allilu

Sunset views from your new Tuesday office I'm opening up my home in Malibu for "Together Tuesdays," an intentional co-creation and community space. My inspiration for doing so is loosely based on Radha Agrawal's book, Belong. She encourages her readers to look at the intersection of their values, interests, and abilities to build community and the sense of belonging.  I've always felt like a Third Culture Kid - someone who wasn't fully Chinese, yet also wasn't fully American. My family also moved multiple times during childhood, and as an adult, I have done the same... I haven't stayed in the same home for more than 18 months since college. Without a strong connection to a specific culture or place, I've often felt alone, despite all my wonderful friends and family. I knew that I had to build or find my own community, to belong.  My last project, UMA, was an attempt at community building. My initial goals in co-founding UMA had little to do with cr...

A common pro-UBI argument is that it will enable people to stop selling their time for meaningless work, and instead pursue art, passion projects, or unlikely home runs. Opposing arguments suggest that people will instead play video games and intoxicate themselves all day, given both how cheap and immersive digital entertainment has become.  This has been my experience.  First, some background: I was born in rural China and immigrated to the United States when I was 5. For half my childhood, we hovered around the poverty line. For the other half, we lived like we were still below it. My parents were big savers to the point of stinginess on anything that wasn't deemed "essential" or education related. My mindset was always one of scarcity: for most of my 20s, despite making a 6 to 7-figure income, I was terrified of losing my livelihood and being forced back into survival mode.  When I was younger, this influenced me to work hard and follow the Golden Path that my parents ...

I’ve been going back and forth on a question in my head. There’s so many causes that I care about in the world: which one(s) do I want to address and really pay attention to?  Climate change represents existential risk for the human species (yikes!), while space exploration represents a frontier of opportunity and a place for us to expand off our crowded planet. Despite a great deal of progress, global poverty is still a pressing problem, as are racial and gender equity. I ping pong with arguments in my head. Existential risk sounds pretty terrifying, and rationally, it seemed like addressing climate change should come first. After all, if we don't exist anymore in the future, then there will be no more poverty or inequity to address in the first place. At the same time, millions of people (particularly those least responsible for climate change) will be affected by what we've already done to the environment, and become climate refugees with food, water, and clean air insecurit...

Thursday, March 12, 2020 is a day that my life completely changed.  NYC was about to hit its 100th case of COVID-19, and there were rumors of a severe lockdown starting that weekend. Miles and I started the day by acquiring staples: 25lb of rice, 20lb of chicken, and other canned goods. I spent the day working (we were all already working from home at this point) from my cofounder's apartment. By mid afternoon, the situation had deteriorated into what felt like panic: the line for the grocery store wrapped around the block, and we felt that any COVID-related restrictions would be lengthy. We believed that life wouldn't be normal again until a vaccine was developed.  So, we made a decision. We booked a one-way flight to Portland, Oregon to plan our next steps.  The idea was to go to my parents' house and stay outside NYC in case the city was quarantined. We only stayed in Portland for two evenings, long enough to pack camping gear and toilet paper into my sister's old ca...

Ideas are immortal. They are as close to the Platonic ideal as we will ever be able to manifest in life. Plato himself may be long dead, but his ideas are still read and discussed to this day and will continue to influence human thought in the future. Being physically mortal, many people care deeply about leaving a legacy that will continue to live on after they die. For most of us, part or all of that legacy is children.  For me personally, I'm uncertain... If I have children, I feel like it'll be more than an opportunity to pass on my genes. I'll also have an opportunity to infect their minds with my ideas. And really, I can infect anyone's mind with my ideas, not just my children's. Individual bits of ideas can be recombined endlessly. As long as I add my awareness of Truth to the collective human consciousness, then pieces of me (my ideas) will live on forever.  If I am effective at teaching my children/disciples to pursue Truth, then their ideas will be added a...

Everything feels wrong. You know what I'm talking about: there's a pandemic, mass unemployment, legislative gridlock, biased media, and now rioting and curfews across America. There's also the more insidious matter of systemic injustice: that our President proudly champions policies of voter suppression; that the core national curriculum does not include lessons on civic engagement or the history of lynchings; that apparently the law does not apply to you if you hold enough power. Against this backdrop, I've been questioning my place in all of this. I'm hunkered down in rural Utah, running a tech startup that hasn't been all that disrupted by having to go remote. I have ample savings, and all my needs are taken care of. Even my investment portfolio and stocks are near all-time highs. It all felt so nihilistic to me: do I have a moral responsibility to take action? If I don't, then does anything really matter? One thing I knew: I have privilege and resou...

30+ years in the making, and I've finally created a place to share my thoughts. Let's see how this goes.