced 27× · 774 likes · 2019-02-01 · Education & Learning · on X
  • To me, school today is like medicine before people learned about germ theory and hand-washing. Creative souls die every day and most people shrug the way they must’ve when women and children used to die in childbirth. Leaves from the vine... — resurfaced 27× · 533 likes · 2018-07-07 · Education & Learning · on X
  • My favorite example of mansplaining — resurfaced 27× · 525 likes · 2018-02-13 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • a quick sketch of a blogpost: how to ask for help https://t.co/ERYRjedrsV — resurfaced 27× · 307 likes · 2020-08-09 · Writing · on X
  • sometimes simple truths have to be restated in fresh language to brush off the thick dust of familiarity and reveal the godly sheen underneath — resurfaced 27× · 302 likes · 2021-02-18 · Writing · on X
  • "whenever I clear up something for myself it quickly affects everyone around me, as if it were a psychic liberation which in turn affects others' conflicts" – Anais Nin — resurfaced 27× · 290 likes · 2019-07-29 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • talking with wife about the different kinds of narcissism & had an odd thought: sometimes it can be “more narcissistic” to be private than public, in the sense that one might want to protect one’s self-image from scrutiny Narcissism is a convoluted concept, needs disambiguating — resurfaced 27× · 239 likes · 2019-03-31 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • 8. it’s very cute when internet antagonists think they can hurt my feelings. you trying to go up against [checks notes] me?? you’ll fuck me up?? Bitch, *I’ll* fuck me up — resurfaced 27× · 201 likes · 2019-06-20 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • TIL about Erasmus – (probably well known to Europeans, there's a student exchange named after him) – one of the most prolific men of letters in the 1500s, corresponding with literally hundreds of people. he was born out of wedlock, both of his parents died in the plague... — resurfaced 27× · 130 likes · 2021-08-25 · History · on X
  • you can’t moralize away a load-bearing coping mechanism — resurfaced 26× · 662 likes · 2022-03-21 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • The courage to be disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Heard good things, let’s dig in — resurfaced 26× · 638 likes · 2018-09-06 · Books & Literature · on X
  • someone once said something like "I like how visa says he's going to do something, then immediately does it". it's actually an ADHD coping mechanism. if you ask my friends from my teenage days, they'll tell you I was unreliable, full of shit and you couldn't trust anything I said — resurfaced 26× · 573 likes · 2020-08-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • my curiosity will be the death of me — resurfaced 26× · 472 likes · 2018-12-31 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • the first step to cease being an unintegrated wannabe is to accept that you are one, and will always be one. and to see the beauty, humor, joy and humility in that — resurfaced 26× · 469 likes · 2021-07-26 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • When Jason was alone out at sea for months on end, his self unbundled into multiple personalities. "It seemed completely sane". This is consistent with other things I've read about people in ultra-solitude. The coherent self is constructed for interfacing with others — resurfaced 26× · 326 likes · 2020-06-30 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • scrolling through my youtube videos and I can see a huge difference in the muscular tension in my face same hoodie, same macbook camera, similar lighting conditions... holy shit — resurfaced 26× · 113 likes · 2020-07-24 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I think about this quote from Virginia Woolf every time I fall sick — resurfaced 26× · 103 likes · 2018-03-30 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • people often think of confidence as bluster and bravado, loud and obnoxious. that’s often actually insecurity the good stuff is often really quiet and natural: the casual, almost sleepy ease that comes from knowing your stuff really well — resurfaced 25× · 235 likes · 2020-11-18 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • A question that made me anxious when I was a teenager is “where does money come from really” — resurfaced 25× · 203 likes · 2018-11-22 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • civilization is a sort of iterated, recursive potty training — resurfaced 25× · 163 likes · 2019-03-31 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I am never truly alone, for I have the light of human consciousness pulsing through my nerves. I am a verse in a song that echoes through millennia. I am Feynman and Archimedes, I am laughter and joy, curiosity and awe, discovery and delight ...anyway, support your local library — resurfaced 25× · 151 likes · 2019-10-14 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • When I was a kid, I was brought up in a Hindu household. I went to an Anglican kindergarten. I had friends who were Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Sikh. Heartland Singaporeans can be all-embracing, praying to gods from multiple religions at the same altar. Maximim coverage! — resurfaced 25× · 88 likes · 2018-01-08 · Religion · on X
  • 200+ people who've opted in to be on a list of twitterfriends around the world: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/visakanv-public/page/DdfBkaSC5 — resurfaced 25× · 62 likes · 2020-08-01 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • slowly and increasingly convinced that the nietzschean yes-sayers are the most powerful beings on the planet — resurfaced 24× · 1,001 likes · 2022-07-22 · Philosophy · on X
  • Just occurred to me that this was a classic exchange between a VC and a shitposter 2,300 years ago — resurfaced 24× · 641 likes · 2020-05-26 · History · on X
  • I think a lot about fashion and weirdness. If this looks odd and funny now, consider moral, ideological, intellectual fashions — resurfaced 24× · 197 likes · 2017-09-25 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" applies . You might be right about something, but if you die before you're validated...? Semmelweis insisted that doctors wash their hands. He was fired, then sent to an asylum, where he was beaten, and died. — resurfaced 24× · 152 likes · 2018-09-02 · History · on X
  • evergreen quotes — resurfaced 24× · 139 likes · 2018-09-20 · Random · on X
  • All buddy cop, road trip, “unlikely team” movies can also be watched as metaphors for how to handle the relationships between the conflicting sub-selves within you Avengers and Inside Out are really the same movie — resurfaced 24× · 128 likes · 2019-06-23 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • There’s something very comforting about being surrounded by your own writing, it’s like your past self giving you a hug — resurfaced 24× · 70 likes · 2018-09-08 · Writing · on X
  • it's our 5th wedding anniversary today! ❤️ — resurfaced 23× · 595 likes · 2018-12-10 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • Possibly the most important thing in a friendship- including one with yourself, or your spouse, or your child - is attention. Deep, focused, undivided, non-judgemental attention. To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard — resurfaced 23× · 309 likes · 2019-07-11 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I never really understood the whole “empty your cup” and “unlearn what you have learned” thing until maybe a couple of years ago. Like, intellectually it sorta made sense, but... is it really that big a deal? It actually is, IMO, and I’m wondering now how I learned to see it — resurfaced 23× · 282 likes · 2019-05-17 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I’ve mentioned an essay idea to several people in the past week and have received a lot of positive feedback about it. I call it the SLINGSHOT THEORY, loosely based on a sweet trick used by rocket scientists - using the gravity of a planetary body to add velocity to a spacecraft — resurfaced 23× · 215 likes · 2019-05-04 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 1. A significant part of why I haven’t been able to be a part of any real ingroup: I think most groups usually have some truth at the heart of it, and also tend to deny some other truth(s). The former makes me seek out deplorable folk, the latter tends to get me excommunicated — resurfaced 23× · 160 likes · 2018-05-10 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "Visa you can't just keep saying that everything is going to be a Golden Age" me: — resurfaced 23× · 156 likes · 2021-03-24 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @literalbanana [half-jokingly] people contain multitudes, coherence is fascism — resurfaced 23× · 116 likes · 2020-01-23 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Max Planck won the Physics Nobel for his discovery of energy quanta he had literal nerd house parties!!! "The Planck home became a social and cultural center. Numerous well-known scienttsts – Einstein, Hahn, Meitner were frequent visitors". They'd play music together — resurfaced 23× · 95 likes · 2020-05-21 · History · on X
  • got some time to kill so gonna do some rambling notes to self on the state of my whiteboard I think the main big picture is the question of wretchedness in our modern times. I roughly define wretchedness as a complex of despair, emotional and muscular tension, knottedness — resurfaced 23× · 84 likes · 2023-09-28 · Philosophy · on X
  • Me as a child (before Twitter dot com) — resurfaced 23× · 84 likes · 2018-04-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Every word is a roughly-hewn representation of an idea, with some vague consensus about what it means. We stretch, distort, invert, resist — resurfaced 23× · 58 likes · 2017-05-12 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • I truly can't with this man. Galaxy brain shit. Musical magician 🤯 — resurfaced 22× · 1,445 likes · 2020-01-29 · Music · on X
  • in 1997, statistician David Banks wrote an essay titled "The Problem Of Excess Genius" – why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest? His primary examples are Athens, Florence and London + another set of minor examples (Paris, New York) — resurfaced 22× · 490 likes · 2021-02-15 · History · on X
  • Agreeing with people who think they disagree with you is the most fun conversation judo move — resurfaced 22× · 162 likes · 2018-08-23 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Bad actors are not sufficiently penalised for the far-reaching consequences of their actions — resurfaced 22× · 151 likes · 2019-02-11 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • A funny thing: I think it’s accurate to say that, in terms of benefit to others, my casual-laidback-playful existence now is more “heroic” than the attempted, play-acted heroism of my late teens, which was defined by insecurity. and probably burdensome for others to deal with — resurfaced 22× · 80 likes · 2018-09-25 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • aggressively seeking out outgroup members to agree with — resurfaced 22× · 75 likes · 2019-02-08 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • All it takes to make a difference — resurfaced 21× · 1,561 likes · 2019-09-20 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • in the 5+ years I worked for my ex-boss Dinesh, he constantly, casually-yet-intensely would ask me about my goals & desired outcomes "what do you want to get out of this?" "how will you measure your progress?" "what's the next step?" "what's the limiting factor?" — resurfaced 21× · 1,551 likes · 2021-06-09 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • 11. joseph campbell on swimming vs drowning — resurfaced 21× · 363 likes · 2021-05-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • All advice is context-dependent to a degree most do not realise until they encounter a different context — resurfaced 21× · 315 likes · 2019-01-29 · Philosophy · on X
  • [smashes champagne on the bow of the ship] Hear ye, Hear ye, my substack is officially Open https://visakanv.substack.com/p/we-were-voyagers — resurfaced 21× · 262 likes · 2022-02-04 · Writing · on X
  • a little joke anecdote I think about a lot: guy goes to fishing shop and sees all the lures and he’s like wow! do fishes like the lures more because they’re so shiny and colourful? and fishing shop guy says, my boy, I don’t sell to the fish — resurfaced 20× · 1,846 likes · 2021-07-30 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • steve jobs said a bunch of really insightful things over the years, but it can be surprisingly tedious to find them because there's so much noise from people over-quoting the inspirational babble. I find myself thinking this a few times a year; probably worth making my own set — resurfaced 20× · 1,070 likes · 2018-12-18 · Business & Markets · on X
  • Fun and illuminating bit about how young children are natural salespeople - until we teach them to get inside their own heads and get in their own way — resurfaced 20× · 679 likes · 2017-12-18 · Education & Learning · on X
  • "Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary." — resurfaced 20× · 601 likes · 2018-04-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • lesson here: anything you do - however mediocre, tedious, clunky, imperfect - can be a stepping stone, a foundation, a springboard for something more wonderful — resurfaced 20× · 404 likes · 2021-07-12 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • tarantino can be a wanker and an asshole but I 100% agree with his takes on taste and creativity — resurfaced 20× · 258 likes · 2019-07-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Childhood: me: I’m just a nerd others: fuck that... you’re special me: I’m special? Oh shit! Get a load of me! others: fuck you, you ain’t special me: huh. I’m guess I’m not special. That’s kind of a relief. anybody can do what I do! people: fuck you, you’re not normal me: — resurfaced 20× · 256 likes · 2019-07-25 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • that aside, what a fascinating, touching, intimate couple these two are. I love how they're so often portrayed touching each other lovingly, tenderly — resurfaced 20× · 252 likes · 2018-09-20 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • a 16yo former MAGA kid actually DM'd me after that thread and we are having quite a wholesome time TIL I am a dinosaur 🦕 — resurfaced 20× · 249 likes · 2019-01-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I am always thinking about the next 1000 amazing people who aren’t here yet — resurfaced 20× · 171 likes · 2021-11-02 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • "Quit while you're ahead." — resurfaced 20× · 149 likes · 2018-10-01 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Did the world need a pair of annoying hippie nerds hijacking infrastructure to make prank calls? Well that depends, does the world need iPhones? — resurfaced 20× · 120 likes · 2019-04-04 · Science & Technology · on X
  • The Great Plague of 1348: “They fell ill in their thousands. Many dropped dead in the open streets...” There was such a multitude of corpses that there wasn’t enough burial ground. “...as if the city had been emptied.” “Would the world ever be so full and prosperous again?” — resurfaced 20× · 118 likes · 2019-04-20 · History · on X
  • I’m really just sitting here feeling thankful and grateful for everything and everyone that has brought me to this very moment. I love all of you so much. Existence is wild and I’m glad I get to share it with you. ❤️ — resurfaced 20× · 118 likes · 2019-05-07 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Reflecting this morning on how my starting conditions were a lot more hostile, cold, abrasive and distant than I choose to remember. I think it’s actually quite remarkable that I’m not much more of an asshole; all credit for that goes to the libraries & storytellers who raised me — resurfaced 20× · 115 likes · 2018-08-23 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • If you can imagine this in a way that is respectful and kind: in a sense, my goal in life is to laugh in the face of god. A big, happy, hearty laugh shared between the closest of friends. Children should not live in guilt and fear and shame and anxiety. Existence is hilarious — resurfaced 20× · 90 likes · 2018-12-16 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Cool story: In 1817, this guy Walter McFarlane was born in Torrance, near Glasgow, Scotland. He worked for a jeweller, then apprenticed with a blacksmith. He then bought over Saracen Foundry, which is responsible for a STAGGERING amount of ornamental ironwork around the world — resurfaced 20× · 85 likes · 2018-11-18 · History · on X
  • people who are really, truly different in non-trivial ways know the truth — resurfaced 19× · 600 likes · 2018-10-31 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "ignore the haters" is a more complex directive than people without haters realize because it's not always obvious in advance who's a hater and who's not deciding to ignore some subset of people requires introducing filters working with filters can change you — resurfaced 19× · 245 likes · 2020-07-11 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • you know what's a thing i've wanted for a long time – and maybe this exists, but I think probably not in the way that I'd like: a "game" in a browser tab that feels like a video game "dashboard" / "war room". A GTD app designed by a game company, like Firaxis games, or Blizzard — resurfaced 19× · 201 likes · 2019-01-13 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Many men grow up in Menworld, where you get bullied, mocked, beaten, threatened, etc for all sorts of minor transgressions (being too emotional, being wrong, etc). To those guys, those seem to be the rules of life; how the world works. The powerful take from the weak, etc — resurfaced 19× · 200 likes · 2018-02-14 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • It just occurred to me that palm leaf manuscripts are basically ancient twitter threads — resurfaced 19× · 171 likes · 2018-03-23 · Internet Culture · on X
  • an on-going compilation of my notes, tweets, threads, blogposts and thinking re: strategy, which may eventually cohere into an ebook of its own: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WVN7DZYWwDXOV-hwFbIYUvv3u17e_h3VS1QZZmIGNY0/edit?usp=sharing — resurfaced 19× · 116 likes · 2021-11-24 · Writing · on X
  • all of this can seem very removed, very abstract but here's what I think I know, from my personal experience I used to be a much needier person than I am now and I believe you can actually *see* this change in my *face* people can feel this difference and treat me differently — resurfaced 19× · 111 likes · 2019-07-17 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Book opens with a joke about how learning the details of technicalities is ineffective when learning a new language. Frank compares 4 years of Spanish (ineffective) vs 13 weeks of rudimentary Nepalese with the Peace corp, mimicking children (effective) — resurfaced 19× · 101 likes · 2018-08-25 · Education & Learning · on X
  • @chumulu A quote I really like that I think explains the translator's challenge well: — resurfaced 19× · 91 likes · 2017-11-25 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • I’m 6’4 / 194cm. In Singapore, this basically makes me the tallest person everywhere I go — resurfaced 19× · 89 likes · 2018-08-26 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Here are the people at the Visa event 😂❤️😍🥰❤️ — resurfaced 19× · 44 likes · 2019-05-05 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • "The B, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations [...] it has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation." — resurfaced 19× · 22 likes · 2018-03-06 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • Oscar Wilde, on bad reply game: "A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." — resurfaced 18× · 1,133 likes · 2020-04-20 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • sometimes people think their bottleneck is time but it’s actually the absence of a supportive context — resurfaced 18× · 938 likes · 2022-05-20 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way. — resurfaced 18× · 889 likes · 2018-09-11 · Internet Culture · on X
  • been procrastinating for years on an essay exploring how lady gaga chose to be weird as a positioning strategy in order to get the attention (for her hard-won talent) that would make her a star. she knew she couldn't get to where she is by playing it straight — resurfaced 18× · 650 likes · 2018-09-29 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • I am very pro reinventing the wheel you might think you know wheels, but what do you really know? how do spokes work? what are the principles of good axles? the Beatles were a cover band, Sony was a radio repair, all learning begins with imitation and reverse-engineering — resurfaced 18× · 604 likes · 2021-12-15 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • what's a minimum viable scene? if you have two sufficiently obsessive people who are trying to impress and outdo each other in public, two is enough but usually it seems that it takes a broader/wider scene to generate 2 such obsessive people — resurfaced 18× · 419 likes · 2019-07-23 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Now here he is demonstrating what it's like to play the chromatic scale, *musically*, over music. Just witnessing this blew my mind. It's like someone reciting the alphabet in a moving, poetic way. Harder than that, since some notes are "wrong". Wooten doesn't believe in "wrong" — resurfaced 18× · 343 likes · 2019-01-19 · Music · on X
  • the truth I hate the most is probably "people who are really knowledgeable are publicly silent about the juiciest stuff, because the upside to talking about it publicly is minimal, and the downside potentially catastrophic" really sucks for smart kids in shitty social graphs — resurfaced 18× · 334 likes · 2019-02-21 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • *cracks knuckles* school indoctrinates kids to compete with each other on standardized tests, to see others as competitors rather than potential collaborators. this atomizes people, makes them feel isolated, disconnected, fearful of not measuring up, jealous of others' successes — resurfaced 18× · 324 likes · 2019-01-27 · Education & Learning · on X
  • Following @visakanv on twitter be like — resurfaced 18× · 324 likes · 2019-04-02 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I often see this narrative that SG was a swampy backwater before Lee Kuan Yew showed up & turned it into a bustling metropolis. I think this narrative is inaccurate and harmful. Again, SG has always been along a critical global shipping route! Here are pics from the 1920s — resurfaced 18× · 279 likes · 2018-08-08 · History · on X
  • If reality seems unrealistic, it’s because you were holding on to a false idea about how reality is. Reality isn’t unrealistic; your expectations were Reality isn’t unrealistic, your expectations were Reality isn’t unrealistic, your expectations were Reality isn’t unrealisti — resurfaced 18× · 218 likes · 2018-12-15 · Philosophy · on X
  • Infinite game-ing is about playing with frames School is a very rigid frame that trains people to think and work within a fixed frame When people first start experimenting with frames, it looks dumb and we make fun of them When they get good at it we call them geniuses — resurfaced 18× · 210 likes · 2019-07-01 · Philosophy · on X
  • This is a very real and underestimated phenomenon If you make twitter threads, people start contributing to them, allowing you to do more than you can personally conceive If there is a clear vector, people like to contribute to it Hardly anybody likes to make a clear vector https://x.com/paulg/status/1080763092932259841 — resurfaced 18× · 194 likes · 2019-01-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • musicians all over the world playing Stand By Me, together I remember crying while watching it on repeat, while I was flunking at school and my parents was mad at me for playing guitar instead of studying I would give my life to protect musicians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM — resurfaced 18× · 183 likes · 2019-01-12 · Music · on X
  • if you keep a personal record of what’s going on & you index your notes, in a decade or two - and honestly sometimes in just 3-5 years - you can become a very valuable asset to any community: a sort of human switchboard for meaningful history. Remember, the past is never dead... — resurfaced 18× · 177 likes · 2020-11-04 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • The galaxy-brain take for those who want to go there: the self is itself an illusion anyway; we are but fleeting assemblages and all our work is necessarily derivative. Narcissism then is a sort of bug, a hallucination; a fixation on a thing that isn’t even actually there. 🤓 — resurfaced 18× · 144 likes · 2019-03-31 · Philosophy · on X
  • 19. Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Parker, sold “I hate Elvis” pins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Tom_Parker — resurfaced 18× · 140 likes · 2019-08-14 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • Let’s circle back and address some FAQs “How do I develop taste?” Well it shouldn’t be something you force yourself to do. What do you already like? What are you already interested in? Explore that with a playful curiosity and ask yourself what’s good, what’s not good. Have fun — resurfaced 18× · 135 likes · 2019-01-24 · Writing · on X
  • "You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know, but who love you. And that is an immense reward." https://x.com/InlibroV/status/1272260925085691905 — resurfaced 18× · 122 likes · 2020-06-17 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • being naive is one of my best assets — resurfaced 18× · 113 likes · 2019-05-18 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • When I was a teenager, I fell madly in love with the local music scene. It seemed to me like a dank oasis of sincerity on a sterile, shrink-wrapped island of lies. It was my church, and I was convinced that it could save the world if only everyone would join in its sweaty embrace — resurfaced 18× · 79 likes · 2018-03-21 · Music · on X
  • where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world ❤️ — resurfaced 18× · 68 likes · 2019-06-13 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • In a sense the media is a sort of moving Potemkin village of understanding, constantly adapting and reconstructing after-the-fact — resurfaced 18× · 61 likes · 2015-07-27 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • 1. Do it 100 times. Write 100 songs, cook 100 omelettes, talk to 100 people. It never seems like a huge deal until you try it yourself. It’s manageable, and yet it stretches you, and you’ll be observably different at the end of it. Effective way to get a foothold on a new thing — resurfaced 17× · 1,136 likes · 2020-11-23 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • One of my favourite books I’ve ever read, feels like it’s time for a re-read. My copy is pretty old; I believe it’s actually from the 70s. Check out that killer content page. David was the real deal — resurfaced 17× · 492 likes · 2018-11-11 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • I rewatched The Big Short last night. I know it's dramatized, but it's really sobering to contemplate how people will think you're insane (literally – they'll think you're mentally unsound) for doing what you think is right, based on your rigorous assessment of reality — resurfaced 17× · 288 likes · 2020-01-02 · Film & TV · on X
  • my twitter philosophy, which informs my content philosophy, which is informs my life philosophy, is something like... pay attention to the sticky riffs in your conversations, and embellish them, and then use them as landmarks to navigate by, and pave the desire paths — resurfaced 17× · 228 likes · 2021-03-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • One of my private beliefs that doesn’t translate very well is that true comedy is sacred. And not sacred as in solemn, but sacred as in profound. & even fart jokes can have a profundity to them if you get it right. But strangely few comedians seem to get it. Maybe I’m delusional — resurfaced 17× · 225 likes · 2019-03-21 · Philosophy · on X
  • everybody owes each other stuff, we call this society then people invented coin to represent this debt and trade it around, we call this money the trade of debt ebbs and flows in massive and complex global patterns, we call this the economy https://x.com/GraceSpelman/status/1232071754488729600 — resurfaced 17× · 205 likes · 2020-02-25 · Business & Markets · on X
  • I JUST WANT 10,000 TWITTER FOLLOWERS FOR BEING A PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK — resurfaced 17× · 168 likes · 2013-04-26 · Internet Culture · on X
  • “are you a man or a woman” I am a hypertext library — resurfaced 17× · 146 likes · 2021-05-23 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • [drinking coffee] ah, the hot bean water is renewing my will to live — resurfaced 17× · 144 likes · 2019-01-04 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Flirting is a conversational OODA loop Teaching a single formula then can be counter-productive, because good flirting is about switching formulas on the fly, appropriately and adeptly so much so that in practice it’s “the formula of no formula” — resurfaced 17× · 143 likes · 2019-02-15 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • #nowreading Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. Been kind of avoiding it because I feel like I already get the idea + all the meta-rationalbros love it. But it seems short and I got time so why not — resurfaced 17× · 140 likes · 2018-07-04 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Shall we? Let’s do this! What is trigonometry? Trigonometry begins with the cult of Triangle worship Would you like the secrets of the universe? You must recite the Pythagorean prayer before you may obtain it. Recite it!!! [Mr. Visa gets dragged out of class by security] — resurfaced 17× · 136 likes · 2019-07-23 · Education & Learning · on X
  • People tend to assume that this Steve Jobs quote is about making products. He does say "everything around you that you call life" – it applies equally to ideas, perceptions, ways of seeing, ways of being. And so it is with time – we can reimagine our relationship with it — resurfaced 17× · 135 likes · 2018-09-29 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • This quote has been sticking with me. I feel like it applies perfectly to thinking about internet celebrity and going viral. You have to have a sense of the broader context, and be able to not take it personally, not fall into the trap of thinking "I went viral, I'm so great" — resurfaced 17× · 132 likes · 2020-02-21 · Internet Culture · on X
  • my brain, when I try to be even the slightest bit sensible: — resurfaced 17× · 129 likes · 2020-07-25 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • VV’s theory of boredom — resurfaced 17× · 109 likes · 2019-03-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Went to bed early-ish but I can’t sleep because I’m thinking... about Game of Thrones- the final season in particular - and how I’d have done it differently. I think a few little changes could have made a big difference. Let’s do a quick sketch — resurfaced 17× · 99 likes · 2020-01-27 · Film & TV · on X
  • The imagination deficit is the most staggering thing in the human realm - but few people know it... because most people lack imagination!!! — resurfaced 17× · 82 likes · 2019-07-12 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Thailand is typically described and understood as a Buddhist country Indonesia a Muslim one both countries have Garuda (a Hindu figure – legendary king of the birds, Vahana/mount of Lord Vishnu) as prominent features I love this about Southeast Asia — resurfaced 17× · 54 likes · 2019-12-17 · History · on X
  • “We’ll see.” — resurfaced 17× · 45 likes · 2018-07-07 · Random · on X
  • One must imagine Sisyphus excited, stoked, so happy to announce that he’ll be rolling a stone up a hill for all eternity! This is a great opportunity for him to really develop his career. What an amazing journey. All the best on your ceaseless ordeal, Sisyphus! Excited for you — resurfaced 16× · 2,205 likes · 2018-07-03 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I am once again reminded that one of the great psychic divides is between people who’ve made/sold stuff in the open marketplace, and people who haven’t — resurfaced 16× · 1,657 likes · 2021-04-30 · Business & Markets · on X
  • I watched this video over a decade ago and still think about it all the time: Bobby McFerrin teaches the audience to be his backing track and performs a song with them in real time — resurfaced 16× · 980 likes · 2020-06-08 · Music · on X
  • The longer a relationship lasts, the likelier it is that you’ll step on each other’s toes in recognizably repetitive patterns. The longer this goes on, the more hollow of an excuse “I wasn’t thinking” becomes. It thus becomes *necessary* to become more considerate. — resurfaced 16× · 485 likes · 2018-12-24 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • #nowreading Debt, by David Graeber — resurfaced 16× · 367 likes · 2018-11-22 · Books & Literature · on X
  • I can’t believe I’m about to say this but: you have to periodically recharge your talismans with fresh thoughts and energy or they’ll “decay” — resurfaced 16× · 364 likes · 2019-08-12 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • The thing I really enjoy about this exchange between Obama and Seinfeld is that you can see that they’re both very curious people, intellectually rigorous, each dealing with unavoidable filter bubbles, and each recognises that the other person has a valuable perspective — resurfaced 16× · 315 likes · 2019-07-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • guy: i’ll pay you $100 to bring me a glass of water me: whoa! nice!! i'm on it me: *opens 100 tabs* what is water? how do clouds even? history of naval warfare? roman aqueducts? how desalination works? guy: hey nvm I got it me: ok me: *opens 100 more tabs* why ice floats? — resurfaced 16× · 291 likes · 2018-12-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • It is tempting to kick your enemies when they are down, but that is also the best window of opportunity you’ll ever get to make them your friends — resurfaced 16× · 251 likes · 2019-01-25 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • One of my favourite stories I saw on reddit was a parent who taught her child that the secret of Santa is that YOU get to be Santa, and you get to join the secret group of people who make the world a better place for other people. I find that very compelling and heartwarming — resurfaced 16× · 247 likes · 2018-08-23 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • wrote this at 20 https://x.com/ciaralondon_/status/1351317402177437696 — resurfaced 16× · 229 likes · 2021-01-19 · Writing · on X
  • I saw a bunch of tweets with people commiserating over how many open tabs they have cute. 😂 here's how I manage mine 1. get @onetab, this lets you expand your "on-standby" tabs to several hundred — resurfaced 16× · 225 likes · 2019-01-11 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • The real flying car / hoverboard / jetpack of 2020 will be a tool that helps you navigate information overload, not physical space — resurfaced 16× · 214 likes · 2015-12-05 · Science & Technology · on X
  • When you worship your heroes, you distract them from the process that enables them to make great work. Encourage the process, participate in the process. They’re people too. Every creative mind is always yearning for more good minds to play with — resurfaced 16× · 177 likes · 2019-01-24 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • kids in my DMs with ADHD symptoms are always surprised when I tell them that I don't think they should try to suppress their mind's wild swings. My advice is to develop the practice of taking meticulous notes instead. It worked for many prolific individuals throughout history — resurfaced 16× · 176 likes · 2019-09-06 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Enjoyed this video from @noclipvideo interviewing @corybarlog about directing God of War. [17m] This bit about the game impacting a player and his relationship with his own father, to me this is the heart of art itself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQh8L1Rf7g&feature=youtu.be — resurfaced 16× · 141 likes · 2019-02-06 · Games · on X
  • Success can be very dehumanizing — resurfaced 16× · 137 likes · 2018-11-10 · Philosophy · on X
  • Real talk, I was skinny as hell until I taught myself how to eat, and it wasn’t easy. 60kg/130lbs in the first pic, 85kg/190lbs now. Wow I used to look almost like I might’ve had an eating disorder. Maybe you could call it an eating... dysfunction...? It was sad, on retrospect — resurfaced 16× · 126 likes · 2018-08-27 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • #nowreading The Body Keeps The Score, Bessel van der Kolk — resurfaced 16× · 119 likes · 2018-04-04 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • So like, do you have an interest you wanna blog/tweet about, but you don’t think you have anything novel or interesting to say? Just add one other interest! Architecture and Lasagna. Motorbikes and Monster Movies. Cities are built out of crossroads — resurfaced 16× · 103 likes · 2019-07-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • me on one of the saddest days of my life vs one of the happiest I carry both of these moments with me every day and yes I had my phone on me both times 😂 thank you technology for helping me document and architect my narrative — resurfaced 16× · 72 likes · 2019-07-09 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • @deepfates @Rididelduol everyone here is hot — resurfaced 16× · 71 likes · 2021-06-03 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Hutchinson Guitar Concepts makes the most beautiful guitars in the world. Art. He works WITH the body of the instrument, not ON it. He respects negative space. Tempo. Rhythm. Pacing. Scale. Few artists appreciate the soul of their work this well. If he did tattoos I'd fly to him — resurfaced 16× · 68 likes · 2017-11-10 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • let’s solve the Losev problem — resurfaced 16× · 67 likes · 2022-02-14 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • @Neats29 exactly. now you know why I am fucking crazy all the time — resurfaced 16× · 63 likes · 2020-07-24 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Why be happy when you could be normal? Jeanette Winterson — resurfaced 16× · 57 likes · 2018-07-25 · Books & Literature · on X
  • The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world - no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper — resurfaced 16× · 54 likes · 2019-06-13 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Metaphor for subjective social reality: fridge light. Every time I open my fridge, there's light. Therefore, the fridge light is always on. — resurfaced 15× · 569 likes · 2017-11-02 · Philosophy · on X
  • I think most of the untapped wealth in the world is in the connections between people who do not yet know each other — resurfaced 15× · 437 likes · 2020-07-24 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Arabic calligraphy has the best aesthetics of all the languages IMO if I could learn one script overnight for purely aesthetic expression, it would have to be Arabic, no contest. They have the *best* curves, and a very interesting, non-linear relationship with space — resurfaced 15× · 389 likes · 2019-02-11 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • There’s a recurring moment in multiple conversations I have had with childhood friends (90s kids) that’s quite bleak. They’re 29-30 and realising they’ve been holding on to vague scripts. not done much self-authorship. These are smart people who feel trapped but avoid facing it — resurfaced 15× · 359 likes · 2019-06-18 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • the thing I really like about the KWML archetypes is how they break it down into the failure modes. Too much yin or too much yang, too soft or too hard, too needy or too detached — resurfaced 15× · 343 likes · 2021-06-08 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • me, in a moment of passion in a salon yesterday: “do you wanna raise your lifetime revenue by 5% or do you wanna live fucking gloriously?” — resurfaced 15× · 278 likes · 2021-01-24 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • So: the most important thing about the most important thing in life is attention, and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it. If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention... ...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life — resurfaced 15× · 254 likes · 2019-07-11 · Education & Learning · on X
  • hey, alert, there's a guy (@movebetterproj) hanging out in my mentions and he seems to be fixing people's physical issues left and right, wow https://x.com/selentelechia/status/1442053432827731972 — resurfaced 15× · 249 likes · 2021-09-26 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • me when I get my ass kicked — resurfaced 15× · 240 likes · 2020-06-01 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Visa’s rules for life [draft] 1. recognise when u get ur ass kicked, & accept it with grace 2. if u *have* to kick someone’s ass, be swift, don’t be a dick about it 3. if u can save an innocent ass from being kicked, do so 4. remember, life kicks everybody’s ass in the end https://x.com/visakanv/status/1057602603792523264 — resurfaced 15× · 220 likes · 2019-01-01 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • we can heal ancestral traumas L: ancient Greek kylix from ~340-320 BC R: frostious, 2021 https://t.co/dNrsyOAKho — resurfaced 15× · 217 likes · 2021-12-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Around this time, a little earlier, an opera & physics nerd named Norio Ohga wrote a highly critical letter to Sony about the many failings of their tape recorder. Akio and Masaru were so impressed, they hired him as a part-time consultant, & eventually made him Sony's President — resurfaced 15× · 177 likes · 2019-04-06 · Business & Markets · on X
  • A crazy thing is that a seemingly meaningless existence can become relatively more meaningful just by thinking about it — resurfaced 15× · 168 likes · 2018-10-05 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • slowly increasing the # of tweets I have literally hotkeyed — resurfaced 15× · 138 likes · 2021-12-04 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I wish everybody on Twitter could each go ultra-viral because it's actually a very eye-opening and humbling experience. I feel like it would be worth listing out some thoughts from the various occasions where my timeline blew up, even if it gets interpreted negatively — resurfaced 15× · 105 likes · 2018-10-29 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I like this picture that my wife took of me recently when we were waiting for our dinner. I can’t remember what I was thinking about. But I was thinking about something. I live in my head a lot, even if I’m not on my phone — resurfaced 15× · 102 likes · 2019-09-16 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I'm sold. Bitcoin matters. I will buy it, I will use it, I will accept it. There will be others. — resurfaced 15× · 71 likes · 2015-01-19 · Business & Markets · on X
  • I bet the Pope is lonely. — resurfaced 15× · 64 likes · 2019-08-19 · Religion · on X
  • 19. Anais Nin – "In the Diary I only wrote of what interested me genuinely, what I felt most strongly at at the moment, and I found this fervor, this enthusiasm, produced a vividness which often withered in the formal work." — resurfaced 15× · 64 likes · 2019-07-29 · Writing · on X
  • Several anon twitter dudes found my menworld thread and assumed that I’m some sort of desperate lonely virtue-signalling basement rat who’s begging for dates and can’t get any Well I’m *married*, so I’m not looking, thanks ... but do I look like a guy who has trouble dating 😂 — resurfaced 15× · 47 likes · 2018-08-26 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I have strong feelings about words https://x.com/visakanv/status/1063069532409880576 — resurfaced 15× · 40 likes · 2019-02-07 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • It is possible to tell the truth in a dishonest way. And we pretty much all do it, because narrative bias and imperfect information. — resurfaced 15× · 33 likes · 2016-03-24 · Philosophy · on X
  • guy: how do I make great art picasso: make 50,000 pieces guy: ur kidding picasso: im not — resurfaced 14× · 1,634 likes · 2019-11-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • reviews and social proof for my book Introspect, the thread (buy it here: https://visakanv.gumroad.com/l/introspect) — resurfaced 14× · 1,627 likes · 2022-02-03 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • fascinating quote from an anthropologist realizing that people from other cultures can have a sense of humor about their spirituality https://t.co/3ut1bbJ7R0 — resurfaced 14× · 1,277 likes · 2021-07-17 · Religion · on X
  • 💎 — resurfaced 14× · 955 likes · 2022-02-01 · Random · on X
  • the secret ingredient to almost everything good is simply giving a shit — resurfaced 14× · 881 likes · 2021-09-20 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • marvelling at how precisely Timothy Gallwey's Inner Game of Tennis (🎾) and Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery (🎹) say *exactly* the same things about judgement, ego, self-talk, instruction, etc and their impact on performance — resurfaced 14× · 662 likes · 2023-10-03 · Books & Literature · on X
  • when I first started making videos of myself talking, I was stiff, awkward, nervous, anxious, frozen. but I kept at it, because I wanted to git gud. I believed that I could learn to become confident and charismatic on camera. here's some of that journey: — resurfaced 14× · 524 likes · 2022-04-17 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • a thing that often seems to surprise people about the act of forgiving and loving your past selves for all their imperfections, failures, incompetence, etc is that you can then begin to feel the warm glow of your future self's love for you — resurfaced 14× · 442 likes · 2021-04-08 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 1. The frame is a useful constraint if you think beyond it https://x.com/visakanv/status/924856413712797696 — resurfaced 14× · 437 likes · 2018-12-15 · Philosophy · on X
  • "When there's a note that doesn't work, there's a note on either side of the note that DOES work." NOBODY TELLS YOU THIS. "It's always easy! but we make it hard!". "A minute ago this note didn't work, but now it does. I can *erase* the wrong note by *making music*." Amazing — resurfaced 14× · 430 likes · 2019-01-19 · Music · on X
  • “I want to produce work but something is stopping me” It’s usually some form of fear or perfectionism. Your technical skill is not yet good enough to gratify your taste. Let go of the expectation that you have to gratify your taste *today* (or *ever*). Make Crappy Stuff!! — resurfaced 14× · 417 likes · 2019-01-24 · Writing · on X
  • “you can make every note work with every chord [...] rather than say this note is good or bad, it’s more, this note hasn’t found it’s consequence yet, or this note is in the wrong context [...] if it feels right, then it's probably fine." – @jacobcollier — resurfaced 14× · 399 likes · 2021-07-15 · Music · on X
  • "Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. They do everything in their power not to have any. And therefore, the great man, in order to exist, must possess a force of attack which is greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of people." — resurfaced 14× · 397 likes · 2021-12-30 · Philosophy · on X
  • A very cool thing about having an elaborate 🕸 of threads on twitter is – when new people find and discover you, they start favoriting all these old tweets, and you get to "feel" the paths of their choose-their-own-adventure journeys. It feels a little transhuman — resurfaced 14× · 247 likes · 2019-02-02 · Internet Culture · on X
  • A thing I like to do when researching a person is to look for all the other people they've quoted or mentioned by name. Can you think of some people who should be in this map but aren't? — resurfaced 14× · 240 likes · 2018-12-21 · Education & Learning · on X
  • the library ethos https://t.co/J3xzAQBtNj — resurfaced 14× · 202 likes · 2021-02-21 · Education & Learning · on X
  • Don’t assume that people who are good at playing a game are necessarily having a good time playing it — resurfaced 14× · 197 likes · 2018-11-10 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • On planning: "You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event." — resurfaced 14× · 188 likes · 2019-07-30 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • 0.01% of people is a lot of people — resurfaced 14× · 110 likes · 2021-02-12 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @mechanical_monk @danlistensto @RealtimeAI I am not fucking around — resurfaced 14× · 82 likes · 2021-03-22 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • some overlap between bits, but I basically get all of these things through other things... including twitter, and increasingly, youtube — resurfaced 14× · 80 likes · 2020-02-10 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • America: damn, growing Chinese influence is scary Chinese kids: — resurfaced 14× · 61 likes · 2020-01-30 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • Sometimes this big boi meows needily until I pick him up and give him scritches — resurfaced 14× · 61 likes · 2018-09-25 · Pets & Animals · on X
  • An essay from my coming book, Naughty Boy — resurfaced 14× · 58 likes · 2018-08-04 · Writing · on X
  • I had a bolt of clarity in the shower earlier. Last night I was thinking that all of my books seem to be, in some sense, the same book. I went to bed wondering what that “master book” is. It is, of course: The Book Of Books, The Story of Stories, the Narrative of Narratives. 📖 — resurfaced 14× · 56 likes · 2020-06-11 · Writing · on X
  • It’s ok to misspelling stuff, even grammer wrong sometiems — resurfaced 14× · 52 likes · 2019-10-28 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • Fun fact: my existence is literally blasphemous to some people https://t.co/rS42ME11iY — resurfaced 14× · 40 likes · 2018-04-28 · Religion · on X
  • obsessed with meryl streep's description of her process – "total immersion into possibility... infinitely interesting... there's no bottom to it... a lot of it just great, deep, belief" (h/t @selentelechia) https://x.com/selentelechia/status/1225637355760967680 — resurfaced 14× · 0 likes · 2022-11-02 · Film & TV · on X
  • never be gleeful about violence — resurfaced 13× · 1,409 likes · 2021-01-08 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • news sites have clearly learned how to use a variant of cunningham's law ("the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer") in order to maximize engagement and traffic — resurfaced 13× · 880 likes · 2019-02-01 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • A thing I noticed fairly early-ish on is that people care about things more once they’re framed properly. Like, if you watch a documentary about a pit crew or a kitchen or a tattoo shop, you become invested in those people’s struggles and you start to care about them personally — resurfaced 13× · 718 likes · 2019-07-31 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • in the early days, humans supposedly stored food surplus in each other's stomachs – I can't eat the whole deer I just hunted, so I share my deer with you today, you share your deer with me tomorrow IMO the best place to store information surplus is in each other's minds — resurfaced 13× · 579 likes · 2019-12-11 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • the interesting part of this to me is when he says “hard to be positive when that’s reality”, when the reality right in front of him only *just* got morphed by his reality distortion field. It’s not reality that screwed him here, but the expectations that he has about reality https://x.com/amanionearth/status/1325997256223428610 — resurfaced 13× · 536 likes · 2020-11-11 · Philosophy · on X
  • cracking up at this drum lesson by Nate Smith (the 80/20 drummer) where he's trying to demonstrate to you how beginners are sloppy and make mistakes — but because he's so good at what he does, his deliberate mistakes are actually delicious and musical 😂 — resurfaced 13× · 490 likes · 2021-04-20 · Music · on X
  • you cannot insult, harass, shame, embarass and coerce people into becoming better people. because what they'll learn from it is that insults, harassment, shaming and coercion are how you get things done — resurfaced 13× · 401 likes · 2020-08-05 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • old paintings of older ruins, a mood — resurfaced 13× · 389 likes · 2018-11-20 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • well-arranged words rearrange reality. — resurfaced 13× · 382 likes · 2023-06-26 · Philosophy · on X
  • I often find myself referencing this Steve Jobs quote about what it’s like to have the means to take responsibility for your own dreams, and can be held accountable for them — resurfaced 13× · 310 likes · 2019-03-21 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • Greetings, friend! 👋🏾 Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of my best threads on twitter dot com. Feel free to reply to any tweet in any thread, however old. 🤓 (Looking for a thread and can't find it? Ask me about it, and I'll add it here!) https://www.notion.so/visakanv/a-list-of-visakanv-s-threads-1a6ed25cf06e49e388a303903d597b73 — resurfaced 13× · 303 likes · 2019-07-12 · Internet Culture · on X
  • knowing when to abandon what you know, is more important than knowing what you know — resurfaced 13× · 279 likes · 2023-01-26 · Philosophy · on X
  • an additional confounding factor: not only do most people not have any real creative vision or ambition... many people entertain themselves by PRETENDING that they do most people want their lives to be sitcoms that pretend to be adventures https://x.com/visakanv/status/1139773860784422912 — resurfaced 13× · 272 likes · 2019-07-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I want to be both Mr. Rogers and George Carlin at the same time — resurfaced 13× · 223 likes · 2018-06-07 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 57. mindfulness for engineers, via @PearShapedComic https://billing.mattengg.com/ — resurfaced 13× · 216 likes · 2020-05-22 · Science & Technology · on X
  • btw I particularly use XKCD 1227 a lot, I reference it so much I have it memorized and basically hot-keyed: https://www.xkcd.com/1227/ — resurfaced 13× · 211 likes · 2018-07-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • OK let's do this: A Timeless Way Of Building, Christopher Alexander [1979] I'm actually reading this because I want some inspiration for thinking about how to improve my mind-palace, notes, tweet-webs — resurfaced 13× · 162 likes · 2019-06-22 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Friends from abroad are always asking me about Lee Kuan Yew. I usually hesitate to answer, because it's complicated. But I always find myself thinking, "still, I should try." Anyway, here are 4 very different quotes from him that I think help to *hint* at what he was like — resurfaced 13× · 151 likes · 2018-10-31 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • @EricJorgenson "Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." – Russell http://t.co/a9EHjSaKxc — resurfaced 13× · 148 likes · 2015-06-01 · Philosophy · on X
  • I’ve been stewing this theory for 1 year +: Just as how the WWE isn’t a wrestling show, but a show ABOUT a wrestling show, mainstream media is less about the news than a participatory interactive tv show ABOUT the news Cable News Network is really Cable News Entertainment https://x.com/kebejay/status/1004088279094841344 — resurfaced 13× · 148 likes · 2018-06-06 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • Conversation with wife: an existential crisis is really a sort of expectation crisis- it’s the horror of falling from the height of your expectations, down to the reality you actually already inhabit. It’s interesting to consider that staying up takes more effort than coming down — resurfaced 13× · 136 likes · 2018-11-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I love these dreamy architectural paintings by @park_sunga. There's this wistful quality of remembering and forgetting, seeing and unseeing, smoke and softness. Imagine playing a video game illustrated in this style, how lovely that would be — resurfaced 13× · 125 likes · 2017-11-30 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Morning! Because of the complicated relationship our species has with the truth, being truthful can sometimes (often?) actually get you labelled as untrustworthy. There’s a huge gap between our moral fantasies (as told in our modern myths and folklore) and practical reality — resurfaced 13× · 120 likes · 2018-12-27 · Philosophy · on X
  • The mere presence of bad actors causes decent actors to be unfortunately-yet-understandably suspicious of each other — resurfaced 13× · 112 likes · 2019-02-11 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • @ollybot_redux 1. screaming into the void 2. screaming at people who are screaming into the void <- you are currently here 3. stepping away from the void and pursuing the light 2 is a common encounter en route to 3, but it’s not actually a prerequisite and can even be a trap u get stuck in — resurfaced 13× · 104 likes · 2021-01-31 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Gonna make a meta index of indexes for all my paper notebooks — resurfaced 13× · 104 likes · 2019-11-24 · Writing · on X
  • To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. Rather - when we are playful, we relate to each other as free persons - and the relationship is open to surprise. Seriousness = pressing for a specific conclusion. — resurfaced 13× · 102 likes · 2018-07-04 · Philosophy · on X
  • 6. a decade before brene brown, emo bands taught me the social power that comes with being artfully vulnerable & honest. you can make new friends that way. you can build a whole sweaty church of distorted riffs & earnest lyrics. I'm still surprised when people don't realize this — resurfaced 13× · 86 likes · 2019-09-04 · Music · on X
  • this thread also makes me realise is that a big part of why I write is so I can think clearly without all of the inelegant clutter of (most) other people’s words, and models. It’s an act of compression. My goal is often to reproduce signal with less noise — resurfaced 13× · 86 likes · 2018-11-06 · Writing · on X
  • The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao... ... which is annoying, because I really struggle to stop my dumb ass from telling everyone about the Tao — resurfaced 13× · 86 likes · 2019-03-20 · Philosophy · on X
  • Lol even in 1949 Campbell was saying Americans need to grow up And that psychoanalysts, experts, etc are basically performing the roles of shamans and medicine men Humans seem to need our Elons and Navals and Talebs to function as a pantheon to project our fantasies onto — resurfaced 13× · 73 likes · 2019-06-13 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • IMO, playing with moods, aesthetics and vibes is a sort of proxy or precursor to playing with ideas and worldviews, identities, self-concept. Depending on how you frame it, you could even say it’s fundamentally the same thing, or deeply intertwined — resurfaced 13× · 61 likes · 2018-12-01 · Philosophy · on X
  • The world is endlessly fascinating once you learn to look at things this way; everything is a part of a greater thread. Everything is connected, nothing exists in isolation — resurfaced 13× · 56 likes · 2019-01-17 · Philosophy · on X
  • thinking with my mouth — resurfaced 13× · 53 likes · 2019-06-27 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • 017: MASCULINITY! - men are scared of men, just as women are - people are quick to say "daddy issues" but where *was* daddy? - how I navigate "men are trash" - elite commandos behave in a much more nourishing and supportive way than wannabe tough guys do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRcPqW9yAs4 — resurfaced 13× · 52 likes · 2020-02-13 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • 38. including a shot of my labyrinth tattoo in my social proof thread, because, skin-in-the-game counts for something, right? I will be updating this book continually for the rest of my life, this is not a passing phase or a casual curiosity for me, it is my life's work — resurfaced 13× · 46 likes · 2022-03-26 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • If cables connected the world, one editorialist wrote in 1857, they would ''make the great heart of humanity beat with a single pulse.'' ''Wars are to cease,'' another wrote. ''The kingdom of peace will be set up.'' https://t.co/iu83ogbf7f — resurfaced 13× · 42 likes · 2018-01-04 · History · on X
  • How long have we spent in the past ~5 years in passionate arguments that ultimately amounted to nothing? What could've we done w that time? — resurfaced 13× · 32 likes · 2016-12-16 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Grain heavy diet wasn't very good for these folks, now starved of vitamins, iron, protein. Avg height dropped 6 inches. And yet, the (unnutritious) food surplus allowed specialization. Specialized, malnutritioned soldiers were still able to drive remaining hunter-gatherers away — resurfaced 13× · 31 likes · 2018-03-02 · Books & Literature · on X
  • “Courage, Merry. Courage for our friends.” — resurfaced 13× · 28 likes · 2018-05-26 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Bozoma was born in Connecticut to Ghanaian parents. She grew up moving frequently, including to Ghana and Kena, before settling down in Colorado. She was obviously Not White, but she was also not quite African-American, and not quite African. A foreigner everywhere. I feel this. — resurfaced 13× · 27 likes · 2017-12-17 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • selected selfies from 2014 — resurfaced 13× · 22 likes · 2020-03-15 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Most casual players do not appear to have caught on to the true potential utility of Twitter, or perhaps they are indifferent to it. A web of tweets is a living entity that allows players to meet, interact and engage with 1000s of others *at the level of individual thoughts*. — resurfaced 13× · 0 likes · 2019-02-10 · Internet Culture · on X
  • 23. it is most preferable to do fuck-all — resurfaced 12× · 1,174 likes · 2022-04-01 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • fucking is labor, fuckability is capital — resurfaced 12× · 1,122 likes · 2019-10-30 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • our ancestors got picked off by megafauna, our peers get picked off by psychofauna — resurfaced 12× · 839 likes · 2022-11-05 · Internet Culture · on X
  • since I did one, I might as well do the other, so here's my latest overview of @FANswitchboard – this one clocking in at 750 words, which is basically a blogpost lol — resurfaced 12× · 591 likes · 2023-06-14 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • 24. consider obeying the inscrutable exhortations of your soul — resurfaced 12× · 553 likes · 2022-04-03 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • twitter has both the best and worst content in the world like imagine you’re walking along a fair, and at one booth is the actual goddess Athena, and at the next booth is some crusty pervert covered in dried cum and Cheeto dust, replying to e-girls and both have 220 followers — resurfaced 12× · 476 likes · 2019-10-13 · Internet Culture · on X
  • dusting off an old meme format — resurfaced 12× · 463 likes · 2022-01-28 · Internet Culture · on X
  • singaporean kid: ah, what a wonderful day, it sure would be nice to do some running and playing at my local playground singaporean playground: — resurfaced 12× · 440 likes · 2018-10-17 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • i'm very late to james baldwin — resurfaced 12× · 418 likes · 2022-07-25 · Books & Literature · on X
  • If you do a beautiful job of treating your own life as something sacred, other people who witness you doing it will notice. Not everyone. In fact most people won’t notice. But the small handful of people who notice will increase your power level unlike anything else — resurfaced 12× · 382 likes · 2019-08-12 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 2 guys I think about a lot: Dashrath Manjhi, who carved a path through a mountain. Jadav Payeng, who planted a forest. Each did it alone. Each took decades. I wonder, what will happen if I spend decades making friends + introducing them to each other? You may say I’m a dreamer... — resurfaced 12× · 357 likes · 2020-01-29 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • this was a tweet about “people who are my type” but actually I realize it’s ex-everything. Ex-mormons, ex-smokers... it takes a certain courage to walk away from something that at one point meant a lot to you, and these people have both a lightness and a darkness about them https://x.com/visakanv/status/1302735438436687872 — resurfaced 12× · 347 likes · 2020-09-06 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • 28. dudes rock (ig: borjacatanesi) — resurfaced 12× · 327 likes · 2021-05-29 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • 1. we are almost always teaching people how we want to be interacted with 2. different people have different degrees of awareness re: (1) 3. different people have different degrees of control re: (1) 4. different people have different degrees of awareness about (2) + (3) — resurfaced 12× · 321 likes · 2020-12-25 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Much of self-improvement, personal development, introspection, etc can quite simply be reframed as the art of socialising with yourself. Listen to yourself, pay close attention to yourself, don’t interrupt yourself, be kind and supportive to yourself, be constructive in criticism — resurfaced 12× · 318 likes · 2019-03-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • My favorite 'cold email' – in 1934, by Robert Pirosh, a copywriter who dreamed of becoming a screenwriter. This letter led to him becoming a junior writer at MGM, and 15 years later he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the war film Battleground. I too like words 😍 — resurfaced 12× · 283 likes · 2019-02-19 · Writing · on X
  • Step 1 is you do an inventory. List out everything about your life. What are your possessions, relationships, behavior patterns, what is everything of consequence that comes to mind? What do you love? What do you hate? What torments you? List it all out. In writing. Look it over — resurfaced 12× · 282 likes · 2022-07-24 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Yes and: this was actually also possible before the internet, by writing letters, and I think that was the most egregious omissions from my education. But most educators are incompetent writers themselves so how would they teach you? You have to go searching yourself. https://x.com/tszzl/status/1642235428496461826 — resurfaced 12× · 273 likes · 2023-04-01 · Education & Learning · on X
  • Each person might think the other person was being rude when they were really trying to be polite — resurfaced 12× · 263 likes · 2019-08-06 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • The pattern I’m describing is - 1. start a relationship 2. enjoy the good times and good vibes 3. accumulate “debt” from bad times and bad vibes 4. fail to address the debt; either avoid it or mishandle it 5. ditch the whole thing to repeat the pattern with someone else — resurfaced 12× · 260 likes · 2018-12-24 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • but now I realize the only thing that matters is finding True Artists and supporting and challenging them, and the bottleneck there is my own thinking, my own behavior a summary: 2007: fuck everyone 2013: fuck you guys 2015: fuck Visa 2019: there is no fuck 😂 — resurfaced 12× · 246 likes · 2019-07-23 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • the thing about the ongoing process of journaling that you cannot get from reading a book, etc is – your own relationship with your own writing changes over time. you read things you wrote that you thought were smart last year, but look stupid to you now. and vice versa — resurfaced 12× · 224 likes · 2019-01-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • "But I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything." – Charles Darwin, to his friend Charles Lyell — resurfaced 12× · 219 likes · 2019-01-21 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • The most important person you have to be friends with is yourself — resurfaced 12× · 212 likes · 2019-07-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Haven’t posted a cat pic in a while. This is Little — resurfaced 12× · 179 likes · 2018-08-01 · Pets & Animals · on X
  • intrusive thought: it might be necessary to teach people how to read — resurfaced 12× · 175 likes · 2021-10-06 · Education & Learning · on X
  • But I’m not trying to start a cult. I’m just trying to be more in tune with my own emotions, my own body, everything that constitutes my life. The funny thing is you can’t hide the glow when you do it right. When you do it right, there is a “charge”, and people are drawn to you — resurfaced 12× · 171 likes · 2019-08-12 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @fortelabs nobody will top this — resurfaced 12× · 159 likes · 2020-01-03 · Internet Culture · on X
  • “i want to set my pants on fire and do skateboard tricks” “you shouldn’t do that” vs “how are you gonna do it? are you using an accelerant like lighter fluid? how do you plan to control the spread? do you have an extinguisher on hand?” etc — resurfaced 12× · 156 likes · 2021-10-02 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I think my core thesis (Visa's Bricks Idea) is that the graph paper format of presenting information is undervalued, underrated, underappreciated — resurfaced 12× · 155 likes · 2020-11-18 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • capitalism never says “torture the workers” or “incite genocide in distant countries”. all it says is “maximize profits or we’ll replace you with someone else who does”. it’s a system that introduces plausible-enough deniability about the relationship between actions and outcomes — resurfaced 12× · 143 likes · 2018-12-07 · Business & Markets · on X
  • Whenever I come back to SG, one of the first things I gotta eat is Hainanese chicken rice. If I go too long without it I start losing a certain part of my identity. You gotta eat it in one of these neighbourhood coffee shops / hawker centers — resurfaced 12× · 138 likes · 2019-05-16 · Food & Dining · on X
  • 2. here is my quick-sketch summary of @Malcolm_Ocean's 2021 dream boat mashup post https://t.co/3KCGsDP1Tb — resurfaced 12× · 131 likes · 2021-07-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • The best things in life are often accidental or peripheral, and you can actually optimise for this — resurfaced 12× · 130 likes · 2019-01-29 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Threading some notes from my latest reread of Pressfield’s War of Art (2002). I revisit it often in search of guidance and encouragement when working — resurfaced 12× · 119 likes · 2021-08-20 · Books & Literature · on X
  • TIL Ted Hughes used the voltage metaphor in the 1930s! (H/t @armandcognetta) — resurfaced 12× · 119 likes · 2019-08-05 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • This is especially true for people with large follower counts (a lot of noise to sift through, and repetition to endure)... ... and especially counter-intuitive ro people with smaller follower counts (never more than 20 conversations happening at once). https://x.com/robinhanson/status/961256991258705922 — resurfaced 12× · 119 likes · 2018-02-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Hardcore social game: (even I don’t really do this 100% because I’m lazy) 1. Take the 100 or so people you know, identify the 5-10 people you aren’t talking to who you respect+admire 2. Talk to them, earn *their* respect, then ask for introductions 3. Repeat 2 indefinitely https://x.com/patio11/status/1159295669405913089 — resurfaced 12× · 116 likes · 2019-08-08 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • This is a sort of “basic life”, and if you live a good basic life that’s genuinely something to be proud of, IMO. There is so much cruelty and toxicity in the world - if you manage to avoid giving in to that, and you help someone out now and then, I love you and I’m proud of you — resurfaced 12× · 111 likes · 2019-03-31 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • You know how some people get frustrated with all the store-bought options and so they make their own bread, or computer, almost from “scratch”, puttering and tinkering around in a messy junkyard, muttering to themselves? I’m like that, but with meaning and identity — resurfaced 12× · 110 likes · 2020-08-21 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • But when I look back now, the over-articulation seems to cloud the points I was hoping to make. I was sketching with too many lines. To use fewer lines, though, you need to know precisely what lines to use. I don’t know of any clever way to get to that other than raw practice — resurfaced 12× · 106 likes · 2019-06-21 · Writing · on X
  • Me, aged 12, reacting to an anonymous hater — resurfaced 12× · 106 likes · 2018-05-24 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • 🤔 magic is curiosity + attentiveness + persistence + willingness to revise and re-evaluate everything 🤔 — resurfaced 12× · 96 likes · 2019-06-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Great post by @altimor with a useful coinage: the Tough Tomato principle. Tomatoes were bred to be tougher than “ideal” to withstand the industrial tomato-harvesting process. Incentive systems everywhere similarly create tough tomatoes in *all* sorts of contexts https://x.com/altimor/status/1122889823705083904 — resurfaced 12× · 89 likes · 2019-04-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • been talking to several SMB entrepreneurs lately and here are some of my observations — resurfaced 12× · 77 likes · 2018-04-19 · Business & Markets · on X
  • It's fascinating to me how you can see certain universal motifs across cultures: Ai Aipec, the chief deity of the Mochica culture (Peru) the Kirtimukha, face of glory, guardian of the threshold (Hindu) Hannya, Japanese mask in Noh theater, common in tattoos the Maori Haka — resurfaced 12× · 75 likes · 2019-09-25 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I think rather I’m motivated by a sort of fear. The world is changing pretty quickly. I’m not confident that my place in it is secure. I don’t have a particular ingroup or tribe that I trust to take care of me. So I need to build my own trust network, person by person — resurfaced 12× · 73 likes · 2018-10-05 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Sometimes when life gets foggy, tumultuous and dark, I navigate via the buoys and lights that past-Visas set up for me. When the skies and seas are clear, I set up buoys for future-Visas. This has helped me rehabilitate a broken relationship with myself into something beautiful — resurfaced 12× · 68 likes · 2019-01-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Also see Neal Stephenson's "Why I Am A Bad Correspondent" > I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent. https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.html — resurfaced 12× · 67 likes · 2018-10-17 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • my man michel figured out the problem with traditional schooling almost 500 years ago and we still here indoctrinating kids — resurfaced 12× · 59 likes · 2021-01-07 · Education & Learning · on X
  • All my best friends have kicked my ass — resurfaced 12× · 53 likes · 2019-01-15 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • the older I get, the more comfortable I am in saying that the LOTR character I most relate to is actually Gandalf — resurfaced 12× · 47 likes · 2019-02-23 · Film & TV · on X
  • Sony's story begins with Masaru Ibuka [1908–1997]. He graduated from Waseda in 1993, worked in movie film processing, then served in the Navy as a researcher during WW2. After WW2, he started a radio repair shop in the bombed out Shirokiya Department Store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo — resurfaced 12× · 45 likes · 2019-04-06 · Science & Technology · on X
  • I have, in moments of quiet and darkness, contemplated Going Dark. Power is delicious! You can win, like, all the fights, by playing dirty! But there is one problem with The Dark Side: and that is it is the Path Without Friends. And life without friends is not worth living — resurfaced 12× · 35 likes · 2019-07-06 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • @callumflack Pic I took in-game: government imposes military authority and food rationing etc, but the people reject it violently because they found it corrupt and abusive. Crazier than what zombies do to us is what we do to each other when there are zombies at the gates — resurfaced 12× · 30 likes · 2018-08-25 · Games · on X
  • @drossbucket reminds me of closing paragraph of Rollo May's Man's Search For Himself, quoting Socrates: "Whether such a city exists in heaven or will ever exist on earth, the wise man will live after the manner of that city..." — resurfaced 12× · 15 likes · 2022-06-20 · Philosophy · on X
  • 1. ornamental ironwork https://x.com/visakanv/status/1064067881451712514 — resurfaced 12× · 11 likes · 2019-04-05 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Prophet: ok i'm gonna blow ur fuckin mind are u ready Disciples: yes Prophet: love people Disciples: [writing down] be a cop, got it — resurfaced 11× · 1,451 likes · 2022-04-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • if I could go back in time to witness one moment in musical history, this might be it — resurfaced 11× · 1,370 likes · 2019-02-07 · Music · on X
  • these 15 seconds reveal that marie kondo is the complete opposite of what ~95% of her haters seem to assume she is — resurfaced 11× · 1,000 likes · 2019-01-21 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • I feel like “put yourself in the shoes of the people who have the ability to give you what you want, then work give them what they want” is still a dramatically underutilized frame for getting what you want. It applies to everything from dating to jobs. Foundational peopling 101 — resurfaced 11× · 582 likes · 2019-11-25 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • If you’re like me, keep meticulous notes of whatever you do when you’re procrastinating. I think of it as “deep-self-directed work”. If you’re going to watch trashy movies then write down your thoughts after watching each movie. It’ll come in handy in ways you least expect — resurfaced 11× · 397 likes · 2018-12-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • a @sighswoon classic: — resurfaced 11× · 341 likes · 2021-10-11 · Random · on X
  • To me, this is a great metaphor for how to think about having a sound mind. You can't have anything that's overly secured or tethered to anything – that then becomes a point of failure. Nothing can be too sacred. But that doesn't mean nothing *is* sacred. Rather, everything is! — resurfaced 11× · 340 likes · 2018-10-06 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Meditated on it and I still find it funny Disagreeable people come at me and try to get me to agree with them that disagreeableness is superior to agreeableness and I don’t agree The deeper you get into it the funnier it gets — resurfaced 11× · 331 likes · 2020-01-19 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @QiaochuYuan @Klockwerklime @bahstgwamt @AdmiralOPG @chaosprime @vinayaki_ @nuanceexists @selentelechia world: hi, welcome to the world. you have to pick a tribe me: I choose everyone world: then you just offend and upset everybody me: [tearfully] I choose everyone — resurfaced 11× · 301 likes · 2020-06-07 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Feeling nostalgic: what are some articles, essays, blogposts etc that would go into a compilation called "the people's oral history of the internet"? — resurfaced 11× · 301 likes · 2019-01-21 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Every group of friends incubates a nascent society. 99.999% of them fail to do anything with it. once in a few hundred years a bunch of bloggers and nerds create something like The United States — resurfaced 11× · 284 likes · 2021-04-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Pope Pius XII in 1950: “...the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part of the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction.” — resurfaced 11× · 246 likes · 2023-05-30 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • beginners are comparing themselves to Beyoncé but it's important to know that Beyoncé herself would not have matched up to Beyoncé now because Beyoncé now is not just Beyoncé, but Beyoncé with tonnes of experience and an entire team supporting her — resurfaced 11× · 214 likes · 2022-05-30 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • It’s so difficult to go from being an underdog to being successful (happens to 1% of people?), and it seems so unlikely when you’re slogging, that... when they get successful, it seems like only 1-5% of *those* are able to adapt and reorient What got you here won’t get you there — resurfaced 11× · 195 likes · 2019-08-28 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Been telling a few friends lately (was the topic of my previous tinyletter) about my sense that feelings are under-appreciated, under-considered, under-articulated, misunderstood, misrepresented - & all of that is a massive bottleneck. To be in tune with your feelings is sublime https://x.com/vgr/status/1158191381187137536 — resurfaced 11× · 188 likes · 2019-08-05 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • i know there's all sorts of nuance and blah blah about process and peer-reviews and replicability blah blah don't @ me — resurfaced 11× · 184 likes · 2018-12-31 · Science & Technology · on X
  • I humbly request my mutuals to stop quote-tweeting bad takes and bad examples of dumb people doing and saying dumb shit — resurfaced 11× · 166 likes · 2019-11-02 · Internet Culture · on X
  • 🚣‍♀️ row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream~ ☺️ merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily... [**Inception BWOOONG**] 💀👹🤡 LIFE IS BUT A DREAM 🤖👽👺 — resurfaced 11× · 166 likes · 2018-08-04 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I've actually been thinking about this class of problem lately a lot on multiple fronts. 1. people are very bad at asking good questions in general 2. people are very bad at modelling other people's minds 3. as a consequence of 1 + 2, people are very bad at getting help https://x.com/visakanv/status/935373856054767616 — resurfaced 11× · 160 likes · 2017-11-28 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • 61. There is something profoundly *sick* about how systemic problems are atomized into personal failings — resurfaced 11× · 152 likes · 2018-12-27 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • P: in fact, saying “if only I could be like X” is an excuse to not change. Like my wannabe-novelist friend, who wants to be a wannabe-novelist full of excuses, not a novelist who struggles and faces rejection Y: wow, big mood — resurfaced 11× · 151 likes · 2018-09-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I often return to this talk by Liz Gilbert to contextualize this sort of thing for me: https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius?view=transcript — resurfaced 11× · 140 likes · 2018-12-21 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, interpreted by @zenpencils — resurfaced 11× · 138 likes · 2018-09-26 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Have decided to revisit High Output Management because I believe it will improve my performance at Overcooked 2 — resurfaced 11× · 137 likes · 2019-03-29 · Games · on X
  • I repeat... if you’re moderately good at articulating something, just enough to strike a nerve, people with relevant experiences and ideas etc will start telling you their stories and dramatically level up your understanding + ability to articulate it even better — resurfaced 11× · 134 likes · 2019-01-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Watching this is so cute and wholesome and I find myself thinking of that French-Iranian novelist... here. Marjane Satrapi https://x.com/mister_nobodya/status/1228576440574148608 — resurfaced 11× · 129 likes · 2020-02-16 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • Every time you go to sleep, your conscious self dies and slips into the ether, the realm between realms. Multiple ages pass in a night there, but you aren’t supposed to feel it. If you’re lucky, the reboot is successful, and the illusion of continuity holds. One day... it won’t. — resurfaced 11× · 129 likes · 2018-07-05 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • also this cover of Hans Zimmer's First Step (from Interstellar) by @tusharlall02 is one of my favorite things to cry to while thinking about the splendor and despair of humanity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKILNbrWxBQ — resurfaced 11× · 120 likes · 2018-12-26 · Music · on X
  • "but what about Apple, they are are so stylish" Have you ever seen what the Apple I looked like; it was just a motherboard. It didn't even ship with a keyboard, monitor, and case. You had to get those yourself — resurfaced 11× · 116 likes · 2019-03-14 · Business & Markets · on X
  • 29. just discovered /r/enoughpetersonspam, where 31,000+ people voluntarily subscribe to posts about Jordan Peterson, including posts indicating shock at reddit suggesting that maybe they might be interested in Jordan Peterson — resurfaced 11× · 96 likes · 2020-10-22 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Nice Here’s my #1 rec for @twitter: realize that quote tweets are a killer feature of your product. Add it as a separate part of notifications besides All and Mentions. And separate it from RTs. Ie make it “likes, RTs, QTs”. Sounds radical? It’ll push this game into hyperdrive https://x.com/patrickc/status/1136805365373231105 — resurfaced 11× · 94 likes · 2019-06-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • This desire, by the way, is how kids end up with bad company. Charming manipulators know how to appeal to a child’s desire for independence, desire to be seen. This is why kids date bad boys and get hideous tattoos. To exercise their *sovereignty*. — resurfaced 11× · 81 likes · 2019-03-06 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • there have been like at least 5 instances where I say something, and people think it means I am Saying Something. I get reactions like "so you're saying..." "your point?" Like... I don't know, guys. I'm just thinking out loud here. Why must everything Have A Point — resurfaced 11× · 78 likes · 2018-06-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • “After long arguments we often found ourselves in the ludicrous position of each having been converted to the other’s side.” – Orville Wright “I like scrapping with Orv. He's such a good scrapper.” – Wilbur Wright — resurfaced 11× · 74 likes · 2017-11-20 · History · on X
  • I already have several aesthetics thread, but here's one that's like... *only* examples of art that I would like to *actually* print out and surround myself with to keep me inspired so... @visakanv's refactored aesthetics, the 2019 thread — resurfaced 11× · 60 likes · 2019-06-29 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • “Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.” ― Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That #quotes — resurfaced 11× · 59 likes · 2017-07-21 · Philosophy · on X
  • Cheap beers and grand schemes. "Few would stay the course." - #LKY http://t.co/ckfhb3r4Bu — resurfaced 11× · 56 likes · 2015-05-05 · History · on X
  • Trauma is a full body experience — resurfaced 11× · 53 likes · 2018-04-05 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Who attended her salons? Some of her guests that you might recognize are: Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclar Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse. Here's Gertrude in her Paris studio, with portrait of her that was painted by Picasso — resurfaced 11× · 38 likes · 2021-02-25 · History · on X
  • Movies thread — resurfaced 11× · 35 likes · 2018-11-24 · Film & TV · on X
  • 59. In this video I just fanboy about the moon for 2 minutes — resurfaced 11× · 32 likes · 2019-12-12 · Science & Technology · on X
  • "The truth is a matter of circumstance, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I." - Black Widow, in The Winter Soldier — resurfaced 11× · 18 likes · 2018-03-03 · Film & TV · on X
  • the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want — resurfaced 10× · 3,817 likes · 2021-05-18 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • sometimes- quite often, really - the answer to the question of “but what if it hurts” is “then you suffer, lol” — resurfaced 10× · 1,177 likes · 2022-04-11 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • inside every hot girl there is a skeleton — resurfaced 10× · 824 likes · 2021-02-11 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Bertrand Russell and George Orwell both had riffs on this: if you're precise about what you mean, and choose your words carefully, you end up improving language just by speaking and writing. This happens because other thoughtful players validate your choices as good ones — resurfaced 10× · 668 likes · 2022-04-17 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • i am always pouring some love down the drain because i used to be a sewer rat who needed it — resurfaced 10× · 609 likes · 2023-03-17 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I've finally figured out how I want to present my best work. I'm starting with a pdf / ebook called FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD. It'll be an edited + updated collection of my best threads and essays, released March 1st 2020. You can pre-order it here: https://visakanv.gumroad.com/l/friendlynerdbook — resurfaced 10× · 584 likes · 2020-02-05 · Writing · on X
  • found the vid, had to speed it up by 12% to fit Twitter's 2:20 limit this is a great example of how to support masculine expression in a nourishing way it's attentive, encouraging. Coach supports & challenges the boy to accomplish more than he could before. Increases his power — resurfaced 10× · 505 likes · 2021-07-26 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • The urgent and important task of the philosopher is to wake up every morning and ask everyone, “excuse me, what the fuck?” — resurfaced 10× · 473 likes · 2020-12-08 · Philosophy · on X
  • Too tired to exercise Too anxious to sleep Too stressed to relax Too broke to quit Too overwhelmed to focus Too many things on the schedule Too many overdue tasks Too many unmet obligations Too many unanswered emails Too much going on — resurfaced 10× · 452 likes · 2018-05-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Meanwhile aspiring writerbros in my DMs: I have written two blogposts. Give me writing advice Me: write 100 blogposts Guy: no — resurfaced 10× · 429 likes · 2019-03-27 · Writing · on X
  • had several conversations w/ friends who've been incapacitated by the burdensome bullshit obligation to Have A Meaningful Life / Be Remembered / Do Important Work strikes me as socially inherited bloatware that causes tedious lag, which ironically prevents you from being awesome — resurfaced 10× · 382 likes · 2019-11-18 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • There must be at least one guy whose two primary interests are Bodybuilding and Poetry Who is he? I wanna hang out — resurfaced 10× · 333 likes · 2021-01-05 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • sometimes when I say "I've been thinking about this for a long time", the reality of it is closer to "i've held on to this idea-lattice for a long time, and the ways in which it has degraded in my mind have revealed things to me" — resurfaced 10× · 287 likes · 2018-12-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • some quick notes from a skim of a book that I obsessed about in 2011, Tor Nørretranders’ The User Illusion — resurfaced 10× · 286 likes · 2022-12-31 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Several conversations with several friends - and also the story of my entire life - is getting me to crystalize some thoughts The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people — resurfaced 10× · 277 likes · 2019-07-11 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • I've always been a fan of this "Soviet aesthetic". They had a certain appreciation for majestic elegance that I don't think I've seen anywhere else. — resurfaced 10× · 264 likes · 2018-01-20 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • The amount of latent wealth sitting around my social graph is staggering to me. Some of you should dare and marry each other, but you don’t know it yet. Some of you should start companies together, but you don’t know it yet. Social media is still not even 1% *truly social* — resurfaced 10× · 263 likes · 2019-05-28 · Internet Culture · on X
  • she is my Mona Lisa... gonna figure her out eventually — resurfaced 10× · 261 likes · 2020-05-27 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • i'm reflecting on how layered it is 1. there's some desire in ur heart 2. follow it, get burned. pain 3. create a barrier around the desire, lock it up 4. now feel cold, desolate 5. feel bad abt cold 6. beat self up for feeling bad 7. detach 8. ugh why am i so bored & listless — resurfaced 10× · 248 likes · 2022-01-17 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • “Nothing I do is original” Nothing is! Renaissance paintings are bible fanart. The bible itself was probably compiled and remixed from existing stories. Everything has predecessors, everything is a remix. You can’t make original things. But you can make interesting things — resurfaced 10× · 245 likes · 2019-01-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I don’t know if I ever specifically set out to learn this, but Ive gotten pretty good at it over the years: I think giving people specific and sincere compliments is a pretty great skill to develop. It’s a the intersection of making people feel good + developing your taste — resurfaced 10× · 243 likes · 2019-03-17 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • there's a limited amount of conversation space that most people operate in. you can actually pretty much survey, study and map out that entire conversation space, and "complete" it. it's actually pretty similar to say, learning all they scales and chords and keys in western music — resurfaced 10× · 236 likes · 2020-06-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Gonna do some reading and research into the history of Singapore(an) Indians, aka "my people". Mainstream oral/colloquial knowledge of this history is sparse, and I suspect that it's by design, because of a bunch of uncomfortable details. Let's see what we find out. — resurfaced 10× · 230 likes · 2018-05-26 · History · on X
  • A thread of my favorite 2,000-year-old graffiti from Pompeii Source: https://t.co/wPzPMvrYnO — resurfaced 10× · 229 likes · 2018-12-11 · History · on X
  • Going through my old photos - it’s striking how much better I looked 2 months after leaving my job. I *wasn’t* eating better, I was eating junk every day. I wasn’t sleeping better, I was playing video games late into the night. I believe this is largely just lower cortisol levels — resurfaced 10× · 227 likes · 2020-03-12 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • I vividly remember what it was like to be a child. I often turn to Maurice Sendak for quotes to help remind people who’ve forgotten — resurfaced 10× · 206 likes · 2020-10-06 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • This is why - I’m totally serious - it’s important to have proper documentation and handover protocols. I’ve seen local music and political and journalism scenes repeatedly stuck in the same small sad loops because nobody has the foresight Play the 100 year game https://x.com/ssteinlubrano/status/1221583848745656321 — resurfaced 10× · 187 likes · 2020-01-27 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. [...] Discourage an artist... you get absolutely nothing in return, ever." http://www.zenpencils.com/comic/kevinsmith/ — resurfaced 10× · 179 likes · 2018-09-29 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • "The best advice is not to tell people what to do, but to ask them the right questions. Find out what's going on in their head, and help them frame that in a way that's useful." – @gtdguy https://x.com/tferriss/status/1168904736227102720 — resurfaced 10× · 161 likes · 2019-09-10 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • There’s a spectrum from obvious cliché to incomprehensible gibberish and all the magic is in the turbulent sweet spot in the middle — resurfaced 10× · 160 likes · 2021-02-18 · Writing · on X
  • https://x.com/Rahmeljackson/status/1331241180496089088 — resurfaced 10× · 154 likes · 2020-11-24 · Random · on X
  • *fires up the twitter* There is an entire shadow world hiding in plain sight. Learning about this I think was more mind-boggling than learning about the scale and scope of the universe. It’s like social dark matter. Most people don’t see it and many never will — resurfaced 10× · 152 likes · 2018-12-15 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Just realised I don’t have an “interesting aesthetics” thread. So here we go. Interesting aesthetics, a thread — resurfaced 10× · 149 likes · 2018-07-03 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • children are naturals at being natural, but we socialize it out of them — resurfaced 10× · 148 likes · 2019-06-21 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • As a picky eater I had no experience in the kitchen. I didn’t know how to crack an egg 😂 I steeled myself by watching lots of beginner cooking vids on YouTube. Those strangers changed my life. It’s the little things. What do you do with your hands...? How do you hold a knife...? — resurfaced 10× · 144 likes · 2018-08-27 · Food & Dining · on X
  • It's all my fault and that's a good thing! It's all my fault and that's a GOOD thing! It's all MY fault and that's a good thing! It's ALL my fault and that's a good thing! IT'S ALL MY FAULT AND THAT'S A GOOD THING IT'S ALL MY FAULT AND THAT'S A GOOD THING GOOD THING GOOD — resurfaced 10× · 133 likes · 2018-04-04 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • So here’s how I think I think about it: a book is a sort of prosthetic. A book is a frame, put together by an author and her support team, a specific window, a specific lens, a particular way of seeing. The book is FOCUSING *FOR* YOU. Am I making sense? — resurfaced 10× · 128 likes · 2018-08-06 · Books & Literature · on X
  • I might be naive/ignorant here but - in my experience it always makes more sense to persuade individuals than to try to change big-picture narratives or “the zeitgeist”. in fact I think doing the former is the only way to properly do the latter — resurfaced 10× · 126 likes · 2019-02-09 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Everything is a remix, everything can be further remixed — resurfaced 10× · 124 likes · 2019-03-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • A comment on my YouTube channel - I’ll write a proper reply when I get to my computer, maybe even make a whole video about it - but basically “crazy amount of effort” is what it takes to get to anywhere worth going. If you saw my twitter at 800 followers you’d say the same — resurfaced 10× · 118 likes · 2020-04-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I think one of the most depressing discoveries I had was the realization that intellectuals can be bought and sold, almost like commodities — resurfaced 10× · 114 likes · 2018-09-05 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • A todo list: - learn the measurement of Milan - draw Milan - ask A how to square a triangle - ask B how the tower of Ferrera is walled - ask C how people in Flanders walk on ice - ask D how to repair a lock, canal and mill, Lombard-style - ask E for measurement of the sun — resurfaced 10× · 101 likes · 2018-04-13 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • a flourishing scene is a context where people unblock each other at a tremendous rate https://x.com/__drewface/status/1425112141674303495 — resurfaced 10× · 100 likes · 2021-08-10 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • his middle name is kindred this is a quote from Philip Kindred Dick — resurfaced 10× · 86 likes · 2022-02-19 · Books & Literature · on X
  • I quote from Pericles' Funeral Oration enough times that it makes sense for me to make a thread. [~431 BCE] (Someday maybe I'll even work through multiple different translations and compare them to each other, but for now, I'll work with what I got) https://t.co/QPoCToCNzz — resurfaced 10× · 84 likes · 2021-09-25 · History · on X
  • @sharanvkaur now we have two problems — resurfaced 10× · 84 likes · 2021-06-11 · Science & Technology · on X
  • this guy Oleg Vladimirovich Losev invented LEDs decades before everybody else (in the 1920s) but nobody cared. he was a lonely nerd with no co-authors. wrote to einstein but didn't get a reply https://web.archive.org/web/20110511132457/http://www.nanophotonics.org.uk/niz/publications/zheludev-2007-ltl.pdf — resurfaced 10× · 81 likes · 2020-11-26 · Science & Technology · on X
  • By being clear about *exactly* what he wants, no more and no less, Ogilvy develops an almost mythical level of freedom and independence. He can’t be bought. This mythical status makes people want him and his preciously genuine counsel even more. *wipes tear* it’s beautiful — resurfaced 10× · 81 likes · 2018-11-11 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • One of my fav bits from Lewis Thomas, who was a science communicator / biologist watcher who influenced me a lot: the biggest massive multiplayer game is *language*. We might not realise it but we are all shaping it, through all our utterances https://x.com/rivatez/status/1093761815870205952 — resurfaced 10× · 78 likes · 2019-02-08 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • A friend once told me why he hates Winston Churchill Friend has a shit relationship with his distant dad Dad was raised by depressed, psychotic grandma Grandma lost all her older children in Bengal famine of 1943 Churchill responsible for famine So fuck Winston Churchill — resurfaced 10× · 78 likes · 2019-01-10 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • trad guy in 2021: we live in a morally corrupt society, I wish we were more like the romans trad roman guy in 79: we live in a morally corrupt society, I wish we were more like the ancients https://t.co/A86bJklppv — resurfaced 10× · 75 likes · 2021-07-15 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Two of the most addictive yet engaging games I’ve played were both made by Firaxis games - Civilisation V and XCOM 2. “Eh, just one more turn” -> “damn, it’s 5am” — resurfaced 10× · 75 likes · 2018-08-28 · Games · on X
  • SG was occupied by the Japanese during WW2 (1942-1945) - ~100,000 allied troops killed or imprisoned - Between 50,000 to 100,000 Chinese young men were rounded up and killed - people were decapitated; heads were put on pikes in the city, food was scarce, terrible conditions — resurfaced 10× · 74 likes · 2018-08-08 · History · on X
  • I just feel like I'm never fucking good enough. Maybe I became an underperforming, lackadaisical underachiever to avoid dealing with that. — resurfaced 10× · 72 likes · 2015-01-17 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • @spiritualpoet_ "Love tells me I am everything. Wisdom tells me I am nothing. And between these 2 banks, flows the river of my life." - Nisargadatta — resurfaced 10× · 72 likes · 2017-11-02 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • fuck fixed mindset, all my homies hate fixed mindset — resurfaced 10× · 71 likes · 2020-07-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Time for a thread on sensitivity. My personal model of excellence involves 3 variables: sensitivity, smarts and strength. Most people intuitively know why it’s good to be smart and strong, but sensitivity is too-often framed as a weakness https://x.com/visakanv/status/1013257129585664001 — resurfaced 10× · 70 likes · 2018-07-01 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • A writer is a maniac who toils laboriously to assemble a sequence of squiggles that generate a parlor of hallucinations in an attempt to jailbreak her own mind out of the prison of her subvocalizations. The wild thing is this actually works sometimes — resurfaced 10× · 69 likes · 2019-04-06 · Writing · on X
  • some recent search queries of mine: marx engels friendship reddit jessica jones black panther ta nehesi comics mark hamill dave prowse thelastpsych narcissus planescape torment that was your first wish tron highway polyclinic sunday open war is worse than hell — resurfaced 10× · 66 likes · 2018-03-13 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Step 2: identify all the pages that you find interesting enough to want to revisit in the future Step 3: create an index if you haven't already Step 4: Highlight/emphasize the best/important stuff — resurfaced 10× · 61 likes · 2019-11-24 · Writing · on X
  • Have you ever instantly developed a deep admiration for somebody for who they are as a person? I last felt this way about Barack Obama (even before he became POTUS44), and I feel similarly about Bozoma Saint John – Uber's current Chief Brand Officer. Her story is remarkable to me — resurfaced 10× · 53 likes · 2017-12-17 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • @zoeyspells Fun fact: the original root meaning of the word "weird" is something like "powerful, one who controls fate". One of my favorite words. Wear it with pride! #weirdheart — resurfaced 10× · 50 likes · 2017-12-26 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • Debbie Harry, singer of Blondie, 1976 Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, 2016 — resurfaced 10× · 45 likes · 2021-03-03 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • a recap / overview of sorts of phase 2 of the VV hypertext universe — resurfaced 10× · 45 likes · 2020-06-11 · Writing · on X
  • Facebook is going to be worth a trillion dollars one day, and on that day millions of people will quote JT's "You know what's cool?" — resurfaced 10× · 41 likes · 2015-11-05 · Business & Markets · on X
  • Practically everything is just a bunch of stuff. And the stuff is made up of other stuff, and there’s relationships between them. You take one thing and you fiddle around with it, try it in different contexts, move it up and down and turn it inside out and you start to understand — resurfaced 10× · 41 likes · 2018-11-30 · Education & Learning · on X
  • 36. TIL that Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart were close friends. In 1933, they snuck out of a White House dinner in their gowns and slippers, and flew a Curtiss Condor biplane to Baltimore and back in 1933 — resurfaced 10× · 39 likes · 2018-11-23 · History · on X
  • Done!! yup needs some micro adjustments but this feels much better. No more dead space and now I can compare/contrast two vert things side by side easily — resurfaced 10× · 38 likes · 2023-01-11 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • There are actually some very specific things that I do that reflect my self-as-assemblage, which might seem weird to some people, but I find very therapeutic https://x.com/visakanv/status/1087420081737355264 — resurfaced 10× · 34 likes · 2019-01-22 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I’ve blocked about 12 followers out of 8,000+ in 10 years on Twitter. Not counting bots or comically malicious people, but real people who were following me and even said nice and supportive things to/about me. It’s never a pleasant or fun thing to do and I think about it *a lot* — resurfaced 10× · 33 likes · 2018-12-22 · Internet Culture · on X
  • @sonyasupposedly Rip to non-survivors but I’m different — resurfaced 10× · 29 likes · 2020-06-26 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • One of my fantasies/goals is to earn the right to have enough quality followers that I can get interesting responses to anything I ask. — resurfaced 10× · 26 likes · 2016-03-29 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Me, in a professional business context: — resurfaced 10× · 25 likes · 2018-11-08 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Being a polytribal weirdheart, a thread — resurfaced 10× · 22 likes · 2018-06-02 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Friendly Ambitious Nerds, poetry edition: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (L) and William Wordsworth (R) were poetry bros in the UK, both born in the 1770s. They formed a poetry group with their mutuals Wordsworth hosted hundreds of visitors and became Poet Laureate of the UK — resurfaced 10× · 21 likes · 2020-05-22 · Books & Literature · on X
  • it's more complicated than that of course — but if you get it, you get it — resurfaced 10× · 14 likes · 2019-02-07 · Philosophy · on X
  • And "ctrl + alt + left cmd + left" lets me move windows across my monitors. All with one hand (other hand is filming this!) — resurfaced 10× · 10 likes · 2017-08-16 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Cloud, Shepard, Terra, Ark, and now Aloy - to me they all embody this idea that if you conduct yourself with decency and humanity, and help others, you can earn their gratitude and loyalty - and in the process collectively become something greater than yourselves — resurfaced 10× · 0 likes · 2018-05-04 · Games · on X
  • the most legendary comeback in fighting game history — resurfaced 9× · 3,971 likes · 2019-01-12 · Games · on X
  • took me years to begin to understand that one of the most heroic things you can do is not hate yourself — resurfaced 9× · 1,117 likes · 2021-11-21 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Excited newbie: let’s do all the things!! Grizzled veteran: we have limited time, energy, morale, goodwill. Keeping this in mind, let’s pick one demonstrably good thing we’re confident we can achieve, and get it done decisively so we unlock more resources to do more things — resurfaced 9× · 893 likes · 2019-04-02 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • To the Asian kids who wonder if their parents might be nicer to them if they had achieved more in life: lately I’ve been hearing from my ultra-high-achiever friends that their parents guilt them with “oh, you very smart lah, you know everything, we stupid lah” TLDR you can’t win — resurfaced 9× · 867 likes · 2018-11-20 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • Always wack when you get to witness people learn something about themselves in public — resurfaced 9× · 774 likes · 2022-03-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • @QiaochuYuan Christian Bale on Wall St bros loving Patrick Bateman — resurfaced 9× · 731 likes · 2022-10-11 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • Some examples of my wife's improvisations over the years – she's fantastic at avoiding functional fixedness + seeing new ways of doing things hidden in plain sight. these are just the examples that I remembered to save for posterity — resurfaced 9× · 692 likes · 2018-05-08 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • misunderstanding is the default state — resurfaced 9× · 542 likes · 2023-11-17 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • George Washington: 1. Respect others 13. If your friend has lice, remove it privately 38. When visiting the sick, don’t play physician 41. “Undertake not to teach your equal in the art himself professes” 46. Take all admonition thankfully 49. Use no reproachful language — resurfaced 9× · 530 likes · 2018-09-11 · History · on X
  • I love to go on Twitch and look up people who are streaming with 0 viewers, and then say nice supportive things in the replies. They're always so excited and happy to have you, we both end up happy — resurfaced 9× · 514 likes · 2020-08-26 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Reflecting on my own life experience, I think reducing one's cowardice by half creates far more utility than tripling or quadrupling one's analytical intelligence — resurfaced 9× · 495 likes · 2020-03-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @selentelechia 🐨 — resurfaced 9× · 460 likes · 2021-12-07 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • There comes a point in your personal development where people will start telling you that you should stop being publicly honest about your self-assessment, for reasons ranging from “it’ll make people feel bad” to “it’ll come across as bragging” — resurfaced 9× · 391 likes · 2020-01-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 30. the nature of ambition, Grant Snider (@grantdraws) https://t.co/iPfOacNVnH — resurfaced 9× · 335 likes · 2022-04-14 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • tweets that changed my life — resurfaced 9× · 314 likes · 2020-07-20 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I don’t need an employer to give me burnout I can do it all by myself — resurfaced 9× · 296 likes · 2021-10-05 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • “...in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.” — Wilbur Wright — resurfaced 9× · 252 likes · 2023-06-25 · Philosophy · on X
  • "haters gonna hate" – ben franklin — resurfaced 9× · 251 likes · 2019-05-24 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves." -Carl Jung — resurfaced 9× · 247 likes · 2011-12-23 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • the more interesting qn to ask, compared to "how do you compete with smarter people", is "how do you win the love, trust, support & goodwill of smarter people, so that THEY are on YOUR side" it's interesting how rarely anybody seems to ask this. i think about this all the time — resurfaced 9× · 239 likes · 2019-01-27 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • saw a tweet that’s like (I paraphrase) “straight guys used to get to be more fashionably fancy but not anymore” you can actually wear bold colours, jewelry and makeup etc at any time, and you’ll get loads of compliments and attention from women for it — resurfaced 9× · 232 likes · 2021-04-26 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • 8. don't ask questions just consume product and then get excited for next products — resurfaced 9× · 217 likes · 2021-03-28 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I have a term I use for myself called "truth in boxes", which are the truths that are so powerful that we keep them locked away in boxes because otherwise they'll force us to re-evaluate the rest of our lives. Which can be exhausting. Typically we hit "remind me later" on these — resurfaced 9× · 206 likes · 2018-12-14 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • @fortelabs Email @Conaw Dickpics Not Titpics try forgetting that one — resurfaced 9× · 189 likes · 2020-09-21 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • 🌹🌸🌷💐 unfollow me 💐🌷🌸🌹 — resurfaced 9× · 184 likes · 2019-06-09 · Internet Culture · on X
  • thanks to @ollybot_browne I finally have a visual on what the @visakanv web of threads looks like https://obrowne.eu/tweetGraph.html — resurfaced 9× · 178 likes · 2020-05-26 · Internet Culture · on X
  • project management is something that *isn't* super intuitive, because it's something that involves things that are bigger than what you might naturally do in a given day. The variance is massive. Some people dick around their whole lives, others build cathedrals and rocket ships — resurfaced 9× · 174 likes · 2018-10-31 · Education & Learning · on X
  • @Coscorrodrift @eigenrobot came to mind as a fun adjacent eg of something “one of us” would do — resurfaced 9× · 173 likes · 2021-07-03 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Wholesome https://x.com/baz00per/status/1049687758711730177 — resurfaced 9× · 169 likes · 2018-10-11 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • a king is a conduit for the honor of his people a tyrant or weakling tries to hoard it personally, continually demands more adoration, dries it up with his neediness and impulsivity a good king honors others in turn, artfully, and in so doing, keeps the “honor economy” flowing — resurfaced 9× · 163 likes · 2022-02-09 · Philosophy · on X
  • very often when people talk about books (particularly true for intellectual twitter, imo), they frame it in terms of takeaways and learnings and insights imo there's a whole other way of reading, and it's what I really love about books: that they present different ways of being — resurfaced 9× · 151 likes · 2018-10-09 · Books & Literature · on X
  • This guy Giovanni Vigliotto fraudulently married 104 women. He'd take their money and their belongings, promise to meet, then run away, selling their stuff at flea markets — resurfaced 9× · 144 likes · 2021-06-27 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Feel like doing a Margaery Tyrell appreciation thread. They really did my Queen wrong 😠 https://x.com/visakanv/status/1068511367919886338 — resurfaced 9× · 140 likes · 2018-11-30 · Film & TV · on X
  • none of us needs to be happy, well-adjusted, mature, enlightened, etc all the time we can *take turns* we can take care of each other we can sooth and comfort and challenge each other, lift each other up the meaning of life is friends https://x.com/visakanv/status/1022508497362071552 — resurfaced 9× · 139 likes · 2019-12-11 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • culture wars are partially downstream of the media-tech nation dropping paratrooper brainworms inside the OODA loops of those with fragile self-sense and people-sense, and recruiting them as cannon-fodder mooks into profitable-but-destructive psychofauna titan battles — resurfaced 9× · 136 likes · 2023-03-13 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • OK so some context – Vic Wooten is a *phenomenal* bass player, considered by many to be the best in the world. He was raised by a musical family, and has a "music is a language, you should learn via osmosis" type of philosophy that I personally find very profound and affirming — resurfaced 9× · 135 likes · 2019-01-19 · Music · on X
  • I was watching the episode of @patriotact that's about fast fashion, and something struck me about the fake/parody/satire H-M store with giant posters of Hasan on the walls. There's something here about social strategy + slingshot theory + mere exposure effect — resurfaced 9× · 133 likes · 2019-11-26 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • egragore? oh, you mean the psychic megafauna — resurfaced 9× · 131 likes · 2021-08-20 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @nickarner I sometimes think of the ADHD mind as a Gatling gun - it takes a while to warm up, jams easily and is harder to aim, but once you appreciate its idiosyncrasies you can use it effectively — resurfaced 9× · 130 likes · 2018-12-21 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • "Can I know you?" "Will you be my friend?" "I think I've fallen in love with you" are all selfish, short-sighted, things to say that force the other person to do all the work of figuring out the relationship you're trying to establish. — resurfaced 9× · 130 likes · 2017-11-28 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • This is what draws me to philosophy and marketing. Software engineers say things like “wow you can make stuff with code just by thinking it and typing it” yes and!! have you tried reimagining your entire reality. Wild — resurfaced 9× · 129 likes · 2018-10-05 · Philosophy · on X
  • ~600 years later lived al-Khwarizmi, who was the astronomer & head librarian of the Baghdad house of wisdom. He popularized algebra, algorithms are named after him. He improved on Ptolemy's maps. That's the @RoamResearch logo in his hand. The USSR commemorated his 1200th birthday https://x.com/visakanv/status/1210871220373086210 — resurfaced 9× · 126 likes · 2020-04-14 · History · on X
  • @QiaochuYuan if we can get more men to do this, and help each other with it, I honestly believe that we can *truly* heal the world — resurfaced 9× · 119 likes · 2019-12-10 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I was like this myself (picky eater) until I enlisted in the army and had no choice but to eat unfamiliar food or starve Then I decided to teach myself how to food, and it was a very intimate and personal journey I have a lot of sympathy for picky eaters. It isn’t easy https://x.com/badgaizak/status/1033539211943657473 — resurfaced 9× · 114 likes · 2018-08-27 · Food & Dining · on X
  • Singapore is older than people think. It's an island-city along a major global shipping/trading route! (LOCATION!) It was part of the Srivijaya & Majapahit empires, claimed by the Siamese, Javanese, then Malacca and Johor. You can see "Cingapura" in this Portuguese map from 1619 — resurfaced 9× · 111 likes · 2018-08-08 · History · on X
  • two of my favorite poems *ever* written: Good Bones, by @maggiesmithpoet Partition, by @asgharthegrouch — resurfaced 9× · 107 likes · 2018-09-24 · Books & Literature · on X
  • In particular I am inspired by Chrysippus of Soli, who died laughing at his own joke. A legend — resurfaced 9× · 102 likes · 2018-12-28 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • me: everybody should make friends and help each other out! friends: visa you are right... and you have been so helpful... you look like you need help, let us help you me: — resurfaced 9× · 101 likes · 2020-12-22 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • me: I'm tired of discussing politics with you guys. I'd rather meet and talk with the prime minister. my friends: that's so fucking cocky and arrogant of you lmao why the fuck would he want to talk to you me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'll figure it out — resurfaced 9× · 100 likes · 2021-01-06 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • The Moscow Metro: Belorusskaya Station (built in 1938) Komsomolskaya Station (1952) Taganskaya Metro Station (1950) Mayakovskaya Station (1938) — resurfaced 9× · 100 likes · 2018-09-30 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • "We were about to play Fake Happy for Good Morning America– one of the anchors comes up and she goes "Well this is a song I relate to!" and i was like, 'It's real!! these people are miserable, but they represent us everyday, and they have to look so happy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cbq968JoFU — resurfaced 9× · 97 likes · 2019-07-21 · Music · on X
  • I've been watching Into The Spider-Verse repeatedly over and over again lately, and I think one of my favorite things about it is how it articulates the Leap of Faith (might be a Kierkegaard reference) How do you know it'll work out? You won't! Welcome to life — resurfaced 9× · 96 likes · 2019-07-17 · Film & TV · on X
  • Morning! Thinking about my personal experiences of and with “privilege”. I think in my personal life, with this as with many other things, I have often found myself having received both the short and long ends of the stick, sometimes seemingly simultaneously — resurfaced 9× · 91 likes · 2019-03-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I love hearing about military leaders who are sensitive and empathetic, adored by their men. This is #goals and it's reminding me of the handful of high-functioning men who inspired me during my own military stint https://t.co/N5ttDHVhcD — resurfaced 9× · 91 likes · 2018-11-17 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • updated my Hire Me page! I'm ready to take on more clients for marketing consulting: https://t.co/nKmJE0xqln — resurfaced 9× · 89 likes · 2022-08-18 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • when playing Paperclip Maximizer, it dawned on me that capitalism is already a sort of indifferently-destructive AI, kinda https://x.com/cyrilsam/status/1070286561646768128 — resurfaced 9× · 89 likes · 2018-12-07 · Science & Technology · on X
  • "How do I build more intimate relationships with people" is a very important question I don't hear many ppl talk abt https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/how-friends-become-closer/538092/ — resurfaced 9× · 89 likes · 2017-09-03 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Me, with love, looking at u being back on ur bullshit again — resurfaced 9× · 85 likes · 2019-06-21 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • the tool should fit the user — resurfaced 9× · 85 likes · 2018-12-31 · Science & Technology · on X
  • inside you there are two wolves. they’re gay. they’re in love. two happy gay wolves — resurfaced 9× · 84 likes · 2020-10-08 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • You may have seen me wearing this - I bought it from this older man in SF who spent his youth travelling through Morocco, Egypt, etc. We talked for 20 mins about art & passion & love. He’s one of me. Talismans are simply objects with stories that are meaningful to you — resurfaced 9× · 83 likes · 2019-06-12 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • You know how some people say “oh I’m so random haha I like a bit of everything”? It’s 99% bullshit. I was sort of like that. Except I wrote everything down. After about 500,000 words you realize you repeat yourself and run out of things to say. Random is a comforting illusion — resurfaced 9× · 81 likes · 2018-08-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • the thing I love about a good idea is that, when it makes it into your brain, all the other ideas, as well as a large set of memories, all get excited and rush over to meet it, and there's this big huddle and everyone starts re-examining themselves & reconsidering their existence — resurfaced 9× · 80 likes · 2018-10-03 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Gustave Eiffel built the Eiffel Tower in 1889, for the World's Fair. If you look at his earlier work, you can kinda trace the evolution of his style: Bourdoux bridge (1860) Maria Pia Bridge (1877) Garabit Viaduct (1884) Colbert Bridge (1888) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Eiffel — resurfaced 9× · 78 likes · 2020-04-16 · History · on X
  • none of my tweets are as impressive as the fact that I *kept at it* — resurfaced 9× · 75 likes · 2021-02-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Emily understood this — resurfaced 9× · 74 likes · 2021-10-15 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • If you only have 5 minutes to check out Singapore, I might have to recommend a walk down South Bridge Road. I’m not sure if there’s anything like if in the world - Indian food - a Muslim mosque - a Hindu temple - a Buddhist temple - Chinese shops - shophouses - corporate towers — resurfaced 9× · 74 likes · 2018-07-25 · Travel & Place · on X
  • have some butt — resurfaced 9× · 65 likes · 2019-01-10 · Internet Culture · on X
  • A caricature of Johnson by James Gillray mocking him for his literary criticism; he is shown doing penance for Apollo and the Muses IMO, if you want to ascend into legend GOAT status you have to accept that this not only comes with the territory, it's part of the actual process — resurfaced 9× · 63 likes · 2021-12-25 · Books & Literature · on X
  • “Boys die by violence and accidents at many times the rate that girls do. They drive too fast, get into fights, haze each other, play sports, join fraternities, drink too much and gamble with their lives in a milllion idiotic ways.” — resurfaced 9× · 62 likes · 2018-04-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I love african facebook way more than american facebook — resurfaced 9× · 58 likes · 2018-03-07 · Internet Culture · on X
  • “This is the contradiction behind so much mental activity in the West. We love money and what we imagine it can buy, and at the same time we are haunted by a fear as old as Achilles: surely there most be some value that is beyond buying and selling, something beyond exchange.” — resurfaced 9× · 57 likes · 2019-04-20 · Philosophy · on X
  • can we collaborate? can we labor together? or can we not? this might be the most fundamental question for human beings — resurfaced 9× · 55 likes · 2022-04-15 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "your duty as someone further along will always be to productively process the pain forged by others, for you must own the hefty responsibility of one who nurtures an empathetic perspective on the viral nature of trauma itself" — resurfaced 9× · 54 likes · 2018-09-20 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • The separation turns out to have been an illusion!! And an illusion that was costly to maintain!! Because it takes more effort to remember 5 seemingly different things than 1 thing with 5 minor variations. But you have to see the pattern first before you can cut the knot — resurfaced 9× · 51 likes · 2018-12-01 · Education & Learning · on X
  • It's been a while since I've been really captivated by an idea, but the one that's got me hooked right now is the idea that jokes are social – they perform social functions, they sustain social orders. They establish identities and boundaries, they alienate and assimilate — resurfaced 9× · 51 likes · 2018-10-03 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • (Black Panther, Charles and Erik in X-Men, the Infamous games, celebrity culture...) Once you strip away the most cartoonish feel-good heroes and comically-bad “just wanna wreck shit” villains, the difference between heroes and villains is their attitude towards The People — resurfaced 9× · 50 likes · 2018-07-22 · Film & TV · on X
  • informalize thread https://x.com/visakanv/status/1358496881572073474 — resurfaced 9× · 47 likes · 2021-02-09 · Random · on X
  • never forget how you started — resurfaced 9× · 46 likes · 2020-03-22 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @djmicrobeads @alt_visa i feel like one of the ways in which i am a good person and a good loser is, if someone kicks my ass, i make sure to say, damn, well played. u kicked my ass — resurfaced 9× · 39 likes · 2018-10-31 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 27. Test Drive — resurfaced 9× · 35 likes · 2019-01-21 · Film & TV · on X
  • me, in a dream: *searches “online” for food, finds 2016 photo of friend eating prata* me: yo can I have some of that friend: this?? this is years old, man, wouldn’t it be gross? me: I’m dreaming, time has no meaning friend: oh ok me: *wakes up* fuck, that was a cool line — resurfaced 9× · 34 likes · 2019-02-18 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • June 2015, possibly the best picture I've ever taken – my cat climbing up to the top of a cupboard and then falling off. My wife calls it "fuckery in motion". — resurfaced 9× · 34 likes · 2017-11-15 · Pets & Animals · on X
  • re: the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad https://roamresearch.com/#/app/visakanv-public/page/dZTMadHhn?help — resurfaced 9× · 30 likes · 2020-04-14 · History · on X
  • @djmicrobeads @default_friend — resurfaced 9× · 29 likes · 2020-01-19 · Random · on X
  • Beneath the floor of the comparatively neat dwelling that we call our consciousness lie unsuspected Aladdin caves Here there be jewels and jinns, inconvenient or resisted psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate into our lives — resurfaced 9× · 28 likes · 2019-06-13 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • "Tropes That Move Visa To Tears" Thread — resurfaced 9× · 27 likes · 2017-12-25 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • The Atlantic has really cornered the "the monster is in your pocket" niche — resurfaced 9× · 27 likes · 2017-08-06 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • Oddball confession: one of my first life-shaping experiences on the Internet was lying on a video game forum (Darkstone, Delphine Software). Somebody joked that they got “Helm of the Arse Gods”, and I lied and said I got it too. I was like... 8. Everyone cringed and laughed at me — resurfaced 9× · 23 likes · 2018-09-01 · Internet Culture · on X
  • all of the above, in greater detail. always a work-in-progress https://docs.google.com/document/d/1URsFlzlknvmaSunLozmT60N0ZpsqWCQkVY4ygXhe50s/edit — resurfaced 9× · 20 likes · 2022-01-08 · Writing · on X
  • the year is 2045. @stewart is still trying to make a decent goddamn video game. he has now sold his 4th company for five trillion dollars, built from the wreckage of yet another failed games studio. — resurfaced 8× · 1,553 likes · 2020-12-01 · Games · on X
  • In my alternate universe, any child that reads books under the desk at school is given a full scholarship to do whatever they want. If they want, they get to skip regular school and hang out in the library with all the other self-directed nerds. Some elder nerds loosely supervise — resurfaced 8× · 1,424 likes · 2019-11-27 · Education & Learning · on X
  • Francis Bacon, Of Discourse - don’t be tedious - let other people talk - if someone is hogging, cut him off - ask questions that people can look good answering - don’t be a poser with smartass questions - don’t bitch about others - eloquence is overrated - It’s Not About You — resurfaced 8× · 1,130 likes · 2018-09-11 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • My last two active neurons every night — resurfaced 8× · 970 likes · 2022-12-22 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Notice Gallwey’s story about the high-agency business exec who couldn’t seem to control his arm Notice how he learned more in ten minutes of non-judgemental observation than in 20 hours of pro lessons — resurfaced 8× · 632 likes · 2023-10-04 · Education & Learning · on X
  • "Women aren't funny" — resurfaced 8× · 560 likes · 2018-03-17 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • “I will not be cruel to anybody (including myself)” is a starting prompt that will have you making small modifications at the start and remodeling your entire life and worldview over a few years — resurfaced 8× · 541 likes · 2022-08-26 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • each person is on a different trajectory sometimes, for some period of time, a group of people find themselves in the same vicinity. they feel like peers. they have shared challenges, can relate to each other but it doesn’t last. eventually they diverge — resurfaced 8× · 518 likes · 2022-03-10 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • The cigarette is one of mankind's most compelling conceptions - all at once a surrogate for a mother's breast, a phallus, a meditative act of breath control, a ritualized burning of sacred fires, done in private or with others; a subscription box of Death — resurfaced 8× · 507 likes · 2017-12-15 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • "think precisely about what kind of life you want" might sounds like some sort of upper-middle-class luxury fantasy privilege thing to a lot of people, but it's also recurringly *the* thing that I've heard from everyone who broke out of terrible circumstances — resurfaced 8× · 473 likes · 2021-05-31 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I think the big secret of social life is that everybody loves to make a great introduction. If you can become someone that people love to introduce to to other people, you're "in the green" socially. Everybody loves to introduce a great hire, romantic partner, friend, co-founder — resurfaced 8× · 383 likes · 2019-03-24 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • This is a good place to start a Thread of Insightful Threads. This particular one is about how seemingly decent people can support cruel policies: it’s partially because they assume it will be implemented fairly, and that exceptions will be made when and where appropriate https://x.com/alexandraerin/status/1004400861865488384 — resurfaced 8× · 364 likes · 2018-06-07 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • them: nobody can do what you're suggesting me: well what if they first do A, B, C, D them: nobody does all of that me: ah you're not actually... you don't actually care about what is possible, you're just giving me your 1-sigma heuristics them: nobody says 1-sigma heuristics — resurfaced 8× · 356 likes · 2021-11-26 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I wanna talk about one of my favorite Quora answers, written in 2015 by David Rose to the question, "Why are there crushed stones alongside rail tracks?" It's an interesting answer about an engineering problem but I got a really deep, fundamental mental model upgrade out of it — resurfaced 8× · 342 likes · 2018-10-06 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Fun with stats: There are 4 people in the world. Alice, Bob, Charles and Denise Alice and Bob are happily married Charles and Denise have gotten married and divorced 4 times In this world, 80% of marriages lead to divorce — resurfaced 8× · 331 likes · 2020-05-25 · Education & Learning · on X
  • you can totally study ethics to learn how to be a more effective evil person — resurfaced 8× · 325 likes · 2020-12-14 · Philosophy · on X
  • to me, it is risky to not have: - alt models of reality - alt sources of meaning - alt scenes and social graphs to hang out in - alt identities - alt jobs/income sources they don't teach *any* of this in school, & people end up depressed, suicidal, abusive... it's insane to me — resurfaced 8× · 322 likes · 2019-08-18 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I sometimes joke that if you wanna play like hendrix you gotta dress like hendrix it's not really a joke; aesthetic resonance is real. doesn't really matter where you start- but if it's legit, it touches everything you do https://x.com/visakanv/status/1151568182219440129 — resurfaced 8× · 297 likes · 2019-12-09 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • in reality scenes seem to need like, idk, 2 dozen people you need the conflict and collaboration and one-upmanship to push people far out of homeostasis — resurfaced 8× · 291 likes · 2019-07-23 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • this sounds like a smartass tweet but I'm totally serious you can't win if you lose so learn to not lose most major failure conditions are avoidable with a little bit of foresight, planning, study, etc etc. just analyze failures and don't do/be that — resurfaced 8× · 266 likes · 2020-08-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 💡! you don't actually need to "know" what you want in order to do what you want — resurfaced 8× · 260 likes · 2022-01-29 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • everyone gets “stuck” when they are 1. unwilling or unable to define the problem 2. unwilling or unable to solicit the right feedback 3. unwilling or unable to integrate it it’s recursive all the way through, all the way up and down that’s “all” there is to anything — resurfaced 8× · 257 likes · 2021-06-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Historical fun facts https://x.com/treasurexgoblin/status/1031634336020344832 — resurfaced 8× · 251 likes · 2018-08-22 · History · on X
  • this is a slightly weird thing to say but this picture of Krishna and Radha from my mum's Facebook stopped me in my tracks because it seriously reminds me of my wife and I (body language) — resurfaced 8× · 245 likes · 2018-09-20 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • Nietzsche was the Kanye of 1800s philosophy — resurfaced 8× · 242 likes · 2021-08-05 · Philosophy · on X
  • A thread of my favorite tweets on this hellscape of a website https://x.com/smithsara79/status/940257849212620800 — resurfaced 8× · 240 likes · 2018-05-04 · Internet Culture · on X
  • when you see the beauty in your imperfections. your stutter, your accent, your slouch, your squint, your posture, your gait – every aspect of you is a sacred manifestation of the story of your life, every dissonant horn and screeching string is crying out to tell the story of you — resurfaced 8× · 238 likes · 2021-07-26 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • one day starbucks will shake off their shabby disguise as a coffeeshop and reveal their true form as interstellar currency — resurfaced 8× · 236 likes · 2021-03-01 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • 49. too busy — resurfaced 8× · 224 likes · 2023-06-24 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I am always thinking about this tattoo by Manu Farranon. It is one of the most perfect things I have ever seen in my life — resurfaced 8× · 217 likes · 2021-12-07 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • When I asked a friend about her dating life, she said "every car I've been in has a different vibe, each is a brief little universe that I share with a man I maybe could've loved" and I think about that a lot she should write novels she is a dentist, you'll never hear of her — resurfaced 8× · 199 likes · 2019-01-17 · Writing · on X
  • disco — resurfaced 8× · 198 likes · 2018-04-01 · Music · on X
  • This might be naive of me but I still believe in the promise of the internet that I encountered as a young boy – the simple idea that you can create a nice little virtual corner of your own, and you can build out a beautiful and exciting network of correspondence from there — resurfaced 8× · 178 likes · 2018-12-13 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I fucking have it 🔥. every phrase in this is carefully chosen, and expands like a flower into full chapters downstream. we are in the endgame now 🔥🔥 — resurfaced 8× · 173 likes · 2021-10-07 · Writing · on X
  • a lot of the value I get out of a book is not WHAT an author says, but HOW they say it alan watts' cheekiness feynman's joyful curiosity bourdain's sensitivity winterson's radical honesty lewis thomas's sense of awe and splendor sagan's expansiveness randy pausch's warmth — resurfaced 8× · 170 likes · 2018-10-09 · Books & Literature · on X
  • look, my book seems like its slow when you think about how it's a bunch of text being edited, but it's actually going really fast when you think about how it's me revisiting and reprocessing every single traumatic moment in my life — resurfaced 8× · 165 likes · 2021-12-08 · Writing · on X
  • It’s always surprising to me that people think it’s hard to get kids to read. Sure it is, if you make it a burden and a tedious obligation. I read books because it was intoxicating to walk through the mind-palace of somebody who cared about me. Kids are starving for this feeling — resurfaced 8× · 159 likes · 2019-03-06 · Education & Learning · on X
  • I notice a thing in my media consumption patterns where sometimes there's something I want to watch or read or learn more about, but it doesn't really happen until something else "softens the ground". Eg: I've vaguely wanted to learn more about Miles Davis for a few years now — resurfaced 8× · 147 likes · 2020-04-16 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • 16. I strongly believe that almost everything that exists should have someone’s name on it. I love that Steve Jobs got the original Mac team to sign the case. People should be proud of what they put into the world. If nobody wants to put their name on it, it shouldn’t exist. — resurfaced 8× · 147 likes · 2018-05-10 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • John Yudkin, figured out that excessive sugar is bad, wrote a book titled “Pure, White and Deadly” - had his career hamstrung for it, and died before the world got around to properly internalizing his findings (we’re still working on it) https://t.co/M1p35DYxjS — resurfaced 8× · 146 likes · 2018-10-16 · Health, Fitness & Body · on X
  • China — resurfaced 8× · 142 likes · 2019-01-27 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • It takes *everything* to learn to love in a way that you weren’t taught — resurfaced 8× · 137 likes · 2019-03-30 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • starting to think that any department of philosophy that isn’t at least 50% staffed by children is bullshit https://x.com/grahamvsworld/status/1244716625510555648?s=21 https://x.com/grahamvsworld/status/1244716625510555648 — resurfaced 8× · 134 likes · 2020-03-31 · Philosophy · on X
  • not my business to tell other people how to live their lives but if you're curious: I feel like lots of people mis-distribute their seriousness too serious about things you don't have to be serious about not at all serious about things you *ought* to be serious about 😂🤔 — resurfaced 8× · 129 likes · 2019-02-07 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • super in love with @morganhousel's description of this phenomena https://collabfund.com/blog/you-have-to-live-it-to-believe-it/ — resurfaced 8× · 125 likes · 2019-04-11 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I once was at a Hindu temple and witnessed two families yelling and shoving over who got to get blessings first. It was the funniest thing. These people earnestly believing that the Infinite Being Of The Cosmos is handing out goodies that you can legit wrestle from one another — resurfaced 8× · 124 likes · 2018-04-04 · Religion · on X
  • Industrial Revolution paintings are some of my favorite paintings. Like the Satan's Anus version of Starry Starry Night. You kind of begin to see where Tolkien got his idea for Mordor. — resurfaced 8× · 118 likes · 2017-11-21 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • lets say I want to learn about swords and become a Sword Guy. well, okay. who are the Sword people? what are the Sword communities? this is actually a funnily difficult example but it probably means I got the wrong word. but hey, there are a couple of sword shops in my city — resurfaced 8× · 116 likes · 2021-03-07 · Education & Learning · on X
  • “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” – Samuel P. Huntington — resurfaced 8× · 116 likes · 2019-02-01 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • I've actually written about this several times in my own journal(s) as "execute the jailbreak". Everyday life is a kind of psychic prison; breaking from it requires finesse. You're unlikely to be able to do it by chance. You have to know the blueprint, the layout, the guards... — resurfaced 8× · 114 likes · 2019-03-14 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I have a terrible memory. But it doesn't matter. Because I have great friends. — resurfaced 8× · 113 likes · 2019-12-11 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • This radical contrast informed his economic pedagogy. Learning economics is like learning a language; it’s important to start slowly and see each idea in multiple contexts. “If you find this way of learning superior, tip your hat to my Nepali language Instructors.” — resurfaced 8× · 112 likes · 2018-08-25 · Education & Learning · on X
  • there’s something profound about this- how these ideas and images spread, become identities... this feels like a parallel to how the pantheon of ancient gods must’ve evolved, via word-of-mouth. Wish Campbell, Jung, McLuhan etc could’ve lived to see this play out https://x.com/shukeiart/status/1297980272328282112 — resurfaced 8× · 110 likes · 2020-08-26 · Philosophy · on X
  • Marie Kondo: I kept trying to throw things away, I had a kind of nervous breakdown and fainted some god of tidying: focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of — resurfaced 8× · 109 likes · 2021-09-10 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • If you’re playing the public twitter game you gotta know what you’re optimising for, or you’ll likely get swept up in other people’s nonsense. In my case I’m optimising to make thoughtful+kind+interesting friends around the world. I think I’m doing pretty good so far — resurfaced 8× · 108 likes · 2018-10-23 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Googled “manifest destiny” and was tickled to find this painting by John Gast: American Progress (1872). That’s Columbia, she was a personification of the USA who predated Lady Liberty... and SHE’S LAYING TELEGRAPH CABLES!! And also driving the indigenous people off their land — resurfaced 8× · 107 likes · 2019-08-06 · History · on X
  • This isn’t about a recent thing but I just got reminded about how sometimes depressed dudes argue with me in a strangely earnest and hopeful sort of way. It’s kiiiind of a “suicide by cop” energy, where you find a kind person to be annoying to until something gives — resurfaced 8× · 105 likes · 2019-11-16 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • @nickcammarata @metaphorician @metaLulie wait hold up. all day you're talking to your parts? can we get a monologue demonstration? — resurfaced 8× · 103 likes · 2021-06-11 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • When you put something out in the public realm, the reaction is something like: 80% ignore it 15% engage superficially 3% shitty assholes 1% useful feedback 1% new friends That final 1-2% is worth wading through all the shit for, at least for me, with no inherited ingroup/tribe — resurfaced 8× · 99 likes · 2018-05-18 · Internet Culture · on X
  • editing video always takes longer than I think lol but like- — resurfaced 8× · 97 likes · 2022-04-17 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • what Friendly Ambitious Nerd and Introspect does to a mf — resurfaced 8× · 97 likes · 2022-03-07 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Sam Madhu is next level https://www.instagram.com/sam_madhu — resurfaced 8× · 97 likes · 2019-05-26 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • So how do we find partners? To play with, to share burdens with, to be intimate with? I personally find this hilarious and sad: we literally go on job interviews. 😂 That’s what dates are, aren’t they, most of the time? Two people anxious to match each other’s criteria — resurfaced 8× · 97 likes · 2019-07-17 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • Sometimes I legit feel like an alien and the vast sea of humanity makes me feel really sick. I can rationalize my way back to something resembling sanity because it’s necessary for continued functioning, but I don’t... like it. I try to accept it; and I manage it most of the time — resurfaced 8× · 93 likes · 2019-01-14 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I think a lot about @ftrain's "The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing" – published in 2014, and one of the most moving things I"ve ever read. With such lovely art. https://t.co/EneHmzEs4V — resurfaced 8× · 93 likes · 2018-02-07 · Books & Literature · on X
  • "If you assemble 11 talented players who concentrate intently during training, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, you're halfway to winning a trophy. It's always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this." — resurfaced 8× · 92 likes · 2018-01-23 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • I'm reminded of a great line from a letter from HG Wells to James Joyce in 1928: "the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong." — resurfaced 8× · 91 likes · 2022-05-29 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Celebrities are lonely, and their fans contribute to that loneliness by dehumanizing them via pedestalization. The media further exacerbates this. We’ll tweet the same sad tweets when they die but we’re slow to address the underlying issues https://x.com/chiefjalia/status/1006062986648117248?s=21 — resurfaced 8× · 91 likes · 2018-06-14 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • "The best advice is not to tell people what to do, but to ask them the right questions. Find out what's going on in their head, and help them frame that in a way that's useful." – @gtdguy — resurfaced 8× · 88 likes · 2021-12-09 · Philosophy · on X
  • @msutherl @nwilliams030 @KevinSimler @leashless @QiaochuYuan @matdryhurst @malloc8 @benvickers_ @nosilverv @bronzejaguar @vanishingmaze @Meaningness @nemesis_global @NoaidiX @SamoBurja @maxdashiell @dthorson @alt_visa @naval My $0.02: a lot of today’s established public intellectuals grew up in a different media environment than the one we’re living in now. They might have Opinions on it, but the more popular they are, the more they’d likely be lagging behind the frontier. Relevant WBW: — resurfaced 8× · 85 likes · 2020-03-22 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • A dawning realisation derived from my obsessive bookmarking and note-taking: I don’t trust Google to consistently serve up content that’s thoughtful, nuanced, etc. It typically gives you something blandly palatable published on a major site. The good stuff is almost crowded out — resurfaced 8× · 85 likes · 2018-06-21 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I very quickly develop crushes on grumpy, angry women 🤔 — resurfaced 8× · 84 likes · 2019-06-16 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • I just want to say it out loud: Terranigma is the greatest video game of all time (IMHO), and it deserves a big budget remake the way FF7 just did. It was never officially released in North America, but practically everyone I know who's ever played it ranks it in their top ~3-5 — resurfaced 8× · 83 likes · 2020-05-08 · Games · on X
  • !Kung, like our ancestors: - nomadic bands ~50 people - high levels of accidental injury&death - domineering senior males balanced by coalitions - v intolerant of hoarding & selfishness - occasional hunger, violence, hardship - extremely close&involved childcare - never alone — resurfaced 8× · 82 likes · 2018-04-23 · History · on X
  • "Talk is cheap, and the road is long, and you’ll see for yourself along the way who sticks around and who calls it quits." https://visakanv.substack.com/p/are-you-serious — resurfaced 8× · 81 likes · 2023-01-08 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • I think being trapped by one’s inherited aesthetics can be a source of frustration, kind of like the pain of being inarticulate — resurfaced 8× · 80 likes · 2019-04-13 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • [mic drop] https://x.com/visakanv/status/1094894798106816513 — resurfaced 8× · 78 likes · 2020-04-30 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • “He just can’t get himself together.” – Moore & Gillette’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover https://x.com/malcolm_ocean/status/1471721940653989894 — resurfaced 8× · 77 likes · 2022-01-19 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I’m surprised I haven’t seen made like an app or guide or online course or something to help people really internalize this WaitButWhy blogpost, it’s very well done IMO https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html — resurfaced 8× · 74 likes · 2019-06-11 · Education & Learning · on X
  • #nowreading Ray Bradbury’s Zen In The Art Of Writing. I thought Fahrenheit 451 was alright, but I really became a fan after reading The Martian Chronicles. ZITAOW was a big influence for me a few years ago and I’m excited to revisit it — resurfaced 8× · 74 likes · 2018-11-15 · Books & Literature · on X
  • 37. Nicki Minaj‘s verse in Monster is one of the best things ever written by anybody ever — resurfaced 8× · 72 likes · 2018-05-12 · Music · on X
  • now we get to my favorite part of Ramanujan's story, and if I'm not careful I'm going to start crying Ramanujan's new peers encouraged him to write to mathematicians in Britain a bunch of them dismissed and disregarded him Except for one man: Godfrey Harold Hardy — resurfaced 8× · 70 likes · 2019-08-10 · History · on X
  • we cannot allow our hatred of assholes to turn us into assholes ourselves. it's pretty tricky, and something that people tend to be silent about because it will get you blowback from your own ingroup. "kindness??? to our enemies???" it's not for them. https://x.com/visakanv/status/1065116502670503936 — resurfaced 8× · 70 likes · 2019-02-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Here’s a sort of litmus test I use for thinking about people Imagine it’s the apocalypse (zombies?) and you and your child are in a disaster scenario. Because of circumstances beyond your control, you have to hand your child to someone and go on a dangerous errand — resurfaced 8× · 70 likes · 2018-07-11 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Turkish pop music is EXCELLENT https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&feature=youtu.be&v=jeDBZpT7-RI — resurfaced 8× · 69 likes · 2018-09-11 · Music · on X
  • underfollowed accounts (<1k), may 2021: @SissiPhys @AbstractFairy @imperialauditor @metaphorician @joespurpleshirt @rmpars @brinkerhoft @startingfromnix @nightmask3 @metakuna @AstralPJs @egocv @misen__ @this_is_silvia @secretmoderator @JamieJacksonati @izzyroze @clementix https://x.com/visakanv/status/1382358460591792131 — resurfaced 8× · 66 likes · 2021-05-01 · Internet Culture · on X
  • @mattgoldenberg have this open in another window while working on my book, Martin Luther's mentor Johan advising him the same — resurfaced 8× · 64 likes · 2021-09-06 · Writing · on X
  • Games thread — resurfaced 8× · 64 likes · 2018-11-24 · Games · on X
  • there's a lot of misunderstanding going on here; people seem to assume that other people saying things must necessarily be for or against something, or making some sort of case. I think now is a good to revisit https://sive.rs/horses — resurfaced 8× · 60 likes · 2018-06-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • meanwhile, in the sourceland — resurfaced 8× · 54 likes · 2019-02-08 · Random · on X
  • On the utility of art, a thread! https://x.com/clairlemon/status/999458316869713920 — resurfaced 8× · 53 likes · 2018-05-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Found some old screenshots from a group chat with my local friends from about 2013 or so... it’s funny to look back and realize that I have always been someone who brings people together — resurfaced 8× · 52 likes · 2020-08-28 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • One of the best things I've done for myself is get a gaming mouse and map the extra buttons to things I commonly use: — resurfaced 8× · 52 likes · 2017-08-16 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Got out of bed to think out loud about the passage of time and what you can learn simply from observing the world around you for about 10 years - say ages 17-27 — resurfaced 8× · 51 likes · 2018-11-06 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • I keep accidentally recreating Nietzsche's talking points without meaning to https://x.com/visakanv/status/1452618932121051137 — resurfaced 8× · 48 likes · 2021-12-31 · Philosophy · on X
  • Bozoma's life story reminds me of Obama's, and punches through my heart in the same way. These funny-colored kids with funny-sounding names, casually ostracized for being different, diving deep into the culture of their peers to understand them better than they know themselves — resurfaced 8× · 45 likes · 2017-12-17 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • I feel like I've reached a breakthrough/synthesis on this – rather than try to model existing status/class signifiers, which is tiresome, it's far more fun, interesting and exciting to develop + elevate your *own* aesthetics. Bowie, Prince, Hendrix, Manson, etc appreciated this — resurfaced 8× · 42 likes · 2019-05-14 · Fashion & Style · on X
  • Someone once asked me “what do kids DM/email you about” and I surprised myself at how quickly and easily I was able to articulate their FAQs. Rereading this I realize it’s *knowledge*: about the struggles of others. This is what I mean when I say being sensitive makes you smarter — resurfaced 8× · 42 likes · 2019-02-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Eminem’s Sing For The Moment remains the most succinctly powerful description of the fame trap I’ve encountered yet — resurfaced 8× · 42 likes · 2018-06-30 · Music · on X
  • Approaching the Sriranaganathaswamy Koyil in Srirangam - I love how it looms in the distance and gets bigger as you approach it. Architecture like this is so underrated in its capacity to move and inspire, imo — resurfaced 8× · 40 likes · 2018-12-07 · Travel & Place · on X
  • does anybody know the origin story behind the "kung fu" font? who was the first person who came up with it? this one is called "Ginko", then there are all these "Asian style fonts", "Chinese style fonts"... what's the story here? "Wonton fonts"... — resurfaced 8× · 38 likes · 2019-01-10 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • Each perfume sells not just a smell, but an entire aesthetic. In my opinion perfume, makeup and beauty marketers are some of the best in the game — resurfaced 8× · 36 likes · 2018-06-17 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • @Saurya Captain Awkward has the right sort of energy https://captainawkward.com/2013/01/24/437/ — resurfaced 8× · 33 likes · 2020-07-07 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • The best art is almost always borne out of love. In a world mutilated by violence and seized with fear, art is *absolutely* necessary. We need more of it. We are all weary and hungry and aching for more connection, more love, more light. How could you think otherwise — resurfaced 8× · 32 likes · 2018-05-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Marshall McLuhan x Ezra Pound, 1948 — resurfaced 8× · 29 likes · 2022-03-29 · History · on X
  • To Understand Is To Perceive Patterns, by @jasonsilva — resurfaced 8× · 26 likes · 2020-05-17 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • The highlight of my trip to Cebu in 2015 was heading down to Oslob to snorkel with the whale sharks. They're like, semi-domesticated – they come near the humans because there's food – but you can feel their power and intelligence, like they could destroy you if they wanted to — resurfaced 8× · 20 likes · 2019-02-07 · Travel & Place · on X
  • Was looking at some typefaces while buying groceries and thought again about Paula Scher. She’s a designer who really understands typography in a very profound way - its music, rhythms, contrasts. A true artist — resurfaced 8× · 19 likes · 2019-04-03 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • "the sheer amount of ink on the page would tell me later on that this was one of the most important scenes" — resurfaced 8× · 19 likes · 2019-07-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I’m Singaporean, our drugs of choice are caffeine, alcohol and paternalism https://x.com/nexusprods/status/1170750370445967360?s=21 — resurfaced 8× · 18 likes · 2019-09-09 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Today's commute read: picking up where I left off on Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Yup, "Dunbar's number" Dunbar — resurfaced 8× · 15 likes · 2018-01-24 · Books & Literature · on X
  • @katgleason @__vansh You can see it in the gender symbols too Spear of Mars Mirror of Venus — resurfaced 8× · 13 likes · 2019-11-19 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • 1/ Interesting realization about tone on the web. I (and others) use capitalization, punctuation + short sentences when I'm confident, angry — resurfaced 8× · 10 likes · 2014-10-11 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • Some nuance to consider is that "The Public" is really an assemblage of many publics. "Whatever the style, the public intellectual is always speaking to an audience that is not there." https://t.co/9IVUlsXZES — resurfaced 8× · 9 likes · 2019-02-05 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I just discovered the Pepsi rebranding slides from 2008 and it is truly breathtaking — resurfaced 7× · 7,054 likes · 2018-10-25 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • My wife predicts divorces & failed relationships with stunning accuracy and I have learned a few of her tricks relationships are fucking hard, and to work they need a sort of functional “economy” (gratitude, laughter, kindness) and waste elimination system (pain, resentment) — resurfaced 7× · 3,183 likes · 2018-08-16 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • some personal news: — resurfaced 7× · 1,511 likes · 2023-06-27 · Random · on X
  • I’ve told variations of this story several times but it bears repeating When I was about 8 years old and I first sat at a computer and typed words into a forum and got replies from people elsewhere in the world, I swear on my life I instantly knew I had found The Holy Grail — resurfaced 7× · 1,385 likes · 2023-05-31 · Internet Culture · on X
  • with love: in my view, this isn’t ADHD itself, but punitive, coercive self-bullying. It’s likely inherited from the people in your life who didn’t know how to deal with your ADHD. This is *mismanagement* of ADHD (it’s not your fault if you don’t know better), not ADHD itself — resurfaced 7× · 950 likes · 2021-06-16 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • A thing I didn’t appreciate as a kid, but understand better now, is why so much of the world is suboptimal - it’s not just because people don’t know better, but largely because people are trapped. Many (most?) people are too tired and overwhelmed to bring their A game to anything — resurfaced 7× · 783 likes · 2018-05-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • 🎷 — resurfaced 7× · 751 likes · 2021-11-09 · Music · on X
  • The more I get the privilege of getting to do stuff I actually really want to do, the more I’m forced to reckon with the fact that procrastination isn’t just about aversion to icky, tedious tasks - it’s also substantially about aversion to failure and disappointment — resurfaced 7× · 707 likes · 2019-12-30 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • most people recognise good ideas but not great ideas *great* ideas look like bad ideas, or are otherwise incomprehensible — resurfaced 7× · 605 likes · 2022-10-10 · Philosophy · on X
  • people don’t say this out loud as much but self-loathing is a form of narcissism https://x.com/house_feminist/status/1289097773837508608 — resurfaced 7× · 551 likes · 2020-07-31 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • no institution, no bureaucracy, no faceless evil, no corporate overlord coerced anybody to describe each other on a 10-point scale. those mfs did it entirely by themselves. we dehumanize ourselves because it's convenient and entertaining — resurfaced 7× · 497 likes · 2022-07-27 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • 20. hmm… A or B? — resurfaced 7× · 487 likes · 2022-02-24 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • social environments nudge people towards making themselves and their work more legible in ways that are less-than-ideal for the individual. this is for the convenience of the system, and the deal is validation... wait this might make more sense as a meme: — resurfaced 7× · 473 likes · 2023-04-11 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • My ex-boss gave me this gift. He was more curious about me than I was about myself. He genuinely wanted to understand my motivations & backstory to a degree that I had stopped caring about, because I didn’t think I merited that much concern. a lot of what I do now is pass that on — resurfaced 7× · 401 likes · 2019-05-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Many people are too burdened by past obligations to see clearly with fresh eyes what’s happening in front of them, what’s around them, where things are headed. Have you ever been too tired to get ready for bed? — resurfaced 7× · 393 likes · 2018-05-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Brian Eno, when asked to make the Windows startup sound: — resurfaced 7× · 387 likes · 2019-08-08 · Music · on X
  • changing your vocabulary is the most cheat-code-esque way to change your life I can think of and it’s perfectly legal — resurfaced 7× · 370 likes · 2021-11-30 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • Realistically, I can only ever be *truly* productive for 4 hours a day. Most days, I'm lucky to even have 2 truly good, productive hours, where I'm really moving the needle. And I get by with the output of those 2 hours! I wish somebody told me this when I was like... 10 — resurfaced 7× · 357 likes · 2020-08-13 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • periodic reminder to do whatever makes your heart sing — resurfaced 7× · 344 likes · 2022-03-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Sometimes I feel like shit for seemingly no reason, and my idiot @visabrain goes through a checklist that’s like 1. “existential despair?” 2. “has meaning finally collapsed” 3. “emotional turmoil?” . . 204. “Have we eaten, slept, hydrated and exercised lately?” Oh, yeah. That. — resurfaced 7× · 320 likes · 2019-11-28 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • #nowreading Tribe, by Sebastian Junger — resurfaced 7× · 315 likes · 2018-04-23 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Noobs: You made a mistake, haha, gotcha! I win, you lose! Suck it, sucker! Friends: Was that a mistake? It’s interesting how we both things wrong in distinct ways, that reveal our underlying assumptions and allow us to come to a better understanding of ourselves. I appreciate u — resurfaced 7× · 296 likes · 2018-07-22 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • 19. there is no advice that cannot be creatively weaponized in some way to justify getting back on your bullshit — resurfaced 7× · 292 likes · 2020-11-23 · Philosophy · on X
  • I knew jordan peterson was due for some misery when I saw that he was saying "clean your room" to others while living in a messy room himself aesthetic dissonance — resurfaced 7× · 289 likes · 2019-12-09 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I think a lot about how Steve Wozniak's dad provided him with a bespoke engineering education that you really can't get anywhere else https://roamresearch.com/#/app/visakanv-public/page/hFsMWQEgb — resurfaced 7× · 281 likes · 2020-05-13 · Education & Learning · on X
  • this eloquently summarizes a large % of my female friends' attitudes towards dating https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1135477611029643265 — resurfaced 7× · 274 likes · 2019-06-03 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • one of the most powerful, poetic things I've ever read was from Dave Trott quoting a scientist scientist: neutrinos have more mass than matter journalist: cool,,, but what does that *mean*, really scientist: it means... we are the ghosts in someone else's universe me: 🤯 — resurfaced 7× · 262 likes · 2019-04-17 · Philosophy · on X
  • you can change people’s behavior by describing things — resurfaced 7× · 246 likes · 2022-06-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I’ve talked to hundreds of people about “do 100 thing” - some people get it right away, lots of people warm up to it in time, but most interestingly I’ve started to notice a common feature among those who “don’t get it”, and it is that they have Expectations — resurfaced 7× · 246 likes · 2021-01-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • notes on wretchedness https://t.co/XqVK9w2W22 — resurfaced 7× · 244 likes · 2023-08-15 · Writing · on X
  • My dream is that one day every voiceless person gets lifted out of poverty so that their children might get to drink Starbucks, write bad poetry and get cancelled on twitter for their thoughtless thinkpieces reeking of unexamined privilege and outward-projected self-loathing — resurfaced 7× · 241 likes · 2020-05-22 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • just describe things bro — resurfaced 7× · 227 likes · 2023-11-12 · Writing · on X
  • Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity! – I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932 — resurfaced 7× · 223 likes · 2018-12-11 · History · on X
  • look at this adorable 1985 picture of Paul Erdõs (72yo) and Terence Tao (10yo) doing mathematics together — resurfaced 7× · 199 likes · 2020-05-17 · Science & Technology · on X
  • here is my personal quick-sketch summary of @utotranslucence's 2018 classic "Becoming a magician", for future reference for myself https://t.co/Zqn7YOnam8 — resurfaced 7× · 197 likes · 2021-07-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • @juliagalef Oglaf- Delusionist — resurfaced 7× · 197 likes · 2018-05-15 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • "what do you do when you can't compete with people smarter and more ambitious than you?" IMO: each time you encounter someone working on X, subtract X from the range of things you’re focusing on. over time you develop a narrower focus, of things that nobody else is focusing on — resurfaced 7× · 195 likes · 2019-01-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @Nouronal I've corroborated similar stories with minority friends and women friends – there's this ideal of us being all cool and zen and being able to just sidestep abuse. But then what is being done to stop the abuse? The moment we speak up, we're "too sensitive". THE GAME IS RIGGED — resurfaced 7× · 188 likes · 2018-05-28 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • when I was a teenager, the dominant criticism my closest friends had of me was that I was too arrogant, and they were right. I was too caustic, abrasive, eager to nitpick, quick to criticize, and I was way too certain of myself. I spent my entire 20s trying to correct for this — resurfaced 7× · 186 likes · 2021-01-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • a mariachi band named Childhood Trauma that suddenly bursts into the scene whenever you ask questions like "I wonder why I have such trouble standing my ground in the midst of an uncomfortable disagreement" — resurfaced 7× · 185 likes · 2020-05-12 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Christopher Knight similarly-ish described how, in his 27-year hermit solitude, "I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant." https://x.com/visakanv/status/945756189811359744 — resurfaced 7× · 179 likes · 2020-06-30 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Tchalla: yield man! Don’t make me kill you Mbaku: I would rather die! Tchalla: you have fought with honor! Now yield! Your people need you! ^ this seemingly throwaway sentence is tchalla’s real first kingly act — resurfaced 7× · 178 likes · 2022-02-09 · Film & TV · on X
  • quick sketch of my personal (ideal) style: move fast, hit hard, wipe quick and move on to the next thing, but be micro-rigorous in making sure that each new thing quickly considers all past things, and is threaded accordingly — resurfaced 7× · 173 likes · 2018-11-13 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • oh tumblr, I have missed you — resurfaced 7× · 172 likes · 2019-10-05 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Welcome, friend, to my space on the twitterwebs. This is a pinned thread of my best tweets. — resurfaced 7× · 172 likes · 2017-12-10 · Internet Culture · on X
  • if the laws of physics don't forbid it, then it's mostly just a matter of figuring out the steps along the way — resurfaced 7× · 166 likes · 2021-01-06 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • in retrospect, this 2014 "i'm not sure if I have ADHD" blogpost is one of the funniest things I have ever written — resurfaced 7× · 164 likes · 2021-03-14 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Another essay I've been procrastinating on: clocks and calendars are tools imposed by rulers (consider what "to rule" really means) to measure, manage and control the world. it's a way of colonizing time, which is in many ways even more insidious than colonizing space — resurfaced 7× · 156 likes · 2018-09-29 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • current mood: nothing is properly knowable or sayable and all the words are wrong — resurfaced 7× · 150 likes · 2019-12-13 · Philosophy · on X
  • curious about the history of Spongebob Squarepants. Its creator Stephen Hillenburg sadly died in 2018 aged 57, from ALS He was inspired by Jacques Cousteau's oceanography as a kid, became marine biologist Oh and he worked as a fry cook after high school... of course — resurfaced 7× · 149 likes · 2022-07-30 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • An interesting thing to observe is how people inadvertently reveal their true beliefs about things when talking about other things — resurfaced 7× · 149 likes · 2017-10-27 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Parents and teachers and peers all unwittingly conspire to create this mass hallucination where people collectively mutilate, cauterize and brand their minds in service of The Economy - and not The Economy itself, but their imperfect, vague and detached conceptualization of it — resurfaced 7× · 146 likes · 2018-11-22 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • fan: ilysm omg you're the best 🥺 hater: salutations, fuckface, I have written a thesis in 3 parts about why you suck. book 1 section (a) part 1.1: your rhymes [click to expand] part 1.2 your song structure part 1.3 your hair- — resurfaced 7× · 142 likes · 2020-06-11 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I’m ~100 pages into Dune, I’m liking it so far. It’s a little demanding re: worldbuilding, but worth the effort I think. It reminds me of Ender’s Game in that it’s really *considered*- it’s pleasurable to inhabit + witness such thoughtfulness. Thanks @maskoficarus for the gift! — resurfaced 7× · 139 likes · 2020-02-17 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Every time this comes across my feed I am astounded again at the *clarity* of this man’s rage. This is the best counter-example I’ve seen that cuts through the faulty assumption that emotion makes people illogical and incoherent. It can also sharpen your mind like nothing else https://x.com/khanoisseur/status/1053531494101196800 — resurfaced 7× · 138 likes · 2018-11-05 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • I think the western concept of “dating” is *drumroll* outdated — resurfaced 7× · 137 likes · 2019-07-17 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • every government is an embarrassment in some way — resurfaced 7× · 136 likes · 2021-01-04 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • @liminal_warmth teaching is 10% knowing your stuff and 90% knowing precisely how and why people misunderstand your stuff — resurfaced 7× · 135 likes · 2021-12-30 · Education & Learning · on X
  • I keep referencing this Mcluhan quote lately when talking about the utility of repeating oneself and going in circles — resurfaced 7× · 133 likes · 2023-07-28 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • oh wow I have some feelings about this stuff I haven’t revisited in years a bunch of the guys in the other bands were what I now know to describe as scrubs and they get very mad when someone achieves success along a dimension they refuse to take seriously — resurfaced 7× · 131 likes · 2023-07-22 · Music · on X
  • in all my years of searching I have never found a better version of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters than this 2014 cover by Thaikkudam Bridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhYeslfRrbE — resurfaced 7× · 131 likes · 2018-12-26 · Music · on X
  • A casual thought with 5 RTs becomes an assertion at 50 RTs, a statement at 500 RTs, a proclamation at 5,000 RTs, and a publicly-endorsed decree at 50,000 RTs — resurfaced 7× · 130 likes · 2018-12-09 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I didn’t quite realise until watching the Reputation stadium tour on Netflix: Taylor Swift is a religion — resurfaced 7× · 130 likes · 2019-01-03 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • One of the fastest ways to get free personal energy is to realise that you don’t need to reply to things or get defensive about things. Which isn’t to say you have to be all Buddha-like either - just make a todo list item reminding you to crush your enemies at a later date — resurfaced 7× · 127 likes · 2018-07-02 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • difference between malware and adware is a legal team difference between language and dialect is state backing difference between a cartel and a government is monopoly on violence difference between lovable outlaw and criminal is PR... and legal team etc — resurfaced 7× · 124 likes · 2020-04-26 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • “If you guys want these crazy ideas, crazy stages, this crazy music, this crazy way of thinking… there's a chance it might come from a crazy person.” - Kanye West https://x.com/visakanv/status/1061703108890259456 — resurfaced 7× · 121 likes · 2021-01-29 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • "but nobody knows what the future looks like!" “they will in a minute.” — resurfaced 7× · 116 likes · 2023-01-19 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @danlistensto My fav Khalil Gibran poem — resurfaced 7× · 116 likes · 2019-09-13 · Books & Literature · on X
  • via @brianduffytweet "What we call mental illness is coerced contractual agreements" – Johan Nygren "We are all pre-programmed with a form of mental illness from the point we’re registered as citizens" "We needed a story to normalize coercion." https://t.co/9m1e9pNxsa — resurfaced 7× · 115 likes · 2019-01-22 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • once you have a few good riffs or talking points or whatever you wanna call them, those are like buoys or lighthouses that you can navigate by. they are like major cities in a trade network. you can build out everything in between them. connecting them creates additional wealth — resurfaced 7× · 114 likes · 2021-03-24 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • My old morning routine: drag myself out of bed, sit in my chair, nurse a coffee and take 1+ hour to for my brain to boot up while scrolling through twitter My new morning routine: exactly the same, but now it takes 5 minutes because I do it while taking deep breaths & holding — resurfaced 7× · 114 likes · 2020-01-27 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 19. If Google’s latest developments are legit, soon bots will be more interesting and fun to talk to than a subset of people. I kinda look forward to the mess this is going to cause, which feels a little naughty to admit — resurfaced 7× · 114 likes · 2018-05-10 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Alan Watts The User Illusion Lost Illusions Sideways look at Time Lives of a Cell Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman Foucault Seneca Seth Godin Sagan Animal Farm Antifragile Ogilvy Randy Pausch WaitButWhy bill wurtz Russell Brand Derek Sivers pg’s essays Ribbonfarm 48 Laws of Power https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1035365193159778304 — resurfaced 7× · 108 likes · 2018-09-01 · Books & Literature · on X
  • 53. It is astounding how few people have any real, interesting ambition. “Make a lot of money” by itself does not count — resurfaced 7× · 107 likes · 2018-12-27 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I suppose then I’d like to travel the world and have coffee with you weird fuckers. Maybe make a couple of humans if my wife is into that. Play in a jazz band. Tell some jokes. Nap in a small boat on a clear lake. Road trip on a motorbike. House parties with more weirdos — resurfaced 7× · 106 likes · 2018-07-07 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • petition to replace "lose your virginity" with "make your sexual debut" — resurfaced 7× · 101 likes · 2014-07-22 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • You can’t get people to read books by telling them that literature is important. You get them to read books by being excited about books. And “books are so exciting!!!” doesn’t cut it, you have to get into precisely what you’re excited about. This is how interest spreads — resurfaced 7× · 100 likes · 2019-02-09 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Cute & cool: the snowshoe hare changes colours for camouflage. But it doesn’t know what month it is - it relies on a circadian timer to keep track of the daylight:darkness ratio. If you blindfold it in July (omg 😂) it starts changing color earlier 😭❤️ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowshoe_hare — resurfaced 7× · 99 likes · 2019-07-01 · Science & Technology · on X
  • This is the general problem of assholes in public commons. They make up 1% of the group, cause 74% of the damage, and ruin everybody's experience. And we let them, because we still haven't learned to do better. https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/ — resurfaced 7× · 98 likes · 2018-03-21 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • the catch is you often have to get intimately familiar with all the lines before you can really know which are the few lines that do all the work — resurfaced 7× · 94 likes · 2019-11-23 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Idle thought: as a kid I used to think fashion was girly and lame. But as I get older I see it as something that can be as elevated and sublime as poetry. A lot of it is trash (same for poetry), but it is totally capable of being Real Art and in more profound ways than I realised — resurfaced 7× · 94 likes · 2018-07-31 · Fashion & Style · on X
  • Study in 1960s found that !Kung bushmen worked as little as 12 hours a week, 25% of urban executives then. They hunt and gather in the day, pool their food in the evening - strong emphasis on sharing + high frequency of movement = minimal surplus accumulation, low inequality — resurfaced 7× · 94 likes · 2018-04-23 · History · on X
  • IMO, Andy saw it as his job to train and motivate everybody, and to train and motivate everybody to train and motivate everybody else. Which is a blessed thing in my eyes. What do you think he'd have said about "slowing down A players to train young people?" — resurfaced 7× · 93 likes · 2019-07-30 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • it’s quite funny how some people will be jerks to the very people they want approval from it doesn’t make much sense strategically unless you model them as internally conflicted, then suddenly it becomes clearer — resurfaced 7× · 92 likes · 2021-09-09 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • On forecasting: "It's too bad that all economists and investment advisers aren't obliged to display their forecasts in a stagger chart form. Then we could really have a way to evaluate whatever any one of them chooses to say." – Andy Grove, 1983 — resurfaced 7× · 89 likes · 2019-07-30 · Business & Markets · on X
  • I use 3 monitors and I honestly feel like I could use 6. Or 10. Or, seriously, a 360 degree cyberdome. Or an entire room full of digital screens. I might need to start messing around with post-its and papers or something — resurfaced 7× · 85 likes · 2019-05-20 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Only just realized that the Moirai (the Fates, the Weird Sisters) correspond perfectly to Trimurti: Clotho (Nona) the Spinner – Brahma The Creator Lachesis (Decima) the Allotter – Vishnu the Preserver Atropos (Morta) the Cutter – Shiva the Destroyer — resurfaced 7× · 84 likes · 2018-11-08 · Religion · on X
  • In the mood for a re-read of Joseph Campbell’s classic — resurfaced 7× · 79 likes · 2019-06-13 · Books & Literature · on X
  • "I wouldn't mind having an evening like it, say, once a week - ordinarily there's no excitement." - a Londoner who missed the air raids of WW2 — resurfaced 7× · 77 likes · 2018-04-24 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • There's something about Dua Lipa that I find really impressive, but I can't quite put my finger on it. She seems really measured, calm and confident for a 23 year old, an unusually clear sense of who she is. I have a feeling she's going to get a lot bigger in the next 5-10 years — resurfaced 7× · 75 likes · 2018-10-19 · Music · on X
  • you set one little thing on fire and the photographers are like — resurfaced 7× · 74 likes · 2021-02-09 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • now check out the vibes and energy on this guy!! holy shit!!!! totally different!! truly transformational — resurfaced 7× · 73 likes · 2020-07-24 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • "The best ideas start out as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible." - David Ogilvy https://x.com/remarksist/status/867814761261547520 — resurfaced 7× · 71 likes · 2017-05-27 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • I remember sitting here, at 17, drunk and depressed, thinking that the world in front of me was too beautiful for me to feel the way I felt inside (at the time) — resurfaced 7× · 71 likes · 2018-07-25 · Travel & Place · on X
  • A service I provide as a "marketing consultant" is really to just help people think clearly about what they're trying to say. I also do this for writers as an "editor". In both cases it's really about sitting with the question, "What are you really trying to do / say?" — resurfaced 7× · 68 likes · 2019-01-15 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • great small accounts (<1k) jan’22 @gene_minkov @Ol_Wall @NonMurkyConsqnc @itsgregormay @m_malignatus @augurydefier @sicongshen @joaomateus @jambarree @mattiasinspace @empirepowder @marm0t @profectedroom @fadnavismehul @l0ath_mindset @juliemosow @frances_lorenz @elocowan https://x.com/visakanv/status/1444938290986057730 — resurfaced 7× · 65 likes · 2022-02-08 · Internet Culture · on X
  • people watching me on youtube *get* me a lot better than people reading my tweets, largely I think because of the inescapable problem of plaintext being read in the reader's voice rather than the author's I feel very Seen by this comment. this is my vibe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mSLJOcUCug — resurfaced 7× · 65 likes · 2021-04-03 · Internet Culture · on X
  • This is the simple truth - I first heard it from @mengwong - and it explains so much about us. Singapore is that guy that was severely beaten up and pissed on, & with tears in his eyes decided that he was going to steel his heart & be a Tough Motherfucker In This Cruel World — resurfaced 7× · 65 likes · 2019-06-15 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • This is tough to articulate, *deep breath* In some (many?) cases it seems like depression, apart from the brain chemistry bits, is a discordant disengagement with value systems themselves, rather than dissatisfaction with the relative stats you have based on your circumstances — resurfaced 7× · 65 likes · 2018-11-10 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • It’s interesting to me how, while we’ve generally as a species shaken off the idea of kings with divine mandates to rule over lesser humans, a lot (most?) of our aspirational myths are still centered on monarchies - from Thor and T’Challa to Elsa and Jasmine — resurfaced 7× · 64 likes · 2018-09-15 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • do this for a few years, and maybe read a few biographies of creative people, etc, and you start to develop a bird's eye view of yourself. y'know, Jung took 16 years to write The Red Book, intermittently, starting at age 38. Maybe your creative life hasn't even "started" yet — resurfaced 7× · 62 likes · 2020-10-18 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • 027: RECREATING MYSELF - the pain of being inarticulate - the conflict within the self as a conflict btwn diff ppl - holding a grudge against life as self-preservation - the impossibility of self-conquest via coercion - cultivating a nourishing presence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1oVhF7gBgE — resurfaced 7× · 59 likes · 2020-03-16 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Don’t obsess over being great or having fun, just be prolific https://t.co/P9eNRXAGSL — resurfaced 7× · 59 likes · 2018-11-19 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • “You’ve never heard of her. ...and you never will.” https://t.co/61O7XEmwK7 — resurfaced 7× · 58 likes · 2019-01-06 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Nobody ever told me how much female attention I would get from wearing & talking about jewelry The closest thing might be “peacocking” in The Game, but that’s needlessly pretentious & “ironic” Also notice how guys struggle to say nice things to each other; gotta talk shit 😂 — resurfaced 7× · 57 likes · 2019-07-22 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • The reason we should be kind to our enemies is not for them. It’s for us. To give in to the rage-monster is to summon a demon that will gladly consume *everything*. Weary elders have been trying to warn us about this for millennia. Nobody wins this fight https://x.com/visakanv/status/1098599890157006858?s=21 — resurfaced 7× · 57 likes · 2019-02-22 · Philosophy · on X
  • we can all be surrogate fathers — resurfaced 7× · 56 likes · 2019-02-25 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • kinda wish I could do threads like this — resurfaced 7× · 55 likes · 2019-06-11 · Writing · on X
  • just occurred to me that when AR becomes more widespread, you could probably-maybe choose an AR outfit that you want other people to see you in though... whether people want to see you in them or not... would be up to them? 🤔 wild times ahead — resurfaced 7× · 55 likes · 2019-07-22 · Science & Technology · on X
  • Samin Nosrat agrees! Get people involved in the process — resurfaced 7× · 54 likes · 2018-12-19 · Food & Dining · on X
  • Tired: traveling back in time to kill baby Hitler Wired: travelling back in time to become friends with Hitler when he was a struggling painter, supporting and encouraging him to work harder so he passes his entrance exam at Vienna and becomes a professional artist — resurfaced 7× · 54 likes · 2018-08-30 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Sometimes I think of humanity as this wretched factory farm, and then there’s The Light Of Human Consciousness - like a lighthouse in the vast uncaring emptiness of infinite space. Libraries are churches to the light of human consciousness — resurfaced 7× · 53 likes · 2019-10-14 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • @CathyReisenwitz @eigenrobot Anxiety: everyone’s watching me Self: nah they don’t Depression: ever Self: wait — resurfaced 7× · 53 likes · 2018-05-10 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • — resurfaced 7× · 50 likes · 2020-11-29 · Random · on X
  • tbc — resurfaced 7× · 48 likes · 2022-05-05 · Random · on X
  • "The ability to route information effectively and meaningfully is power" is an elaboration of "knowledge is power". What is knowledge? it's having useful information. but not just locked up in a box somewhere. it's information you can use on demand in the right context — resurfaced 7× · 48 likes · 2020-05-10 · Philosophy · on X
  • Delicious vegan sandwiches with @tasshinfogleman - being vulnerable in public, how to make friends and allies, allies-in-waiting, content strategy (nerdposting + kindposting + shitposting), managing a multiplicity of needs in a relationship, the paradox/tension of “human brands” — resurfaced 7× · 47 likes · 2019-04-26 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Follow my dad on the way out and I think you’ll get a sense of the sanctum-within-a-sanctum feeling. It’s like... the extra quiet room in a restricted section of a library. It’s quite a clever and powerful way to inspire a sense of sacredness and reverence. Great design! — resurfaced 7× · 46 likes · 2018-12-05 · Religion · on X
  • 5. The frame is a useful constraint if you think beyond it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5GmSYipz6A — resurfaced 7× · 45 likes · 2018-12-15 · Philosophy · on X
  • 1/ On growing up: A man should be sensitive (to inputs from reality), smart (at making sense of reality), and strong (to effect reality). — resurfaced 7× · 45 likes · 2015-04-23 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @maybegray @m_ashcroft @QiaochuYuan @mesolude Take 1000 selfies I can already feel my face relaxing in some places I didn’t realize were tense (This is new/uncomfortable for me, in a good way. I’m a text man) — resurfaced 7× · 44 likes · 2019-12-18 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • An interesting, messy thing about our modern social media landscape is the blurring of personal, private, commons, local public, global public. It’s kind of tragic because things in one context can get misconstrued in other contexts — resurfaced 7× · 44 likes · 2018-05-08 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Thinking today about the 4 dominant media threads in my life: - Local Singaporean media, primarily Singaporean-Chinese - American media (Nickelodeon + MTV) - Indian media (mainly Tamil, but also some peripheral Hindi/Bollywood) - Japanese media (anime, J-rock, JRPGs) — resurfaced 7× · 44 likes · 2018-08-22 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I’m not kidding about the hero thing - I was *obsessed* with it. My username everywhere was “visaisahero”. I think I’ve always felt, as a misfit, that an ordinary life was not for me. It felt like I was either going to have to learn to fly, or burn out — resurfaced 7× · 43 likes · 2018-09-25 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • One of my favorite things: a cold rainy night in a Singapore bus — resurfaced 7× · 43 likes · 2017-08-21 · Travel & Place · on X
  • I’m rewatching Rick and Morty, here’s a thread about what I like about the show. S1E1 opens with a drunk Rick dragging Morty out of bed into a home-made spaceship and a plan to destroy the Earth and repopulate it... and then Rick passes out, cue intro... then family breakfast — resurfaced 7× · 42 likes · 2018-08-12 · Film & TV · on X
  • Show idea: There’s a new guy in charge in The Bad Place, and he is disappointed with everyone’s lackluster performance. He will be implementing agile workflows effective immediately. *stares at camera* “I just signed up to torture people, man.” (Catastrophe happens off-camera) — resurfaced 7× · 41 likes · 2018-05-08 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Reminded of a riff from Joseph Campbell: all you need to get out of the labyrinth is a ball of thread. But without it you’re lost and hopeless. The difference between despair and triumph: 🧵 — resurfaced 7× · 40 likes · 2020-01-02 · Philosophy · on X
  • 3. “OK, but you have so many threads. How do you find the right thread to add stuff to? Do you have a database or a spreadsheet or...?” Not really. I do have a blogpost with links to some of my threads but I never use it. I just do a from:visakanv search https://x.com/ryandawidjan/status/718827648433041408?s=21 — resurfaced 7× · 40 likes · 2019-04-14 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Ed Sheeran advises Tom to be prolific (h/t @davelocity) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDyg_41QF1w — resurfaced 7× · 39 likes · 2019-08-01 · Music · on X
  • if you're a fish you shouldn't be trying to fly. maybe out of curiosity or whatever but don't beat yourself up for being a an incompetent monkey or bird. be the best fish you can be — resurfaced 7× · 37 likes · 2021-04-28 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • @metametrician address audience, accumulate status — resurfaced 7× · 37 likes · 2020-11-17 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Do you ever think about how the human nervous system is an electrical system? An elaborate labyrinth of cables and filaments, from lips and fingertips to beating heart - electrical charges travelling at speeds from 1 to almost 300mph - a bustling metropolis of light in your body — resurfaced 7× · 36 likes · 2018-01-09 · Science & Technology · on X
  • 2022 so far. notice the patterns? — resurfaced 7× · 34 likes · 2022-12-14 · Random · on X
  • "If my humors happen to please some worthy man... he will try to meet me. I give him a big advantage... for all (the) long acquaintance and familarity could have gained for him in several years, he can see in 3 days in this record, and more exactly." https://x.com/aaronzlewis/status/1246007884732944385 — resurfaced 7× · 33 likes · 2021-02-09 · Books & Literature · on X
  • I am at heart a much weirder person than I present to the world. Presenting your weirdness in a palatable way requires a lot of marketing skill - in a way you need to understand people better than they understand each other, since you're going to interfere rather than imitate — resurfaced 7× · 33 likes · 2018-01-17 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • “We all suffer from spiritual pride. We all do. We must remember that... you are not God [...] you are only human. [...] You must believe in the mercy that you preach.” — resurfaced 7× · 32 likes · 2020-09-08 · Film & TV · on X
  • @belgianadian Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, down the street from my place — resurfaced 7× · 32 likes · 2019-05-28 · Travel & Place · on X
  • Quincy Jones’s life almost seems fake - like Forrest Gump, or that intro scene in Iron Man where Tony Stark is photoshopped to be hanging out with Bill Gates — resurfaced 7× · 31 likes · 2018-12-27 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • If you wanna go to a cool bar, I recommend going to the Atlas Bar. It's a little bit pricey (Gin and Tonic is S$19) but more affordable than you'd expect considering how opulent the place looks. the building it's in has a lot of personality ("the gotham building"). — resurfaced 7× · 30 likes · 2019-09-09 · Travel & Place · on X
  • internet me is the hyper-real me, @visakanv is realler than Visakan Veerasamy, whose performance isn't as interesting https://x.com/patio11/status/1046798955483262976 — resurfaced 7× · 30 likes · 2018-10-01 · Internet Culture · on X
  • 👽 that’s fine — resurfaced 7× · 29 likes · 2019-03-04 · Random · on X
  • This is the street in front of my grandfather’s house. I imagine his ancestors before him can’t have been very far from here...? But history will always surprise you, so who knows — resurfaced 7× · 28 likes · 2018-12-04 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • This bookstore gives me the good kind of shivers — resurfaced 7× · 28 likes · 2018-10-16 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Still thinking about how cool Zendaya's Joan of Arc outfit was — resurfaced 7× · 25 likes · 2018-06-15 · Fashion & Style · on X
  • I went to bed really early (for me) last night, at about 9pm. It's 335am and I'm awake. And I have some thoughts. To get ahead of myself a little, I wonder if this is what I subconsciously try to avoid when I perpetuate a cycle of late sleeping/waking. Being alone w my thoughts — resurfaced 7× · 24 likes · 2017-12-26 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • this is a fun and appropriate moment to soft-announce that I'm experimenting with launching a digital currency called $GOLDEN via @tryrollhq – nothing serious yet, just a playful toy currency for Friendly Ambitious Nerds. Idk what we'll do with it but the point is to have fun — resurfaced 7× · 23 likes · 2020-06-06 · Science & Technology · on X
  • @m_ashcroft @stubborncurias Possibly my favorite version of this riff is by Kenny Werner, jazz pianist. He calls it Effortless Mastery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un3p614XExc&feature=youtu.be — resurfaced 7× · 23 likes · 2020-03-21 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 28. Ramin Djawadi – Driving With The Top Down [2008] — resurfaced 7× · 22 likes · 2019-01-21 · Music · on X
  • @motleykru I’m gonna spend the rest of my life finding the others so y’all can find each other through me — resurfaced 7× · 21 likes · 2019-10-15 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • “I want you to know it could be more than this. We could help each other see in the dark. You‘re supposed to be echolocating, but all you are doing is shouting at me.” (h/t @Tipsycaek) https://t.co/4cu71dPNoP — resurfaced 7× · 20 likes · 2019-11-05 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • @david_perell @eugenewei "A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." – Carl Sagan — resurfaced 7× · 19 likes · 2019-09-06 · Books & Literature · on X
  • @matt_sven I honestly believe that deep down I want my enemies to be my friends — resurfaced 7× · 16 likes · 2019-01-22 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • "The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which the B batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces down the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate." — resurfaced 7× · 13 likes · 2018-03-06 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • I am firmly in the "y'all will learn to read and write 280char tweets" camp. A year from now everyone will have adapted. Idk if y'all remember but this was also a thing every time FB changed its format in the late 2000s. Ppl complain then adapt. I think same will happen here — resurfaced 7× · 13 likes · 2017-11-08 · Internet Culture · on X
  • 8. I distinctly recall being both homophobic and transphobic as an adolescent, in a sort of idle, ignorant way. "Inherited from society" — resurfaced 7× · 13 likes · 2017-07-10 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • So here's what I know: Everything is connected. Every object, every idea, has a history. Literally, everything. Your body. Your thoughts. Your language. Physical objects around you. Everything is made of other things. Everything is part of a process, even if you don't perceive it — resurfaced 7× · 12 likes · 2019-02-11 · Philosophy · on X
  • I find myself referencing radical candor in all sorts of contexts — resurfaced 7× · 11 likes · 2018-01-18 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • Thinking of getting an ATR2500-USB Mic for doing podcasts, anybody have any thoughts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBvh8n2YC1U — resurfaced 7× · 1 likes · 2019-05-24 · Science & Technology · on X
  • @bengold @boop whatever makes your heart sing — resurfaced 7× · 0 likes · 2020-05-24 · Random · on X
  • the only media I've ever encountered that really, really, really recognizes this is Terranigma, which sits at the top of my list of favorite games, favorite stories the hero's path is *profoundly* lonely and isolating the hero's secret is he was lonely & isolated to begin with — resurfaced 7× · 0 likes · 2019-02-15 · Games · on X
  • The most beautiful thing I ever read about grief was written 9 years ago by a redditor called GSnow https://t.co/DX8gaWd5zn — resurfaced 6× · 1,994 likes · 2020-10-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • It's time for a History of Singaporean Chinese people in Brownface 2012 UOB bollywood-themed party https://www.asiaone.com/singapore — resurfaced 6× · 1,109 likes · 2019-07-30 · Politics, Culture & Identity · on X
  • finding out the origin of the name of this color Chartreuse was such a fckin trip. "It was named because of its resemblance to the green color of a French liqueur called green chartreuse, introduced in 1764." ok, why is the drink called that? — resurfaced 6× · 872 likes · 2022-07-30 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • you don’t win big from being the goodest good boy you can be (minimizing negative variance to try and please your internal taskmaster) you win big by being a bad motherfucker who’s sensitive to feedback (maximizing positive variance in alignment with your deepest feelings) — resurfaced 6× · 808 likes · 2023-04-26 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • me: [mildly annoyed] lol look at this person doing me a rude annoyance wife: [offended on my behalf] yo what the FUCK? me: [slightly frightened and mostly aroused] oh wow you went all the way to the f-word that's hot — resurfaced 6× · 777 likes · 2018-01-12 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • @markdalgleish Goat farming — resurfaced 6× · 699 likes · 2019-03-26 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • The children of the 900m Indians, 88m Pakistanis, 70m Nigerians and 36m Filipinos who don't speak English will grow up on the Internet and learn English. Create their own English, really. They're going to colonize the colonizer's language and it will be hilarious and fascinating — resurfaced 6× · 688 likes · 2018-10-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • sometimes when you have 2 beliefs that seem contradictory, it’s not that one belief is correct and one is wrong, but rather they’re each context-dependent, and you haven’t quite precisely figured out what the respective contexts are — resurfaced 6× · 646 likes · 2020-06-03 · Philosophy · on X
  • Most men with ambition have no taste and most men with taste have no ambition — resurfaced 6× · 630 likes · 2021-04-19 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Found the exchange I mentioned earlier. I feel like learning how to do this is just as important and powerful as learning CPR, if not more so. Psychological first aid — resurfaced 6× · 562 likes · 2020-08-04 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • friendly subtweet: sometimes when someone has an idea to do something, the best thing you can do is not to suggest ways to expand and broaden the idea into something more complex than they can handle, but to cheerfully tell them to just fucken do the thing they said they wanted — resurfaced 6× · 522 likes · 2021-11-01 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • the problem with disguising your power levels for social reasons is, you can get too good at it and end up disguising them from yourself — resurfaced 6× · 521 likes · 2021-11-20 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • A lot of things make a lot more sense when you consider that people have toxic relationships, are sleep deprived, eating junk, sitting for too long, are saddled with debt, and are generally being tortured by existence via thousands of small cuts — resurfaced 6× · 471 likes · 2018-05-22 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Someone asked me to do a thread about how I use Twitter search. It all started here. 1. Use from:username to find something someone tweeted https://x.com/ryandawidjan/status/718827648433041408 — resurfaced 6× · 463 likes · 2019-11-04 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Lots of people think “I will be successful if I become less stupid, less incompetent, less fail, less embarrassing...” This is almost entirely back-asswards, an illusion caused by media bias, narrative bias, selection bias, halo effects — resurfaced 6× · 462 likes · 2021-04-14 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Warning: sleep hazard https://visakanv.gumroad.com/l/friendlynerdbook — resurfaced 6× · 407 likes · 2021-03-21 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • a lot of my favorite relationships with people are what i'd call Long Orbit Friendships – often they're other busy creatives from completely different social graphs, and we only really talk like once a year, sometimes once in a few years, but when we do we talk for *hours* — resurfaced 6× · 401 likes · 2022-12-12 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • the older I get the more obvious it becomes that you can win at lots of things just by deciding that you're going to stick with it longer than everybody else have long believed this to be true, but now I think I can start to say with conviction that I *know* it to be true — resurfaced 6× · 401 likes · 2019-03-14 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • One of my favorite memes from over a decade ago (!!!) was "draw this again", where artists would revisit their older work and reinterpret it I love paying close attention to what changes and what stays the same, and to how they get better at achieving their own intent — resurfaced 6× · 398 likes · 2020-03-18 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • A bit of conviction I have that I’m not sure I’ve articulated strongly: If you want to make it in a market as a creative, an artist, whatever, you have to be able to “present a vector”. which is a way of saying, “here’s what I’m doing”, in a way that has a sense of direction — resurfaced 6× · 377 likes · 2022-03-31 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • Do what you love, but solve for distribution. — resurfaced 6× · 375 likes · 2022-02-02 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • It is painful to accept that we will all die before there is justice in the world the people who recognise this self-select into one of several different camps Team “Well fuck it all then” escapes the pain of defeat Team “We’re going to fucking try anyway” is defeated daily — resurfaced 6× · 363 likes · 2018-06-07 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • a person who holds themselves hostage gets genuinely worried for you when they see that you are a free person — resurfaced 6× · 352 likes · 2021-12-11 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • some people are so invested in their network of toxic relationships that they protect themselves psychologically by projecting the assumption that non-toxic relationships must be somehow fake. they rationalize the abuse they inflict on each other with "at least we keep it real" — resurfaced 6× · 340 likes · 2019-06-01 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • 8/ Counter-intuitively, this means you should do the minimum research possible. Because more research = inertia, time-cost, expectations — resurfaced 6× · 318 likes · 2014-11-23 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Give people very specific requests and they will be so glad to be able to help. It's like night and day. Everyone wants to build social capital. Nobody wants to do the thankless, tedious work of figuring out the project management of a new relationship w/ unknown utility — resurfaced 6× · 300 likes · 2017-11-28 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • amusing dynamic that plays out at every scale, from families to cities to nations: local: [sigh] goddamn this place sucks so bad outsider: haha yea totally!! local: [laser eyes] the *fuck* did you just say? — resurfaced 6× · 294 likes · 2020-09-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Man’s Search For Product-Market Fit — resurfaced 6× · 288 likes · 2020-01-18 · Business & Markets · on X
  • I think about maps a lot, and I'm underwhelmed and unimpressed by a lot of them. Here's one I quite like – world city populations, by luminocity3d. It's always interesting to me to pay attention to the white areas – western China, the Sahara, etc. (Also – upcoming cities) — resurfaced 6× · 264 likes · 2018-04-19 · Travel & Place · on X
  • 27. people contain multitudes, coherence is fascism — resurfaced 6× · 261 likes · 2020-11-23 · Philosophy · on X
  • I once translated Hamlet’s To Be Or Not To Be into Singlish and I think it’s one of my finest works — resurfaced 6× · 251 likes · 2018-09-20 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • you don't have to agree with me i don't have to make sense to you — resurfaced 6× · 250 likes · 2023-06-03 · Philosophy · on X
  • if you’re a coward, and you misdiagnose yourself as an idiot, you’re going to be stuck there indefinitely https://x.com/visakanv/status/1223823933658451969 — resurfaced 6× · 242 likes · 2021-08-31 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • it's funny to consider how much of the conversation around things like "what makes you unique, what makes you different" is dominated by people who aren't really all that unique or different. I don't mean this as a putdown or a jab, it's just one of those optical illusions — resurfaced 6× · 242 likes · 2018-10-31 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • — resurfaced 6× · 239 likes · 2020-07-31 · Random · on X
  • good reply game between old friends can look like bad reply game between strangers — resurfaced 6× · 233 likes · 2022-04-05 · Internet Culture · on X
  • [jerry seinfeld voice] what is a meme? I've had it with these things! it's a picture. with some text. it's a postcard, that's what it is. or a greeting card. that's nothing special. we've been sending these to each other for centuries! why? because we hate each other, that's why. — resurfaced 6× · 231 likes · 2020-05-28 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • I’m gonna get weirdly solemn and serious about this: By repeating the “people say I remind them of Tony Hawk” story several times, Tony has set into motion an old and powerful magic that now summons people to contribute to the story, reinforcing it https://x.com/tonyhawk/status/1348520159858683904 — resurfaced 6× · 229 likes · 2021-01-11 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • Currently reading David Deutsch’s The Beginning Of Infinity (thanks @RealtimeAI for the gift!) and it is shaping up to be one of the most ambitiously nerdy and optimistic things I’ve ever read. Startlingly lucid thinking, I’m surprised that this isn’t 100x more popular than it is — resurfaced 6× · 227 likes · 2020-03-12 · Philosophy · on X
  • some women are into suave, charming types some are into quiet, intellectual types some are into outdoorsy types some are into indoorsy types YOU ARE ALREADY SOMEONE'S TYPE. you just need to present yourself accordingly — resurfaced 6× · 223 likes · 2021-06-08 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • A thing I’ve been thinking about lately re: Dune is how effectively Herbert points out the usefulness of having many names. Paul Atreides, son of the Duke, Muad’dib, the Lisan al Gaib, Usul to his close friends. It’s all the same human being, and they’re all different people — resurfaced 6× · 212 likes · 2020-03-21 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Twitter dot com — resurfaced 6× · 206 likes · 2018-09-13 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Wife lol’d when I suggested that are at least 6 people in a marriage: - Me - Her - My trauma - Her trauma - My model of her - Her model of me Rick and Morty S2E07 goes into this a little — resurfaced 6× · 201 likes · 2019-07-24 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • I get young people in my DMs all the time a common thing I notice about their despair is that they do a lot of generalizing ("I can't seem to study for this test" -> "I can't do anything"). Lots of catastrophic thinking, things get very grandiose I remember this feeling too — resurfaced 6× · 200 likes · 2020-02-15 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • It's worth restating that Da Vinci was a rambling, distracted, self-directed weirdo who would probably not have survived in a modern classroom without getting put on ADHD meds — resurfaced 6× · 195 likes · 2018-04-13 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • every day is eight billion new dawns, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere — resurfaced 6× · 189 likes · 2023-03-27 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • lady gaga had to perform in parking lots before she could perform at the super bowl you can't really shortcut this, if you're a serious player you have to do your parking lot gigs with suboptimal sound and lighting, you have to ship your ugly Apple I https://x.com/visakanv/status/1517585272040726528 — resurfaced 6× · 185 likes · 2022-05-30 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Btw AOC is a marketing *professional*. She knows wtf she’s doing. Brand, messaging, call-to-action, outreach, she knows what’s up — resurfaced 6× · 184 likes · 2020-03-03 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • Me, aged 17: how can you trust employers? the economy? Everything is built on lies and manipulation Friend: lol chill out you conspiracy nerd *12 years later* Friend: I got fired, haven’t paid off my student loans, and people tell me to code Me: *deep breath* I’m so sorry — resurfaced 6× · 182 likes · 2019-01-29 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • "We are an antihuman society. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, mystifying. Our fundamental human desire is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that." - anthropologist Sharon Abramowitz, Peace Corps volunteer during Ivory Coast 2002 civil war — resurfaced 6× · 181 likes · 2018-04-24 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • me: let’s go to bed at 11pm instead of 4am, it’s healthy and good my brain: nice, here’s a dream of us getting thrown into prison for a crime we didn’t commit, then tortured & beaten by corrupt guards, forced to seek protection from a prison gang, and living in terror me: wtf — resurfaced 6× · 178 likes · 2019-01-29 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • [stepping into a quiet room to scream] I cannot help you if you don't fucking read!!!! — resurfaced 6× · 174 likes · 2022-12-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • To me, the most critical part of becoming “so good they can’t ignore you” is to be “so prolific you don’t recognise yourself”. Once you cross that threshold you can actually look at your own work with a relatively objective, critical eye https://x.com/visakanv/status/1075091316390809600?s=21 — resurfaced 6× · 171 likes · 2018-12-21 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • A bit of a fortune cookie thought, but here’s something I’d like to keep in mind more: you should tweet for the audience you want, not the audience you have — resurfaced 6× · 168 likes · 2019-09-16 · Internet Culture · on X
  • Noob-minus: this is the worst thing I have ever read Noob-plus: this is the best thing I have ever read Friends: you’re on to something here! I really liked the part where you talked about X, it made me think about Y. I was kinda hoping for more about Z, but that’s just my POV — resurfaced 6× · 166 likes · 2018-07-22 · Friendship & Community · on X
  • Hardy himself was a highly accomplished math genius but when asked what his greatest contribution to mathematics was, he unhesitatingly replied that it was the discovery of Ramanujan. He called their collaboration "the one romantic incident in my life." — resurfaced 6× · 165 likes · 2019-08-10 · History · on X
  • There’s something interesting about how certain phrases become memes “Weird flex but ok” “This ain’t it chief” “Wild” And how these phrases become sort of... templates? Thought & interaction templates that people can use. Kind of related to how brands sell identity templates — resurfaced 6× · 165 likes · 2018-11-14 · Internet Culture · on X
  • I have earned the respect of every tattoo artist in this studio and multiple dudes with full sleeves etc. officially a bad mf ❤️‍🔥. always been etc etc — resurfaced 6× · 164 likes · 2022-02-09 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • great marketing attracts great talent — resurfaced 6× · 162 likes · 2023-05-01 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • 12. disco record sales — resurfaced 6× · 154 likes · 2021-08-11 · Music · on X
  • big part of why great ideas are hard to perceive is bc they exist outside the existing configuration. good ideas play nicely with the existing config. great ideas deviate, break, depart from existing config. a great idea needs a whole support structure that doesn’t yet exist — resurfaced 6× · 153 likes · 2022-10-10 · Philosophy · on X
  • humans can create talismans (meaningful objects) at will intuitive example of "humans charging a talisman" is a wedding ceremony → wedding ring you can similarly do ceremonies to imbue any object with meaning. trophies, medals. people compete very hard for some of these — resurfaced 6× · 153 likes · 2020-06-14 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • No matter how carefully you articulate your principles, when you meet new people, you're going to see them violated them in all sorts of unexpected, unforeseen ways. This is because your principles are shaped from your experience, which contains assumptions you aren't aware of — resurfaced 6× · 152 likes · 2018-05-17 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • artists https://x.com/ShamekaWrites/status/1236491206131101696 — resurfaced 6× · 151 likes · 2020-03-08 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • casual observation: it's interesting that there's zero mention of the body in Roko's otherwise excellent post about Ugh Fields. it's implied to be an entirely mental/psychological problem (tho if you think about it, "ugh" is a bodily feeling of revulsion) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EFQ3F6kmt4WHXRqik/ugh-fields — resurfaced 6× · 148 likes · 2021-04-03 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • Culture is made up of layers upon layers of projections and hallucinations If you study it, you can walk through walls — resurfaced 6× · 148 likes · 2020-02-05 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • I think “status regulation” is the most important concept I’ve learned in 2020 — resurfaced 6× · 146 likes · 2020-06-25 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • 2. At my core I am somewhat sociopathic and nihilistic. I don’t think life is sacred. I think most of social life is an elaborate game of charisma and PR. I _try_ to be somewhat ethical and sincere, but I think that’s mostly because the people I like most also seem to be that way — resurfaced 6× · 146 likes · 2018-05-10 · Philosophy · on X
  • why did I think this? I do not know. my brain is an autonomous zone beyond my jurisdiction — resurfaced 6× · 143 likes · 2020-06-13 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • One of the games I‘m playing on Twitter is to seek out as many other infinite players as I can. Every time an additional infinite player joins a game, the game gets more interesting. A handful makes a scene. Infinite-player scenes invent the future But the play is the point — resurfaced 6× · 141 likes · 2019-07-01 · Internet Culture · on X
  • 48. this was too much chemistry for two humans to have — resurfaced 6× · 139 likes · 2019-01-23 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • “Communities devastated by disasters almost never lapse into chaos and disorder – if anything, they become more just, more egalitarian, and more deliberately fair to individuals.” — resurfaced 6× · 134 likes · 2018-04-23 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • just hanging with the girls — resurfaced 6× · 133 likes · 2020-12-06 · Pop Culture & Entertainment · on X
  • people don't really do the math 0.1% of people is a lot of people most aren't willing to take 1000 shots for the 0.1% payoff they'll write it off as risky lottery chasing but you just need to be able to afford those 1000 shots then it's just math, and victory is inevitable — resurfaced 6× · 131 likes · 2021-04-16 · Work & Ambition · on X
  • but if you assert “we’ve got it, we’ve got the perfect conceptualization of the absolute truth”, you will attract True Believers who chant it mindlessly, and quickly the heavy fog of familiarity descends upon everyone and you have to abscond into the wilderness to see again — resurfaced 6× · 130 likes · 2021-02-18 · Philosophy · on X
  • Maybe...observe children at a playground? It’s informal, improvisational, sensitive - failures are small and graceful, individual interactions are not burdened with the weight of the other person’s whole existence. Pressure is minimal, rejection is not a big deal. Just play — resurfaced 6× · 129 likes · 2019-07-17 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • u kno how people can be harsher on their loved ones or ingroup members than with strangers? there's a range of reasons, from "I expect more from us", "your incompetence/failure makes me look bad", "this is a sore spot for me", etc one of mine is, I get annoyed by the "half-free" — resurfaced 6× · 127 likes · 2020-10-18 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • take note — resurfaced 6× · 125 likes · 2019-01-21 · Random · on X
  • Benjamin Franklin's rules of bad reply game, 1750 — resurfaced 6× · 124 likes · 2021-05-20 · Internet Culture · on X
  • “For a novice, novelty is newness. For an expert, novelty is nuance.” Seek out the nuance and you’ll never be terminally bored https://x.com/soonaorlater/status/1080540134561374208?s=21 — resurfaced 6× · 123 likes · 2019-01-03 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • I still believe that a single blogger can change the world — resurfaced 6× · 122 likes · 2021-02-28 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • nobody can move as quickly, confidently and resolutely as the people who are grounded in a deep understanding of + pursuit of their own aesthetic. these artists look like magicians to people who aren't in tune with themselves — resurfaced 6× · 122 likes · 2019-12-09 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • @nicklovescode let there be light https://t.co/uF4UsJPco1 — resurfaced 6× · 122 likes · 2020-08-13 · Science & Technology · on X
  • common assumption is that marketing is about putting a false veneer onto lousy things. some people *do* do that, and it leads to ugly, highly visible failures far more interesting and satisfying to look for good things that have lousy veneers, and just remove the veneer — resurfaced 6× · 121 likes · 2019-11-15 · Marketing & Branding · on X
  • 1915, earthquake in Avezzano, Italy, killed 30,000 people in 60 seconds. Rich and poor were all thrust into basic struggle for survival. “An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain,” one of the survivors wrote. “The equality of all men.” — resurfaced 6× · 119 likes · 2018-04-23 · History · on X
  • to have ADHD, in my view, is to be blessed & cursed to be the custodian of a wild trickster spirit who refuses to be tamed, broken, refuses to obey anybody else's directions – including your own. You can't win, IMO, so you might as well accept your fate and go along for the ride — resurfaced 6× · 115 likes · 2019-09-06 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • just as reality is unrealistic, authenticity gets parsed as inauthentic — resurfaced 6× · 114 likes · 2021-01-07 · Philosophy · on X
  • 39. if you precede your actions with the slightest amount of consideration, you are already ahead of the curve — resurfaced 6× · 114 likes · 2019-06-20 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • this suggests to me that news will only get more infuriating as time goes on — resurfaced 6× · 114 likes · 2019-02-01 · Media & Journalism · on X
  • 39. just looking out for everyone else — resurfaced 6× · 113 likes · 2022-09-10 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Meditating on the fact that when I eventually “succeed” (as defined by others), people will say that I was lucky, and that using me as a case study = survivor bias — resurfaced 6× · 110 likes · 2019-11-21 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • One of things Marie Kondo mentions when talking about “Spark Joy” is this idea that... for a lot of people, when they touch their things, they don’t even really have any feelings at all. It’s “just stuff”, and they have to *practice* feeling the feelings. Turning up the voltage — resurfaced 6× · 109 likes · 2019-08-05 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • theory about loving your own writing: 1. people who are selfish narcissists are known to be self-obsessed and say that they love their work 2. most people would prefer not to be seen as selfish narcissists 3. most people try to avoid saying things like "I love my writing" — resurfaced 6× · 107 likes · 2019-01-13 · Writing · on X
  • there was that mom with "i'm so fit, what's your excuse" that went viral in 2013 – and then a couple of years later revealed that she struggled with eating disorders, marital problems and hating herself in a way, The Struggle really is a sort of faustian bargain for moral worth — resurfaced 6× · 106 likes · 2018-10-22 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • shrooms — resurfaced 6× · 105 likes · 2018-05-20 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • @kalliopica correct! also consider the pacific ocean — resurfaced 6× · 104 likes · 2018-05-15 · Travel & Place · on X
  • A simple but powerful truth I keep in a box is "sleep is the bottleneck limiting your brain's performance". Understanding this intellectually is easy; rearchitecting the rest of your life to accommodate it is hard. I know it's stupid — resurfaced 6× · 103 likes · 2018-12-14 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • 028: THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY, featuring @DavidDeutschOxf! - parochial problems - the purpose of conversation - creativity and static vs dynamic societies - the danger of creativity - tolerance for deviants - rational vs anti-rational memes - much more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t511rshmw1Y — resurfaced 6× · 100 likes · 2020-03-18 · Philosophy · on X
  • @TheAnnaGat one of my fav richard feynman essays is the one where "he fixes radios... by thinking!" — resurfaced 6× · 99 likes · 2019-07-22 · Science & Technology · on X
  • IMO our problem is less that “communication is lossy” and more that we *fail to appreciate* that communication is lossy. If we truly appreciated this, we would all give each other a lot more time and space to revise our statements. but we don’t, because https://x.com/visakanv/status/1044880239158022144?s=21 — resurfaced 6× · 98 likes · 2019-01-29 · Language & Linguistics · on X
  • could spend a lifetime just investigating the colors of india — resurfaced 6× · 98 likes · 2018-11-25 · Travel & Place · on X
  • I had trouble sleeping last night because of this fact that @sharanvkaur pointed to me: in 1933 - when Lee Kuan Yew was 10 years old - ONE in FOUR Chinese adults in Singapore were addicted to opium. ONE IN FOUR https://t.co/gKvvBrFeXA — resurfaced 6× · 97 likes · 2019-09-01 · History · on X
  • Chappelle and Seinfeld on letting the idea drive, and “the guy onstage” — resurfaced 6× · 97 likes · 2019-07-29 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • putting together a sort of network of musical artists who influenced other musical artists. just getting started, this is going to get very, very busy. any important relationships that come to mind? — resurfaced 6× · 97 likes · 2019-07-18 · Music · on X
  • 1. mice raised in a warm nest with plenty of food scurried home immediately when subjected to loud, intrusive noises. 2. mice raised in noisy homes with little food similarly returned home EVEN WHEN BEING IN MORE PLEASANT ENVIRONMENTS. I guess home is home even if it's hell — resurfaced 6× · 97 likes · 2018-04-04 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • So yesterday I announced that I’m setting aside $1000 for “blogpost of the year”. Having slept on it, I’ve gotten a little more clarity about what exactly I want it to do. I want to incentivise discussion about scenes, scene-building, community creation and maintenance https://x.com/visakanv/status/1376743860143988738 — resurfaced 6× · 96 likes · 2021-03-31 · Education & Learning · on X
  • my optimism is not a *substitute* for despair, it’s a manifestation of it, a response to it, an emergence from it. if i did not despair i would not be optimistic, because it would not be necessary to be optimistic. i dont need to be sold on despair, its the mud my lotus grows in — resurfaced 6× · 94 likes · 2022-12-01 · Philosophy · on X
  • friend: i would die for hayley williams me: I would restructure my entire life in hayley's honor: strive to embody her spirit, do my utmost to pass on her messages of vulnerability, openness, honesty & kinship to every human being friend: me: what, u said ur thing i said mine — resurfaced 6× · 94 likes · 2020-06-04 · Music · on X
  • "You wanna say something?" — resurfaced 6× · 93 likes · 2020-09-27 · Random · on X
  • But there came a point where I got fucking sick of it. I realized I wasn’t writing what I wanted, but what I thought would get a reaction out of people. My audience seemed to be getting stupider, not smarter. In 2013 I decided to give up, and walked away from a high-traffic blog — resurfaced 6× · 91 likes · 2019-01-26 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • You can end up producing smart work *entirely* by accident, and still own it because you recognized it. It’s yours! That’s the gift that the creative process just gives you sometimes. You can then study and reverse-engineer this, and wow, you just got smarter as a result — resurfaced 6× · 90 likes · 2019-01-24 · Writing · on X
  • (Any time there’s a label that starts getting fashionable, it’ll get flooded with bad imitators who use it as a substitute for thinking. Roughly akin to how today’s hot new startup becomes tomorrow’s corporate bureaucracy. It’s an inescapable part of the cycle of trash) — resurfaced 6× · 89 likes · 2018-05-11 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Scarcities in the world: - Stories - Meaning - Context - Perspective - Empathy - Sincerity - Relationships - Focus - Nuance - Curiosity — resurfaced 6× · 88 likes · 2014-12-31 · Sociocultural Commentary · on X
  • Like, I’d really like to live this Yogi Bhajan quote - and I think there’s a lot of truth-value in this - but at the same time, what if you’re the asshole? — resurfaced 6× · 88 likes · 2018-10-07 · Spirituality & Esoterica · on X
  • yikes man, yikes. rough times. grateful that I wrote it down. — resurfaced 6× · 86 likes · 2020-08-06 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • At a meta level I am still playing this game. I would like to be a successful writer by my own constantly-evolving definition of success. I‘d to eventually make a living doing this. I am willing to persist at this for 80 more years if I can. And if I fail, at least I tried, man! — resurfaced 6× · 86 likes · 2018-07-07 · Art & Creativity · on X
  • The Economic Naturalist, Robert Frank. Can’t remember where I got this but it’s been in my shelf for ages, seems like a Freakonomics type book. Let’s dive in — resurfaced 6× · 85 likes · 2018-08-25 · Books & Literature · on X
  • Paraphrasing Sadhguru: you enjoy your children because they are so helplessly dependent on you. My baby, my booboo. Imagine if your baby came out and said “Who the hell are you?” You wouldn’t like that baby. But she *does* ask that question, it just takes her 14-15 years to do it — resurfaced 6× · 84 likes · 2019-01-24 · Romance, Parenting & Family · on X
  • let's normalize not being normal hahahahahaha got em — resurfaced 6× · 83 likes · 2020-06-27 · Observations & Humor · on X
  • Watching a 17-year-old @yelyahwilliams earnestly reaching out to the sweaty Anaheim crowd in 2007 changed me forever; Paramore has my heart always When they get the crowd singing with them, then kill (most of) the music... ❤️ my entire life is a pursuit of this deep intimacy — resurfaced 6× · 83 likes · 2019-01-12 · Music · on X
  • Watched Easy A a couple of days ago (very witty, clever script) and thinking this morning again about how cultural expectations and pressures around sexual behaviour are really a sort of powerful psychic prison. Slut, prude, virgin, stud - all tools of social control — resurfaced 6× · 82 likes · 2018-10-17 · Film & TV · on X
  • Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — resurfaced 6× · 81 likes · 2021-09-24 · Psychology & Emotions · on X
  • "Anytime anybody wants something from me, and I have to say no, I wish I could say yes. I wish I had unlimited time and attention and patience and compatibility, and I could make everyone in the world happy and that would be fantastic." – @maybegray being adorably relatable — resurfaced 6× · 79 likes · 2021-03-17 · Life & Meaning · on X
  • Found this old picture on my Uber account (must have uploaded it around... 2013? 2014?) I’m a totally different person now! I’m gonna age so well, I can feel it. My sexiest days are still decades away 🥰 — resurfaced 6× · 78 likes · 2019-05-11 · Personal Growth & Self-Improvement · on X
  • Waiting for the bus — resurfaced 6× · 77 likes · 2019-05-22 · Observations & Humor · on X

The Twitter Archive›Retweets

Retweets

The accounts and posts Visa amplifies. Not his words, but a record of who and what he has pointed his audience toward over the years. Self-retweets aside, here is everyone he has reshared.

The Twitter Archive›Network

Network

If Twitter is a public town square, Visa is the hyperactive, affable guy who talks to everyone: nearly half his posts (45%) are replies to other people. Below are the 100 accounts he replies to most.

The Twitter Archive›Stats

Less a body of work than
a body of conversation

The shape of it

Every post and retweet, sorted not by what it’s about but by what it is.

How the mix shifted

His blend of replies, quotes, posts and retweets as a share of each year. Hover for any year.

Volume over time

Themes

What he posts about most. Toggle to see what actually lands.

His network

The accounts he engages with most. Toggle replies, quote-tweets, or retweets; tap a bar to open the account.

…and the same as a bubble field: the top accounts he replies to and quotes most, sized by how often. Hover or tap a bubble.

Hall of fame

All-time records across the archive.

The record-setting tweets

All of Observations & Humor

The Twitter Archive›Themes›Observations & Humor›All

Every tweet in Observations & Humor. Search the text or a handle, narrow by date or to replies vs. originals, and sort however you like.

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16,834 tweets
reply312 likes2026-05-22
original2.1K likes2026-05-20
reply84 likes2026-05-19

placeholder copy and data · this same page serves any scope (a theme, an account)

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