Nebula Walker · 星忘塵
Mythogen Engine
Industry and capital structure analysis, long-form books and essays.
Latest Dispatches
The 8 most recent publications across Lucid Record and Essays.
Why I Rarely Write About Psychology
Real psychology asks 'how did this person become who they are?' Abused psychology asks 'which category does this person belong to?' From Koo Hsiu-chuan's case analysis to school labeling, workplace MBTI theater, and unfalsifiable Jungian pop psychology online, this essay dissects how psychology shifts from understanding individuals into a weapon for passing verdicts, shifting blame from broken structures to individuals.
Prologue: Snatching Rice from the Beggar's Bowl
Money keeps flowing to the top, the share left below shrinks year after year, and everyone else is steered into fighting the people beside them. Four essays, one pie cut thinner every year.
Final Part: After the Counting
Taiwan already counts clearly, yet wages stagnate and homes remain out of reach. The middle class are both victims and beneficiaries, and land prices are chained to public finance, the tax base and capital: any single policy is pulled back by the whole chain.
The Fraud You Can See, the Numbers Nobody Measures
Public housing worked in Hong Kong for decades and now seems to have failed for no stated reason. Means tests see payslips but not cash or offshore assets, so those screened out are the ones who declare honestly. Welfare fraud is an enforcement problem, not a problem with protection itself.
Those Who Leave and Those Who Arrive
Hong Kong's statistics department publishes only net figures; one-way permit holders and talent-scheme arrivals count as “local” after seven years, and where they came from disappears. Asking for data is not discrimination: it is not that it cannot be measured, but that no one measures it.
Global Top, Local Bottom
An office administrator on HK$22,000 a month ranks in the global top quarter, yet after rent she cannot afford a phone. Guilt and fear steer attention downward; those who take most of the pie are never part of the comparison.
Suffer If You Don't Work? From CSSA to UBI, Whose Principle Is “More Work, More Pay”?
The premise that people who don't work should live worse comes from England's 1834 Poor Law, and its function has always been to hold down wages. A society needing work done does not mean people must work to deserve to live; the height of the safety net sets the floor for every level.
Fiefdoms Beneath the Pretty Charts — The Giants Embrace AI, the Crowd Rebuilds UIs, and Nobody Will Surrender the Power to Define
The interface is the tiling; the data is the plumbing buried in the walls. Companies fail to integrate their data not because of technology, but because nobody will surrender the power to define. AI has exposed the excuse — and may bury the fault lines even deeper.
NEW BOOK · 2026
AI isn't the problem.
The coverings are.
- Prose covers emptiness
- Credentials cover absence
- Corporate rhetoric covers power dynamics
— AI just rips them all off at once.
From the manufacturing of narratives, to the passing of costs, to the arbitrage of anxiety — all the way to the structure of consciousness. No anxiety to sell. No tools to peddle. What it dismantles is the underlying mechanics. Technology changes, platforms shift, but the mechanisms driving it all remain — understand the mechanics, and no change can catch you off guard.
