Writeswell Inc.

17/08/2025

"Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or a woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or one woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed.

What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win."

James Baldwin

16/08/2025

PSA for the day.

🐝 Buzzing Stripey Things Guide – Know Your Friendly & Not-So-Friendly Flyers

🌼 Friendly Flyers (Mostly Harmless)

Honeybee – Excellent pollinator, makes honey, friendly unless provoked, needs our help the most.

Bumblebee – Very friendly, can sting multiple times, basically a flying fat panda, excellent pollinator.

Carpenter Bee – Males can’t sting but may act aggressive; important pollinators, more nuisance than threat.

Hoverfly – Can’t sting, wears a “bee uniform” for protection, may follow you if it likes you.

⚠️ Watch Out – Can Sting if Threatened

Paper Wasp – Scary-looking but not too dangerous unless provoked; builds paper-like nests; pollinators with no sense of personal space.

Yellow Jacket – Aggressive, minimal pollination, wants your food, can sting multiple times, sometimes fatal.

Hornet – Big, intimidating, mostly nests above ground; aggressive if provoked.

🕷 Special Mentions

Mud Dauber – Spider hunter, builds mud “organ pipe” nests, rarely aggressive, abandons nests.

Cicada Killer Wasp – Huge, scary-looking but only attacks cicadas; will sting if provoked.

16/08/2025

Oscar Wilde’s last years in Paris were a messy, heartbreaking, yet strangely luminous chapter in his life. Broke, exiled, and abandoned by most of his old crowd, he still held court in dimly lit cafés, cracking jokes between sips of absinthe, as if his wit alone could keep the darkness at bay. It was here, in those final, fraying days, that he crossed paths with André Gide—a younger writer still tangled up in his own Puritan guilt and desires. Their friendship wasn’t long, but it left a mark.

Gide had met Wilde before, back in Algiers, where Wilde’s shameless decadence both fascinated and unnerved him. By the time they reunited in Paris, Wilde was a ghost of his former self—his health wrecked, his reputation in tatters—but somehow still radiating that dangerous charm. He’d laugh about his ruin, spinning his suffering into another Wildean paradox, all while subtly needling Gide about his repressed bourgeois morality. There was something almost cruel in the way Wilde pushed him, as if he wanted Gide to avoid his own mistakes by refusing to live in fear.

And it worked, in the end. Gide never became another Wilde—he was too careful, too measured—but he did something Wilde never got the chance to do: he wrote openly about being gay. In Corydon and his memoir If It Die…, Gide laid himself bare in a way Wilde never could, at least not in print. Maybe that was Wilde’s last, unwitting gift—showing Gide the cost of denial, the price of hiding.

Their friendship was brief, uneven, and charged with all the unspoken things between men who know they’re alike but refuse to say it outright. Wilde died in that shabby hotel room, abandoned by the world that had once adored him. Gide lived on, carrying something of Wilde’s defiance forward. It’s a strange legacy—not quite a torch passed, more like a spark that refused to go out.

16/08/2025

Frank Lloyd Wright's quote reflects his deep commitment to integrating beauty and functionality in architecture. He shared this belief during a transformative period in his life, especially influenced by his experiences in New York City between 1925 and 1932. This era marked his recovery from personal and professional crises and set the stage for his later successes. His work on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City helped revive his career and reinforced his philosophy that beauty is essential in architecture to create lasting value and human fulfillment​.

15/08/2025

Frank Lloyd Wright in 1945, presenting his radical design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Captured by photographer William Short, this image shows Wright holding the proposed glass dome—an intricate, organic structure inspired by nature that was ultimately never built. The model reveals the now-iconic inverted spiral form, a direct challenge to the rigid geometry of Manhattan’s grid and the traditional museum layout. With its continuous ramp and central atrium, Wright envisioned a space where visitors would experience art as a seamless journey. A turning point in 20th-century architecture.

📷 Getty Images/Ben Schnall

15/08/2025

Fascinating. And sad.

In Japan, the term "Johatsu" (蒸発), which literally means "evaporation," refers to people who deliberately disappear from their lives due to intense personal pressures like debt, family conflict, shame, or work-related stress. According to The Economic Times, these individuals often vanish without warning, leaving behind homes, jobs, and relationships to start over in complete anonymity.

To make this possible, many turn to specialized companies known as "night movers" or yonige-ya. These discreet services operate mostly under cover of darkness, helping clients pack up and relocate without alerting neighbors or family. The phenomenon gained traction in the 1990s after Japan’s economic bubble burst, leaving many in financial ruin. Sociologist Hiroki Nakamori notes that Japan’s cultural emphasis on privacy and the limited police involvement in non-criminal disappearances make it surprisingly easy for someone to vanish.

{PS}

14/08/2025

Disquieting is an understatement.

Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” fears the technology he helped build could wipe out humanity — and “tech bros” are taking the wrong approach to stop it.

14/08/2025

Never knew this

14/08/2025

In Japan, the term "Johatsu" (蒸発), which literally means "evaporation," refers to people who deliberately disappear from their lives due to intense personal pressures like debt, family conflict, shame, or work-related stress. According to The Economic Times, these individuals often vanish without warning, leaving behind homes, jobs, and relationships to start over in complete anonymity.

To make this possible, many turn to specialized companies known as "night movers" or yonige-ya. These discreet services operate mostly under cover of darkness, helping clients pack up and relocate without alerting neighbors or family. The phenomenon gained traction in the 1990s after Japan’s economic bubble burst, leaving many in financial ruin. Sociologist Hiroki Nakamori notes that Japan’s cultural emphasis on privacy and the limited police involvement in non-criminal disappearances make it surprisingly easy for someone to vanish.

{PS}