Stanley O'Shea

news

news, announcements, updates about my projects, etc.

news, memoir

Summer 2026 Update

Hey guys, I know I haven’t been writing this newsletter for a while, so this will be a solid one. Moving and housing Since two years ago, I’ve been dealing with a difficult landlady, who provided decade(s)-old second-hand electrical appliances that were eye-opening to me in terms of (dys)functionality. I was advised to find a different apartment in the same area. The new place is better in structure, but no better in terms of safety and robustness against horrible weather. More importantly, there was a fire accident, and the landlord was trying to hide it from me. This crude and cruel person tended to gaslight new tenants, just like many landlords in this world. Of course, the broker was also to blame. It took me a lot of trouble to understand why I have been suffering from people in this area: these homeowners, in this apartment complex with a “demolition-relocation” background, were from the less educated area of this city. The broker’s office is also the most remote one in their company, almost bordering the rural area. These people live by very different moral codes. Despite the relapsed leg injury during the recent moving process, I’ve decided to move back to the city area after living in this apartment for only three months. Suburbs here are not like suburbs in America. Lesson learned with clarity. Time to say goodbye. Swimming and challenges At the beginning of the year, I made a wish to go back to the swimming pool, as a new step of my rehab process. It took me weeks to relearn breaststroke, a skill I had acquired in college. Then I signed up for the freestyle lesson. Honestly, I wasn’t satisfied with the coaching here, because the coach doesn’t understand anatomy, let alone fitness training. Each session with him would bring me so much pain in some parts of my body, so I had to see a PT in a different city for treatment, in the name of unlocking the restrictions of my body. I disagree with their old-fashioned pedagogy, because it’s not suitable for adults with overuse injuries here and there. Yes, swimming is great exercise for your health, but learning a new fitness skill at this age was really painstaking. The Silver lining: I had a comedian friend, Matthew Broussard (@mondayponday), who gave me a lot of swimming tips. Meanwhile, I watched the YouTube video by Global Triathlon Network again and again to internalize the movements. I hope to finish the lesson with this coach, and then practice at my own pace in the future. I feel it is much less painful afterward when I swim by myself instead of being pushed to swim in a certain standardized way. There are definitely gains and losses in the process. I don’t think I can recommend freestyle swimming lessons to adults with physical difficulties already. You must have heard people say swimming is gentle on the joints, but you need most of your muscles and joints to be healthy in order to swim effectively. It’s too ideal for most of us approaching middle age, actually. If you are interested in swimming, please find someone who understands fitness anatomy, if not physical therapy. They also need to be psychologically mature enough, with good patience. This seems like a high standard for a coach, but if your body isn’t wholesome, you gotta be picky. Forgot to mention, swimming is really good for the brain and your autonomic nervous system, unless you have pre-existing medical issues. New series and IG reels Adventures with the Medical Ninjas is an urban fantasy & graphic novel series I have been working on. The pictures are generated with generative AI. I try to create a new episode each season as I grow my understanding of the healthcare industry and human society. Episode 08 is a special story between “me”, Patrick, and Gary Woo, head of the IT department. This episode carries more technical than medical flavor. You shouldn’t miss it if you are into engineering and math… and mythology. I put a lot of effort into making the battle graphs for this episode. Part One Part Two Part Three Episode 09 is shorter than usual. It’s a battle between “me” and Llama from the Department of Psychological Medicine. Let me give you a heads-up: the psychological battle is darker than usual. Of course, I got the inspiration from real-life interactions with various clinicians and those in the service industry. Part One Part Two If you remember, I once posted a short series (EP N1, N2, N3 pt.1, N3 pt.2) based on my medical trips to a second-tier city. Dr. Warm is the main clinician in the series. In the past season, I also created a graphic series based on my clinical visits to a PT with needling skills. I borrowed the concept of The Visored from Bleach, although the series is called Medical Ninjas. The stories have been posted on Instagram and TikTok. Below are the links. V1 empathy V2 bow V3 corkscrew V4 lancet V5 pliers You can also see my swimming series and cooking series on Instagram and sometimes TikTok. Please check out my profile pages @stanthefeline. If you wonder why I didn’t post on YouTube this time. I have some sad news to announce. My YouTube channel (@stanthefeline) has been shadow-banned, presumably because their algorithm flagged my AI-manga shorts as AI slop. I tried every way I could think of to rescue my channel, but there was no traffic coming in except toward the old videos. I seem to have a lot of co-victims this time, and this crisis with AI is out of our control. Therefore, I am spending more time on Instagram again, and occasionally share these anime-styled works on TikTok. I share my movie and book reviews on these two platforms too, if you care to look. The feedback is not bad. Sorry Youtube. Maybe someday I’ll create a new channel if I decide to create long-form videos.

news, health

Autumn 2025 update

The temperature dropped sharply earlier last month. Through a bad episode of calf muscle stiffness due to my historic lumbar disc issue, I learned to wear thicker sweatpants even indoors, to help maintain good circulation in my calves. What I realized during this process: I have been wearing one more layer on my arms than on my legs. Our legs need more warmth as we grow older, and prolonged sitting does worsen the circulation. At the same time, a sudden episode of rhinitis, which led to a one-day-long headache, helped me realize that I had let my face be exposed to cold air during my night walk, despite protecting every other place on my body (except the hands). All these things make sense. There’s a cause behind it. The trigger was usually ignored because we were overconfident or because we were negligent. Now I have developed the habit of taking a look at the outdoor temperature on my phone before I go out. I recommend installing a mini thermometer inside your vehicle if you drive one. Additionally, you can carry one with you in your backpack, wherever you go. The cheap ones may not be sensitive and accurate enough. This year, I have been reading (or say, deciphering) a psychology nonfiction book called Noise by Professor Daniel Kahneman et al. He mentioned this type of retrospective analysis for what’s going on in our lives. It’s different from statistical analyses for large datasets collected from a group of people. I think both are important skills to understand this world around us. However, before you go academic, you have to learn to protect yourself as an individual, and nobody else can substitute that role. In the past few months, I have learned a little bit about running social media ads. Through this trial-and-error process, after watching a couple of YouTubers’ insightful videos, I kind of saw through the business model behind these tech giants. No details to offer here for my conjecture, as I don’t want to sound cynical without much quantitative evidence to provide. My book ad has reached a lot of people from several countries, mostly in the US, and my website got more traffic as a result. Running social media does not lead to sales directly, as I have read about other people’s experiences. Marketing requires a huge investment of mental work, no less than the cost and effort of production and publishing. That being said, I don’t regret this learning process. I once had a landlord who said this to me, “The best way to learn something is to put your hands on it.” I put my hands on my mouse and keyboard after watching tutorials. That’s how I learned the new skill, which college and graduate school cannot teach. With so many other tasks to finish each month, I chose to practice advertising advertising stage by stage ( as opposed to letting it run constantly as some Youtube guru advised us to), and use AI to help me automate a lot of tasks. One cannot outsource all the mental work, not for marketing. The playlist of audiobook excerpts is still expanding. Link. Unlike my true video content, this playlist is only on YouTube, which I deem the most serious platform for the general public. Now, take a look at my creative work published recently on my blog and social media channels. I am talking about the Medical Ninjas series. This series really has transformed into a better shape, episode by episode, despite the limits of AI generation and the constraints of different apps provided by the same platform. I finished a fork (learned this concept from blockchain) of the storyline: N1, N2, N3. It’s based on my experience of seeking healthcare in a city with better healthcare resources. Episode N1 [ Dr. Cold and his white guns ] N2 [ Getting a chakragraphy and encountering the soul reapers ] Episode N3 [ Dr. Warm: the Quincy defendant who activates the Cosmo ] Part 1 Part 2 In contrast, Episode 07 [ Kokoro Superior and her puppies ] has a higher percentage of fiction, based on previous episodes. part 1 part 2 part 3 I call this genre “medical fantasy”, analogous to “science fiction”. Medicine is about practice, so it’s more than rigorous science. I get to incorporate alternative medicine and personal philosophy into it.  Besides, my understanding of human psychology is manifested in the dynamics of human interactions. My story takes form in both writing and manga (or graphic novel). Why don’t I create something in a fancier form? That requires a huge investment and a big team and may not be intrinsically rewarding for me. My brain generates new content faster than my hands can produce. Below is the list of the posts. Yes, I’m using a new format, like those graphic books. Bloopers are only available on my YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels (universal handle @stanthefeline ). Yes, I am posting the videos on TikTok again — The younger generations are into anime, like we once were. That being said, the adult-oriented part is always in the writing. I didn’t create this series just for fun. It is my life experience in fantasy form. Because of how this series was developed, there was no text form (or written story) for the first few episodes. I’m not sure whether or not I will have time to write them down. The best way to know the beginning of the plot is to go to my YouTube playlist. Finally, I just want to announce to the world that I have completely got rid of orthotic inserts. I’ve been getting shockwave therapy for the plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendinitis caused by this erroneous prescription. Long process, and real incremental progress. I can wear winter sandals from now on. What a bless. It’s a big life lesson for me: these things that are pleasing you can hurt you somehow. These inserts didn’t address the cause of my condition, and

A well-dressed young man with many arms rowing a boat in his dream
news

Integration: Mind, Memoir, Media

[New site, new blog] For a long time, I’ve been struggling with my online identity: as a person with an interdisciplinary STEM background, I have published a memoir as a crucial project after leaving both America and academia, but I don’t consider myself a literary writer by any sense. I’ve been creative throughout my life, doing songwriting for a decade, and now making mobile-based audiovisual short videos after getting RSI, but I still reject formal titles like “composer” or “artist”. It was imperative that I should connect these elements of life, and figure out a way to reconcile different dimensions of my creative skills on one platform; otherwise, I would have to set up multiple websites and multiple social account handles, and eventually get exhausted, if not go crazy. (Matthew McConaughey explained why it wouldn’t work in his memoir Greenlights.) Here we come, on this green-themed website. It’s not a typical author website, but one with the potential to evolve. I have migrated my old Substack articles to this platform, for easier management from now on. Now this blog section on my website will serve the following functions: For example(s), check out the following YouTube playlists on my channel: I wish I had time to upload everything I have in store, but I need to balance different lines of work and manage/investigate my health issues in the meantime. Public comments under my posts and videos are very welcome. If you go on my social media channels (see bottom of this website) to like, comment, share, and subscribe,  that’s going to help more people discover my work, help yourself show your good taste, and perhaps help the world become a better place in your standard. Currently, my prioritized platforms for creative works are YouTube (Google) and Instagram (Meta). I will distribute the content to more platforms if I have extra energy. If you have any suggestions for products and services, you can also let me know. (No crypto hehe). For collaboration, please go through the contact page of this website. Thank you in advance. Please check out all 3 versions of my psychological memoir The Snowy Battlefield of Ohio, through this website (book section). They each have unique strengths. My team put a lot of effort into each version. The audiobook distribution did not land on Amazon or Audible this time, unfortunately. I hope you can still enjoy other platforms like Apple, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, etc. Here is the trailer: This playlist BELOW has small clips of my extension articles for the book. Snowy Memoir Note that I only personally discuss extension articles with people who have already read the main book, to show respect for both parties’ time. I do not discuss sensitive topics related to America with those who have never lived in America or do not want to live in America. These are life lessons I have accumulated through life. Thank you for your understanding. I have to emphasize that at this point, as a person, on or off this website: What I can provide is my personal opinions and general recommendations if available. More details will be given on the “Services” page of this website. At the end of this post, I’d like to thank my professor David Huron for his education and guidance during my stay at Ohio State. He passed away earlier this month, which is a great loss to the field of music cognition. I was deeply enlightened by his book Sweet Anticipation as a college student. June 17, 2025