New Things

I like making things.

For the longest time, I’ve thought about mak­ing a pod­cast, at the very least, attempt to make one. So, dur­ing quar­an­ti­ne, I finally took the plunge.

The pod­cast is con­ver­sa­tions with friends about top­ics we are both nerdy about.

So far, I’ve got­ten to talk to Chloe Yeo about design and envi­ron­men­tal activism. I’ve also recorded an episode with Kyle Detillo about whether we can be happy that Trump got coronavirus.

In the end, it was less about the end prod­uct but more about the act of mak­ing some­thing. Of hav­ing an idea then actu­ally deliv­er­ing on it. It feels great.

Dur­ing quar­an­ti­ne, I also wanted to make a satir­i­cal web­site about Thai pol­i­tics. What if Thai­land had right-wing “in­tel­lec­tu­al” pub­li­ca­tions like National Review, The Bul­wark, Amer­i­can Com­pass? What if it had the same pompous elitist tone?

Meet The Bastion.

I had the design and the code ready — design­ing it was super fun — but in the end, I was forc­ing myself to write. I had to make things like human rights abuses funny and it wasn’t enjoyable.

Instead, The Bas­tion was repur­posed into a news aggre­ga­tion site with some orig­i­nal com­men­tary. Very much a mar­riage of Tech­meme and Axios, but for Thai politics.

So far, I’ve enjoyed edit­ing The Bas­tion. You can find it here.