Sixian

“People are good at learning by imitation,” Housel notes. “But the hidden nature of wealth makes it hard to imitate others and learn from their ways.” We can’t imitate many of the actions that lead to wealth because the most important action that leads to wealth—not spending every dollar we make—is an anti-action. Wealth comes, in part, from the... See more

The truth is that we want most things according to how other people model the value of those things to us. These people are models of desire.

Thinking about the two opposed theories, it struck me that between the carrier bag story and the hero’s journey, there is a third kind of story that is superior to both: the boat story. A boat is at once a motif of containment and journeying. The mode of sustenance it enables — fishing, especially with a net, a bag full of holes — is somewhere... See more

After all that reading and talking, I can say with confidence that nothing great in this town is built without the whole team linking arms to build it together. And, that true collaboration makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And, that getting there requires working your butt off to do work you’re proud of and leaning on and... See more

Internet subcultures, by contrast, are building grand narratives and meme worlds that help people feel their way through the chaos that’s currently unfolding. These stories cut deep, down to the most foundational questions of race and religion and destiny. We shouldn’t be too surprised that complex conspiracy theories, intergenerational trauma, and... See more

The relative invisibility of stretch wrap outside the warehouse or distribution center is echoed in the critical literature on the movement of cargo.

Some of them we have named for, you just named a few ‘good’, ‘accountable’, ‘evil’, you know, turning away, a bypass, and in naming and in inhabiting and in performing those neural architectures, we place-make the world. We terraform the world as we are terraformed ourselves, as we learn to acculturate ourselves to the psychic demands of these... See more

To fill in the gaps in this literature, to draw connections among different disciplines, is an act of repair or, simply, of taking care — connecting threads, mending holes, amplifying quiet voices.