Update 10/31/24: I've copied over some rather vanilla/ professional notes from my Trilium to this site; I've yet to really write any of the topics below that I've really wanted to explore & publish. # My intentions for this website ## Background During my senior year of high school, I took a design & technology class which involved creating a personal portfolio; I kept this portfolio through college as a way to document projects. After graduating, I've begun to write significantly more. So far, I've been keeping notes in this open-source, self-hosted app called Trilium, and it's been excellent for personal knowledge management. While sharing some of these thoughts with friends, I've been told that it should be published, so I deleted my previous site and signed up for Obsidian Publish - so that I can tie together concepts in a similar manner. Here's what my Trilium note map currently looks like: ![[note_map.png]] I'll probably continue using Trilium for my direct ramblings & personal notes on a day-to-day basis, but will use Obsidian for publishing more final pieces. ## Potential Topics I'm not sure what I'll end up publishing, but I have a lot of ramblings, and off the top of my head these topics include: * mental health * understanding the default mode network (DMN) and task-positive network (TPN) * social vs. medical models of disability: is it you, your environment, both, or neither? * executive dysfunction vs. authenticity: accepting never being who you want to be * justice sensitivity & conceptualizing expectations: when radical acceptance feels wrong * self-control is authoritarianism internalized; what's the alternative? * lessons from injuries * what is healing? adaptation to vs. removal of painful stimuli * internal ecosystems: a more grounded version of IFS (internal family systems) * alienation * egocentricism vs. allocentricism * the Seattle freeze: a historical perspective * the limits of an agent's ability to form community * Epictetus' the Art of Living & connecting to Nature * oppression * intersectionality & massive moral grey areas * internalization: what does "choosing your values" mean if you're a product of your environment? * common origins of patriarchy * memetics & culture * intergenerational trauma through a memetic lens * nature is to genetic life as war is to memetic life * anthropology * a review of The Dawn of Everything * absurdism / existentialism * hopelessness is not defeatism * the relationship between defeat & rest * an IFS approach to (passive) suicidality * everyone has survivorship bias * criticisms of art & creativity * the cruel indifference of art within injustice * what is righteous art, and what is trauma porn? * creation is overused: a love letter to integration, preservation, cultivation, observation, & destruction * art as egotistic, anthropocentric, individualist reductionism; is nature not art? * solidarity for whom? therapy for whom? art for whom? * moral issues & philosophy * life & death * why effective altruism sucks, but means well * moral proximity: a bittersweet bias * neuroethics * accepting the uncertainty of the responsibility gap * against certainty: skeptical to a fault * valuing human life * restorative vs. punitive justice & fighting ideas vs. fighting people * the limits of compassion * political theories & praxis * the tension between epistemology & praxis * doing it vs. letting it happen * art history * design principles * dog training * media reviews * video games * books * movies * Mind Game (2004): an absurdist approach to valuing even the worst life * Anbe Sivam: "Love is God" - a Tamil movie about communism as spirituality in a world filled with chaos and capitalist oppression * random hyperfixations * love * relationship saturation as an ideal state of being * the inseparability of monogamy and patriarchy * intersections between all of the above ## Pyrrhonist Preface I'd like to note that this website is not meant to be as self-ingratiating as it once was - or as I find many other personal websites to be. For the most part, these thoughts are partially-baked explorations into concepts which may not be novel, useful, or certain. There are a few things I really hold with high conviction, but for the most part, I withhold judgement and am in a state of constant inquiry; more often than not, I can make as many points against beliefs that I hold than for. So if you're reading this, I hope you know that despite the grand or poetic tones I may be writing this content with, they're just parts of me thinking out loud - not necessarily statements that I wish to shout with certainty (except for a few in which my conviction will be clear). Mainly, I enjoy the process of putting things together in a document and polishing it for someone else to see; it's a good creative outlet. But I really do hope that someone searching for some insight on a topic will come across a post of mine and maybe find it valuable - similar to how students searching for answers to coursework came across my former site.