On How To Write.
“To me, a short story is a conversation between writer and reader, since only the writer can speak, she must take care to respect the reader, to avoid telling him what to think, to say as little as possible and imply the rest with metaphor, ellipses, allusive dialogue, pauses.” ~ Edith Pearlman on Writing
Inside the Wild Cage – A Poem by Rachana
We spend an insane amount of time being "wild" only in our thoughts. This piece explores what happens when we finally say "ok, fine" to the person holding the key, and trade our inner silence for something much louder. told youi can't get locked...
The Radical Acceptance of a Book Deal: Lindy West’s New Modern Love
I’m not entirely sure where our society is headed, but I've understood one thing for sure. If your marriage implodes in a strange way, there’s probably a book deal waiting for you on the other side. Lindy West had written a book called Shrill. I had fun listening...
The Attachment Economy Is Here: What AI Companions Mean for All of Us – Part I
Parents, Get Ready To Welcome Your AI In-Laws There will be a time in the not so distant future, when your child will introduce you to his girlfriend. And there's a possibility, you will end up locking eyes, if that's even possible, with his AI companion. The...
Finding Your Alignment: An Indian American Woman’s Guide to Living Fully in America
Rooted, Rising, and Reckoning As a life coach and friend to many from the Indian diaspora, I often find myself in the sacred space of listening to Indian American women juggling life and priorities in America as mothers, professionals, and social change...
Stop Hustling, Start Living: Nietzsche, Self-Mastery, and the Courage to Quit
In his work, The Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche talks about a certain type of person who has the most tolerance for suffering, because they experience difficulty as meaningful. “The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would...
Shirin Ebadi’s Fight for Freedom: Lessons from a Nobel Laureate and Iranian Women’s Resistance
Shirin Ebadi is a 2003 Nobel Prize winner known for her political activism and human rights work as a lawyer in Iran. She was also one of the people placed on the state’s execution lists. In 2017, I listened to the audiobook version of her memoir, Until We Are Free:...
Kryptonite – A Poem Read by Rachana
https://youtu.be/r1ydUcfoIsU - Want To Listen To The Article Instead? - Kryptonite Kryptonite is an exploration of that high-voltage space between a professional facade and private vulnerability, where an "iron will" dissolves into the blue light...
Human Slop: How This Fellowship-Winning ‘Satire’ Shows the Literature World’s Low Bar
Hey, sorry this needs a content warning. I'm about to review an unpalatable vulgar fictional story by a writer who has won a $75k/yr fellowship prize for this gem. A full 2-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford, nonetheless. The opening paragraph reads like...
Inside Social Media Lawsuits: How Meta, YouTube & AI Are Harming Teens
Life As a Chaos Machine I was on a beach, when I couldn't move, listening to The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher. The book makes painfully clear that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook leadership knew their platforms were harming young minds. Internal research linked...
When Men’s Vanity Becomes a Requirement: How Social Media Turned Self-Improvement Into Obsession
A decade ago, I had a Korean coworker who put my skincare regimen to shame. I used to be annoyed at him for not leaving a single lick of hair on his perfectly groomed, smooth skin. He blamed it on his culture’s beauty standards — and the fact that his wife was a...
AI Safety Leaders Destroyed by AI Agents: The Ironic Collapse Everyone Saw Coming
This past Sunday evening, in all her candor, Summer Yue, the Director of Frontier AI Safety at Meta posted on her profile: Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my...
In Life, He Left Our Hearts Racing — In Death, He Broke Them
Back around 2005, my husband and I were still watching TV together in the evenings. One of the shows we’d tune into was Grey's Anatomy. Yes, we had claimed our solidarity and remained fully committed to each other in spirit, but there seemed to be an unspoken rule...
Love For My Lava – A Poem by Rachana
It’s not a recurring dream —it’s my childhood in technicolor. I’m in Eluru again,first-floor balcony,colored baby chicksstrut past the open street sewer. Over the brick wall,police cadets march —stiff, precise,the way colonizers drilled them,looking ridiculous under...
When Dreams Abroad Turn Heavy: The Tragic Story and the Silent Mental Health Crisis of International Students
A Promise And Brilliance Lost “I'm a Master’s student in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at University of California, Berkeley, with an undergraduate degree from IIT Madras. I'm passionate about deep-tech innovations in soft and active...
Success vs Failure: Why Boredom, Stillness, and Slow Mastery Create the Most Powerful Humans
Success vs. Failure Billy Oppenheimer, a writer, once described picking up Robert Greene from the airport. For the uninitiated, Greene is the author of The 48 Laws of Power, a must-read for those who love power and want to dominate the world. Of course, the...
Anima – Micro Poetry by Rachana
Hi, thank you for reading my micro poems. Anima means soul in Latin. According to Carl Jung, it refers to the unconscious feminine archetype within a man: the inner image of woman that bridges the conscious ego and the deeper psyche, often manifesting as intense...
Why Being a Generalist Is the Ultimate Power Move in the Age of AI, Uncertainty, and Reinvention
The Case for the Generalist Years ago, I had created a username called wannabepolymath. I wasn't sure which single thing interested me most because I wanted to learn many different things. As I read more, I felt a growing urge to explore new fields, seeking...
Skyfaring In Luxor, Egypt: A Sunrise Hot Air Balloon Ride Over the Valley of the Kings
At 5am, we got ready for our sunrise hot air balloon ride. We were each handed a small bag of breakfast items to take with us at the lobby of our cruise. A few of us ate a muffin or a slice of bread but were mostly not hungry at that early. We were then picked up by a...