Found in the Field
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Kbach :: ក្បាច់ខ្មែរ and Khmer Design
Be part of a conversation about the emerging Khmer aesthetic, by interacting with people in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Kampot who also care about art, design, writing, illustration, sculpture, and architecture. DK have been exploring design in Cambodia since 2013.
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Exploring Taipei
Update: Well I went and checked out a few things over there, and AI was only a tiny bit helpful, it turned out. The most important things I got to do were those that I asked about, of others, in person. ‘Where can I find tea houses and trains and mountains?’ ‘Alishan!’ Or, ‘Which bookshop…
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Memorable Phsar Toch Phsar Thom, ផ្សារតូចផ្សារធំ, delivers art, food, and variety
Lovely to chill out and meet fantastic people creating from their heart to express themselves. I found out about this event from a lot of roundabout sources, as happens sometimes here in Cambodia. There can be some frustration in, for example, being deposited to the wrong location by your tuk tuk driver who also drove…
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Protected: DESK | The thing I saw after years away from the US, and what it taught me
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Protected: Estrangement
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Become excellent and have a vision
Listening to this lecture on what successful people do and how they become successful. The harder you work, the better you get. But that doesn’t mean doing things that don’t align with your vision. Concentrate on things that move the dial.
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Review | Don’t Look Up the movie
Maybe we’re just… stupid.
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‘Culturally bound to the status quo’
‘Americans still have time to prevent the next great boom and bust, but they are culturally bound to the status quo…’ Reading about the 2026 prediction of a fiscal depression in Progress.org, I chanced to stop on this line. This line about how Americans are ‘culturally bound to the status quo.’ Now here I was…
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‘Putting things together that make you feel a certain way’
Nice line. Can relate to the idea of wanting to use materials found right around me when I got to Cambodia. Sopheap Pich‘s studio features in this National Gallery of Singapore video in which he also talks about his explorations of material. Nice title, too: ‘How things meet’. Here is a link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIUAAyr6tr4 ‘Something different……
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Most people think you have to have then you can be, but it’s not like that
Nice video of a billionaire woman talking about inner peace. It seems like she kind of means it but who knows what thigns are like off-screen, off-camera, and away from youtube which is designed to make us stay and go, ‘Yeah, yeah, I, too, can be like that.’ Can we? I’m 1/4 in, but probably…
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Kindness is the way
Ignore the click-baity title here, this clip I’ve started the video at tells us a ton about why kindness is so, so valuable for us. The giver, the receiver: society. In an earlier part of the conversation, too, in which the idea of ‘status’ was addresssed, there was this whole idea that ‘power’ and ‘possession’…
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Bitter old lady and grumpy old man
So yeah. I found this and I like this piece. This bit, especially… ‘Psychology reveals that the gentle elder and the bitter one didn’t simply inherit different personalities—they made different choices about their grief. How we process our losses throughout life directly determines the person we become. The divergence between softening and hardening with age…
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Protected: Embedded in a relationship advice column, I found this gem
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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‘Internet Girl’
Have you heard?… I heard this somewhere on the road, perhaps it was Singapore on that visit there in the January season to put up flyers and investigate Art Week. I loved this song. It really contrasts with what’s in the CD collection here, yes, CD collection. Kept for the sake of nostalgia, realizing, not…
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‘American education needs to be more difficult’… A conversation snippet from a David Foster Wallace interview
Slowing down. Friction for us to have so that we can use our brains and not get lost in the ‘feed it to me fast’ entertainment-like finding out of stuff modes, and more topics about how people are refusing to be online as much. I saw someone using a camcorder at the Songkran festival water-throwing…
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‘The way it actually works…’
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in…
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‘Unsafe wherever you go’
Japanese citizens scamming Japanese citizens in Phnom Penh? Wow. Now I’ve heard it all. This is the ‘article’ in the ‘newspaper’ that is the Khmer Times. https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501876503/8-arrested-for-japanese-police-officer-impersonation-scam-at-phnom-penh-condo/ We used to have a joke in-house about ‘unsafe wherever you go’, a riff on what my mother used to say, ‘There are all kinds of crazy people…
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‘It changed from a product you used to a product that uses you’
The BBC reported about a major decision about social media addiction, today. ‘Arturo Bejar, who used to work at Instagram, said he warned Mark Zuckerberg of the dangers it posed to children several years ago. “It changed from a product you used to a product that uses you,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme…
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Is it game over already for ‘teaching creativity’ in Asia?
Is Asia uncreative?
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Offline
Found in the BBC today… a piece about how adding more things that are inconvenient can give you better all around human skills like talking, feeling, and relating to others. ‘… a 45-year-old artist living in Bournemouth, in the UK… found himself unable to paint for more than a half-hour without reaching for his…
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Going analog in a digital, fast, money-obsessed world
Found this article published last fall in South China Morning Post about zines, written by Salomé Grouard. Why zines are thriving in a financials-obsessed town like Hong Kong, for example, is part of it. “Culturally, we’re not encouraged to invest time and money into alternative media,” says [Zine Coop co-founder Beatrix] Pang, who uses the…
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Bamboo ballots
I know this is going to be weird, me bringing in US politics here, while also saying that Desk will be a magazine dedicated to Southeast Asia, primarily, and other reaches of Asia where design is concerned so professionals in graphic arts, interiors, architecture and similar fields can know more about who’s around, who’s doing…
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How can you prepare yourself to effortlessly engage in creative thinking
Working in the internet to help people find their ‘creative voice’ for quite a while now, here at Design Kompany at first but more and more on my personal website dipikakohli.com and through projects of Kismuth, where I write the philsophy-style essays around the topic of ‘what if?’, which, admittedly, I think is getting completed…
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Julia sets, the kbach and wu wei: how I learned to let things flow
Once I found this quote… ‘The way you learn is the way you approach life in general. It is also the way you solve problems, make decisions, and meet life’s challenges.’ It adds that learning happens in any setting and goes on throughout life, and that the experiential learning process supports good things like getting…
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ELI5
How we talk to each other: ‘ELI5’ But what does this have to do with how we talk about what we’re doing, and how we’re making things in ways that other people will relate to, and connect with? There is no one answer to this that hits all the right buttons. But eliminating confusion by…