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 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...
Chopra Is a Construct. Epstein’s Crimes Are Real.
The Business of Consciousness Constructs In one of the emails to Epstein, Deepak Chopra declares, “God is a Construct. Cute Girls are Real.” Yup, the self help Guru Deepak Chopra features in Epstein emails over 3000 times. And this is just one of the few...
The Evolution of Love: Marriage, Survival, and Personal Reinvention in a Changing World
A Society Experiences Growing Pains I took this picture of a wall hanging in the lobby of a hotel we were staying at in Granada, Spain. Somehow, the couples whose heads are disintegrating felt like a fitting image for the essay on marriage I was writing. I’ve...
The Prophet and the Poet: Tupac’s Humanity, Legacy, and Why His Words Still Heal Generations
For the longest time, until it just became too dirty for me to wear, I would wear my Tupac shirt whenever I had to run an errand or just take Yogi, our dog, out for a walk. I can't find a picture of mine readily, but I’ll update this space once I find one of me...
I Walked In as a Tourist and Left Feeling Like I Belonged Somewhere I’d Never Been Before
Selling Our Soul to The Arts I arrived in SFO as a tourist, but the moment I walked into SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, it felt like I belonged there. I was suddenly in the company of over 50,000 artists’ works. The Grand Atrium’s minimalist...
The Integrity Exit: Why Mrinank Sharma’s Departure Matters
Two days ago, Mrinank Sharma resigned from his role as an AI safety engineer at Anthropic. He had been with the company for two years. “The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very...
You Don’t Die Once – A Poem Read by Rachana
https://youtu.be/cAahMdoN9J8 - Want To Listen To The Article Instead? - I’ve written this from the perspective of a mid-lifer, about how we get infinite chances at reinventing ourselves only if we’re looking for those opportunities. My children...
Filters, Fraud, and Fame: Why I’m “Hiring” Kim K as My Life Coach
The Open Letter to Kim K Yeah, once in a while I write posts like these, the kind that disappoint my parents and my kids alike. But, who else will stick it up to Kim and her klan? Uggh, so I will do the needful. This one is going to be special. I’ll tell you...
The Nihilist Penguin: Why Werner Herzog’s Lone Penguin Speaks to Our Need to Reject the Herd
The "Nihilist Penguin" and the Man Who Found It Like many of you, I was captivated by Herzog's lone penguin. The one that breaks from the herd and heads in the opposite direction. This singular image of defiance seems to be the hallmark of its observer who...