I started this blog in 2008, and it’s been evolving ever since — especially since moving to China in 2018.
Here’s my recipe for this blog:
- I’m not an expert on economics, politics, or history, and while I envy those who can condense a trend into a statement, or neatly define historic periods — I’ve no ambition to do the same.
- The same for news really. New articles cover specific stories but it can distort your view of reality because daily life is rarely covered. A day in which nothing special happens is significant for me, but it is not for the news. News only covers extremes; factory explosions, real estate developers going bankrupt, or army preperations. But what about millions of people having a certain daily habit? What about a couple who moved to Shanghai and now operate a moving van? Immigrants watching the waves of the Yangtze? A lady working in a clothing factory? And so on.
- I also try to stay away from anything that can be considered pedantic ‘self-help advice’, because I think those articles are more useful for the author than the reader. Plus Twitter has enough of these people.
- Wikipedia is extremely valuable, but it has no feelings. The ability to feel is just as important as the ability to think — and it’s increasingly difficult and yet increasingly important.
Maybe that has been my big discovery of the last decade. I always imagined myself as a cosmopolitan; smart and understanding of the world. But now living in a vastly foreign culture, I’ve been confronted by just how inescapably Dutch I am; both in habits and my thoughts.
That is not a bad thing. Cities become increasingly homogenized with the same multinational chains everywhere. The algorithm of social media partially decides what we read, and also what we create — as most content creators will optimize for what works for views (not what they think the world should read). And all of this in a media landscape that is increasingly written by AI. I crave for these personal stories, and here, I try to provide such a space.
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