Connie Li

Hi there! I'm your friendly neighborhood bodega cat who, in between cold brew, coding misadventures, and roaming the streets of SF for delightful ppl and caffeinated shenanigans, enjoys collecting good words, reddit screenshots, and unusual events that usually revolve around whether AI is good, whether AI is bad, and deliberately awkward eye contact. Some statements that feel true about me:

• I am happiest when learning something new, especially if it is completely useless
• I am a long-time Huffledork who has read almost all 1.68 million words of Worm, tragic amounts of fanfic, and about 2% of 5000 books in progress on Kindle that I will not finish this century
• I listen to more podcasts than music 🙈 the flipside is I can give a great AG1 Athletic Greens spiel
• I have supported the same mediocre soccer team, and successfully masqueraded online as a middle-aged English man who lives in his mother's basement, for nearly two decades now
• I run almost every day and have never gotten a runner's high :(
• Naruto has had a hilariously profound impact on my life, if only for getting me into college (as a teenager I was a hopeful mangaka who sent in a 25-page comic as my application essay)
• My longevity stack consists of vitamin D, Asian sunscreens, trying to live near my friends, and a fashion sense that can best be described as Temu-inspired toddler-punk
• I resist most tribal affiliation. This is not because I'd like to keep my identity small, but because I refuse to join any club that would have me in it 😤
• You can read more about me in my old and mildly infamous dateme doc, with the caveat that I am now (partly thanks to the dateme doc!) in a very happy committed relationship so that is just for posterity :) But feel free to use it as an example if you'd like to write your own!

The title of this site is aidagara, the Japanese word for "betweenness", the space that exists between two people. It has no equivalent in English but encapsulates things like vibe, social capital, guanxi, connection, the Bay Area stalwart word relating, the Australian aboriginal notion of "us two". This is something I think about a lot, the way that the Chinese word for "human", 人 (ren), is the image of two people leaning on each other: this idea that the fundamental task of humaning is not one that can be done alone. That I exist in some way because of you.

There are a bunch of things I like thinking about that I've listed below and on other parts of this site, and enjoy exploring via communities like the SF Commons and the magic constellation of scenes all over SF. If anything on there strikes your fancy, feel free to hit me up on the bird app!

What I Like Thinking About

• broadly: who we are, where we're from, where we're going
• the study of human systems - sociology, anthropology, big history, social semiotics and epistemology
• coordination problems, ie. Moloch
• theories of storytelling, aesthetics - why do some stories resonate more than others? why are we moved by beauty, narrative, music? are buildings getting uglier?
• high weirdness (a la Erik Davis) and memetic tribes
• psychohistory, in particular this Hardcore History episode
• the origins of depression, social theories of disease
• left and right brain thinking (McGilchrist), east vs western philosophy, indigenous cultures
• what is the nature of freedom? does post-industrial/modern society actually decrease freedom? are there different kinds of freedom and tensions between them?
• is warfare necessary, inevitable, or important
• explore vs exploit strategies in life
• how to create your own adventures / increase surface areas for serendipity
• the biggest 80/20s in different fields and how to find them
• problems with modern dating and where it will go next (apparently, pitch decks!)
• how to create a flourishing life for my cat
• variations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and their validity
• the nature of fun / what is fun
• the Pacific theatre and modern Asian history
• the future of work; the meaning of work, a la Studs Terkel

You can check out what I'm up to now on my Now page 💪

And some of my fav blogs, podcasts, and Books on my Favs page 💕