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Beautiful World, Where Are You (Review)

Beautiful World, Where Are You (Review)

Two weeks ago, I finished Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. I procrastinated this post for two main reasons; one, I didn’t establish a cohesive opinion on the novel and two, I struggled to identify why I love contemporary fiction. My immediate answer to the latter is

The Hairdresser's Line

The Hairdresser's Line

There's this diagram of the different type human of relationships that occasionally pops up on social media. Using lines to represent lives, the diagram depicts the variability of closeness within common relationships over time. "Closeness Lines Over Time"For the parent and child relationship, the two

Drowning in a Sea Storm (FHF #2)

Drowning in a Sea Storm (FHF #2)

She pulls her knees to her chest and allows her head to slump forward. The darkness swallows her peripheral vision, and to compensate for her loss of awareness, her other senses magnify. She feels the water on her body; first as heated beads on her scalp and then as warm droplets...

How I'm Trying to Combat Environmental Hobbyism

How I'm Trying to Combat Environmental Hobbyism

As I've written before, I struggle with managing my ambition [https://www.openthoughtblog.com/with-ambition-comes-insecurity/]. Many of my goals are rooted in dreams of becoming an ideal future version of myself. A flawed system, I admit, but one that has introduced me to the hobbies

I've Never Read Robinson Crusoe (FHF #1)

I've Never Read Robinson Crusoe (FHF #1)

Hello, everyone! Thanks for stopping by! This week marks the start of a new blogging series called Five-hundred Fridays. For now, all genres, topics and styles are fair game. The only regularities for Five-hundred Fridays posts are that they'll consist of ~500 words and be posted

The Five Building Blocks of Capitalism (Part One of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few)

The Five Building Blocks of Capitalism (Part One of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few)

Capitalism is strange. It’s an economic and political system, yes, but as a concept I believe it’s meaning has become extricated from its original definition. One's stance on capitalism has strangely become a societal indicator for their moral and political standing. I've noticed in

The Shinagawa Monkey and a Bookshelf

The Shinagawa Monkey and a Bookshelf

When reading or writing, must there always be a theme? I personally thought so, that is, until I read Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/confessions-of-a-shinagawa-monkey] , a chapter in Haruki Murakami's book of short stories titled, First

Should Social Media Fact-Check?

Should Social Media Fact-Check?

As a self-professed man of science, I'm a big fan of facts. Like most, I believe preserving truth is essential. It's best to be truthful in our relationships, professional life and academic work. This relatively, acceptable belief has become more polarized as one's

With Ambition Comes Insecurity

With Ambition Comes Insecurity

In May 2018 I began writing an entry titled The Exclusive Club. Labeling it an entry is a stretch since I wrote a total of 88 words, the last two being "The Stev", which is a peculiar way to start a sentence and to end a work. I

A Simple Journaling Practice

A Simple Journaling Practice

When I was around eight to ten (elementary school, surely) my mother introduced my sister and me to a gratitude journal. I have no recollection of the exact day, but at some point, my mom must have told us that she kept a gratitude journal to document what makes her

The Last Male Northern White Rhino

The Last Male Northern White Rhino

Hello, this will be a different type of blog post. I suppose with only 3 posts so far it's difficult to claim that there's a normal type of post. The initial plan of this post was to explore the different points of view in writing by

The Lunar Time Capsule

The Lunar Time Capsule

On January 25, 2021 the reddit user u/Valphon orchestrated the creation of a Lunar time capsule on the r/space subreddit. In the post, Valphon promised 100,000 users each 10 MB of data to send to the moon for free. Valphon purchased cargo area, called a MoonBox, of

The Anthropocene Reviewed, Reviewed

The Anthropocene Reviewed, Reviewed

I'm a big fan of the five-star scale despite its simplifications. It delivers a near aggregate evaluation of something's worth in (a more or less) coherent fashion. Rather than asking friends or family for recommendations, the five-star scale provides a data and consumer friendly

From Reader to Writer

The concept of being a writer or an author always allured me. I see writers as the rare few who possess the ability to translate our weird human experience from foreign opinionated emotions to legible and thoughtful words. The writing process invokes constant filtration of ideas that almost guarantees absolute