juliana ong
@julianaong
juliana ong
Meanwhile, instead of systemic solutions, the culture offers individual ones. Optimization culture. Side hustles. “Maxxing.” Career content that treats a structural problem like a personal productivity challenge. The treadmill gets faster, and instead of questioning the treadmill, we buy better shoes.
I make good money. Why do I still feel like this?
While it is true, as generations of psychologists have found, that “who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love” — a process known as limbic revision — it is also true, as generations of self-aware humans have found, that whom we love depends in large part on who we already are. Our original wounds, our formative attachments, our... See more
How (Not) to Love: George Saunders on Unbreaking Our Hearts by Breaking Our Patterns
Courage changes things and courage changes us. It’s how we become. I have found that there is a “right-sized” fear inside any vision for change, and in taking courageous action we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead... The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay... The courage to exit... See more
How patterns change, an astronaut's antidote to despair, and the lost Italian art of sprezzatura: living with ease and openness to wonder
Who we fall in love with is ultimately a reflection of what we value individually and how we view ourselves. There’s no escaping yourself in dating. No matter who you’re sitting across from, the one constant you come up against is your own insecurities, your own unresolved issues, your own doubts and fears.
materialists
The irony of American TikTok refugees flooding Xiaohongshu in 2025 underscored a deeper reality: that the US internet had become much more like China’s, not the other way around. “In trying to ‘protect’ Americans from China, our gripped-by-moral-panic political class has made us just like China. The government has decided that the only way to... See more
To understand China, we need to understand the Chinese internet
Both partners taking accountability for having an outside support network (no attempt to make each other everything)
I can’t do better than Kurt Vonnegut on this subject:
I can’t do better than Kurt Vonnegut on this subject:
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a... See more
Sasha Chapin • What I'm looking for in my marriage
But don’t you understand, Amy? You’re wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things.
... See moreHanya Yanagihara • A Little Life: A Novel
Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?