PerspectiveEssays, 2025–2608 texts, in ChineseWords, Enzo Redford
perspective
我们总是尝试把自己活进某个标签，但没有一个标签能真正通向自己。
We keep trying to live our way into a label, but no label leads back to ourselves.
From 01, No Label Leads Home
no label leads home
Labels, possessions, and a hollow self
On labels and the self, through American Psycho, Blade Runner 2049 and Fight Club: three men who try to anchor who they are in something outside themselves, and fail.
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the tyranny of being reasonable
A murderer, a detective, an insomniac
Reason is taken for maturity and feeling for weakness. Crime and Punishment, True Detective and Insomnia, read against that habit.
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war · civilisation · the individual: homer, still echoing
Notes after Nolan’s Odyssey
Notes on Nolan's Odyssey, where the hero's homecoming gives way to a man carrying a war home, and to the suffering of civilisations, of an age, of one person.
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genius and madman
The people of The Bear, and what they are made of
On the series that kept the writer company for three years: Carmy and his family, a kitchen shot like a war, and people who look at each other as they are.
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the education of taste
The tide of Chinese taste, Song to now
That taste in China is poor today is not false; the question is which page of the story we are on. From the Song to the present, the rise and fall of a Chinese aesthetic, and what really brought it here.
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loss leader, or long game?
An idle move is never idle
Why Chinese labs open-source their best models, read as a contest over who sets the standard, from the DeepSeek moment to 2026.
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what the fuck is web3
From 1.0 to 3.0
Web1, Web2 and Web3 as three versions of one game, each handing a little more of the right to publish, spread and own information down to its players.
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a long read on rwa
Where it came from, what it is, where it goes
Real-world assets on the blockchain: where the idea came from, how a building becomes ten million tokens, and what it might mean for an ordinary person.
Read →Plates: public-domain works, via Wikimedia Commons.