Minsuk Kang 강민석

I don’t have to care about algorithms if I have people who care about me. And I get people to care about me by first demonstrating that I care about them. Some people I’ve talked with over the years have said that this seems like “too much effort,” but I counter with “it’s effort that actually pays off over time, contrasted with... See more

Yes. I was nineteen or twenty. Harry Adams, who was the master of Trumbull College, said, “Do you want to come to this tea? This missionary from Japan is coming.” And so this nice white guy, who helped poor Koreans in Japan, came and gave a talk. There were about two of us in the entire room, and I couldn’t leave. He told the story about, I guess,... See more

Write on the internet.

Find or create a

third place.

Pick up the phone.

Join niche interest groups.

Live, don't lurk.

Embrace candid culture.

Put people you care about on the calendar.

Don't play near black holes.

Meet people at farmers markets.

Learn to communicate.

Make wobbly things. Subscribe to local events calendars.

Learn to win friends.

Learn to feel.

Em... See more

Perhaps the oldest and most fundamental question that I wish to examine in the course of this semester is the question: what is a regime? What are regimes? What are regime politics? The term "regime" is a familiar one. We often hear today about shaping regimes or about changing regimes, but what is a regime? How many kinds are there? How are they... See more

Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you're producing, you'll know you're not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The... See more

If you write to please others, you are selling out. You are in the process of audience capture. This way of talking, which is how the fear in me talks, is common—as if writing for an audience and writing for yourself are at odds with each other. I really used to feel like that.

But I no longer think that it is quite right. The relationship between... See more

I think that every writer should have a question they can ask that there is no end to the pursuit of. Every writer should have questions big enough and pressing enough and multi-faceted enough and unanswerable enough that they occupy their entire life, however long or short it is