jessa blog
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Milestones we now find difficult to achieve (unless you are the elite)
I find it hard to imagine how my parents, at 30, bought their land, built their house, and created a home with their children. This erosion of life’s fundamental milestones charts the same course as our broader societal fractures. While the elite class grows wealthier and more disconnected, entire generations find themselves unable to achieve Read more
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Quantity vs. Quality: The Publication Paradox
The nature of science is growing so complex that PhD founders now need large teams and administrative support to make progress, so they go to big firms instead. Thus, we have the paradox of our Golden Age of science. More research is being published by more scientists than ever, but the result is actually slowing Read more
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Late-night musings #25
When I was planting seeds, I never really considered how much time it would take for the seeds to grow. I was just hopeful that they will. While some promised immediate returns, others could lay silently under the earth for years and decades even when you keep watering them. I kept watering the ones that Read more
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The state of mental ease
Ease is defined as “freedom from worries or problems.” And doesn’t that sound good? Who always wants to worry and think about problems, right? But ease is also defined as “the absence of effort,” which doesn’t sound so good at all unless all you want is to just get by in life—here today and gone Read more
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Self-centeredness and short-term thinking
Our confrontation with mortality—or more often, our avoidance of it—shapes our relationship with time itself. When we refuse to acknowledge our finite nature, we construct an artificially narrow temporal horizon that barely extends beyond our existence. This temporal myopia manifests first as self-centeredness, as I’ve observed in my perception of time. Who has the time Read more
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Think long-term
As an energy researcher, talking about climate change is part of our work. It is a concept that really stuck with me in 2006 after watching An Inconvenient Truth on cable television. Even after reading The Ministry for the Future, I still find it challenging to imagine what life would look like a year or Read more
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Appearances can be misleading
Wealth can be found even in unassuming places—the dirty and the dank, the commonplace and unremarkable. I also learned that aesthetics don’t always indicate a steady and growing business (although some have reached a point where they can afford the luxury and expense of aesthetics while others have to be aesthetically pleasing as a part Read more
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