–
Want To Listen To The Article Instead?
–
A Night To Remember
I came home and couldn’t go back to bed without cleaning my kitchen countertop with my hands. As I cleaned, I thought of Brandon and how he was a human like me and not a hand that refilled my hot water, brought me extra napkins, or cleared out the empty plates on our table.
But, hey, here’s my ask. I want you to listen to those quiet crackles in the background, the ones of desire and longing to be the best you can be. The ones that feel forbidden, and the ones of love that don’t follow any norm. And you know what I think?
Read the essay HERE.
– 0 –
When Life Happens, You Write
When you’re a writer-at-large, you let life happen to you. That way, you let your eyes steal everything that you see, put a spin on it and spill onto paper / machine some “stream of consciousness” kinda cool stuff. And if I am a true writer-at-large, it’s only fair that I must observe, muse and write about it.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...