She was literally cutting that long tail bro. And someone commented "Vai pregnant xa ra"

maan pani k k lagdo raixa hou

- For the betterment of society

- To end casteism

- To not limit the possibilities of gene mixing

- To prevent genetic disorders

- And to have majestic kids 😍

As a chhetri, I'm definitely considering intercaste marriage or will probably find my wifey beyond the borders

Suddenly, you start checking the lives of people you haven't seen in years. People who probably wouldn't even stop and say hi if you randomly met them on the street. But still, they've become these random background characters in your mind.

This is what social media does to us.

The problem with social media is that it makes us so self-conscious that we start constantly thinking about how other people perceive us instead of focusing on our craft.

Here's a thought experiment I've been thinking about recently.

Imagine you're checking someone's life on social media. Indirectly, you're also letting a little bit of their world into yours: their values, beliefs, desires, opinions, and the way they choose to present themselves.

Now ask yourself: Do you really want that?

Do you actually believe in everything they believe? Do you want the lifestyle they're showing you? Do you want to think the way they think?

Most of the time, probably not.

Maybe there are a few people whose lives, ideas, or values you genuinely admire. Maybe you agree with 80% of what they represent. Those people can be your heroes or role models.

So why give your attention to everyone instead of deliberately choosing the people and ideas you actually want to learn from?

The less attention you give to the external world, the more you can appreciate your inner world.

Not even with my family or friends (which I don't have), nor with strangers. I just rant here and there in writing, that's it

Now, all of that is affecting me, I guess. I've been feeling so heavy for a while, but I don't really have the words to say it. I don't even know what to say or how to say it, but I know I have something to say. I think I’ve lost my ability to express myself as well

How can I cure this? How can I break free from this?

Where are my loved ones? Are there anyone? Does my happiness and peace depend on someone else? If so, where are they? Why aren't they coming? If not, why am I feeling hollow and empty? Why am I craving human connection and feeling the need for someone? Can't I be enough by myself? But I'm a social animal. Still, I have to be strong and positive, right? So I did. But why am I still crying and thinking too much in my dreams, just because I've stopped crying in real life? So what's the point then?

What is even real?

Oh God, why isn't my relationship with my mom and dad like a friendship? I wish I had that and I wish I could cry and hug them. Why don't I even have someone... Dai Didi, in my life? I just wanted to hug them. Now, whom should I?

What is this even about?

I'm out of words; I'm just crying in my dreams but not in real life. I'm so strong and positive in real life. I can endure anything. But I'm dreaming so weird things. When I wake up, my head feels so heavy and I just want to cry, but I can't in real life.

I wasn't a movie person. I just used to scroll, be on Reddit, YT and all that. And I wasn't feeling good either. I've no one really to talk to. It's always just me with my random stuff. So then I decided to give movies a chance. I started with some thrillers, then I tried other genres too. It's been a month and I've finished countless movies. And after a long time, I'm feeling good and alive. I'm just having coffee and watching movies. Cinema is so beautiful.

These are some of the movies I've watched recently: Oldboy, Incendies, parasites, maharaja, synecdoche NY, nightcrawler, se7ven, prestige, john wick, the batman, arrival, Avatar, dune, gladiator, kingdom of heaven, lotr, AOT,

Forgot the counting as well lol

When I say alone, I really mean it. I've been so alone for such a long time. Ever since I left home after +2, it's been over 5 years. Even before that, I was all alone. I never fit into any group and I still don't. I don't really connect with my family either, let alone other people. Why am I so different? The thing I hate most about myself is my naive, innocent looking face. Everyone has told me, You look too innocent and I hate every bit of it. I've tried so many times to fit in with them. I've copied what they do, what they wear and how they talk cause it's so suffocating to be myself all the time. I analyze and overthink everything so much. Even while walking, I feel anxious, so anxious around people. I have no one around me, no one to talk to about the things I actually want to talk about. I don't know how long I'm going to be like this. I thought things would be fine by now. I expected this feeling to go away a long time ago, but it's still the same.

What's your experience? My skin is kinda dry and itchy, so I'm thinking about buying them. And where did you buy them?

What's your experience? My skin is kinda dry and itchy, so I'm thinking about buying them. And where did you buy them?

I like to write once in a while as a note to myself and I do it simply for fun. Specifically on X and Substack. I also have a YouTube channel where I've posted Naval content. I do all of this simply for the love of the game.

Right now, this is all I can offer to the world and I'm also working on my tech skills. But before I get there, I want to figure out how I can monetize my writing skills and the stuff I do.

I have 100+ subscribers on Substack, but unfortunately, I can't turn on the paid subscription feature because Stripe isn't supported in my country.

You can check out what I've created and give me some suggestions on how I can leverage these skills. I'm from a third world country where finding a job is difficult and even when you do find one, it's like trading all your time for very little in return.

I want to save my time as well so I can continue working on my skills and focusing on college as well, but I'm struggling financially right now.

I'd genuinely appreciate any suggestions, advice or ideas on how I can turn what I'm already doing into something. Thank you.

A while ago, I saw a tweet by Andrej Karpathy about movies that has really stuck in my mind. He tweeted:

“Movies are great though. Even if you set aside the pure artistic enjoyment (you shouldn’t). Movies are stories, and stories are powerful, primal, moving, motivating. They are prompts to you to consider dilemmas and scenarios, to build your world model and compass…”

He also shared a list of movies he had watched multiple times, like Interstellar, Gladiator, Contact, Good Will Hunting, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings 1/2/3, Harry Potter 1, Avatar, The Fifth Element, Independence Day, Rush Hour, Armageddon, Stargate, Anchorman, Mean Girls, and Terminator 2.

For a long time, I thought movies were actually a waste of time. But that tweet stayed in my mind, so I decided to give movies a chance.

I started with The Lord of the Rings. While watching it, I started thinking about how amazing it would be to be born hundreds of years ago, to live without technology, surrounded by mountains and communities of people, struggling for survival in the wild. Lots of wild and interesting imagination, lol.

Recently, I’ve finished Dune, The Batman, John Wick, Gladiator, and a lot more. A few other interesting ones I’ve watched are Limitless, which is similar to Ted Chiang’s “Understand,” and Arrival, which is based on his short story “Story of Your Life.”

And I’ve started to realize that, besides entertainment, movies can actually help you build your world model. You can experience so many things in just a few hours.

Maybe this is why people say to consume as much information as you can from different domains.

When you do that, you start to fuse knowledge and ideas from different fields, and the outcome becomes unique to each individual and their experiences. This is where great ideas come from.

Just like language shapes how we see the world, mathematics might be one of the most powerful things we’ve created. It is essentially the language of nature. Physics, code, and so much more rely on math and logic. Basically, logic teaches us how to think.

Similarly, cinema might be one of the most powerful forms of art we’ve created.

Before watching Dune, I watched a video about the author of Dune, Frank Herbert, and his extraordinary life. It was so interesting to see how he connected different pieces of his life experiences into his work.

Then, after digging deeper, I found that both Hermann Hesse, the writer of Siddhartha, and Frank Herbert, the writer of Dune, were heavily influenced by Carl Jung’s ideas.

And then you start seeing how Herbert connected different aspects of experience; politics, power, religion, philosophy, ecology, and human psychology, and turned them into a story.

He experienced the world, collected all these ideas, connected them in his imagination, and wrote them into words.

Then Denis Villeneuve gave that imagination a visual life.

And the most beautiful part is being able to experience someone’s whole lifetime of experiences, knowledge, observations, and imagination through a story.

One person’s experiences become words. Those words become someone else’s imagination. And that imagination becomes something millions of other people can experience in their own minds.

I was wrong about movies.

Read this essay on Substack or Medium.

There’s a famous Royal Society motto in Latin: Nullius in verba, which means “take no one’s word for it.”

In life, you’ll admire certain people, ideas, and ways of living. You’ll take their advice because you respect them. But their ideas and advice are based on their own situations, goals, and perspectives. Your situation is probably very different. They’ll try to fit you into their world, but you probably need to build your own.

That’s why I believe in questioning most advice and walking your own path.

In Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, after experiencing both the materialistic and spiritual worlds, Siddhartha tries to control his son because he knows, from his own experience, how deeply the materialistic world can consume a person. But after Vasudeva helps him understand that he cannot control his son’s path, Siddhartha finally lets him go wherever he wants.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that you may have many goals and admire many people. You can learn from them, but in the end, you have to experience life yourself and rely on your own judgment. Truth has to be seen through your own eyes, not borrowed from others.

In the modern world, everyone on social media is advising you on how to live and think. Have you ever questioned their ideas?

On social media, we create our personalities so carefully. We like to pretend we’re doing everything for others, but in reality, most of the time we’re just doing it for ourselves. So how can you take someone’s ideas so deeply when their whole purpose is often to capture your attention and gain something from you?

Even when someone has good intentions, you should still question what they say.

There’s endless information about what to do, how to live, and how to think. People constantly consume whatever appears on their screens. The negative side of this is that we slowly lose our independent thinking. We stop questioning and simply believe whatever we see.

I read Arthur Schopenhauer’s essays a month ago, and his words are becoming more and more relevant, and honestly, a little scarier, in this modern world. Here are some of the lines from his books that made me think:

“And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal, that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk.”

And another:

“From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.”

And another part of the lost art of thinking for yourself is boredom.

It’s strange that we are now trying to learn the art of doing nothing. People can’t do their chores or laundry without putting something on. They can’t even go for a walk without playing music.

There’s nothing wrong with good music. But personally, I’ve noticed that when I constantly switch between different genres, songs, videos, podcasts, and other forms of stimulation, I feel like my mind is constantly reacting to something new.

Personally, I’ve found classical music much more calming. It doesn’t make me feel as stimulated, and I don’t stress over things without a reason.

The whole idea here is less.

Less information. Less food. Less entertainment. Less communication. Less stimulation.

You already have too much of all of these. Sometimes, consuming less gives your mind the space to think, rest, and create.

Thank you so much for reading!

Read this essay on Substack.

One of the best things you can steal from great people is their ideas, and the fastest way to get smarter is to read smarter people. While studying their daily rituals, I’ve started believing this line more and more: “Alpha doesn’t come from common knowledge.”

I found this on the Daily Rituals website, but sadly, the site has shut down. It was about Sir Isaac Newton’s routine:

“One of Newton’s assistants noted the physicist’s habits in the 1680s. Newton rarely went to bed before 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., and sometimes not until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. Yet, “in a morning he seem’d to be as much refresh’d with his few hours’ sleep as though he had taken a whole night’s rest.” During the day, Newton was never seen taking a walk or engaging in recreation. His assistant recalled hearing him laugh only once. Food was also a dispensable luxury. Newton dined sparingly and often forgot to eat at all. If reminded that he hadn’t touched the meal set before him, Newton would reply, “Have I?” and absentmindedly take a few bites before plunging back into his work.”

Stories like these inspire me every time I read about Newton, or any other artist.

I also saw a tweet by a person named Ron where he said:

“Thiel did a fireside chat my freshman year (2014) of college where someone asked: ‘Could the next Zuckerberg be in this room?’

Thiel: ‘He would never show up to an event like this.’

Basically, there is endless advice out there on how to live, think, and act. But the people who actually do bold things don’t always have time to sit around consuming information all day. They do things, get stuck, and figure them out.

That’s why I believe in questioning most advice and walking your own path. People give advice based on their own situations, goals, and perspectives. Your situation is probably very different. They’ll try to fit you into their world, but you probably need to build your own.

There’s a good quote by Jeffrey Pfeffer: “You can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.”

Imagine if someone had suggested Vinci, Newton, or Tesla avoid extreme routines and maintain active social lives. Would they necessarily have become who they became?

I don’t think their unusual habits were necessarily the reason they became extraordinary. More likely, their unusual habits were a consequence of being unusually obsessed with something.

Here’s another example from Daily Rituals:

“(Francis Bacon’s) idea of dieting,” Mason writes, “was to take large quantities of garlic pills and shun egg yolks, desserts, and coffee, while continuing to guzzle a half-dozen bottles of wine and eat two or more large restaurant meals a day.”

From history to today, every artist who creates something meaningful seems to have unique, and often weird, traits that make them who they are. For me, that’s what makes studying great people so fascinating.

Thank you so much for reading!

I believe experience is the highest form of knowledge. But I’m still in my early 20s, so there’s no reason to blindly follow the principles of someone who hasn’t lived his life yet.

I’ve studied people I admire, and some of these ideas I’ve experienced myself. I’m writing them down as a note to myself, to remember what I’ve learned so far.

You’re allowed to reject my advice.

1. Believe in spontaneous curiosity.

• The ability to act in the moment when you feel the urge to do something is hugely underrated. When you’re inspired to do something, do it.
• Most great things happen spontaneously, as side projects or hobbies, without the aim of making something big. So do more side projects.
• Don’t be practical. Be delusional.
• Maximize your serendipity. The more risks you take, the luckier you get.

2. Don’t get attached to the self.

• Don’t fix your identity. Every human contains multitudes and has the capacity to think any thought ever conceived.
• Learn to handle the risk of embarrassment, rejection, and failure, and be shameless.
• The biggest weakness is wanting to be liked.
• The attention you’re seeking is your own.

3. Learn to think.

• All learning is about how to think.
• Math is just a way of thinking, and it teaches you how to think. Physics teaches you what is true. If you want to understand how everything works, study math and physics.
• Build your foundation: study computer science, math, physics, and engineering. Nature has no boundaries.
• In this world, we don’t come with innate knowledge. We read books, observe people, and watch movies. As we do, we collect information about the world. Over time, those ideas collide and fuse together to form something new and original.
• Whatever you’re looking for is already written somewhere. Some people have been in your situation and had thoughts similar to yours, so they’ve written them down. When you find their words, you’ll realize you’re not the only one thinking these things right now.

4. Build something.

• The best way to prove your value is to build something.
• The best way to find like-minded people is to do something interesting. Then you’ll have something to offer, and you’ll attract the right people.
• Pick the immediate direction that will put you in a position to work with the smartest people. That’s probably more important than having a good idea.
• Most of us look up to a few people who have already achieved the dream we’re trying to achieve. But the real question is: why aren’t you doing what they actually did? Is it ego? Ignorance? It’s obvious you should copy what works, but you don’t.

5. Learn from the greats, but become yourself.

• I can’t be the next Newton or Elon Musk. Even if Elon guided me personally, I can’t be him. But certainly, I can be myself. I can learn from great people, study the patterns in their lives, and copy what works. But in the end, I have to experience and figure it all out by myself.
• You don’t lose what you don’t have.
• The top three most important decisions in life are what you do, where you live, and who you’re with.
• Write for yourself. Write to remember.
• Writing is basically talking to yourself.
• Live an unscheduled life.
• Agency > courage > intelligence.

And, above all:

Reject most advice.