15 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Welcome to Rambletown! I think the core problem I have when I am creative writing, is that sometimes I feel like I wax poetic too much, or I feel the pressure to wax poetic too much, and then I am not driven by the whims of the mind but instead a ghoul on my shoulder constantly nudging my hands off the wheel to pull a fucking Gymkhana maneuver. I wonder why I like creative writing. I know for a fact I have fun writing interesting sentences; it’s a definite thought I’ve had, where I just chai…
12 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
I was talking with a new friend Angela yesterday, and during our email conversation she mentioned her art taking a side seat to the tech-y stuff. It got me thinking about art again, and in particular the seemingly random but firm belief I have that knowing about, caring about, and engaging with art is important (more important than ever before? Who’s to say, really). I initially thought up a large portion of this with the intent of being prescriptive, but some helpful conversations with my gir…
6 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Written by Joseph Nguyen This book, I thought, would be similar in spirit to Naval's Almanack. I was wrong about that, and I think that was a very good thing. I really liked the cadence and style of this book, it felt inviting and grounded, and helped me more calmly re-evaluate how I thought and the difference between thoughts and thinking, non-thinking, control, the PAUSE acronym, intuition, and space for ideas. I still need to properly peruse the "practice" section, but overall this was helpfu…
3 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Written by Eric Jorgenson This was an interesting read, in part because I disagreed with about a third of the book sort of fundamentally, but as a whole it made me think quite a bit. The book is about Naval Ravikant, an angel investor who now preaches philosophy as well. The first half of the book was on wealth and judgement, in particular about compounding effects, leverage, doing things you're the best at, and so on. A lot of the advice is sensible in this vein, things like "Productize yoursel…
3 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Written by Sarah Thornton This was the first book about art that I'd properly read in years, and I have it to thank for kickstarting an interest in both art and the art of critiquing art (lol). The culture surrounding the art world is a curious one, whether you're at an auction like Christie's or la Biennale di Venizia (Venice Biennale), or even at a crit at CalArts, and learning about the art world through these seven days proved rather eye opening for me. In particular, I think I understood be…
3 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Written by Dava Sobel This was a very cool book detailing the journey and eventual success of John Harrison, the man who invented a clock that could work at sea, which helped solve the problem of keeping track of longitude. This was crucial for navigation, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, when naval travel was tantamount for both military and trade prowess. What I think this book did a very compelling job of was showing the scale and importance of the problem, from bringing in famous h…
3 Aug 2026 · asb's corner
Written by Jim Holt My musings on this shall be brief, I'd wager. First, I want to thank Daniel Huang for recommending this book to me, it was a pretty fun read! It goes over a series of essays and stories wherein Jim Holt collates curious chronicles of central chaps in the world of math, the sciences, and technology. There were lots of fun tidbits, some challenging of the status quo with regards to stories about certain eminently famous figures, and a lot of dry wit that I personally gelled wit…
27 Jul 2026 · asb's corner
let nani_house = "The doors open, and it is basically all the same. The speaker as you enter is the same, a slow, dimpled white dome capping a dish shaped structure on a tripod. We blasted all the coolest songs back then. The sofas, chairs, and tables on the right are the same, the girl playing guitar in charcoal opposite the TV is the same. Some of the tables’ books are the same, and most of the pictures on the shelf are too, although a picture of my mother I don't remember seems to have ente…