This page is a bit of a cacophony of my thoughts and interests. There’s no specific theme, just things I like.
I spend most of my day watching them. I love them so much. Honestly, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.
I didn’t expect a fish tank to become this central to my life, but it has. My freshwater tank, with six mollies (four tiny babies) and six red cherry shrimp, has turned into something I orbit around. I check on them constantly. I count them. I sit and watch them swim, hide, clean, exist. Time disappears when I’m in front of the glass.
There’s something incredibly comforting about having this small, living world right next to me. The plants grow slowly, the shrimp move with intention, and the baby mollies dart around like they’re discovering life for the first time. Watching them makes everything else feel quieter, simpler, more manageable.
And this tank is just the beginning. My dream is to have a much bigger saltwater tank someday. Coral, reef fish, an entire ocean ecosystem scaled down into glass. I think about it all the time what it would look like, how I’d care for it, how much patience and learning it would take. It feels less like a hobby and more like a future version of myself I’m slowly growing into.
For now, I’m happy here, watching my fish and shrimp live their tiny lives. But one day, I’ll have a piece of the ocean in my home too. And I already know I’ll love it just as deeply.
There’s something oddly fascinating about Blank Street Coffee. On the surface, it’s just another minimalist café with oat milk, clean branding, and locations everywhere. But once you look a little closer, it becomes clear that Blank Street isn’t really a coffee company at all. It’s a tech startup wearing a café costume.
Blank Street was founded by tech and finance guys, and you can feel that in how the business operates. Everything about it is optimized. The stores are small, uniform, and designed for speed. The espresso machines are mostly automated, which means fewer highly trained baristas and more consistency from cup to cup. This isn’t about craft or artistry — it’s about efficiency. Coffee is just the vehicle.
They run the business the same way a startup runs software. Reduce friction. Cut costs. Standardize everything. Once the model works, scale fast. Each new location feels like a copy-paste of the last, dropped into another high-traffic urban corner. No local flair, no personality, no sense of place — and that’s the point. Local character doesn’t scale well.
What’s interesting is how perfectly this fits into late-stage capitalist logic. Blank Street doesn’t ask you to linger or build community. It wants you in, caffeinated, and out. It’s built for people who live in productivity mode — commuters, students, professionals — people who want their coffee to function more like a utility than an experience. Reliable, fast, predictable.
And honestly, it works. That’s the uncomfortable part. The company expanded insanely quickly, something traditional coffee shops could never do without sacrificing margins or burning out staff. By automating labor and centralizing decision-making, Blank Street unlocked the kind of growth investors love. It’s capitalism doing what capitalism does best: turning culture into a system and scaling it.
cartography is an art.
Not in a dramatic way, and not in a “maps are beautiful therefore art” way. I just think there’s something deeply intentional about it. Every line, every curve, every decision had to be made by someone. Nothing on a map is accidental.
I really like imagining how people went about designing roads—how they decided where things should go so they’d be convenient, efficient, and actually make sense. How much forethought it takes to plan something that people will rely on every day. And not just for now, but for the future too. Someone had to think: What happens if this city grows? What if traffic increases? What if this area changes? That kind of thinking really interests me.