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Of abandoning mother tongues and shame
ℹ️ Now, a caveat before I go on. There’s a common narrative on left-leaning US-dominated social media that there’s a concerted effort by Beijing to stamp out native languages. This interpretation is false and propaganda, and this writer is not in the mood to educate or argue with these believers right now, and as I don’t want this thread to be hijacked by an agenda, I’ll be moderating the comments.
This will be my only attempt at educating people on the subject: Even in Malaysia, Chinese dialects are fading, being replaced by Mandarin. There’s no concerted effort by the Malaysian government to stamp out Chinese dialects. This is all due to the power of peer and family pressure. Self-inflicted, almost. Kids feel pressured to adopt the perceived “elite language” at school or even at home. And if parents do not make a concerted effort to educate their children in the native tongue, it’ll fade.
It happened in my family, with my siblings being total bananas, preferring to communicate most of the time in English while I am can converse in Hokkien (a Chinese language dominant in China’s Fujian province) and Mandarin. This was a choice on my part to keep learning Mandarin and speaking in Hokkien. My siblings just didn’t think it a priority, that’s all. It’s no biggie. It’s just a personal choice every individual in Malaysia may make. Now on to the essay.
Yaqi Li’s essay, Reversed Tones and Borrowed Tongues fascinated me because, as a Malaysian, I grew up in an environment where we end up using multiple languages.
I thought long and hard about whether I was ever ashamed speaking Hokkien, and the short answer is, No.
In fact, I’d be surprised if any Malaysian-Chinese would feel ashamed speaking their native tongue. For as long as I lived, the Malaysian Chinese community had been fiercely determined to preserve their traditions, and that included speaking their native tongues. If anything, they’d frown at anyone who look down on their mother tongue.
The pressure and “shame” I feel is that I was never fast or smart enough to master more languages. For example, having lived in Kuala Lumpur for most of my life, I am often side-eyed for not bothering to learn Cantonese.
Malaysia’s unique education system—we have schools whose primary languages are either English (private schools), Malay (national schools), Chinese or Indian (vernacular schools)—meant that there’s no one Malaysian with the same command of language in any language.
My strongest language is English despite being in a Malay-dominated national school because my family are Penang Peranakans who are Anglophiles. Even before Malaysia’s independence, the Penang Peranakans spoke English and sent our kids to missionary schools.
At home, my parents and I speak a mixture of English and Hokkien. Among my siblings, I’m the most fluent in Hokkien and Mandarin. Mandarin was a ‘chance of geography’. I grew up in Johor, but unlike my siblings, I just naturally learned Mandarin while they didn’t.
The Peranakans are Chinese, but we don’t really feel inferior or ashamed for not speaking Mandarin or our native mother tongue because it’s understood that most of us can’t. The Malacca Peranakans, for example, mostly speak Malay.
One of the excuses I give when a Chinese-educated Malaysian-Chinese scoff at me for not speaking Mandarin fluently is that I am Peranakan. A look of understanding will dawn on their faces and they will say, “Oh no wonder.”
They’re not as forgiving for complete Chinese bananas, however. They just cannot comprehend Chinese people who do not bother preserving their mother tongues.
We also don’t feel any shame/superiority/inferiority for learning a language. When you are a Peranakan, whose culture is a blend of myriad cultures including Chinese, Malay, Thai and even British, there’s really little shame in learning a language. As I said, if anything, our shame comes from not learning more languages than we should!
I’m an odd duck in that I have really good accents in my languages (great Malay and Mandarin accents) but my vocabulary sucks. My accent makes up for it, fooling many native speakers into thinking I’m native like them.
So, in summary, Malaysians generally don’t really have an identity crisis over our mastery of language. However, language is politicized, with Malay trying to maintain its primacy in an English-dominated world, made even more complicated by a language-fractured education system and a population whose mastery of Malay isn’t standard or homogeneous.
But I hear that among the Chinese educated, they do feel bad if they can’t master English. But again, only because they are supposed to. They understand how important it is to master English and their mastery of it will determine their success in business.
But again, when most of Malaysian society is multilingual, able to switch to multiple languages (sometimes in one sentence), the shame comes from not mastering a language fast enough or adding more languages to your skillset.
#languages #Chinese #Culture #Mandarin #Hokkien #Malaysia
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Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt
Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!
They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.
Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.
Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.
However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)
In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.
These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.
AI as a ghost writer?
As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.
I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.
However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.
These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.
It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.
These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.
You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.
And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.
Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?
Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone
Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.
For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.
Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:
For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:
- I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
- This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
- I then rewrite the first draft extensively.
For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:
- I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
- I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
- I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
- At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.
As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.
I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”
I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!
So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.
AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)
I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.
Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.
Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:
- Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
- Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
- Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.
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Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service
My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services.
You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.)
But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Anthropic seems driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing.
To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still use the free versions for all US AI models. Mostly for research.
I went for Mistral because I didn’t need to do wild stuff with my AI, not because it was a “purer” company than US-based ones. It just doesn’t do as many reckless things.
I hope.
Funnily enough, one of Mistral’s unique selling points is that it is not a US based company lmao.
But a reminder: most AI companies are just driven by a drive to succeed, either to get more money or to get more power, so it’s something we have to soberly accept if we throw money at them.
I really don’t need my LLMs/AI to be bleeding edge frontier stuff
Most of the time I rely on open source AI such as Deepseek (which has recently upped its game with v4, which doesn’t rely on Nvidia chips – a seismic game changer.
My AI colleagues do simple stuff like translate from Mandarin to English to help me learn (Deepseek), clean up transcripts (Qwen), do simple grammar edits (Qwen) and help me organize my thoughts for my personal writing projects (Mistral, Qwen, Deepseek).
As you can see, I use the AI mostly for writing, but still retain full control of my writing.
My primary method is dictation as I write 4x faster that way. (I use Otter or Windows’ Windows+H command to dictate.)
I tell AI to use up to 90% of my original words and then clean it up. I will then revise it further, adding more flair and finesse. Occasionally, when I’m especially brain dead, I’d ask it to help me improve the flow by suggesting how to move around pieces of my transcript to a coherent narrative.
I don’t need to fully automate my life: I’ve already built simple agents with Gemini at work. It automates some of my workflows but it’s nothing fancy in the world of agentic AI.
Another reason why I chose Mistral
It’s not a prude.
Yes, sometimes I do write fiction with a spicy edge, and there’s nothing more annoying than an AI clutching its pearls and muttering at you, “How dare you besmirch my chips with your filth!”
ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Qwen, Gemini – all of them are prudish, and would seize up the moment you talk about body parts. It would throw out your uploads that have some spicy scenes and turn away like a delicate miss, saying that my content is forbidden.
Well, eff that.
Sure, there are workarounds to make these models do stuff, and there’s a way to nerf them too. But why go through all that trouble when Mistral, like the French, don’t hyperventilate when you talk about sexy matters.
For me, the future may not be Mistral
As convenient as Mistral is, eventually, I hope to build my own Open Source AI system locally. Because that’s the way to go. Also I’m rebellious that way; I hate being beholden, gatekeeped or walled-in by any company with fuzzy morals. However, right now I just don’t have time to learn the ropes to climb the very steep mountain to get there.
I don’t know, I guess I’m a rebel like that. Hate sending money to hype machines even if the hype is half deserved.
What AI service do you pay for? And if you use open sourced stuff, what do you use?
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Reading Pu Songling’s “The Haunted House”
I created an LLM ‘literature professor’ who discusses stories with me after I finish a tale from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (or Tales of the Liaozhai), using the 2006 Penguin translation by John Minford.
As I read through the book, one of the most important things I learned about Tales was that it is not just a series of funny, scary stories, but Pu Songling’s commentary on life under Qing Dynasty rule.
About “Liaozhai”
The series of short stories, written during the early years of the Qing Dynasty (mid-to-late 17th century) in China, may seem like horror stories. However, they are actually reflections from a frustrated scholar who, in his lifetime, was denied entry into officialdom despite his scholarly abilities.
“Liaozhai” is Pu’s “studio name” or penname. Liao Zhai basically means “The Studio of Idle Chats”, which suggested that his stories were merely “gossip” or “casual tales” told among friends, not serious historical records or high-minded literature.
However, this was ironic. He may call them “idle chats” but his stories were often sharp, sophisticated social critiques disguised as ghost stories.
Anyway, after I upload my story notes, the Qwen ‘Liaozhai professor’ will ask me a series of questions using the Socratic method to help me think more critically about the story beyond ‘oh, that was interesting’. It also provides me with the historical context of the times.
The Haunted House
The story that I read for this post is The Haunted House (Chapter 11).
The Haunted House was a curious story: a man owned a strange house. Sometimes, the furniture of a room manifested scary behaviours – its texture felt like flesh, and some pieces could literally slither away.
Towards the end, one of his tenants wakes up to a strange sight: he sees little people in his room. This terrifies him. The story ends with him trying to run out of the room, only to fall flat on his face.
Hearing the commotion, the household runs to his room, but they see nothing out of the ordinary.
One of the most interesting aspects of the narrative style of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is that it demands you be comfortable with ambiguity. Readers accustomed to Western storytelling styles, where stories end with some form of closure, would probably feel discombobulated. Like them, I naturally asked, at first, ‘What the heck was the point of this story?’
A story about living under injustice
As I had the conversation with Qwen (the LLM asked me questions, did not feed me answers, and I came to many of the conclusions on my own), I realised that the entire room and house were an allegory for the Qing Dynasty’s justice system and bureaucracy.
The furniture’s texture being like ‘flesh’, and the owner’s disgust after touching it, mirrored the revulsion the author felt towards institutional ‘instruments’ acting in a way that was alien and illogical.
The horrified reaction of the tenant to the tiny, crying figures represented petitioners lost in an inscrutable system; their unexplained grief mirrors how bureaucracy absorbs suffering without redress. The tenant’s terrified reaction probably reflects the scale of the horror this system perpetuates on normal people, and despite his attempts to flee the clutches of this room, he falls on his face. And even when people come to his “rescue” they end up thinking, “what is he on about?” because they don’t see what he sees.
Chinese storytelling traditions
As you can see, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio demands that you read the stories not at face value, but to see the meanings behind the ‘horror’.
It is written in the style of the zhiguai tradition, where strangeness is documented, not solved. (Ambiguous endings are a feature of the narrative style.) Zhiguai stories are treated like ‘historical documents’; each entry is short, about 500 words.
I also learned that Pu Songling blended zhiguai’s ambiguity with chuanqi’s emotional depth.
According to Qwen/Britannica: “Chuanqi (傳奇, ‘transmissions of the marvelous’) emerged in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) as China’s first mature form of fictional short story in classical Chinese. Unlike zhiguai’s brief, documentary-style records of strangeness, chuanqi developed fuller narratives with psychological depth, character arcs, and often romantic or adventure plots – written with literary elegance rather than historiographic restraint.”
Learning about these narrative traditions was fascinating! However, I lamented to myself that since Western media and storytelling have proliferated throughout the world and become dominant, we are often told what’s the “right” storytelling structure.
The three-part narrative, the “Save the Cat” story structure etc, isn’t universal after all. Doesn’t that mean that those of us reading and writing in English are currently limited to one form of structural storytelling?
Many Western storytellers or writers often tout the ‘right structure’ or a ‘template for storytelling’, and I wonder if we are really losing out on something. Are we being limited in some way, forced to adopt a style – a form of imperialism of storytelling culture?
To this, Qwen, or rather, the Liaozhai (the Chinese name for Strange Tales) professor, reminded me: not all Western traditions demand closure (e.g. Kafka’s unresolved nightmares).
A haunting’s deeper meaning
In the end, The Haunted House’s message is this: ‘The instruments of justice are not behaving as they should.’
Pu was not just telling a ghost story; he was documenting how power feels when it violates its own logic.
During the Qing Dynasty, bureaucracy often felt endless and aimless, and for the people trapped in it, trying to get answers or resolve their grievances, it was an endless room of horrors they could not escape.
The ambiguity of the story is the message.
Fun fact: Some of the tales from Strange Tales have been made into blockbuster movies. Here’s a very popular one: A Chinese Ghost Story, starring Leslie Cheung:
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March 2026: What I’m doing now
Realised I’ve not updated my “now” status in a long, long while.
Right now, geographically, I’m in Penang, the island where I was born. My ancestors have been here for more than a century. Sometimes I feel that the island calls to my blood – at the risk of sounding dramatic.
At this exact moment, I’m typing this at a quiet bookstore cafe where they serve Chinese tea and Chinese books.
A most zen place to work.
Jing Si bookstore & cafe in Georgetown, Penang. What I’m learning
I feel behind in terms of AI, but I’m taking Anthropic’s Claude Code In Action course. I may be learning Clawbot from a friend, but let’s see how it goes – I think it’s overkill for a normie like me and I don’t feel like I have many use cases for it as I like to be in control of my writing most of the time.
What I’m writing
I’m quite behind with my personal writing as work has been really intense lately. I tend to write in bulk and spurts. I recently cleared about a dozen reviews for my Chinese drama blog, Dramatea. Speaking of which, I’ve been at it for two years. It’s about time I make it official, bite the bullet and buy a domain name for it.
Likewise for this website, I have a huge stockpile to clear and schedule for the blog.
I’m trying to implement a more Posse vs Pesos approach to this blog. It’s just too easy to digital sharecrop for platforms because they make it so very easy. The worse part of it is when I PESOS, I often forget to return the content back to my website where it should rightfully belong.
I’m also sharing more links via my linkblog section, at least twice a month. I feel that with AI on the ascent and search becoming murkier than ever, surfacing only the select who know what to do to get their content seen by LLMs, human recommendations are more important ever.
Where I am, career-wise
Still at my company, ServiceRocket. Designing Content Strategy and writing about AI, cloud migrations, enterprise planning and systems. As a planning nerd, I find it fascinating, but I do miss working directly with product teams.
Habits I’m trying to form
- Strength training is more important now at my age, so I’m doing 2x bodyweight exercises per week. I don’t really like to rely on gyms; I just prefer the outdoors.
- In the same vein, I’ve been taking more walks in the park these days and thankful that I live very near one.
- Walking after meals is super healthy for you and I’m trying to implement that for every meal, especially dinner time, if possible.
News that is taking my bandwidth now
Try as I might, I find it difficult to tear my eyes away from the US-Israel-Iran war. I just find it difficult to comprehend the level of lawlessness, barbarity, injustice I’m forced to read about daily. The “heroic” nation of the US is no longer heroic in my eyes. (Though to be honest, it has been decades since it appeared that way to me.)
I used to think of the US as a flawed democracy, but now I can’t help but think of it as a fallen democracy, a rogue state.
I’m refraining, to the best of my ability, from writing about it, however. The world doesn’t need more rants about the war. I also don’t like attracting too much unnecessary attention to myself.
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Linkblog March 26, 2026: On typing
Welcome to my Linkblog where I share interesting articles and blog posts I found about social media, Indieweb, geopolitics, Chinese and Malaysian stuff, cute cat videos or anything funny and interesting I find online.
FYI: I also share links in the “Weekend Tales” of my Substack newsletter, Tai Tales. The newsletter is geared towards Chinese and Malaysian culture.
PS: I felt it was appropriate for this issue to use AI-generated imagery 😉
Nostalgia for word processors
The Digital Dilemma: Why Writers Are Abandoning Modern Word Processing Software
“Modern word processors, like most contemporary internet spaces, have become battlegrounds for our attention.”
I long for the days when a word processor was just a blinking green thing on a black screen 🥲
Your Word processor is distracting you
Each time I use a web-based word processor, my blood pressure just goes up. These days you never get a peaceful moment when you’re writing on one of those. You get interruptions galore – hey, would you like a tour? Hey! Did you know about this feature? HEY! WE GOT AI NOW
That’s why I write with Obsidian these days. So peaceful. No bloody interruptions. I use it to write almost everything. Blog posts, work copy, fiction, newsletters.
Turning Obsidian into the ultimate writing app and
How to Use Obsidian for Writing and Productivity
Speaking of which, this is how you use Obsidian for writing.
Malaysia
We Malaysians sure love our malls. It’s our community centre, place of work … some malls even have condos above it!
Geopolitics
The three reasons why Americans aren’t rising up in open revolt
It’s kinda depressing this video was released 12 years ago. At what point is “enough is enough”? 😅
Does AI “Threaten to Undermine Democracy” or is it already way too Broken?
The intersection of tech and politics! I love the channel, Internet of Bugs, and this is such a solid take.
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How I conduct UX copy reviews
Efficiency and clarity are the bread and butter of UX writing, but often our own internal processes are the messiest part of the job.
I’d like to share a UX copy review process that I’ve adapted from Dr Katharina Grimm, a UX writer who shared a brilliant video about performing UX copy audits.
My system is slightly tweaked to the needs of my team and workflow, so while it isn’t an exact copy, I want to give her full credit for simplifying the UX review process for me.
The problem: Breaking the “switching” cycle
Previously, my team used Confluence (for text-heavy UIs) or Jira tickets as our one source of truth.
However, I felt that this caused significant cognitive friction for both the designers and the UX writer.
Having to switch from one platform to another—both using very different UI systems—inevitably slows down the work. On top of that, UX writers had to:
- Reproduce the original copy from Figma.
- Include a link to the relevant screenshot.
- Provide an image of said screenshot so designers knew exactly which element was being discussed.
Not only does this friction result in mistakes during the transfer of content, but it is also a lot of time wasted on manual work.
Why a dedicated figma board?
The new system I created eliminated the need for designers to switch between platforms.
They can simply copy the relevant elements from my board directly into their own Figma files. They are able to easily identify which copy needs to be changed and on which part of the screen.
I decided to create my own separate Figma board for copy reviews, rather than implementing this system directly on the designer’s working board, to prevent confusion.
In the past, I tried giving feedback on the live design board, but it led to lost comments and shuffled copy.
For a UX writer, it is vital to have a single source of truth for the copy review so that we can look back and see what was changed.
The UX Copy Audit Process
I kick off the UX copy review process by defining the review criteria with product managers and designers. Then, I scope the work by clarifying exactly which screens need a review.
1. Defining the criteria
What do I look for when correcting UX copy? I categorise my review into four main buckets:
Criterion Description Correctness Basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling. House Style Ensuring the copy is consistent with our established brand voice and style guide. Usability The copy might be grammatically correct, but does it help the user navigate the product effectively? Quality Improving the sentence so that it is more readable, clear, and succinct. 2. Research and analysis
Next, I conduct research of the app to get a “bird’s eye view” of the project. What is the intent of the app? What do users want to achieve with it?
I then look into technical terms to gain a better understanding and to ensure the copy conveys the right context.
For example, if I’m reviewing survey tools, I’ll research terms like CSAT or NPS to decide on the correct casing and usage. At this stage, I am doing more analysis than actual writing.
3. The copy review
An illustration of how the process looks like on a Figma board.Coloured sticky notes = what needs to be corrected, and under what criteria. Grey sticky notes = original UX Copy. Star stamp = final copy. Once the research is done, I perform the review by placing coloured sticky notes next to the UI elements to highlight changes based on the criteria mentioned above.
4. The rewrite
Finally, I rewrite the copy.
- I copy the original text into a grey sticky note as a reference (our source of truth).
- I rewrite the copy directly in the design.
- I mark it with a stamp to indicate completion.
This makes it easier for designers to see exactly what has been updated and replace their text boxes without any “mind-boggling” transitions between systems.
Final thoughts
I really enjoy crafting processes that account for every team member’s challenges. My main goal was to reduce friction; in Figma, a designer can simply copy a text box and replace it in their design, reducing the margin for error.
Question: What does your copy review process look like?
I am always looking for suggestions to improve this workflow. If you have any ideas that make it easier to implement changes without mistakes, please let me know in the comments!
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What I learned in Malaysian history class
Malaysian secondary history classes have changed so much, so I am not sure what is being studied now. But during my time, we studied the history of Malaysia (of course), world history, which includes Islamic civilisations, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We didn’t go in depth with all of them; we just learned their big highlights.
The one thing I remembered about the Islamic civilisations, especially the Persians, is their pioneering work in Mathematics and the Sciences, which included Algebra, which I both loathed and am fascinated with.
We also learned about imperialism, colonial attitudes like the “white man’s burden,” etc. It was something the older generation frowned upon, as they thought we were learning politics. People of my parents’ generation tend to regard the British admiringly.
Being young, I didn’t really understand what was going on. However, as I grew into adulthood, I appreciated this foundation. I expanded my studies deeper into all of this.
Granted, however, I’m a bit of a nerd, and I like to do deep dives on random topics. (One of the deep dives I did was taking a course in the Old Testament survey, studying the history and culture of the Middle East extensively.)
And when I was studying world history in school, being dissatisfied with the Cliff’s Notes version of world history that we were studying, I decided to study on my own and wrote a book about it. (I didn’t publish it, but it was just something I did for fun.)
I must remind myself that not everyone has that interest nor the educational foundation that I had. But I still get frustrated by the assumptions people make about civilizations and countries all the time. In our age of disinformation it’s especially dangerous as people are prone to manipulation this way.
I think if people took the time to understand and learn about the history of various countries, they will gain a better understanding of the motivations of its people. -
Linkblog March 12, 2026: Platform blues
Welcome to my Linkblog where I share interesting articles and blog posts I found about social media, Indieweb, geopolitics, Chinese and Malaysian stuff, cute cat videos or anything funny and interesting I find online.
FYI: I also share links in the “Weekend Tales” of my Substack newsletter, Tai Tales. The newsletter is geared towards Chinese and Malaysian culture.
PS: I felt it was appropriate for this issue to use AI-generated imagery 😉
Something beautiful
Watch this, I promise you it’s worth it.
I wrote about this performance in Chinese New Year, Spring Festival Gala, Flower Deities in Tai Tales recently.
This 5-minute Spring Gala Festival performance had everything I loved about Chinese culture: poetry, dance, beautiful hanfu and CDrama actors. However, one needs lots of context to truly appreciate this performance. I’m here to provide the information about the 12 “flower gods” and the stories of the real historical figures behind them.
Technology
AI ‘slop’ is transforming social media – and a backlash is brewing
AI “slop” is transforming social and there’s a backlash.
Actually I don’t mind if everyone ends up abandoning it and eventually it is just AI interacting with bots.“when I see folks piling on erstwhile friends because they didn’t pass a purity test, it really bums me out, because some opinions being more equal than others is just the kind of ideological inbreeding that invites intellectual entropy.”
First, I absolutely adore the Expanse series. Second, having been on the reception of such purity rages just because I wasn’t pure enough nor do I want or even care about abandoning a platform or tech because it’s evil, a Nazi bar whatever, I appreciate this.
Well, anyway. Pure platforms and tech do not exist. Shaming others for using tech you consider evil is not productive, especially since there’s no black and white in the world.
The puritanical pursuit of platform purity
By yours truly. I noticed cycles of one platform after another being condemned for some societal ill after another. Frankly, it’s exhausting trying to be so “pure” in an age where purity is just an illusion.
Also, I use AI for my work and writing. I still post on Facebook occasionally. Hell, I promote my blog posts on Threads and X sometimes. I don’t care what people say. I am moving beyond the rants and polemics.
I relate to this so much. The internet and the portals that dominate had made life hellish for creatives. That said, being an electrician is soooo cool. I did something like this in my mid thirties when I got so disillusioned with my journalism/writing career that I turned to nursing. While it didn’t work out it made me realise that going all in as a creative, making my art support my life isn’t for me. Now I work in tech and it supports my writing and I am happy.
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The Writing Community’s AI Panic
Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!
The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude
TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.
(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)
Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.
If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.
I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.
Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.
I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)
How I reacted when AI became a thing
Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.
But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.
Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.
Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.
When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities
On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.
A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)
AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.
These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.
At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.
Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger
The online writing community on a good day. To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.
They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.
I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.
I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.
I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.
During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.
One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.
Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.
Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.
Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.
If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.
The disability perspective
Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.
For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.
Ethical AI use?
As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.
Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.
One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.
Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.
What we need to discuss
What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.
We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.
We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.
But no, writers are fighting with each other.
And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.
I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.
Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.
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Elizabeth Tai 