Katâlepsāra | Grasp, Transform, Repeat

Consciousness

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What is consciousness?

I have been collecting notes around that question since 2019. The collection grew much faster than my understanding. Philosophy led me to psychology; psychology led to neuroscience; neuroscience sent me back to philosophy. A question about pain became a question about expectation. A question about memory became a question about time. A question about sheep became a question about whether behavior can ever tell us what another creature feels.

Eventually, the size of the project became an excuse not to write it.

The problem is that consciousness will not hold still. Is it wakefulness? Attention? Intelligence? Self-awareness?...

On Being an Umpire

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

First, How I Ended Up Coaching

Although I played baseball my whole life, I didn’t exactly set out to become a coach. I sort of fell into it. Then that led to umpiring later on.

It all began during the pandemic era, when college had become Zoom University. I was in my room, staring at my computer all day. I had a Microsoft Surface Pro and that model was part of flickergate where the screen would flicker and cause a headache. After a while, the experience of school online became decorporealizing, so I started going to the park where...

Introducing The Coverage Project

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:00:00 +0000

“Hello folks.”

In college, I was an orientation leader. Essentially, I facilitated icebreakers and activities to help incoming first-year students get to know one another. As awkward and daunting as that may sound, it was actually a lot of fun.

If I remember correctly, I first met Ely while I was an orientation leader during new student orientation in the fall of 2019. I had randomly sat down at a lunch table in the dining hall with a few first-year students, and he happened to be one of them. Who would’ve thought we’d still be keeping...

At the Plateau of Meaning

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents
The Fog of Saturation
The Decorporealized Cosmopolis
Diagnosing the Plateau
Wealth as Scaffolding
Systems of Survival and the Path Forward

Thinking was the last frontier we had. Now, we’ve delegated that to AI.

I don’t have a problem with thinking. In fact, I think way too much. I suffer from overthinking. I use AI, and I used AI for this very article to revise and bring clarity to my thoughts. If anything, having this tool makes me...

What 50 Books Taught Me About Doing a PhD

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents
1. A PhD is not “more school.” It is a different game entirely.
2. The PhD is as much psychological as intellectual.
3. The dissertation should be finishable.
4. Writing is not what happens after thinking.
5. Learn the field broadly before going deep.
6. Choosing people may matter as much as choosing the project.
7. Rejection is part of the training.
8. A PhD should change your standards, not just your...

Why I’m Not Building a Personal Brand

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:30:00 +0000

I haven’t written here in a year. Life got in the way. Now I feel a renewed clarity. I want to reclaim writing as a habit. Revising my book has provided a surge of inspiration, and I want this site to reflect that ongoing work.

Returning here, I’m revisiting the core essence of what this space is about. I feel it deeply, but I also need to communicate it clearly, so readers understand where I’m coming from. Think of this as a syllabus: a blueprint for Katâlepsāra, so we’re on the same page.

Katâlepsāra is about building a nonconformist intellectual...

Exercise

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 21:11:05 +0000

Jump to my current exercise routine

Much of the philosophy behind this post is attriubted to Mehdi of StrongLifts

In Ancient Greece, there was a legendary figure named Milo of Croton, renowned for his incredible strength. His training method, though seemingly simple, is a profound example of progressive overload—the cornerstone of building strength and muscle. Each day, Milo began his training by carrying a newborn calf on his back. As the days turned into weeks and months, the calf grew larger and heavier, eventually maturing into a full-grown bull.

This method was not just about physical endurance; it...

Science of Successful Learning

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 20:01:05 +0000

No matter who you are, we all have 24 hours in a day—168 hours in a week. What will you accomplish in that time? At the end of each day, we are the product of our choices.

The number of hours that people have in the day hasn’t changed, but the amount of time that people spend on online platforms has. “I cannot make my days longer, so I strive to make them better” (Henry David Thoreau). It is not death that one should fear, but never beginning to live. How many of the posts you recently scrolled through on...

MediTEAte

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The iPhone has a native app named shortcuts which is a heavily slept on feature. It can automate certain features depending on what you program. For example, I have an automation for when my wake-up alarm is stopped every week day. When I stop my wake-up alarm, my iPhone performs text-to-speech of a Marcus Aurelius passage from Meditations that serves as a guiding reminder for the start of my day. I’ve read that other people use and scan NFC tags to run shortcuts for different household responsibilities. To give you a better understanding of what shortcuts are used for, below...

My RSS Feed Subscription Lists

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 16:00:00 +0000

It has been a difficult decision to come to terms with. I am shifting gears and will no longer passively let in various content. What I mean is that I will be directing my own knowledge consumption. I have so many directions to go in just from what I already have in my Obsidian vault. I’m pivoting from knowledge accumulation to knowledge deployment. When I was younger, high school and college me, I was trying to keep up with whatever was published. I wasn’t an expert in anything and I had to let stuff come to me. I didn’t know...

A Grave Threat To Mental Health

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 01:19:05 +0000

This is the full text from chapter 3 of my book.

The following chapter integrates central ideas from various thinkers. I am not reinventing, but instead synthesizing their ideas. I want to carefully simplify and demystify the process that threatens our collective mental health. Our mental health declines once our psychological needs (competence, autonomy, and relatedness) are disrupted. However, once these needs are met, then we become self-determined (Deci & Ryan, 1985).

Disruption #1: Task Switching

A task is an assigned piece of work that is expected to be done. Focusing too much on what has to be done...

Welcome to the blog!

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:20:05 +0000

I’ve been meaning to get a website deployed for over a year. At work, I’ve been starting to write more complex code, and I am going to start using git for version control. I used GitHub in college for my senior thesis. At the time I knew it was for documenting code and that it was good coding practice from what I’ve read about. During my senior year, around the same time, if not earlier, I had migrated from Notion to Obsidian for notetaking. Obsidian is where I learned more about md language, YAML, and SQL. Simple, elegant, and...

Katâlepsāra | Grasp, Transform, Repeat

Consciousness

On Being an Umpire

First, How I Ended Up Coaching

Introducing The Coverage Project

At the Plateau of Meaning

Table of Contents

What 50 Books Taught Me About Doing a PhD

Table of Contents

Why I’m Not Building a Personal Brand

Exercise

Science of Successful Learning

MediTEAte

My RSS Feed Subscription Lists

A Grave Threat To Mental Health

Disruption #1: Task Switching

Welcome to the blog!