week 2 (1/4/2026 - 1/10/2026)
Reads
a few pieces by writer Hallie Cantor, in her comedic and absurdist words, well depicts the mentality of self developing while being cool ...
AllTrails Guide to Cringe Mountain: being awkward, embarrassing, or uncomfortable is cool. The most "cringe" thing of all is caring about being cringe in the first place.
As for slangs and tropes, ask ai to tell me "Bacon equals epic win . . . pizza is your boyfriend . . . sportsball . . . you can haz cheezburger . . . FTW. FML. LMAO. IDK my BFF Jill. Duck face, peace sign, hand heart, I love my curvy wife!!!"
What Tsunami?: the metaphor in climate catastrophe also explores the generation stress and life choices. In the conversation with mom, "the giant tsunami is literally seconds away from drowning them both". That "hope cliché" counters the environmental nihilism making the surreal or even moral concerns to the generation.
Listens
mandarin interviews by Xiaojùn Podcast for Manus acquisition and Z.ai IPO -->
Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng: Inside the IPO of China’s First Publicly Listed LLM Company
Manus' Final Interview Before the Acquisition: Oh, the Surreal Odyssey of 2025…
Dr. Jenna's read meditation on UFO’s, disharmonious species, Isotopia, and extraterrestrials -->
Whales Don't Want to Go to Mars
Discoveries
Activism: Cypherpunks manifesto (1993, Eric Hughes):
Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. ... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy ... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. ... Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and ... we're going to write it.