juliana ong

In an age of mass production, curation and taste matter more.

AI productivity is now creating a world where everyone can execute, but only a few will figure out what’s worth executing .

In the absence of strong convictions about what you want from life, you will always default to wanting more money. It’s the lowest common denominator of desire in a society with any semblance of upward mobility. The key to escaping this cycle is first establishing your priorities (family dynamics, geography, lifestyle, whatever) , and then figuring... See more

In Freudian language, ambivalence is the ability to hold contradictory feelings toward a person. A child loves their mother, but can also sometimes be extremely angry at her. A person holds love and hate, attraction and disgust, excitement and boredom, connection and disconnection with a person. The ability to be able to hold these contradictions... See more

I’m a natural skeptic who believes the beauty industry is fucking with women to sell more products. I really do think it starts with diet and exercise and sleep, beyond anything you apply topically. My beauty routine is consistent exercise, walking a lot, and drinking a ton of water.

Gen Z are experimenting with something new: meta-sincerity; embracing earnestness in full awareness that it may look cringe. Rather than a naïve return to sincerity, it is a conscious choice to care, try, or feel despite knowing that detachment is the safer cultural posture. Nowhere is this clearer than in their embrace of hobbies: roller-skating,... See more

“I think a lot about those whose lives I find fascinating, and it’s often they who tried new and varied things on the way to figuring out what they were great at: Christopher Walken was a lion tamer, Mrs. Prada is a trained mime artist. Maybe my future iteration is something in the circus. We’ll see. Perhaps after this swim.”

Fulfillment... is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal... It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell... The thing about working with time, instead of against it, ...is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.