A Lot Like You

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It’s my 25th birthday & I’m out for a run along the beach of Half Moon Bay, California. Evening’s descended, the sky still hungover from the afternoon rain, the waves lumbering to their own indecipherable meter. My leg strikes the … Continue reading →

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As a neophyte Ruby on Rails programmer, there are certain phrases, acronyms, and slogans one hears incessantly. “REST”. “CRUD”. “DRY”. “Convention over configuration.” “MVC”. These concepts are all central to Rails — and, to an extent, web development more broadly … Continue reading →

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The conversation at the end of conversation is a form of poetry. Con-verse-ation: Poetry spoken in company. I’m relieved to find poetry here, in part because I’m never sure when or where it exists elsewhere. How often do we find … Continue reading →

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Begin in a vacuum. Or: Approximate to the wasteland six miles below you: Alaskan oceans, a picket of waterlogged air, some volcanic landmass, dark and nameless. Or, barring that: Approximate to where you are, an airplane cabin in transpacific flight … Continue reading →

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It is perhaps unsurprising that Chinese liberals today find such resonance in the writings of Eastern European thinkers such as Vaclav Havel, Jan Patoçka, and Adam Michnik. Like the European dissidents of the 1970s, Chinese intellectuals today must write in … Continue reading →

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That’s just the world we live in, you used to say, back when we lived in the same world.

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       It was a drab February day in 2009. I sat in my college dorm room four floors above York Street, drinking instant coffee and languorously gazing out the window at pedestrians below — miniature fortresses of warmth … Continue reading →

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The world is still tranquil. You are asleep in your apartment. You are asleep because everyone else is asleep, so late at night. That is what normal people do. End of story. And even if you were not asleep, and … Continue reading →

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We could see the parable, even with all the vertigo it offers, as a seamark, or known face, a remembered gesture: we look at it, we go away, we travel (to China), we come back. It has not changed, but … Continue reading →