Welcome to The Penny Blog

Welcome to my blog- my name is Samuel Liang, a high school sophmore currently residing at 39.0738° N, 125.8198° E. This blog, The Penny, is a new passion project I'm started, adding to it whenever I can in my free time. I really don't know where this will go, but we'll see as the path falls ever so slowly to place. You're probably wondering-

What’s This Blog About?

My inspiration for this blog started a few weeks ago, right across the turn of the year to 2025. During the winter, spring, and summer breaks, I noticed a strange phenomenon. Without any school work to occupy my mind and keep me busy, my mind was left to wander, like a sheep drifting astray into the woods. Now of course, the sheperd (aka high school) wasn't there to drag me back in, and so I started to truly ask myself:

What the f*ck am I doing with my life?

What's the point of life if I'm going to be forgetten in a century or two?

How can we call ourselves human, but slaughter 80 billion innocent animals a year?

If I eat meat, am I a bad person?

What is an "abosolute evil?" Is deadly self defense justified?

Are a million monkeys or one human worth saving more? At what point do we draw the line?

Is there a God?

Are there multiple gods?

What happens after I die?

When I'm 30, I'm hitting my physical peak, so is it all downhill from there?

You get the point. Thinking about aging and the final death and holy sh*t I'm still 16 years old and literally nothings changed. Basically freaking out over nothing.

Eventually January comes and school reels me back into the long hours of busywork and studying, and as usual my endless procrastination takes turn and I start browsing the web instead of coding for CSA, writing endless essays for Ojeda, and doing literally any work at all.

As it turns out, I stumbled across Tim Urban’s “Wait But Why” blog, and there's a lot of similar stuff on there. Exsentential questions and blog post that really make you think about what the heck you're doing with your life. As it turned out, I really liked his blog, but he hadn't posted in literally years. And then it all came together- Why not just start my own blog? 

Introducing the official one and only blog- The Penny!

But why- you may ask- is it called "The Penny"? 

Why It's Called "The Penny" Blog:

Now originally, I was heavily inspired by Tim Urban's "Wait But Why" blog (check out his hit Ted Talk too- https://tinyurl.com/ydm6ynz8). I needed a name that perfectly fitted the existential manifestos I wanted to write for this blog.

I thought to call my blog something like "Who Asked?" or "Who the F*ck Cares". Which, in retrospect, are corny names in their own right, the latter being a tad bit too hot for professionals. 

I thought "A Penny For Your Thoughts" sounded incredibly amazing, but there were a few issues-

1. "A Penny For Your Thoughts" would be way too long to fit into a proper URL. Also consider that the URL has to also fit the "-.blogspot" bit at the end of it.

2. The name “A Penny For Your Thoughts” was already taken by another blogger from the 2010s. Well then again, so was “The Penny”, (taken from a blogger from 2007), but there’s was more about coin collecting rather than existential crises. 

Anyways, taken by this immense spiral of inspiration, “The Penny” seemed like the perfect name- bold, simple, and symbolic. Kind of like when Steve Jobs named his computer company “Apple”. Now I’m no Steve Jobs, but hopefully good enough for writing slop like this. So then-

How can I Support The Penny?

First of all, thank you for considering supporting my blog. Supporting free content just for the sake of it is quite honorable, and I sincerely thank you for that.

There's a few ways to support The Penny:

1. Just Reading The Penny:

With the magic of Google AdSense, just by reading my blog, you help support me and what I do. Sure it may be just a few pennies (no pun intended) here and there, but every bit of support truly counts.

2. Sharing With Friends:

This is basically the first way from above ("Just Reading The Penny"), but 10 times better, because now all your friends can read The Penny! 1 person shares with 3, and 3 people share with 9, and 9 people share with 27, and so on and so forth. 

3. Supporting Me Monetarily:

As of right now, I obviously haven't opened up a Patreon or Locals of that sort, but stay tuned!