A thought: monocultures and Grand Narratives about what it is to be human and have a human experience have been our driving force for centuries. And then algorithms came.

Now, with each new curated bubble, a new micro-narrative.

I find it’s the same with non-fiction books: you can always find a new narrative that fuels your biases or challenges them. The point being that, today, you can pick and choose the data points & narratives that sustain your worldview. You don’t have to live by what the state, or society, or the church deem real and true.

This access to everything, everywhere, all at once makes it harder and harder to connect through shared values, principles, and ways to be in the world. (Just try to imagine how many scenarios were actually possible throughout history compared to today).

So, as we’re reaching peak summer and I will pause for a bit, I leave you with a list where this monoculture might still be “truer” than in other aspects: that which invites you to explore Taste.

Why the capital T?

Because I’m referencing the concept, and not the limited definition of subjective likes and dislikes.

Taste, in any domain, is the ability to unpack the rules and principles underneath the thing that works. And to know the why not as well as the why.

via

Tipar's Substack

Taste Isn't a Vibe. It's a Discipline.

Product taste. Founder taste. AI taste. It’s suddenly everywhere: in every newsletter, every LinkedIn post, every founder thread about what AI can do. And almost nobody using the word tells you what it means…

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · Tipar Collective

###

By the way, before I leave you to follow your tasteful curiosity, I need your help: my thoughtful conversation & business partner (hello, ^^) and I have launched Tipar Collective substack – so there’s a written version of our talks on all things business growth, AI, marketing, GTM, creative strategies, and so on.

I’d love to repost some of the essay-talks for you to easily get.

Thank you and let us move on:

#ToSee

There’s no better way to train your eye in contemporary composition and visual storytelling than to disect a film. You can always search for film name + analysis or video essay. YouTube provides:

When I say monocultures and the need to go back to the fundamentals to understand the rules of a period in time in terms of social mores and aesthetics, this is what I mean:

And, of course, because we do have multiple centers that generated the rules of morality, beauty, etc. for humanity in certain spaces, not just times — always search for the Other. You know I can’t escape my East Asian obsessions, so:

Complement it with the following fictional experiments: Baraka, La jetée, or a bit of Eisenstein’s magic. And if you’re willing to linger, start here.

#ToRead

• The essays that triggered my down-the-rabbit-hole-Taste-definitions, continued — to help you ask better questions of your own tastes:

  • ’s the best conversations help you hear yourself: “At its best, conversation helps make something newly available. Under the pressure of being listened to properly, people often discover that they know more than they thought they knew. A generous question, paired with a generous listener, can reach beneath the managed self and help pull something truer into language, bringing something from fog into form.”

  • Paul Graham’s Taste for Makers that invites us all to cultivate dissatisfaction: “Dangerous territory, that; if anything you should cultivate dissatisfaction. In Leonardo's drawings there are often five or six attempts to get a line right. The distinctive back of the Porsche 911 only appeared in the redesign of an awkward prototype. In Wright's early plans for the Guggenheim, the right half was a ziggurat; he inverted it to get the present shape.”

• John Berger and his Ways of seeing (in digital essays or book form) is a great way to fast-track your training in the definitions, currents, principles of art. If you want to go the advanced route, there’s always Gombrich (the bane of my uni days).

• Or maybe you prefer the speculative, fictive route. How about one story to challenge the idea of the creator?

#ToListen

• Have you heard of Angine de Poitrine and the waves they’re currently making in the music world? Train your ear for mathematical sounds. See if or what you like.

• Or go the ancient route and find out what sounds a biwa or an erhu make.

• How language shapes the way we think — before society and culture, we had the spoken word.

• To understand where we’re going, we need to understand how we got here: The Rest is History does the trick really well.

• The beauty of fusion in two ways: Asaf Avidan and Moses Yoofee Trio

#ToTry

• The ultimate film studies watchlist [this one is truly an endeavour into not just visual understanding, but also social and cultural, since the stories we tell codify a lot about the context they were produced in]

• ’s reading list for a deep-dive into humanities.

#ToPonder

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
Aristotle, Politics

Today, inspired by & our journey together co-building a marketing & growth consultancy boutique, I’m doing a summer mixtape of resources on imposter syndrome, taste in the age of AI, and why getting back to our whys is more relevant than ever — especially in a world that seems to be losing its creative compass.

And, yes, there’s something magical (I know, I know, some truths are hidden in clichés) about having an intellectual sparring partner you can co-create with, because then you get to build from first principles and articulate the why before anything else (Sinek explains it so well, still). In our case, that’s all about understanding the patterns underneath to get to the roots of a business context because we’re genuinely passionate about helping with both immediate results and long-term changes, and not becoming a “patch” on a dysfunctional system. TLDR: doing a marketing campaign is easy, making a campaign part of a coherent product narrative that lands with the right audience, at the right time — that’s what we’re here for!

So let’s dive together into what sparked both this passion and curiosity lately, and why I think all of you here will appreciate it:

#ToSee

One night, I randomly stumbled upon the live streaming below, and I got hooked — if there’s one terrain where formula and originality constantly battle, it’s clearly Japanese pop culture:

I could say the same thing about the following animated film recommendation — French and Japanese creators giving it their all in every aspect (storytelling, sound design, a plethora of animation techniques, voice acting, etc.). It will leave you with a lot of questions on originality, creativity, and otherness.

What about the imposter syndrome that kicks in when following in the steps of tradition…and maybe breaking it? This one truly is poetry in motion:

#ToRead

I wish I authored the essay with the excerpt below, that’s all I’ll say ;)

When applied to taste, practising discernment means to:

• Think critically about a cultural artefact you’ve been exposed to for the first time. Its context, meaning, intent etc.

• Engage in self-reflection about one’s own existing tastes and preferences. Eg: How does this new phenomena make us feel.

• Have some awareness that this reaction may be shaped by one’s social class, education, and cultural background.

• Lastly, being open to new perspectives in the first place.

Complement it with another take on taste by the same author, thejaymo.net, and remember that taste is the intersection of experience, education, and judgment, not a subjective view (that’s opinion and it has its place in other contexts) — great “cure” or “lens” for a productive imposter syndrome, by the way!

And then continue exploring the imposter syndrome with this beautiful essay on John Quincy Adams via The Marginalian: It is often when life blindsides us with a bright counternarrative to a limiting inner story that we suffer the most, because we are suddenly forced to revise our entire personal mythos, to relinquish our familiar ways of keeping ourselves small, to exceed our own expectations of the possible.

#ToListen

• This new Stromae collab is such an “ear candy” + perfect summer mood.

• I have to recommend this Tipar Collective podcast episode by Jenny and yours truly, for all of you feeling somewhat cheated by AI and its recipes vs. what it really means to “steal like an artist”.

#ToTry

• Yes, guilty as charged for jumping on the hype, but it’s so good: Ube matcha latte.

#ToPonder

“Growing up, you had very specific dreams: by 50 you would be a bilingual marketing executive CEO entrepreneur, wearing lingerie and weighing your oatmeal (you really, really loved the opening scene of Devil Wears Prada). You’d be settled with your gorgeous, green eyed British husband that you met while living abroad (city undefined - stylistically Paris, but on the water, and everyone’s speaking english? Your imagination has never had much use for a map), and you’d have a home (no, a penthouse apartment! No, wait, a seaside cottage, but in New York City..!) filled to the brim with tasteful knickknacks you’ve picked up during your lifetime of travels.”

This excerpt from the essay below felt like peering deep into my soul, because that was literally me at the undefined age of 12, 13, 14 or so? Makes one ponder on what you really want & why you want it:

@lizleatrice

The year is 2063 and you were never interesting.

Growing up, you were gifted. Your parents would talk about your potential, the things you’d do. You had hobbies, interests. You collected Pokémon cards and adored animals; your singular life goal was to convince your parents to dig a backyard pool so you could put a dolphin in it. You were obsessed with miniature things and death, you concocted elaborat…

Read more

3 months ago · 9334 likes · 266 comments · @lizleatrice

It’s International Children's Day in my part of the world — fitting for what I’m about to write next.

Writing is like breathing to me. Never stopped to ask why I ingrained this in myself. But I’ve been nostalgic lately, fondly chuckling at the 7-year-old me composing rhymes and poems for my parents, and, later on, my dog.

So, with the same curiosity that I always preach about around here, the childlike one (pun intended!), here’s what “writing is like breathing” actually means to me:

1. Writing is thinking.

2. Good writing is there to make you ask better questions of yourself and the world.

3. Understand the invisible craft. Respect it. Know how and when to play with it and break the rules.

4. True craft is invisible. Because making something “simple” is the hardest.

5. A good story is medium agnostic. It happens that I feel compulsively attached to the written one. *By good, I mean it makes you care for a specific way of being and doing in the world, so you ask better questions. See points 1 and 2.

6. Writing is a selfish act. After long deliberation, I realised I write for myself while dreaming of many readers. A paradox? Maybe.

7. I’m an essayist at heart, although I love fiction. It’s probably my questioning mind that gets in the way of my forever unwritten novel. An essay is an act of vulnerability & giving. (See, a paradox, again!)

8. Short form is a virtuoso’s playground.

9. To write is to search for something or have an irreversible need to create.

10. To write is to accept that the more you search for knowledge, the more it evades you.

11. To create is “to not take yourself so seriously”. [And in the spirit of this one, I’m actually co-founding something. Here’s the link, with more details coming in a separate note].

What about you? What axiom are you carrying about yourself?

#ToSee

The award for best dialogue writing in a while:

Must-see for fans of the absurd and a profound AI critique wrapped in dark sarcasm:

Another one for the storytellers in all of us, with all the meta you need:

#ToRead

• I’ve probably recommended this one TOO many times, but this is one of the best fictionalised memoirs I’ve read — because that’s the pretext for one of the best essays on death, and by extension, life: “I used to believe, when I was ‘just’ a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth was found, because they described the world, because they saw into the human heart, because they grasped both the particular and the general and were able to re-create both in free yet structured forms, because they understood, must therefore be more sensitive- also less vain, less selfish- than other people. Then I became a writer, and started meeting other writers, and studied them, and concluded that the only difference between them and other people, the only, single way in which they were better, was that they were better writers. They might indeed be sensitive, perceptive, wise, generalizing and particularizing- but only at their desks and in their books. When they venture out into the world, they regularly behave as if they have left all their comprehension of human behaviour stuck in their typescripts. It’s not just writers either. How wise are philosophers in their private lives?”

• Subverting narratives? Try Dorohedoro, the manga.

• Need hope in the form of a functional utopia that reminds us what humanity can do from a place of good? Start here.

#ToListen

• Recently rediscovered this one: Shelter.

• The one on repeat: Mr. Know It All.

• When Bobby McFerrin improvises, the world listens.

#ToTry

• It’s the perfect time to give haiku another chance.

• Done is better than perfect, with a revealing story by my friend and co-founder, ;)

#ToPonder

“Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.” Andy Weir

I was really struggling with my writing these last few days, and then this popped into my inbox: The Majesty. The worth beneath the worth:

Like me, you may have hit some rough spots, you may have lost much, your wounds might be fresh. But how you feel about your worth does not change your worth. (Dan Dowman)

That last sentence (my emphasis in bold) made me pause.

Although I’m not particularly a fan of the word majesty, the way the author defines it as one’s intrinsic worth speaks to me. Precisely because it is so easy to measure oneself with the unit metrics society, school, family, and companies build — forgetting oneself in the process more often than not.

To me, this is also a time story, because I truly believe you start understanding this more and more as you grow older, no longer being so affected by others’ measuring stick.

I’ve always questioned my worth, both intrinsically and externally “validated”, because I’ve always been on this quest of making meaning of my existence. That is not to say that I have a definitive answer. On the contrary, I think we each owe it to ourselves to negotiate and renegotiate that answer as life throws curveballs our way.

So, in that spirit, I invite you to explore what majesty can become for us and make of us all. If some of these resources are a stretch though, please let me know ;)

#ToSee

Renaissance never left us — and I always felt closer to this model of being (in time) than what our current times dictate:

If you want a contrarian view, you can count on Alan Watts to have you covered. With a foot in all religions and one in the philosophy of living, you’re bound to find something that resonates:

Not a new recommendation, but one I come back to, over and over again — precisely because it shows how valuable a life is:

Bonus: not sure why, but this theme prompted me to think about the following masterpiece:

#ToRead

• I have to nudge you to again. Not just the article that inspired this edition, but the whole thing. Such a refreshing view of the world ;)

• Range is a book to call out when talking about majesty, because to me it’s a translation into the real, messy world.

• explores both intrinsic and extrinsic ways of defining worth for a fractured, tired society. And I’m truly here for it, because it touches on angles and issues I’ve questioned all my life (so far).

#ToListen

This one is to both watch and listen to, precisely because it’s manifesto on the pressures of the K-pop industry:

Complement it with this other one, which is all about worth when society shuns you:

#ToTry

If you turn the lens, what worth do you put into your life? Here’s a simple exercise worth doing from time to time: The Wheel of Life.

#ToPonder

“Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don’t have to love it, just don’t hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.”

―Scott Galloway, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

As usual, for this time of year, I’m still mulling over all that I’ve lived during the Power of Storytelling (PoS) weekend. (So funny that Grammarly wants to correct lived with learned - aren’t they the same in the grand scheme of us?)

Yes, I laughed and cried my heart out.

Yes, I was reminded of why I write in the first place. Or used to…

Yes, stories as art and craft are more important than ever.

So let me share some of these wondrous feelings with you — powered by all the speakers, but also the main conclusion of last weekend, as I took it: to hope is not just to feel or imagine, but to act.

#ToSee

Can’t believe I somehow missed this one — I’m adding it here and to my watchlist ;) Chris Jones’ (one of my all-time journalist favs) article inspired Away, so it’s gotta be good.

…which makes me think of Project Hail Mary, of course, amaze amaze amaze:

#ToRead

• This Ukrainian creative resistance in the face of war: Re:visions.

• Lea Ypi and her compelling case of writing at the limit of fiction and memory, while uncovering the (hi)story of her grandmother in communist Albania.

• Lana Bastašić’s short story collection (once it’s translated): Milk Teeth (Mliječni zubi). Think Grave of the Fireflies for our part of the world.

• Chris Jones’ upcoming book: Legs Hearts Minds. Or anything else, honestly. Jones is the proverbial storyteller, a rare mix of vulnerable, ironic, and sharp, who always asks the hard questions and speaks the hard truths. No wonder we always cry when he gives a talk at PoS.

• Adam Thomas and his Theory of Change. Bonus: his tools for changemakers (to test).

• The brilliant Jacqui. Jacqui Banaszynski. One of the first women to do investigative journalism, ever. Who writes like this.

#ToListen

• The amazing stories that change worlds are usually uploaded on the PoS YouTube. Subscribe & be notified when they upload this year’s recordings ;)

• Yowei Shaw’s podcast on investigative emotions: Proxy. Where total strangers match up on shared problems they’re navigating.

• Gogol Bordello’s We did good with the good we did, as quoted by the conference’s founder.

#ToTry

If you’ve ever tried to deliver a compelling message in whatever shape or form, you’ve probably encountered the following. That’s why Chris Jones transformed them into questions to ask yourself when you want to go from good to great:

1. Have I made myself clear?

2. Have I told the truth?

3. Have I made something new? (an expression of an idea as original as you can do it)

4. Have I been economical? (you know the anecdote: I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead)

5. Will my audience feel (something)?

6. Have I looked after the little things? (don’t be lazy with this one)

7. Did I stick the landing?

8. Did I honour the people I love with what I did?

#ToPonder

• Is there a place for anger in hope? (Alina Cristea in conversation with writer Lana Bastašić)

• When is the time to talk about hope if not in times like these? (Chris Jones)

• Beware the binary. Find door no.3. There’s always one. (Jacqui Banaszynski)

What gives you hope these days?

#

First, two remarks:

Welcome to the new faces that joined our curioser and curioser corner of the internet — thank you for being here!

And sorry for conflating February and March. In a world that’s crumbling more and more, time slips away in asynchronies. Not an excuse, just me battling the feeling that I don’t have too much time anymore! (Do you feel this silent pressure in the air or is it just my anxious mind?)

#

I’ve been thinking about curiosity lately because a kind soul told me last week that, before we can feel empathy, we need to push through our fear by staying curious about the other.

The context: Izanagi, the Romanian anime film festival.

The moment: Sînziana Mocanu and I debating about approaching the Other with openness to create spaces of connection instead of judgment.

…and, because, when I obsess over a concept, it keeps popping up — another good friend recently shared that she wants to lead her life with more curiosity. What does this mean in practice?

Go where your curiosity is enticed and see what you discover about the world and yourself.

So that’s what the resources below are all about.

(Cover photo: Valentin Boboc, Uji)

#ToSee

*powered by Izanagi & the theme of Alterity

A metaphysical exploration of faith, belief, loss, and humanity. A film inspired by the Western avant-garde in visuals and philosophies. A metaphorical flow. Mamoru Oshii in his meta state:

An alternate history of totalitarian consequences and loss of morality. Again, Mamoru Oshii at his best, with a screenplay that surprises through its subtlety and brutality all at once:

A laugh-out-loud satire of Christmas consumerism and the true spirit of hope and redemption, a different form of Satoshi Kon’s mastery and montage:

A not-so-clear-cut good versus bad lost episode of Cowboy Bebop. A story of misfits, living at the fringe of society, but still choosing to save it when push comes to shove:

A retelling of one’s life through the eyes of a past self. A nostalgic view of a 20-something in confrontation with her 10-year-old self.

#ToRead

• What makes us like or dislike something? And what do otherness, taste, and tech have in common today? Complement it with this. (Thank you, , for the rec!). I still believe taste is a deeper subject than any in tech care to actually explore, but that’s a story for another time.

• Since we’re exploring, curiously, alternatives and alter-persons, my colleagues proposed to re-read 1984. An unfortunately timely read, yet again. Complement it with any collection of short stories signed by Ted Chiang.

• If you’re exploring alternative professional selves, how about this?

#ToListen

*a curation of off-the-beaten-track sounds in the same spirit of the Other

• The once-in-history range of Dimash. (Check this video from the Winter Olympics as well)

• Yoko Kanno & her Tank.

• The erhu and its ethereal sounds from ancient times.

#ToTry

• Next time you hear about a living library close to you, I urge you to try it. It’s been helping me shift perspectives and embody the Other for a little while, for many years now.

• Imagine what it was like to live in those times. What times? You choose:

  https://www.azopan.ro/

#ToPonder

In the end, no matter how much we other one another, we’re all mortals at the mercy of time. Or, as Pablo Neruda says it:

Listen and learn.
Time
is divided
into two rivers:
one
flows backward, devouring
life already lived;
the other
moves forward with you
exposing
your life.
For a single second
they may be joined.
Now.
Read the rest here.

New year (although the calendar is an ever-shifting convention), same old me here. Hi, hello! ;) I still don’t feel like there’s any new beginning around, just a long, strenuous, too-much-anxiety-inducing present. With memory lapses and compressions that make me wonder and wander (apparently, it’s not just me, psychologists have an explanation here and here).

What about you? How is 2026 treating you so far?

Well, whether you’re team resolutions or team we’ll see, I have some brain goodies to make this crossing easier:

#ToSee

Quick disclaimer: I just returned from Torino where I was part of a roundtable on Manga in Europe — talking about Romania and its manga renaissance of the 2020s. So I’m still under an Italian x Japanese mirage that will probably colour this section.

• Torino is a walkable work of art, so please add it to your list if you’re planning travels anytime soon. Must see: Egyptian Museum, Museum of Oriental Art, the river Po, Porta Palatina, Galleria Subalpina, and Via Cavour.

• Latest obsession? The winter holidays were spent binging Chinese dramas O_o More specifically, xianxia. From a cultural perspective, you can argue about the new soft power rising and successfully competing with anime and K-drama, while also propagating mixed messages of communist propaganda. From a historical perspective, you can argue about the imperial systems, values, and aesthetics of China. From a purely pleasure-driven perspective, I’m just here to recommend 3 cheesy, silly, and melodramatic titles: Love in the clouds, Who rules the world, and Love between fairy and devil.

• Into strong competition, refined flavours, the best analyses of a dish possible, and A LOT of knowledge on food chemistry, techniques, and ingredients? Say no more! They’re back! Yes, binged this one, too.

• Okey, okey, maybe I should’ve started with this one. Park Chan-wook strikes again: with a more precise scalpel, crazier scenarios, and another deeply felt human exploration, while making his visual metaphors and compositions almost clinically on point:

#ToRead

• If you want to expand your inbox with thought-provoking essays this year, here are 5 newsletters that never disappoint: Sentiers, The Marginalian (yes, I continue to recommend them again and again), (yes, the irony is not lost on me), , and Dense Discovery.

• How about some essays on the art of reading by Virginia Woolf to reset or recontextualise your relationship to books and fiction? (This is the Romanian version I’m currently reading). Also, an exercise my better half provoked me to, recently — do you hear your voice or any other voice when reading? Is it quiet? Is it the voice of the character telling the story? I realised, to my surprise, I do a mix of no voice and voice of the character, but in a stream of consciousness kind of way, not a fully-formed sentences manner. Really want to know your answers (reply or comment, please!).

• I rediscovered Eminescu’s Scrisori and read them with a very different understanding as an adult (by my choosing, not some school agenda telling me how to interpret them). You should try it, too! I was mesmerised. For English, start here.

#ToListen

• What is a pop culture product without its music? Back to our Chinese dramas with these two: 1 and 2.

• This conversation on career growth, seasonality, and work.

• How about some more Rory Sutherland world-shifting perspectives? I always find new lenses to test my ideas with - from him.

#ToTry

• Just 3 words: bonet alla piemontese.

• Want to learn more about tech culture, product thinking, and AI? A treasure trove right here.

• If you told me I’d end up starting each day with Japanese callisthenics, I’d have laughed in your face. Such is life! I’ve wisened a little bit.

#ToPonder

The craze of/with Moltbook these days made me ponder what is to be human. Read some of the top posts and see for yourself.

What is your relationship with imagination?

Growing up, I used to daydream for hours on end. I still do, but now I have to remind myself to do it. Weird, right?

When do we transform something that used to be so natural into a rational exercise?

Well, November brought back the childhood daydream-state, because I did something I’ve been meaning to do for more than 10 years — and it felt farther and farther away as time went by and life happened. I uncovered the lived Japan with my better half, and it exceeded my imagination (and +12 years of studying its culture, both pop & traditional).

Not through the looking glass, but through the embodied day-to-day.

Yes, it is all that you can imagine and then some more.

I won’t try to capture it in words, as I don’t have the right ones at hand (I’m convinced I never will), but I will invite you to imagine it through my experience and yours ;)

As always, with bits and bobs:

#ToSee

A dear friend asked me what the 5 highlights of our trip were, and I didn’t have to think much at all: the silence, the social fabric of kindness and respect, the sounds, the ramen & teishoku meals, and the temples.

Oh my, oh my, the temples! Well, it would be correct of me to say the temples (which are Buddhist) and shrines (which are Shinto).

In no particular order, to see and let your mind wander: Itsukushima-jinja, Hasedera, Fushimi Inari-taisha, Kasuga-taisha, and Shōden-ji.

If, like me, you love to see through other people’s eyes, from time to time, then you will definitely enjoy this YouTube genre: Tokyo by Sol Life, Kyoto by Cari Cakes, and Osaka by Riri Travels.

If you prefer the fictional, then I must recommend, once more:

and

Finally, if you prefer the historical time and space, not through documents, but art — I (re)discovered Hirshoge for the once daily life of Edo, Japan:

#ToRead

• Nick Bradley’s second novel is a leap in storytelling and astute observation of the Japanese inner and outer worlds: maybe it was because I read it after returning from Japan, maybe it was because it felt too familiar, I don’t know. It just felt right: Four seasons in Japan.

• A classic I keep returning to, just to better understand how a society and culture could evolve like so. It’s a beginning.

• Something I just stumbled upon these days and found very endearing: Sōseki’s I am a cat, the manga edition.

#ToListen

• Did you know there are compilations with sounds of everyday life in Japan? Well, I can’t get enough of them!

• An artist you should include in your playlist ;)

• To listen (and see) and dream some more <3 Complement it with some Fuji Kaze.

#ToTry

• Uji’s precious kabusecha. The egg sando from 7/11 (I’ve actually linked a homemade recipe). Matcha ice cream & pancakes ;)

• Next time you have the chance, try sitting still in a Japanese garden. What do you hear? See? Smell? [this is my fav so far]

• Buy a single-use film camera and have fun! Here are my experiments: 1 and 2.

#ToPonder

• What makes you daydream?

• Here are 3 exercises to get you started, if you want to diversify your imaginative process: do a vision board, imagine something upside down (all the regular rules of that something are reversed), or imagine the back story of a stranger that draws your attention ;)

#Bonus

Wondering what your favourites were this year? Here are the first three:

• Certainty is the death of curiosity

• In a world of content, tell Stories

• On being lost and found

I plan to write a whole essay on taste, and as I’m still researching, I’ll take you on the first leg of this journey.

The definition, as per Cambridge:

That “judgment” in there is key, yet what is the difference between “my taste” and “taste” as an ability? Well, it’s this nuance that voices in my industry (tech + AI) have started disputing: first, there was “product taste”, now there’s “AI taste”. Yet, they still aren’t nailing the underlying issue: what makes “taste” “good”?

From where I’m standing, it boils down to the foundations that build that “judgment” to begin with — who defines what is “good taste”? Critics, curators, artists… now, product managers and designers?

I tend to say it’s a mix of nurture and nature, as we’re hardwired to approve certain aesthetics that we’ve codified as principles of beauty. But, until I finish my research, let’s exercise that personal “taste” and see where it gets us.

Bonus: for my Romanian wonderers, I’m doing a talk on anime, k-pop and strategic thinking at the kind invitation of ;) Friday, Oct 17, all details here.

#ToSee

Two great American dramas for you — I’m recommending them together as both Ari Aster and Paul Thomas Anderson have found inspiration in the latest tribulations of US society, from the pandemic to racial discrimination, from conspiracy theories to so-called terrorism and back:

#ToRead

• No, chatbots don’t have personalities. Yet, do we truly care? “This design exploits a vulnerability we’ve known about for decades. The ELIZA effect—our tendency to read far more understanding and intention into a system than actually exists—dates back to the 1960s. Even when users knew that the primitive ELIZA chatbot was just matching patterns and reflecting their statements back as questions, they still confided intimate details and reported feeling understood.”

• Do you know who truly cares, though? This new cult-like, AI-fanatic group who feels the need to also invent (read, control) its own language. It includes, you guessed it, “taste”: ““Research taste” is about naturally intuiting the most impactful problems to work on; “high-taste testers” are what OpenAI calls the power-users they ask to qualitatively assess model vibes (presumably, low-taste testers are the unwashed masses, relegated to mere thumbs up/down votes). Marc Andreessen proclaimed that the “taste element” means VC is the one job that can’t be automated: “It’s not a science—it’s an art.” It also includes “agency”, “NPC”, “996” and more. And a different can of philosophical worms on the question of intelligence versus morality versus knowledge (maybe I’ll add that to my essay).

• To return to the truly tasteful, the improbable story of a woman who went from Ireland to India on a bicycle in the 1960s.

#ToListen

• Let’s entertain our senses with some Yussef Dayes and the latest discovery at this year’s Enescu Festival, Philharmonique de Monaco.

#ToTry

• Going back to the basics of taste, have you ever tried the real pumpkin spice latte?

#ToPonder

The great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under every one’s observation. Men of the most confined knowledge are able to remark a difference of taste in the narrow circle of their acquaintance, even where the persons have been educated under the same government, and have early imbibed the same prejudices. But those, who can enlarge their view to contemplate distant nations and remote ages, are still more surprised at the great inconsistence and contrariety. We are apt to call barbarous whatever departs widely from our own taste and apprehension; but soon find the epithet of reproach retorted on us. And the highest arrogance and self-conceit is at last startled, on observing an equal assurance on all sides, and scruples, amidst such a contest of sentiment, to pronounce positively in its own favour.

David Hume - On the standard of taste, 1760

I’ve stumbled upon the video essay below, and it changed my understanding of existentialism and nihilism. Sure, there’s more to study here, but it made me think about meaning and how, even though there might not be an external one, we’re bound to create it — as moral, creative, social duty.

In the spirit of the fall as a form of *new* beginning or, at least, a mid-year reset, let’s create some meaning of our own!

I’ll go first:

#ToSee

We’ve been on a series bingeing spree, and boy, oh boy, do these stories make you think about life, death, and what to value every day — that’s all I’m going to say, just go watch them:

1.

2.

3.

#ToRead

• Actually, part of the reason I started thinking about nihilism today is that I’m currently reading Wilson’s The meaning of human existence – highly recommended for an exploration of biology and humanism ;)

• If we’re talking meaning, we can’t ignore the glaring problem at hand: AI. Here’s an essay that puts things in perspective, though I’m wondering if we can actually talk about intelligence in this case.

• What style of curiosity do you practise?

#ToListen

• My latest musical obsession has a funny name: Vampire bat.

• Poetry, the ultimate form of meaning-making.

• Liberty, emotion, and an artist’s radical views.

#ToTry

How about some amazing world-building, characters, and music to test your skills? — or, as Nerdwriter would put it, escape into meaning with a splash of dexterity:

Check out:

and

#ToPonder

If there’s no inherent meaning to life, what gives meaning to your life? Or, maybe a better follow-up question, how do you *make* meaning in your life?

###

Your turn!

Let me know in the comments below what meaning(s) you wish to bring into your day-to-day?

Let’s make that summer feeling last longer, together.

With the right pinch of nostalgia.

And the right type of escapism.

That’s what this list is all about ;)

#ToSee

1.

Late to this party, but I get why it’s considered a gem of a show. Satire, dark humour, murder mystery, Gatsby meets Dangerous Liaisons meets late capitalism, and a dash of social commentary:

If you’ve seen the full series so far, you might appreciate this opening title sequence analysis.

2.

On my list for a long time now. Still have to see it, but I know it’s too good not to recommend it:

Want more food-focused movies? Check out Eater’s ultimate list.

3.

Ah, I was longing for an anime with good storytelling, pacing, and eye-candy action sequences. Well, this “postapocalyptic” one doesn’t disappoint so far:

#ToRead

• Absurdity meets profound metaphor and deep political sarcasm in The Lives of Things by Saramago. Because, at times, we need to look at everyday life from a weird perspective: “Stretching one arm behind him, the man passed his hand over the horse's coat, his own skin transformed, or skin which had transformed into him.”

• I (still) work in tech, but, with each passing day, I’m more dejected by this dystopia we’re currently living while being promised the utopic everafter. That’s why I found this essay (via Sentiers) so refreshing in its critique and hopeful exploration: Greatness is overrated. It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. (Kevin Kelly) If you want even more, then “We make zombies here” is also for you.

• The following book I’ve uncovered by happy chance: The knight and the moth is a realistically dark fantasy about power, legitimacy, and how religion is created. Part of a duology that is still being written, mind you! Well, I couldn’t stop reading it, fascinated and outraged by how blind we, as humans, can be: “When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in.”

#ToListen

• Florence + The Machine did it again. Everybody scream.

• Have you ever listened to a game music symphonic concert? Start with this. You’ll thank me later ;)

• This one is to listen and watch. Again and again. Complement it with On the way.

• Looking for a different sort of escape? Whenever I want to put things in perspective, I just hit play on whatever Alan Watts lecture inspires me in that moment.

#ToTry

• Just one word: daifuku.

• Dance like you mean it ;)

• Sauna with essential oils and incense. It truly is eye-opening. I’ve tried this one and this one so far.

#ToPonder

When, in our society, did productivity become the end goal, do you think?

I woke up this summer with a nagging thought: Certainty is the death of curiosity.

So I invite you to keep an open mind and an open eye for that first spark of a pondering, a question, a what if.

With the following.

And so much more.

#ToSee

1.

One of the best detective stories I’ve seen in the last couple of years. Of course, it’s actually based on a Nordic crime series.

A disappearance, a jaded detective, a quirky prosecutor, what can go wrong?

2.

Searching for a story of political intrigue, mystery, smarts, and the human condition in history? How about this one?

3.

Did you know we live in both past and future at the same time? If you’re thinking I’m exaggerating or that it’s not possible, please watch this thoroughly documented explanation of how our brain and body process the world:

4.

I’m not necessarily a fan of Al Gore, but these statistics are pretty bad. Makes you truly wonder what’s next for our species:

5.

When Shinichirō Watanabe creates, you have to watch. It’s the unwritten rule ;)

6.

The best restaurant series that’s truly not about a restaurant, but dealing with pain, family issues, and the cards we’re dealt in life:

#ToRead

In need of books to inspire you through long breaks, holidays, or just to pass the time mindfully? Here are my latest discoveries:

• Meditations for Mortals — an easy-to-read, but hard-to-practice collection of musings about our finitude and how to make the most of it.

• Anything written by Laura Imai Messina for a perfect blend of personal stories, family histories, Japanese cultural and societal insights, unexpected metaphors, and the subtle threads that bind them all together. (Two of my Romanian reviews here and here)

• If you prefer a cute romance to keep you in high spirits, then go for Emily Henry.

#

Curious how Bucharest feels like? This is one of the most inquisitive and spot on analyses I’ve read about the contradictions of being from this city and from Romania. I’m not a fan of the author at all, but I was pleasantly surprised.

#

“But to be human is not to have answers. It is to have questions—and to live with them. The machines can’t do that for us. Not now, not ever.

And so, at last, we can return—seriously, earnestly—to the reinvention of the humanities, and of humanistic education itself. We can return to what was always the heart of the matter—the lived experience of existence. Being itself.”

I truly believe humanities can make a huge difference in this crazed AI rat race. It’s a matter of taste.

#ToListen

• I’m back to my kpop explorations with these latest obsessions: Killin’ it girl, Jump, and Python. Production, choreo, costumes - I’m amazed every time by the extent of their evolution.

• I’m also back to anime soundtracks — a few of my top favourites: Kyouran Hey kids!, A cruel angel’s thesis, Otonoke & Bling-Bang-Bang-Born. Complement them with the story of LiSA (*the voice* of contemporary anime) and the long-time collab between RADWIMPS and Makoto Shinkai.

• Another recent discovery thanks to a good friend: the next level of beatboxing.

#ToTry

• Mouth watering eggs with lovely cultural twists. I’d love to try some of them even though I’m not such a big egg eater.

• Dancing time — what moves you?

#ToPonder

Today I learned that, in the words of Hannah Arendt, despair is intellectually lazy. For human nature is ever-changing — what she terms natality, the power to be born many times throughout a lifetime, making us capable of altering our circumstances.

Because we have the power to change, it is our moral duty to do so in and for society.

What a liberating thought, though it may sound harsh, preachy, or even entitled!

Well, with that lens in mind, and fueled by a lot of change-makers from the London Design Biennale, in this edition I invite you to explore the possibilities.

Remember what the Queen said:

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

#ToSee

1.

What do tea, the rainforest, and cooking have in common? A story of legacy, memory, and rediscovering the act of ancient cultivation:

2.

When life, death, and remembrance pour into a shape, this is what it can look like:

3.

A somewhat playful, somewhat tragic installation, Poland invites us to connect traditional wood carving patterns with universal modern scenarios.

The result?

Measuring time in a very personal, yet common “language”.

Someone had the inspiration to film it (min. 02:00) ;)

BONUS: the mood of the whole endeavour at Somerset House

#ToRead

• Discover the concept of Japanese emptiness in design with KUMA LAB. Complement it with this personal essay on emptiness as a lack of a continuous self & how we’re all connected:

  “I published an article about Hume, Buddhism, and the Jesuits, long on footnotes and short on romance, in an academic journal. As I was doing my research, many unfailingly helpful historians told me that my quirky personal project reflected a much broader trend. Historians have begun to think about the Enlightenment in a newly global way. Those creaky wooden ships carried ideas across the boundaries of continents, languages, and religions just as the Internet does now (although they were a lot slower and perhaps even more perilous). As part of this new global intellectual history, new bibliographies and biographies and translations of Desideri have started to appear, and new links between Eastern and Western philosophy keep emerging.”

• Discover EcoVision Plan and their research+design+activism ways. Complement it with Building with biology — an amazingly crafty idea for fungi as construction materials.

#ToListen

• All the thought-provoking projects I’ve shared reminded me of these Jupiter sounds.

• And some futuristic compositions to accompany them.

#ToTry

Notes to Humanity — “What does it mean to preserve your humanity in the Digital Age?” My answer was to go beyond the digital bubbles and seek both difference and similarity with a curious mind, all around you. What’s yours?

#ToPonder

Not found at the biennale, but very much in its spirit:

The cybernetics movement eventually split along two paths: those drawn to complex systems ecology emphasized interconnectedness, developing fields like Earth System Science and Gaia theory, while others focused on information processing, pursuing artificial intelligence and cognitive science. The environmental crises of the 1960s-70s further polarized these camps. Systems ecologists adopted posthumanist positions that prioritized planetary health over human expansion, while information-focused researchers developed transhumanist visions of overcoming biological limitations through technology. This ideological divergence explains today’s political realignment, with tech oligarchs finding common cause with right-wing movements not out of shared values but because they see in figures like Trump allies who won’t impede their pursuit of technological advancement at any ecological cost.

*read the full analysis in Sentiers

I’ve been rewriting this edition in my head for two weeks now… and I’m still not convinced I hit the tone I’ve been searching for.

But one question is looping tirelessly in the back of my mind: do we understand or even think intentionally about the consequences of our actions? Or inaction for that matter?

I know I easily get distracted and take things for granted.

Well, you probably intuit where this is heading...

Time for a refresher on a hot, infuriating, tiresome, hopeful, and so necessary a topic: the right & obligation to vote.

Because in my home country, Romania, we’ve reached a boiling point (which can be understood historically, although it’s so nuanced and complex) — and our right to vote might be lost (it might seem dramatic or like an exaggeration, but history knows better and tends to repeat itself because we seem to unlearn the important lessons).

#ToSee

A deep dive into the maths behind your vote and why every choice has a statistical consequence with strong real-life implications — yes, democracy may be imperfect and mathematically “impossible”, but we still have a way to keep it. And yes, voting is still the best system to achieve democratic values, yet we might need a better iteration (it starts with ranks):

#ToRead

• I’ve been wondering more and more if a compulsory vote, reinforced by laws and penalties, might be the answer to a functioning democracy. Apparently, it’s not that simple, but it’s the start of a solution.

• One of the best recent social analyses of why Romania is on the verge of killing its democracy (it’s in Romanian, but browser translations do a good job). It’s also a relevant sociological deep-dive to extrapolate in understanding the rise of neo-totalitarianism.

• To complement with: Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

  “One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”

#ToListen

• I loved the research that Amanda Ripley has done so far on the nature of human conflict and why binary conflict is so distructive. If you want a glimpse into it, listen to this podcast episode.

• If you need a break from all of this, some charming lofi and jazz vibes.

#ToPonder

“It doesn't matter if we don't mean to do the things we do. It doesn't mean if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn't even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.”

― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Maybe in Another Life

Bonus: one of my favorite quotes in Baldur’s Gate 3 — which, unsurprisingly, gets us right back to the start

Stilness is rapidly engulfing these (holi)days, and I’m so grateful for it!

I love this time out of time, when streets empty, birds become louder, and subjective movements string together late mornings with family dinners and long coffee conversations.

To celebrate this almost forgotten rhythm, I give you:

#ToSee

1.

The exploration of possible futures in a new dystopic season — I especially enjoyed the one that is so realistically bleak and accurately depicts late capitalism, the nostalgic one that takes storytelling within, and the gamified office one.

2.

What if machine learning becomes another instrument of music prodigies? Jordan Rudess masterfully explains in this overwhelming conversation with Rick Beato where music might go next.

3.

Want to quietly contemplate underwater? Here’s one way to do it: the fish doorbell. I’ve been keeping an open tab ever since I first uncovered it.

#ToRead

1.

Muriel Barbery’s A single rose was recently translated into Romanian, and what a treat it is! I’m currently savouring each turn of the page, dreaming of solitude in Japan ;)

2.

Want more reminders to change your daily rhythms? I urge you to subscribe to & read The Imperfectionist:

#ToListen

And see a *too* straightforward depiction of anxiety in action.

Complement it with:

• a dance vision of love and affection within cultural diversity.

• guitar strings and deep voices high up the mountains.

• a powerful voice from the past, resonating just the same today! (The anime adaptation is also worth a watch)

#ToTry

• The silent joy & relaxation of thermal baths x sauna. We ended up in Băile Felix last week.

• Black walnut ice cream — the latest in tasty discoveries, you definitely need to try it.

• A walk in an arboretum close to you — our form of komorebi-meditation. We ended up in Simeria for this one.

#ToPonder

“In this world
We walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers”

― Kobayashi Issa

I’ve written and deleted at least five ways to begin this.

Instead, I give you a very personal collage-manifesto from last weekend’s :

1. Do the next right thing. (Jacqui Banaszynski)

2. Identify the wider story. (Amanda Ripley)

3. There’s no such thing as raw data. Investigate who and how they gathered that “raw data”. (Chris Wiggins)

4. If it means everything, does it mean nothing? (Alison MacAdam)

5. Rage isn’t enough. You need to act. (Radu Ciorniciuc)

6. Travel to find out who you truly are. (Rachel Louise Snyder)

7. Ask the right questions. (Kate Murphy)

8. Know when to listen and what to listen to. (Kate Murphy)

9. Use storyworld thinking to understand the limits of your universe and the Other’s universe. (Arkady Martine)

10. Always ask yourself: Where can I pour my extra love? (Chris Jones)

11. Who can you be when you are with me? (Jennifer Brandel & Mara Zepeda)

12. Don’t wait for permission. Do it yourself. (Rhiannon White)

###

The above are all quotes or paraphrases from the deep thinkers and storytellers who inspired us all — and so are the resources below, of course:

#ToSee

1. TATA (Dirs. Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc)

… an intimate journey into domestic violence, workers’ abuse, and the need to heal.

2. The price of speaking up (a Data4chan.ge project)

3. Common/Wealth theatre

In their own words: Common/Wealth make site-specific theatre events that encompass electronic sound, new writing, visual design and verbatim. Our work is political and contemporary – based in the present day – the here and now. We make work that is relevant and addresses concerns of our times.

#ToRead

• Notes From a Formerly Unpromising Young Person — an essay from my favourite storyteller of this edition, Rachel Louise Snyder, whose life story is best encapsulated by herself: Cancer took my mother, but religion took my life.

• Stopping culture wars in their tracks: How one city did it — the story of how functional conflict can actually bring about social change.

• A reading list that explains the science behind reading curated by Ruxandra Gîdei.

#ToListen

• 544 days — a limited series audio documentary about an imprisoned innocent man.

• This song we danced on, at the end of the event, together, while the light was out, and disco vibes were on.

• The crowdsourced PoS 2025 playlist.

#ToTry

1. Amanda Ripley’s The Good Conflict Toolkit.

2. Give your attention away with care & curiosity. Next time someone needs it, start with a question: What do you need? Don’t assume, don’t jump to solutions, just ask.

P.S. If you read all the way through here and still want some more, you should also check ’s 11 lessons from the conference:

P.P.S If you attended, what’s one thought that lingered after last weekend?

Recent events reminded me how short of a time we have here. So, to paraphrase a thinker I can’t remember right now, let’s see how much living we can squeeze into our impermanent existence.

A short edition that invites you to stop and smell the proverbial flowers with one meaningful (I hope!) recommendation:

#ToSee

Thanks to IZANAGI - Japanese film festival, I saw this beautiful, melancholic film about searching for your “true colours” — through music, friendship, and spirituality. It’s a coming-of-age story with stunning visuals in watercolour, especially blue and green (you’ll see why).

My take? Never forget to question why you do what you do and search for meaningful experiences.

#ToRead

Another recent discovery: Stiegler and his philosophy of technology. Because we forget that the status quo of technology today is, still, a human construct — that can be negotiated & changed:

“By the start of the 1970s, a growing number of philosophers and political theorists began calling into question the immediacy of our lived experience. The world around us was no longer seen by these thinkers as something that was simply given, as it had been for phenomenologists such as Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. The world instead presented itself as a built environment composed of things such as roads, power plants and houses, all made possible by political institutions, cultural practices and social norms. And so, reality also appeared to be a construction, not a given.”

&

“How we consume music, the paths we take to get from point A to point B, how we share ourselves with others, all of these aspects of daily life have been reshaped by new technologies and the humans that produce them. Yet we rarely stop to reflect on what this means for us. Stiegler believed this act of forgetting creates a deep crisis for all facets of human experience. By forgetting, we lose our all-important capacity to imagine alternative ways of living. The future appears limited, even predetermined, by new technology.”

#ToListen

Found on a random Sunday through a random YouTube search — this lovely indie radio with tunes to soothe your soul.

#ToTry

This breathing exercise always calms me. Maybe it’s useful for you, too!

#ToPonder

What identity do you hold dearest?

In many shapes and forms, the theme of shifting identity(es) has been following me lately (and most of my life, to be honest). Or should I say that my brain was primed to see it in all the stories, art, and professional conversations surrounding me these past few weeks?

Human history has this bad habit of repeating itself. Of course, it’s our bad habit — because we forget and ignore these shifts. So we fracture. And split. And repeat.

In the realm of marketing, there’s this obsessive conversation around product marketers being or not being marketers. Yet, we forget that the definition of marketing is rightfully mixing the 4 Ps - product, price, place, and promotion - to begin with.

In the realm of art and stories, form has depleted most of its meaning. Yet, we forget that it should be about the human experience for it’s what makes us understand and feel beyond our selfishness.

In the realm of History, the capital H one, the personal has trumped the community (all puns intended). Yet, we forget that the personal can’t exist in a vacuum, ever.

Of course, it is the universal “we”.

That’s why, I invite you on a journey of remembering. Or, even better, choosing:

#ToSee

1.

If you’ve ever wondered how you’d get along with your alter-ego, what kind of other personality you could have/live, or how to make your unconscious conscious — just go watch Severance now.

Apart from its deeply philosophical themes and unsettling corporate zealotism, it is a gem of visual explorations, showcasing what a split identity looks like. Pay close attention to how each composition is carefully divided. I’ll give you a hint (thanks, Vali, for this one).

Also, if you need even more convincing, it’s one of the best-written shows in the last decade.

2.

Our identities are also shaped by the cities we inhabit. Right?

3.

Have you met the paintings of Hilma af Klint?

I recently discovered this amazing artist and her abstract spiritual musings — not only a way to delve into the world’s identity with a capital I maybe, but a way to gain independence in the late 19th century.

#ToRead

1.

Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro tells the story of a coming-of-age, falling in love, jealousy, male friendships, and accepting who you become across time — are we just a single self, in the end? Are we ultimately good or evil?

“You seem to be under the impression that there is a special breed of bad humans. There is no such thing as a stereotype bad man in this world. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary. But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men.”

2.

The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

You’re probably more familiar with the final verse of this poem, but it’s always good to remember the full “story” and that the choice is ours.

3.

How about the identities we share without questioning their origins or usefulness?

• This is not a call to abandon caution, but an invitation to think critically about why we follow the rules we do.

• Enter Stuart Hall and his theory of encoding/decoding which is at the heart of mediated communication — are you aware of the stories you consume every day and how they shape your identity? Yes, news, TikToks, ads, or that latest meme you received, they all count! The message, or what Hall calls “the programme as ‘meaningful’ discourse” is the end result of this long process of encoding, which converts reality into a media product. He is careful to call this message “‘meaningful’ discourse” with those ironic scare quotes because he wants to remind us that this message is not neutral.

  &

  Identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning…identity is always a never-completed process of becoming — a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being. (Hall)

#ToListen

• What better time to revise the story of you than in your final days? Ikiru (the Japanese version) and Living (the British version) — both inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro.

• Did you fall into the autopilot identity? Here’s an interesting thought-experiment.

• Beirut is back with a song about a fake unicorn and an album titled “A study of losses” which, this article terms, is inspired by the chilling tale of a man obsessed with archiving all of humanity’s lost thoughts and creations. How’s that for a study in identities?

#ToTry

This prompt to explore the masks you wear: “I want to uncover the masks I'm currently wearing, the roles I'm playing, and the illusions I'm believing. Please guide me through this process by asking me 10 reflective questions - one at a time - to help me recognize the stories I'm telling myself. After I answer the 10th question, please step into the role of my higher self and analyze my responses. Identify the top negative patterns present in my life and the top positive patterns I can embrace and grow. Be direct and truthful, tough love is welcome. Provide me with actionable steps to change my behaviours and embody my authentic self.”

I did this exercise with ChatGPT and found some helpful action points — like making space to write more of this newsletter, for instance (more about that coming soon).

#ToPonder

Thank you to all of you here — you make me want to keep on writing, exploring, and being curious about the world. So let’s be curious and unravel identities, together!

Please share your thoughts and suggestions as a reply or in the comments. I read them all even if sometimes I’m slow to react.

Onwards!

Thank you for sending me your thought-provoking-mind-pondering resources! If you want to share more with me, I’m leaving the form open ;)

Without further ado, let’s jump right into this readers-fueled edition — from me to all of you and back (yes, like Bilbo).

And, of course, an excited welcome to all the new wonderers who joined us! ^^

#ToSee

1.

Anul nou care n-a fost (The New Year that never came), 2024 — the best slice-of-life story surrounding the fall of communism in Romania from my point of view. I’m usually weary of these Romanian films as they’re overly aestheticised with an overengineered atmosphere. Yet, I know how important it is for the collective memory that we keep telling the gruesome (his)stories, and this one does a great job with its organic narrative, natural acting, and familiar surroundings:

2.

One hundred years of solitude is another surprising find via my lovely half — great storytelling, great cinematography, great acting, all within the magical realist atmosphere of a world that rises and falls with each character:

#ToRead

1.

The Neuron Daily — so we can all keep up with the latest & greatest in AI (<3 back at you, Dude!)

So, if you’ve been confused by all the craze around DeepSeek, like I have, here’s a good deep dive.

2.

“Sort of like a bootcamp for life”, you said.

From the latest Curiosity Chronicle, a cool decision-making exercise to try:

• Step 1: Does this opportunity fall within my list of professional priorities? If no, say no. If yes, proceed to Step 2.

• Step 2: Is this a "Hell yeah!" opportunity? Writer Derek Sivers famously proposed this simple rule: If something isn’t a "Hell yeah!" then it’s a no. If it is, proceed to Step 3.

• Step 3: Assume this opportunity takes twice as long and is half as rewarding/profitable than you expect it to be, would you still want to do it? We tend to be overly optimistic when taking on something new. Force a degree of rationality into the decision. If the answer is no, say no. If the answer is yes, take it on.

3.

Arthur C. Brooks takes on existential pondering (with practical exercises included!) in this Atlantic article — thanks

“Even an “I don’t know” response can lead to a deeper, if unstated, understanding—with important benefits. In 2012, for example, two psychologists asked a sample of young adults how often they considered questions such as “Do you ever reflect on your purpose in life?” and “Do you ever think about the human spirit or what happens to life after death?” They found that the people who spent more time on these questions tended to score higher than their peers on a variety of measures defined as spiritual intelligence, critical existential thinking, sense of life’s meaning, curiosity, and well-being. That certainly sounds like cognitive health to me.”

Bonus: one exercise that I need to do more often — invite boredom.

#ToListen

• How about some life mapping with the 9 lives framework? (*with many thanks to another good friend of mine — we’ve been debating quite a lot about life in tech and autopilots…)

• Or maybe you’re more into fusion rock with Asian flavours? 👀

#ToTry

• For the gamers around here, there’s the brand-new ultra-deluxe edition of The Stanley Parable — a gem of a narrative and, especially, narrator! “The end is never the end is never the end is never…”

• I’ve been craving Irish Coffee for weeks now and (in Ro) delivered a delicious-looking recipe:

#ToPonder

Until next time, let’s uncover more curiosities to feed our minds.

And keep the sharing going! 👇🏻

Hello from 2025! Can’t seem to fully process that it’s already a new year, but here we are anyway.

I wanted to start with a Puglia-focused edition, as we’ve just got back from Ostuni, and I still feel lost in Italy in the best possible way.

[And to give you more time to contribute to the community-focused edition ;) ]

So I invite you to wander & wonder with me — through sites, sounds, and bites.

Let us begin!

#ToSee

In no particular order, here are the spots that will make you feel the local “heart” and make you feel at home:

• Monopoli — after 10+ towns explored, we still love it best for its quiet charm, warm light, and welcoming sea & people. My tried and tested recommendations: Cesare’s Carpe Diem B&B as he makes true on his promise of providing a “home away from home”; N24, bar a vin, the most atmospheric and intimate bar-restaurant in the coastal city; Caffè Letterario, for the best coffee we’ve had in all the region.

  

• Ostuni, la citta bianca indeed — get lost in the historical centre, grab a pinsa at Osteria Ostuni Bistrot or try authentic Apulian dishes at Osteria Da Nonna Ia. You won’t regret it.

• Matera and Alberobello — the two UNESCO sites, for the hype is real! There are no words to explain the feel of either of the two, just that humanity is ingenious when imagining housing systems: sassi (cave dwellings from the Paleolithic onwards, apparently) and trulli (dwarf houses with conical rooftops, sometimes found in groups).

  

• Conversano — a hidden gem we stumbled upon while searching for this temporary exhibition of Antonio Ligabue (a weird, self-taught painter with a history of madness, fraud, and genius). We still dream of one day spending a month here, working remotely and enjoying the comforting slowness of living in this town.

  

• Locorotondo — another beautiful town, which was especially welcoming at Christmas time, with its quirky decorations.

  

• Valle d’Itria — just going off track on the rural roads, between masserie, olive trees, vineyards, and fields of green (lush even in winter), there’s nothing more meditative than that.

#ToRead

All the poetry & quotes on the walls of many, many towns in Puglia — a selection to inspire you to check the authors (I’ve added some of the quotes in English, but note that they were all in Italian):

• “Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.” Virginia Woolf

• “You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.” Cesare Pavese

• "But the sea is like the soul. And it is never silent. Not even when everything is silent." A. de Pascalis (*hope I got the right writer)

• “…life is like a mirror, it smiles at you if you look at it smiling” Jim Morrison

#ToListen

Although I haven’t uncovered any specific sounds while there, I was as curious as you are to check some traditional music (like tarantella & pizzica):

Complement it with this one and some whimsical local jazz. Actually, I’ve found a whole playlist if you want to give it a try.

#ToTry

This section is mostly dedicated to taste, because Puglia is a well-known producer of many beloved ingredients and because I am a foodie:

• The star of the show: olive oil. The best decision we’ve made? The olive oil tasting with the super knowledgeable Giacomo from Masseria Pezze Galere. What you need to know in a nutshell (in the photo below): a good olive oil doesn’t feel oily on the lips, smells of green (grass, green tomato, olive leaves), and tastes of aromatic bitterness and spiciness (mostly grass, arugula, tomato stems, etc.). The one I loved the most: Alba, made of picholine olives.

  

• The other star of the show: homemade pasta, especially orecchiette (yes, you should go check the nonnas of Bari vecchia). Some of the favourite local recipes: alla Pugliese, with polpette, or with pistachio pesto.

• Life is better with tagliere, Italian for charcuterie boards — the local cheeses you must try: caciocavallo, cacioricotta, burrata, and pecorino. The local cured meats you must try: capocollo of Martina Franca, soppressata, and salsiccia pugliese. Plus, the taralli: we have a soft spot for the ones made of grano tostato.

  

• And, of course, life is better with wine: meet Fiano (our pick 9 out of 10 times), Falanghina, Negroamaro, and Primitivo.

• Unexpected discoveries from Matera (technically not Puglia, but Basilicata): a traditional bread shaped like a mountain and fermented with grapes and figs (pane di matera), cialledda - a bread and tomato salad packed with flavour, crapiata - a hearty soup made of beans, lentils, chickpeas.

• We can’t forget the sweets, because there are as many pasticcerie as there are streets ;) Definitely try: pasticciotto, all the varieties of almonds (mandorle) in chocolate, biscuits, etc., and many other biscotti, for that matter.

I’m sure there are many things that I’ve probably missed, but I hope I’ve made you dream a bit.

Thank you for reaching the end of this long post (which might get truncated by email clients) & please share your own Apulian discoveries (like so) with me ;)