Hey everyone! It's the beginning of second semester, and so far this blog has mostly been about non-fiction materials such as AIs, propagandas, persuasive skills, and writing speculative fictions. Today, we take a detour and talk about money. Not the coins in your pocket, but the giant invisible forces that decide how much your snacks cost, why your parents sigh at the gas station, and why adults on the news keep saying words like "the Fed" with very serious faces. Last year in 2025, I wrote...

According to many sports-odds sites, South Korea has around a 70~80% chance of making it into the Round of 32 in the World Cup. If that happens, we will get to watch another game, and many families in Korea will probably do something very familiar: order chicken. Your parents open a delivery app, and the screen flashes the magic words: FREE DELIVERY. Nice, right? But here is the question: if delivery is free, who is paying for the rider, the app, the discount, and the restaurant’s lost...

There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to intelligence: Nature (genetics) vs. Nurture (education & environment) Most experts agree that education matters a great deal, but research also shows that your genetic predisposition (natural tendancy) plays a surprisingly large role. In fact, for certain cognitive domains, genetics might even outweigh environment. But don’t worry, this blog post isn’t about being deterministic. If you remember from our previous class (Week 23), we...