Links for January 2022
- Buy Things, Not Experiences (Harold Lee) – Common wisdom suggests that having a lot of stuff will not bring happiness, but advocates of this "new minimalism" often live in modern houses in expensive neighborhoods. In general, Lee argues that there is no real boundary between things and experiences, and in fact we may have erred too far and are now over-consuming experiences.
- Speaking in Tales: conversing in Chinese means constantly alluding to folklore (Michelle Lim) — Lim describes chéng yǔ, commonly used 4-character phrases in Chinese, which are allusions to classical Chinese folk tales. This introduces unique challenges to translations, which lose their evocative impact when you don’t know the story.