July 2025 Thought Notes: Self-Knowledge, Daily Life, Engineering

Passers-by in life and emotional ties

A group of people, just like that, drinking, chatting.

A seemingly very harmonious atmosphere

The plea for you to stay before leaving

But isn’t life just passers-by?

Staying because of attachment and emotional connection

Unfortunately I’m ultimately alone, and destined to be alone

The dripping tap dilemma: the body’s honesty and the price of avoidance

The tap problem

I’ve already tried to fix it, replaced it with a new one, but it still drips. It’s destined that there will be a tap that drips.

If a tap drips all year round, will you get neurasthenia?

Subjectively you think you’ve “gotten used to it,” but your body and brain are still continuously affected, because the brain actually needs to keep consuming energy to “filter” this sound — that in itself is a burden.

The body is more honest than we imagine, so fixing the problem matters more than forcing yourself to adapt.

It’s like a lot of things: when you can’t handle them yourself, you avoid discussing them.

Admitting misfortune and enduring it is far easier than enjoying happiness and changing.

I hope I can always keep the ability to accept new things, even on my own land. My parents reject technology, feel alienated by the towering factory buildings. People withdrawing from the world all the time — engaging with the world matters just as much.

The essence of focus: a by-product of obsession

Some thoughts

Actually just look at this world like a passer-by

The world just slides past your eyes like that

You want to find something valuable

You want to find something you truly love

But clearly you have the willpower

When you hit difficulties, why can’t you do it?

You don’t know how to break tasks down simply?

You don’t know how to turn danger into safety?

You don’t know how to change this world?

I still don’t understand what the core of focus is

Finding your own simple rhythm in a complicated world

A pianist’s performance seems to be not

Is the core of focus really deliberate focus? It seems more like letting external noise fade away naturally, and what’s left is just focus.

We always look at the good qualities others have, attribute their success to some quality, then conclude that this quality is important, and end up confusing ourselves.

Focus comes from my dissatisfaction with this world — the world can be better, focus on some place to change this world.

It’s more about losing interest in other things than forcing yourself to stare at one goal, just like whether love forces you to think about someone; it’s actually natural.

Focus is more like a by-product of obsession; find the thing that makes you obsessed enough to give up everything, and allow yourself to be obsessed with doing one thing.

Stop looking for the secret of focus, start looking for the problem that keeps you awake at night.

The Tale of Genji: does it shape Japanese aesthetics, or mirror the spirit of its age

The influence of The Tale of Genji on Japanese culture

What does it actually reveal that was always there?

The Tale of Genji shaped the tonal foundation of Japanese aesthetics; this shaping seems to be making the subconscious collective unconscious concrete: mono no aware, yugen, wabi-sabi.

What did it change, or what did it reveal that was always there

The Tale of Genji shaped the tonal foundation of Japanese aesthetics, but rather than saying these concepts were created by Genji, it’s more that it expressed what Japan felt deep down about impermanence, incompleteness, the beauty of things that are gone in a flash.

Just as Murasaki Shikibu wrote over a thousand years ago, life is like a dream; the times change, but humanity’s confusion about existence itself never changes.

Culture seems hard to describe with causality; including some great works, like the Apple Jobs created — it’s more like a mirror of the spirit of the age. Without Jobs and Apple there might still have been other smartphones, but Jobs and Apple still stand for a spirit. They’re not the cause, they’re the sign.

The reason The Tale of Genji could influence Japanese culture for a thousand years is precisely that it touched some shared human experience that transcends the era.

We always overestimate the power of words and underestimate the wisdom of life itself.

The standard of “greatness”: rooted in its age, touching the eternal

What’s truly great is both a product of its age and beyond the limitations of its age.

A great tool lies in how it changes the way humans understand themselves.

Great creations often aren’t solving an existing problem, but discovering that we’ve been asking the wrong question all along.

Maybe the standard of greatness isn’t about transcending the age at all, but about being deeply rooted in the age and then growing universality out of that rootedness.

Apple’s greatness isn’t that it transcended the 2000s, it’s that it fully understood that era’s longing for simplicity, intuition and beauty, and then took that understanding to its extreme.

We always judge what’s “great” after the fact, but at the time these things were often considered heresy, useless or dangerous. Great works aren’t great because they transcended the age, but because they understood the essential needs of that age more deeply than their contemporaries.

A great work is both the deepest expression of its age and the bravest breakthrough past the age’s limits. It’s not either/or, it’s two sides of the same coin.

The question really worth thinking about might be: in our age, what kind of creation can both respond deeply to the present and touch the eternal in human nature?

A bizarre day

2205-07-05 Japan wasn’t destroyed, no earthquake, no tsunami, normal commute to work and home from work; doesn’t seem like anything to regret — even if this were the last day, you’d still want to experience the present well and do it well.

The Tale of Genji’s influence on Japanese aesthetics is more like every aspect of it, invading every pore of Japanese culture like water, lines, colors and negative space everywhere, an understated, people-centered aesthetic; light and color, fused with nature, can accent a lot of art forms. In the post-industrial period and the information age, minimalism rose, a simple aesthetic; aesthetics to some extent also carries the needs of the era and the collective psychological state. The need for simplicity in an age of information overload.

An aviation-themed park; it reminds me of Singapore Changi, which also has this design idea of the airport being the destination — you can feel joy, calm and pleasure even in airport anxiety, and it blends human and natural elements so well. Giving a retired Boeing 787 a new life, mono no aware; three levels of vertical space, ma; preserving the wear, wabi-sabi.

Missing three shuttle buses, missing a sunset, missing the hotel’s latest check-in time — is that also a kind of the beauty of impermanence? We thought we’d planned well. At the start we were rushing around and missed the morning shuttle; in the afternoon I zoned out in a Starbucks; the laptop’s time zone hadn’t synced and was an hour off, and at 3:10 I suddenly snapped awake — I’d missed the 3 o’clock shuttle. At 4:30 my companion arrived; because we weren’t in the same terminal, I missed it by two minutes, we missed the 4:30 shuttle together, and so couldn’t make the hotel’s 8 p.m. latest check-in. In the evening rushing for the high-speed train I lost the ticket again. One companion took a phone call before leaving and left his phone on the bus; by the time it was located by GPS, the driver had already left a lonely car behind and gone to sleep, and my friend waited there all night. The funny thing is we all thought it was pretty amusing. The train ticket was picked up by someone and came back to me; the hotel owner clearly didn’t have to take responsibility — by pure business logic he could have refused a refund and offered no extra help at all. But he still gave us kind concern, and even his friend gave us a fantastic room with a view of Mount Fuji. As a host, an ichigo ichie friendship. Later he recommended a friend’s “luxury hotel” for me to stay in and experience. Focus on the process, the present, rather than on the result, and everything becomes much more interesting. It suddenly reminded me of that Japanese public service ad — positive energy spreads through the world like this, and slowly influences and changes the world.

And at the very end, a little interlude: at night I wanted to go out and buy some alcohol, and I ran into a Japanese uncle. In the elevator we were both holding on with both hands, watching the numbers; and when the elevator door opened, we simultaneously made an inviting gesture for the other to go first, and then we both burst out laughing at the same time. Interesting people, interesting souls, just like that, Cheers!

How to describe them? It feels like two introverts huddling together to save each other

Two people by the sea, two people embracing in an art museum …

A friend suddenly woke me up: how would you describe it? What’s behind this image?

The first time I looked at Japanese culture from the angle of love

Among the countries I’ve been to, on the topic of love

Our country is obvious about it; it still emphasizes material foundations, reserved, family-oriented, material matching, parents’ approval

Emotional expression is also very restrained, “doing things for you” more than “saying I love you”; young people today face a lot of pressure around marriage, their own emotional needs are suppressed, the generational influence is huge — every ten years the young people, even people the same age, have very different views on love.

Japanese culture: setting aside mono no aware, there’s 甘え (Amae) — a culture of mutual dependence and acting cutely dependent,

emphasizing that people can and need to show weakness and depend on each other. It’s not that you have to make yourself strong, it’s that we can depend on each other. Japan’s emphasis on dependence is actually born of a vertical hierarchy, with the head of household (usually the father or eldest son) as the absolute authority; the dependence of subordinates on superiors and their seeking of protection is a manifestation of amae.

Shinto itself, unlike theistic religions, doesn’t have an absolute dualism of good and evil; it’s more inclusive and ambiguous. Japanese people believe more in the goodness of human nature and are more able to accommodate human weakness and imperfection.

Language is the carrier of culture and in turn shapes culture. Japanese has a large number of words to describe amae and its derivative emotions; amae is hard to find a perfect English equivalent or Chinese equivalent. When amae isn’t satisfied, it produces a series of emotions like すねる (Suneru, sulking), ひがむ (Higamu, being perversely jealous), うらむ (Uramu, resentment). So Japanese people from childhood to adulthood

Korean love culture is doubly influenced by Confucian thought and modernization: passionate, romantic, strongly dependent. Amae is hard to find a perfect English equivalent. Japanese people, used to “reading the room” in intimate relationships, also develop a highly sensitive social radar at work and in social settings. From childhood Japanese people learn to read the air: the subtle atmosphere of the present situation, other people’s emotional state, and unspoken expectations.

Judging true thoughts from micro-changes in the other’s expression

Hearing what’s implied from subtle differences in tone

Observing body language: changes in sitting posture, gestures, gaze

Sensing the meaning of silence: which silence is agreement, which is opposition

Reading the room, and indirectly reading what the other person hasn’t said out loud.

This in turn gives rise to the Japanese definition of concepts, especially love-related concepts, being rich and varied.

Hakone Open-Air Museum: letting art return to the sky and the earth

Hakone Open-Air Museum

When the press magnate Nobutaka Shikanai founded this museum in 1969, he wasn’t just trying to display sculptures; he was trying to answer a fundamental question: where should art actually live?

This question itself is a deep reflection on modern civilization. We shut art between white walls like caging a wild animal, and then wonder why it lost its spirit. Shikanai’s radical move was to let sculpture return to its original home — the sky, the earth, wind and rain.

True art never exists to be viewed; it exists to redefine the viewer’s world.

The sculptures in the museum that you’re allowed to touch and climb. Modern society teaches us “please do not touch,” but the essence of art is exactly touching — touching the soul, touching the boundaries of cognition.

In an age of information overload, the sense of space and the sense of time themselves have become the scarcest works of art.

Japan’s first outdoor museum, breaking the closedness of traditional museums, strolling in greenery and finding your own favorite artworks.

Art needs to breathe too; art shows different forms in different seasons.

There’s a Symphonic Sculpture tower with colored glass set into its walls; light shot in from outside the tower creates a dreamlike, beautiful world, a combination of light and color.

Understanding other cultures

Other cultures seem like a mirror; knowing another culture is essentially a process of psychological projection.

Japanese people are very good at learning something from other cultures, or feeling something from them.

The imagination of Europe reflects a certain sense of deficiency in, or psychological compensation for, one’s own culture.

This also seems to explain why we think certain places abroad do things well; the subtext is actually feeling that we aren’t good enough.

The purpose of other cultures existing seems to be letting you temporarily escape the bondage of your own cultural identity.

So rather than imitation, it’s better described as creating after copying, and it inevitably carries a Japanese-style refinement and sense of order.

Sartre’s “hell is other people” is like this too: when the other looks at me, I seem to realize I’ve been objectified, no longer pure subjectivity but an object in the other’s consciousness; this transformation is violent, making one feel shame and anxiety.

I wonder if the Japanese themselves, when exploring these gardens, are also trying to temporarily shake off their own identity or role and try on a new role — a process of trying to redefine themselves.

Historical hatred and racial prejudice: making the living pay for a dead history

Earlier I talked with a friend about a fairly interesting topic: are hatred and prejudice the same thing, and how do we understand today’s hatred education.

People can hardly escape human nature. Hatred is humanity’s attachment to the memory of lost dignity; it can be proof of past pain, or it can be fear of the future.

Every people tells its story with its own scars, and the listeners are the ones who continue the story.

This is different from racial prejudice. Prejudice is often based on ignorance and fear, while historical hatred has its “reasonable” emotional roots — suffering that really happened.

So when a driver refuses to take Japanese passengers, what the driver sees isn’t a specific person, it’s the carrier of a historical concept.

One of humanity’s greatest tragedies is making living individuals pay for a dead history.

That’s also passing on the harm.

If human nature can defeat the inertia of history — courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s choosing the right action while still afraid.

Human nature is complex, human nature is possible: there can be prejudice, there can be wounds, there can be all kinds of imperfection, but there can also be kindness.

The vertical “ma” of the Mori Art Museum

Some thoughts on the Mori Art Museum

The “ma” in vertical space: this vertical line itself creates a unique kind of “ma.” There’s a magical feeling, that you suddenly plunge deep into high altitude, pulled out of the city’s noise.

Seeing the city’s panorama from high up seems to be part of the art too; the urban scenery seen through the window is no longer background, it becomes part of the exhibition.

This osmosis between inner and outer space expresses the philosophy of “ma” — the boundary isn’t a division, it’s a connection.

The role of “ma” is even more important and more interesting than the content itself, amid the cluttered information of modern space.

A 23-year-old waiter and dissipating vitality

I met a really great waiter at a Western restaurant in Ho Chi Minh.

He really looks full of vitality.

He’s only twenty-three!! I’m only twenty-four, but I faintly feel my own vitality dissipating wuwuwu.

Some passion or initiative

I feel this world often lacks this spirit and quality in many people.

Although the restaurant’s aesthetics feel very limited, you can clearly feel the protagonist is the kind of person with a growth personality, and in the future he’ll definitely get better and better, reaching the atmosphere of a top café.

Small gains and big trust: a game at a café

Last night I had coffee at a café

An outdoor café, the waiter was a young guy

The total charge was 100k Vietnamese dong, I gave him 200k Vietnamese dong

He seemed to see that I wasn’t good at recognizing the money, treated me as a sucker, and thought that since there was a language barrier I wouldn’t bother

At first he just never gave change. I thought, it’s 30 yuan, surely not worth it; the other restaurant guys I’d given money to before all gave change properly.

A long while later, maybe twenty minutes, still no change. I asked him one question, in English; whether he didn’t understand or pretended not to, he shook his head and waved his hand, then went off to do other things.

I clearly felt he was doing it on purpose, so I found another companion and called him over, and showed him the corresponding Vietnamese translation.

After that he properly gave the change back.

If I hadn’t bothered, would his petty-gain mentality mean more Chinese or foreigners get hurt later?

Sometimes you do have to push back a bit, for the sake of this world.

The world as a mirror: what you see is what you get

Every country has interesting people, negative people, prejudiced people

And every country also has interesting people, friendly people, energetic people, people full of vitality

What this world is like depends on what we see, what we think about, and what we want to change.

Shedding the inferiority about your original identity

Feeling inferior about your own original identity is really incredible.

It’s an extreme lack of confidence in yourself.

How to be strong inside and shed your original identity is a very necessary thing.

The process from resistance to acceptance — actually a lot of experiences are also there to shape you, as if they were an indispensable part of you. Identity is a long-term process of growth, and experience is power.

Thoughts on the sense of collective honor

Chinese people’s sense of collective honor feels very high.

On one hand we naturally care about the collective image, feel proud of the collective’s achievements, worry about negative events; on the other hand, as individuals we really can’t control or represent everyone’s behavior.

China’s sense of collective honor is among the top in the world. At the cultural level, the collectivist tradition makes us used to linking personal identity with the group; at the psychological level, we tend to build our sense of self-worth through group identification; at the social level, outsiders really do sometimes judge the whole group based on certain individual cases.

But actually I feel real collective honor should be expressed in doing yourself well and leading by example; there’s no need for excessive anxiety about the many things you can’t control.

The only thing you can control is yourself. When a person starts being responsible for the image of 1.4 billion people, he’s actually evading responsibility for one person’s behavior; the person who claims to be responsible for the collective is evading control of himself by controlling others.

Be responsible for your own thinking, focus, choices and behavior.

Some relaxedness Vietnamese people taught me

In any small alley, Vietnamese people just set up a table and start eating, working, smoking, drinking tea.

Vietnamese people really like being outdoors; in a tropical, subtropical climate people prefer to naturally seek outdoor ventilation and coolness.

It seems frequent gatherings with friends and activities can raise a lot of happiness.

Everyone playing cards together, chatting on the street, people naturally forming social links with each other.

Changing the world is arrogance toward the world

What Jobs really changed wasn’t the essence of the world, it was people’s relationship with technology. He gave cold machines warmth, made complex functions intuitive.

An expulsion of mediocrity, a refusal to accept it.

Changing the world isn’t because you love this world, it’s because you can’t stand the world’s ugliness.

The real world-changers are often the people who can’t adapt to the world.

Fluency bias: the brain’s energy-saving mechanism

I feel everyone has a kind of fluency bias:

The easier information is to process, the more the brain thinks it’s “important” and “correct.”

The brain has a second bias too:

Effortful things seem not worth it; this is the brain’s energy-saving mechanism.

How time perception affects learning motivation

Time perception affects learning motivation

A linear view of time leads to anxiety about keeping up with progress

Spiral time encourages repetition and deepening

A more thorough and fundamental cognitive view of time

What model growth teaches us

If a model’s progress is a rising tide, then we want our application to be a boat.

Deliver the best thing possible in the shortest amount of time.

Singaporean guys

It suddenly occurred to me — some of the good qualities of Singaporean guys, from my previous contact with them

A very rational country, pursuing truth

Has their own views but isn’t stubborn

Emotionally stable and capable of expressing emotion

Real, not putting on airs, influenced by Western culture

Rational but not cold; they can actually understand other people’s feelings, and use reason to solve problems.

On the focal points of cognitive psychology’s functions

The functionality built into the language centers; the two hemispheres each handle different cognitive regions.

On the organizing principles of perception: elements in each column are similar, so they get grouped together.

The essence of stillness within movement is focus

Of course stillness within movement is rarer.

Many people can show pretty good focus under deadline pressure.

But I want a more fundamental inner transformation, that is, not avoiding the external noise, and not being affected by the external noise.

I feel it needs a very deep understanding and acceptance of the environment, not resisting, but a wisdom of fusion.

Staying open and aware while not losing yourself, not being swept along by the environment’s emotions and rhythm — that’s much rarer.

What does growth actually need

I’m still thinking about this topic, and whether blinkist actually brought me growth?

The sense of belonging in human cognitive sovereignty

Some things:

Focus

Willpower

Judgment

Creativity

Inner strength

Some fairly interesting findings

Finding out you’re a foreigner, Vietnamese people very easily adopt a mentality of grabbing small gains — not giving you change, or using an ATM to automatically round off your amount for you (say 111.23k gets rounded up to 112k).

There was a girl with lots of tattoos, she looked very individual; outside a GS25 she noticed a little boy picking bottles out of the trash, and took him inside to buy some snacks and drinks.

What exactly drove her kindness?

Does information overload make people more complicated, or does it make for more meaningful connections?

Wasted time may be the most valuable asset of the future

Not getting rich fast, not gaining fame fast

Real growth needs time to ferment

Slow down.

Martin Buber talked about “I and Thou” versus “I and It”

I actually never understood it — it’s just that the object you face is “you,” not “it.”

Actually it seems their most important relationship is how we ultimately meet this world.

The “I-It” relationship is the mode we’re most familiar with day to day; in this relationship most “Its” are objects to be observed, analyzed and used — clients, users, influencers, investors.

The “I-Thou” relationship is completely different. It’s an encounter of the whole person; in this relationship there’s no intermediary and no purpose, you don’t need to observe the other, you co-create a special existence.

It seems in other countries it’s the same with the barista. Maybe she’s pretty; at first you think, the locals are pretty, you can learn about the culture from her, get information and experiences. When the exchange happens and your eyes meet, it’s like the two of you start a real conversation; we’re no longer the labels of traveler and local, we’re real individuals meeting.

A million I-It relationships may not bring growth as deep as 10 I-Thou encounters; those real encounters, connections and exchanges matter more.

One is getting information, one is getting experience.

But what’s wonderful is that we can’t stay in the “I-Thou” relationship forever; it naturally falls back into “I-It.” The key is keeping the ability and the willingness to enter “I-Thou.”

Making products is like this too: do you treat the user as a market, as a “Thou,” as a friend? If you only rationally analyze data and analyze metrics, you really will lose a lot of what users truly care about.

Are we building a relationship with the world, or conquering the world? Are we creating connection, or manufacturing separation?

Don’t always try to fully solve the problem

Instead you should think about which tasks you don’t want to stop doing.

Again, some thoughts on AI in the post-AI information age

Again, some thoughts on AI in the post-AI information age

This morning I talked about this topic with a travel buddy.

If in the past it was about understanding the world, in this complicated world we all go through a process from simple to complex to simple.

It’s itself a deeper resonance after the novelty fades.

Maybe in some corner, a corner of an art museum in Tokyo, inside a Buddhist temple in Vietnam, you suddenly understand the soul of this city.

The waves of technology are like this, wave after wave.

The waves of information are like this, wave after wave.

The waves of entertainment are like this, wave after wave.

People need information that resonates.

Maybe it’s a blog, maybe it’s music, some clarity amid a complicated information world.

So a truly good product may not help users consume more information, but help them discover the few pieces of content that truly resonate. Depth over breadth.

When speaking, remember: I’m f***ing right, output first

When listening, remember: am I wrong? Hear what they have to say.

Maybe you can see patterns others can’t

This kind of insight comes from a lot of independent thinking and practice.

Living abroad, learning — that’s training this ability to see.

Letting go takes more courage; it’s rare, because ego keeps us holding on to ideas that have already failed, haha.

Trusting is really an artistic act. Our aim is to build a network of cognition — real trust isn’t dependence, it’s building a cognitive network, of people who fill in your blind spots.

Being exactly on time is a misconception

I want to break this misconception.

Cutting it close is a gamble — a weighing of everything certain and uncertain.

Uncertainty is a given — traffic, weather, sudden events.

Psychological cost — the hidden price of tension and anxiety.

Opportunity cost — the other possibilities given up for the sake of being “on time.”

Arriving early means bearing an extra time cost; being late means bearing the cost of what you missed.

Flights in Ho Chi Minh City especially require you to bear extra upfront uncertainty, or the cost of trust.

Discrete thinking about time.

Deeper down it’s about intentionality: whether this thing is truly important, and whether you’re willing to leave yourself a buffer — that determines the real ranking of priorities. What you need is to face your own values honestly.

Looking at a cat: reward and punishment

We used to have two cats at home. At first they were very disobedient; we’d sometimes reward them, sometimes punish them, but

positive reinforcement creates a positive learning environment. When a child or an animal is recognized for good behavior, the brain releases dopamine and forms a pleasant memory association. That positive experience makes them more willing to repeat those behaviors.

Punishment in essence only tells someone “don’t do this,” but doesn’t teach them “what you should do.” Praising good behavior not only reinforces the right thing, it also provides clear behavioral guidance.

Maybe punishing first and rewarding after is a good way; punishment helps you know yourself and form values with the right intent.

A line that really moved me

A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.

A good way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on the things in other people that you find irritating.

Does our dislike of some behavior in someone else reveal something?

Maybe it’s the pursuit of order and responsibility deep inside me.

So this natural dislike, this liking, becomes a way of self-exploration.

Before, we’d use meta-awareness to observe the world, to observe the moments we were moved, the moments we liked, and why.

Now, facing dislike: what’s the counterpart of this in me? Which side of myself am I resisting?

Chinese people like to be modest and deflect praise

Most people will deny it, or say “oh no, you flatter me, I’m not that good.”

Simply saying thank you is more appropriate than denying the compliment.

We need to accept positive feedback; it’s part of self-knowledge.

Rejecting praise may reflect inner self-negation.

Accepting praise is a sign of maturity.

Whether or not you feel you deserve it, you should still be grateful.

An interesting point: our pricing

If we’re not clear on how to discuss price with the other side,

then what we can do is ask them: in this market, if things were fair, how should you be priced?

That gets the other person to think more from a fairness angle.

The standard for judging me is how I treat people who are of no value to me

When we face people who can bring us no benefit, status, or help, our true character shows.

Not performance.

An unconditional kindness, a genuine kindness.

Because only in this kind of relationship can we learn to truly give, experience the joy of not seeking anything in return, and understand what real human connection is.

We can’t persuade someone to give up a belief they didn’t arrive at through reason

Intuitive or emotional associations, or beliefs formed under social and cultural influence — maybe instilled over and over since childhood. This belief isn’t something he thought up, it’s something he felt.

From the perspective of cognitive psychology, the brain has two systems: System 1 (intuitive, emotional, fast) and System 2 (rational, slow, energy-consuming). Most deep beliefs are stored in System 1, shaped by emotion, repeated experience, and social environment. You can’t attack System 1 beliefs with System 2 logic — unless the person has a highly developed System 2.

A person’s fear of money isn’t a calculation about money; it’s the body remembering what poverty felt like.

Don’t try to “educate” users; create an environment where they “discover” it themselves. The best product makes people feel “this is exactly what I’ve been looking for,” not “let me tell you why you need this.”

How to deal with a rude stranger

Stay polite.

Not returning the rudeness or backing down — extreme politeness. It’s a test of self-control.

You’re not enduring, you’re choosing.

Isn’t that the essence of information processing? Facing a noisy, chaotic, even “rude” information environment, how does your product maintain “extreme politeness” — that is, clear, useful, beautiful output?

Understanding them, and tolerance after understanding — that’s useful.

Go trust others, trust people, find other people’s bright spots

Go trust others, trust people, discover other people’s bright spots, and also taste their kindness toward you. Occasionally being cheated is a very small price.

The Youth Time Café

Next door is also a high-rated restaurant; after eating there it felt like that restaurant’s high rating was gamed. This café is likewise highly rated, and it also has over a thousand reviews.

The Youth Time Café (Quán Của Thời Thanh Xuân)

This isn’t just a café; it’s a meaningful social project, a shared home belonging to young deaf people. Here they study, work, and write their own stories of youth.

Inside, the walls of one room — inside and out — are covered with notes recording visitors’ worries and messages. It’s like an open diary, holding the moments and feelings of countless people who paused here: Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Korean…

Background story

“The Youth Time Café” was founded by Mr. Võ Thành Luân, who gave up the chance to study abroad and returned to his hometown to realize this passionate project. The café’s name not only recalls beautiful youthful years, it also carries a deep meaning — it’s a place where young people with physical disabilities can still live complete, meaningful lives, and in their own way have a radiant “youth.”

Mr. Võ Thành Luân was born in Bảo Lộc, Lâm Đồng Province, Vietnam. Like many young people, he once held an “American dream,” and to that end went to the Philippines to study psychology, hoping to use it as a springboard to the US.

Yet the turning point came in the Philippines. After a severe typhoon (Typhoon Haiyan), an experience let him witness the fragility of life and the impermanence of human existence. He saw people’s suffering in the disaster and gained a firsthand sense of the vast wealth gap in society. These shocking sights made him deeply re-examine his own pursuits in life: “A person only lives once — how should we choose to live?”

That experience was like a wake-up call, and he resolutely gave up his studies and the seemingly bright “American dream,” choosing to return to Vietnam and use his own strength to do something “happy and meaningful.”

He insists on using “người điếc” (deaf person) rather than “người khiếm thính” (hearing-impaired person), because he learned that in Deaf culture the former is a more direct and respectful term. He works to explain and promote this respect to society.

Cultural differences are always there

In China and across East Asia, killing live seafood and steaming it right away is fairly common, but for the West it’s hard to accept.

There’s a striking clash with the standard the West widely recognizes as “cruel treatment of animals.”

Many restaurants turn “heating it up live, spraying steam” into a visual show and an experience, with a waiter explaining it, giving a sense of “ritual” — performing a kind of violence at the table.

Especially for animals capable of feeling pain: octopus, crab, lobster.

But objectively speaking, in the end these animals all die by the same method; the key is whether the customer perceives it.

More important is whether the motive and attitude behind this cruelty are moral.

There’s a set of standards human values are converging toward.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights: prohibition of torture, humiliation, inhumane treatment;

The Five Freedoms of animal welfare: freedom from hunger, from pain, from fear, freedom to move, freedom to express natural behavior;

International war conventions (such as the Geneva Conventions): even in war you may not mistreat prisoners of war or civilians.

These can be seen as a “minimum consensus.”

Eating seafood heated to death alive right on the table, especially when the behavior carries performance, showing off, or entertainment elements, looks even more cruel.

There are clearly two kinds of people, haha — maybe most visible across the father-son generation gap

There are clearly two kinds of people, haha — maybe most visible across the father-son generation gap.

Some people pursue a sense of superiority: they want to establish their superiority in the world or in others’ eyes. These people strive to surpass others, show off resources, emphasize identity.

Another kind is good at dismantling other people’s sense of superiority: they expose, mock, negate, and challenge others’ authority or sense of superiority.

People who pursue tearing down others’ superiority come from repression or frustration in their earlier experience; it’s also a kind of assertion of rights: you can’t throw your weight around in front of me, and don’t gloat about what I don’t have.

Essentially, whether you call it a change brought by the times, showing big differences in visible behavior, they actually come from the same set of psychological needs — both are lacking a sense of self-identity, and must confirm their value through “relative status.”

One climbs up, the other pulls others down.

Whichever kind, both need others to confirm their value.

I remember what a friend said before: if in the end you still leave

I remember what a friend said before: if in the end you still leave, it seems the one who stays behind is sadder? Then what about the people you meet on the road, the friends you run into?

It’s like that. The one who leaves holds the initiative; the one who stays is usually the one who gets “told” or “ended,” more prone to powerlessness or regret.

I think the definition of a scumbag is deception — knowing you can’t give something, yet deliberately building a false fantasy of the future to get benefits.

All you can do is be sincere and genuine, treating every person you meet as a once-in-a-lifetime encounter, rather than deceiving or hiding things. No regrets!

First principles can, to a large degree, get you out of habitual thinking

Many things and habits may come from what was instilled in you growing up, absorbed into your bones and habits — not conclusions you arrived at through rational thinking.

These things affect your growth or judgment, and you lose the ability to build a more objective understanding of the real world.

First principles, in practice: even facing questions that count as common sense, we push to what the essence behind that common sense is. Focus on basic concepts and axioms rather than conventional experience. For example, during execution, ask more often what the root cause of this thing is and what the cost is, to avoid falling into analogy or habitual thinking.

Franz Kafka, “Don’t bend

Franz Kafka, “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly,”

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Whatever the cost, whether or not it means being alone, don’t change to please the outside world. You exist first, and then create your own essence through choice.

Don’t change yourself just to fit into this world, don’t lose your true self. Only by being true to yourself can you be truly good for this world.

Authenticity is, in essence, a moral choice.

Growth mindset

As someone with a growth mindset, I think everything can be developed through effort and learning, rather than being fixed.

The key principle is that continuous learning, feedback, and effort drive growth; learn from mistakes, dare to try.

Focus on the process rather than the result.

Believe that you definitely can!

The brain repeats or filters for the concepts it firmly believes

This is determined by the brain’s self-protection mechanism: our attention, our way of interpreting things, and our behavioral choices all involuntarily support this belief.

People are better at finding pessimistic signals; it’s a biological instinct.

A person who considers himself a failure, even with the opportunity right in front of him, will find some way to fail regardless of his good intentions or willpower. A person who considers himself an unjust victim, doomed to suffer, will always find an environment that confirms his view.

Many people would rather be a “right” loser than a “wrong” winner. Because if they succeeded, it would mean all their past suffering and self-narrative were wrong — and that cognitive dissonance is more terrifying than continuing to fail.

Like a friend of mine who firmly believes success must be preceded by mental suffering, so for everything he thinks about how much pain he’ll have to bear.

We aren’t shaped by our environment; we’re looking for environments that can prove our inner beliefs.

The so-called “victim” and “loser” identities actually give them a distorted sense of superiority and a moral high ground. Pain becomes their only currency, suffering their only identity marker. Giving up the pain means giving up themselves, which is more terrifying than bearing it.

kimi k2 performance

It feels very comparable to Claude Sonnet 4.

Performance is about the same, maybe even better.

But hasn’t kimi always had a bad reputation?

Seems it’s gotten better recently?

The brain’s selection mechanism, confirmation bias — the tendency of an individual to selectively recall or gather favorable details and ignore unfavorable or contradictory information, in order to support a belief or hypothesis they already hold.

So a lot of the time we interpret information selectively and biasedly, especially when the bias carries strong emotions or traditional views.

Biased search, interpretation, and recall are often invoked to explain phenomena like attitude polarization (arguments escalate even when both sides rely on the same evidence), belief perseverance (clinging to one’s original view even after counter-evidence appears), the irrational primacy effect (a strong “first impression” effect), and illusory correlation (the tendency to make unfounded connections between two coincidental events).

Impressions of Weihai: the missing details of a tourist city

Weihai feels like it’s become a tourist city too

The high-speed rail station: cigarette butts all over the ground, no smoking area, no trash bins.

The high-speed rail station: only boiled water, no room-temperature water and no iced water.

Supermarket prices are doubled, more than twice.

The dialectic of action and thought

While action solves the uncertainty of thinking

Laziness in thinking can’t be solved by diligence in action either.

Sorrow and joy don’t reach each other

You don’t need others to understand or empathize.

Those who understand need no words; those who don’t understand don’t fail to understand, they’re unwilling to understand, and saying more is useless.

People’s joys don’t reach each other.

Discovering the world and approaching objectivity

We are constantly discovering this world

We are also constantly using our own logic to explain this world

Is humanity’s whole lifelong development an endless approach toward objectivity?

A calm mind makes you cool naturally? The importance of environment

I’m quite envious of people who say a calm mind makes you cool naturally.

Next time we can throw them into a pot of hot oil.

Environment matters a lot; it doesn’t depend only on your state of mind.

The environment is itself important for the survival and reproduction of living things; a suitable environment, a quiet environment, a good environment, a natural environment is naturally conducive to human life.

Empiricism and nativism: the source of knowledge

Knowledge in the eyes of empiricism

Empiricism relies on this creed: knowledge comes from the individual’s own experience, that is, from information people gather from their own perception and experience.

A person becomes himself largely because of prior learning.

Nativism differs in that when they talk about acquiring various abilities and forming various tendencies, they emphasize more the quality factor, i.e. innate ability; they believe talent matters more than learning.

The essence of causal analysis: reason or narrative

Is analyzing causality really part of rational analysis and logical analysis, a reconstruction after the fact?

The illusion of causality: are we discovering truth, or building tools

What’s the essence of causality?

Causal analysis isn’t rational analysis; it’s a comforting story the human brain weaves to cope with chaos.

Causality isn’t objective; causality is a way the human brain processes things. You see lightning and then hear thunder, and think lightning “caused” the thunder, but physics tells you they’re different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Our brain is by nature a causality-manufacturing machine, but the real world may not be causal at all.

When we do “reconstruction after the fact,” what are we actually doing? We’re selecting a few elements from infinitely complex reality, and then claiming there’s a necessary connection between them. But that selection is itself subjective and arbitrary.

Which factors we choose as “causes” more often reflects what worldview we want to believe in.

Logical analysis and causal analysis may be two different things. Logical analysis cares about consistency between concepts, while causal analysis cares about connectivity between events. But connectivity itself may be a cognitive illusion of humans.

We never truly “see” causality, we only see events following one after another, and then habitually think the former caused the latter. Causality may be nothing more than a way our brain interprets chronological order.

So what use is causality at all? That depends on how we see it — is it a cognitive illusion?

Causal analysis isn’t describing reality, it’s creating a useful model of reality. It isn’t discovering truth, it’s building tools. When we say “A causes B,” what we’re really saying is “if you want B, then doing A may be effective.”

Real rationality may not lie in finding causality, but in admitting that in most cases causality is unknowable, and then learning to make decisions amid uncertainty.

But reality is: history is full of accidents, the present is full of ambiguity, the future is full of uncertainty.

Meeting someone unwilling to understand

What do you do when you meet someone who’s unwilling to understand and unwilling to believe?

Go around them. It’s destined.

Humans and nature: the Eastern wisdom of governing by non-action

The relationship between humans and nature

Humans follow the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Dao, the Dao follows nature.

Are humans part of nature, or the opposite of nature?

Traditional Chinese culture emphasizes “governing by non-action,” believing the most brilliant intervention is no intervention. Behind this is awe for the “way of heaven” — nature has its own laws of operation, humans should comply rather than actively change. So humans lean more toward nurturing the mountain rather than burning it.

Actually it’s different wisdom in different scenarios, different choices, because of what each place’s government chooses and what the national conditions require.

The resonance of the senses and the regret of the ending

Some musicals are just so perfectly timed, or just right, giving you a shock in a certain venue.

At that moment, you suddenly forget yourself, immersed in your own sensory world.

A kind of exhilarating resonance, coming from the senses casting their vote.

A kind of regret and reluctance about the ending.

I thought having been through so many partings, a small goodbye should be easy

But…

Sister Xiaomei let me leave first, deliberately moving her ticket to the afternoon. I know it was so there wouldn’t be another send-off this time. The one left behind is always the forlorn one, and the one leaving feels reluctance too; at this moment time is ruthless.

Ichigo ichie, in the end there’s nothing to regret, but … I always feel like I’ve touched some wound that had just scabbed over, the tearing pain, along with the memory ~

• “Parting after Mount Fuji-Kawaguchiko”

Early morning at the Shibuya Crossing

The Shibuya Crossing, the busiest street in the world

A bit past seven, there don’t seem to be many people; maybe it’s not work time yet, and actually today is Sunday so not many people are working anyway.

A night of jazz in Tokyo

I love this atmosphere so much; everyone meets ichigo ichie, every performance is a full-hearted expression, all the emotion is inside the performance…

jazz is very candid, a very pure artistic performance, with no baggage of history between each other, no fixed expectations, no relationship that needs maintaining.

Actually being pure is very hard, especially the safer and more stable the relationship, the people you’re with day in and day out, they often can’t see our purest expression; what breeds isn’t contempt, it’s the exhaustion of performing.

We long to be fully understood, yet in the safest relationships it’s hardest to be fully real. Maybe precisely because these relationships are so important to us, we’re more afraid of losing them, so we choose a performance that’s safer but also more exhausting.

Being real feels more precious than being perfect; accepting contradiction and uncertainty, rather than giving a standard answer, maybe it’s better to admit how much you’re also unsure. Sometimes that flawed, confused, occasionally fragile self is actually more real, and makes it easier to build a real connection.

jazz’s greatest charm is that once technique is in the blood, it achieves simplicity and purity; this expression is instinctive and sincere.

World citizen and creative fairness

A world citizen

Creativity is fair.

Learning English: how to say “breaking a large bill”

I could never think of how to say exchanging a large amount of money for smaller amounts.

Actually you can use break, meaning to break apart.

Could you break this bill for me

An unexpected encounter with a Bhutanese: crossing paths in a Ho Chi Minh hostel

I actually met Bhutanese people, from a country whose entire population is under a million.

Meeting in a hostel in Ho Chi Minh, really quite interesting.

They’d even been to Act.

China’s unfinished tense: the enormous tension of a life

The most interesting thing about China is that its market, space and possibilities are incomparably large.

No neighboring country, including developed ones, can achieve this.

The tension of change in life is the greatest, the room to rise is the greatest.

China is an unfinished country — big and unstable, plural and chaotic; precisely because of this, the differentiation of life paths is extremely rich.

No matter where you come from, rural or middle class, as long as you have talent and ambition, you really have a chance to turn things around, break out, break through class.

You can become a poet, entrepreneur, content creator, internet founder, writer, teacher, grassroots official … doesn’t matter.

Life is an experience, the possibility of becoming an extraordinary individual.

If you only get one life, then I want to pick a place worth “living with ups and downs.”

The optimal solution for emigrating

People who emigrate aren’t stupid; there are only two optimal options in this world for Chinese people

One is staying in your own country

One is going to the US.

The world doesn’t need to be understood, only experienced

The world doesn’t need to be understood, it only needs to be experienced.

Let the world’s pain and beauty ferment in your heart.

The importance of sincerity

The importance of sincerity depends on the disaster of insincerity.

The balance of childlike innocence and wisdom

Picasso: learn to paint like a child

Richard Feynman: would get so excited watching a plate spin that he’d study the physics behind it; would learn samba drums in Brazil just because he found it fun; would deliberately explain complex concepts in simple language, not caring that others thought he was “not academic enough.” But at the same time, he had sharp judgment and deep thinking ability. He could stay rational inside light humor, losing neither childlike innocence nor wisdom.

This kind of person has a balance: the “neurotic” cuteness and realness, plus enough self-awareness to know when to pull back and when to let go. They aren’t different for the sake of being different; their uniqueness flows out naturally because they’re rich inside.

This kind of person makes you feel both relaxed and deep, both fun and reliable.

A moment alone at a rooftop bar in Ho Chi Minh

The feeling of sitting alone at a rooftop bar in Ho Chi Minh

The city’s neon is like a canvas slowly unfolding, Saigon’s lights flickering, traffic flowing like a river, the pop music from a distant live band in my ears, the crisp clink of ice against the beer, as quiet as a heartbeat.

Sitting alone high above a building, no one in front of me, no one beside me. I feel like I’ve temporarily slipped out of the world’s gears, time slows down, the air carries a bit of sweetness, the sea breeze mixed with some street wind. Suddenly I understand why Ho Chi Minh people like crowding outside in the middle of the night — the wind makes it feel like this world belongs to you alone.

Liangzhu drinking water could be covered up too

Water pollution, compensation of five tons of water, which works out to less than twenty yuan — this is simply ridiculous.

If dirty water can get mixed in, why was it covered up for a whole day before any measures were taken?

The key-value cache hit rate metric

A very important metric that directly affects latency and cost.

An age of information overload, social overload, stimulus overload

The phone is always ringing

Information is always updating

The city is always clamoring

The heart is always restless — an age

of talking with yourself

Why Ho Chi Minh, a fast-growing city, seems so loud

Why Ho Chi Minh, a fast-growing city, seems so loud

Admitting your own ignorance matters far more than being wise

Someone who knows himself and knows he doesn’t know — that’s wisdom.

What is virtue, and why is men’s virtue different from women’s virtue?

What is the virtue they have in common?

What’s the relationship between virtue and the concept of the good?

Virtue can be understood as the character trait or behavioral tendency that realizes the good.

Socrates once proposed “virtue is knowledge,” holding that if people truly understood what the good is, they would naturally practice it. But Aristotle disagreed: he held that virtue requires not only understanding of the good, but also cultivating habits through repeated practice.

A conclusion about virtue reached through dialectic: virtue is knowledge.

In most cases, the problems discussed end up with no conclusion, but actually the most important meaning of dialectic isn’t the result, it’s the process.

Revealing contradictions, helping the other person escape the contradiction, approaching the truth.

Socrates’ curiosity came from probing the essence of things and what lies behind them

The thing itself, or the general definition

The question “what is it” is logically prior to the question “what kind of thing is it.”

Maybe I’ll form connections, or end them, faster or slower

Maybe I’ll form connections, or end them, faster or slower

I want to become an interesting person

But interesting people all need rich experience and a unique perspective

Collecting stories and insights that others don’t have

What does the virtual world look like

What does the real world look like

What does their overlap look like?

In all the buts / however / and then

In all the but / however / and then — whatever comes before these words doesn’t count; the most important thing is what comes after.

The word “but” marks the person’s real thoughts.

What comes before is buffering and padding.

And then,,, this isn’t just about understanding the other person, it’s also about understanding yourself.

How to measure the strength of a person’s leadership

Maybe not by how many followers he has, but by how many excellent leaders he can build.

Not making the other person completely dependent on you — the organization born that way is fragile, and the whole organization will still fall into chaos.

Not making others depend on you, but empowering others so everyone can think independently, take responsibility and make decisions; what you cultivate is a self-reproducing leadership ecosystem.

Leadership’s root isn’t in technique, it’s in confidence and scope — being willing to share power, even willing to watch the people you’ve cultivated surpass you.

Ordinary World

Poverty makes people suffer, and having money makes people suffer too

so suffering doesn’t come from external conditions, it comes from within.

Life is just this inexplicable

Life is just this inexplicable.

On how everyone should have absolute control over their most private information

Violating information sovereignty is violating the most important kind of privacy.

To some degree, it becomes infinitely important that we respect how much someone else’s privacy matters to them.

Don’t be afraid to deviate

Deviating means you’ll leave the main goal, but deviation often brings a lucky turn or a breakthrough.

Some lodging experience

Keep things together as much as possible — chargers, earphones, whatever it is.

That way you usually won’t leave things behind when you go. Don’t always scatter your stuff around; human attention and memory are easily strained.

One charming thing about tech and code: they help you create

One charming thing about tech and code is that they help you create and change this world.

So, love technology.

Aim to die penniless

Before you die, give it all away.

It’s more fun and more useful.

The last check should be payable to the funeral home.

Even better, try to have the balance insufficient so the check bounces.

We’ve trained too many normal people

We’ve trained far too many normal people…

Checklist

Take checking as the principle, making sure no key step is missed.

It’s also essentially built around breaking tasks down.

Analytic mathematics

Mathematics is a tool for us to understand the world.

Mathematics lets us strip away language, culture, and experience, and understand this world again — natural laws, gravity, probability, information, and structure.

If you want to truly understand nature, you must be able to speak mathematics — because nature is written in the language of mathematics.

Mathematics isn’t just calculation; it’s more a structured way of thinking, a higher-level language for modeling, abstracting, and expressing the real world.

If you’re obsessed with a goal, the universe will conspire to help you

If you’re obsessed with a goal, the universe will conspire to help you and give you the resources you need to achieve it.

This also seems to be the law of attraction. For example, if we focus on making money, we’ll surely get rich.

Confess and you get leniency; your cellmate serves the whole sentence

With opaque rules: confessing other people’s problems — all ignored. But confessing your own problems — all confirmed.

What exactly am I afraid of

Because of fear of uncertainty, I don’t dare choose.

Uncertain about myself, uncertain about the future, uncertain about relationships.

vibe coding experience

Humans have implanted too much experience, which actually gets in the way of AI and locks the product down before it can ship.

For Agent development, the lessons in the bitter lesson matter just as much.

Use agent mode as much as possible; agent mode is already very mature now, what’s needed is training the Agent’s way of thinking.

You can focus more on ideas and design rather than implementation — be an architect, not a coder.

Over-presetting rules (like a fixed test process) can block AI from using the latest model capabilities; instead you should let AI choose for itself more.

Experience is scenario-dependent; relying too much on experience constrains what the LLM can do. Inject it moderately as “heuristic guidance.”

The essence of collecting: finding a future use case for today’s information

Why do we collect?

Collecting is like memory, it makes it easy for you to search later, for what you might search for.

Collecting is to do addition for yourself; even if it isn’t really addition, at least it’s psychological comfort.

Collecting is kept in reserve for later.

Collecting is investing in your future self (*cognitive assets).

People collect information they think is valuable — but what exactly is valuable? Actually it’s that a fleeting piece of information is itself valuable.

claude code can start working in many terminals at once, and all the engineers start iterating fast.

What kind of information is valuable? Information useful for a future scenario is valuable.

So the point of collecting is to help today’s information find a future use case; the essence of collecting is a cognitive snapshot fixed at a moment in time.

JSONL: a solid way to guarantee streaming output

A way JSON guarantees streaming output

A very good approach is JSONL; JSON’s key-value pairs and nested structure clearly separate content from metadata (like {“content”: “text”, “metadata”: {“id”: 1, “type”: “response”}}), which suits streaming parsing.

Use the JSON Lines (JSONL) format, one JSON object per line, easy to parse in real time

{“content”: “first part of the text”, “metadata”: {“id”: 1, “timestamp”: “2025-07-01T09:00:00Z”}}

{“content”: “second part of the text”, “metadata”: {“id”: 2, “timestamp”: “2025-07-01T09:00:01Z”}}

FLIGHT OF DREAMS: linking emotion inside a transport hub

FLIGHT OF DREAMS

An aviation-themed park; it reminds me of Singapore Changi, which also has this design idea of the airport being the destination — you can feel joy, calm and pleasure even in airport anxiety, and it blends human and natural elements so well.

FLIGHT OF DREAMS also links people and emotion inside a cold transport hub.

Making the unapproachable approachable, the rational emotional, the industrial poetic.

Giving a retired Boeing 787 a new life — mono no aware

Three levels of vertical space — ma

Preserving the wear — wabi-sabi

Digital art overlapping with a physical plane, light and shadow overlapping with metal — an aesthetics of overlap.

Vercel AI SDK custom fields and protocols

vercel ai sdk supports custom field types, in two aspects:

define a new type in the backend LLM prompt

add the corresponding case handling in the frontend JsonlRenderer.tsx

The frontend supports streamObject + custom Schema, using DataStream to send arbitrary data

A few key protocols:

The 0: prefix is used for JSONL data

The 8: prefix is used for the completion signal

The 9: prefix is used for error handling

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art: the fusion of art and nature

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, a design combining art and nature, feels like the extreme of Japanese beauty. The Rodin wing with the Gates of Hell, a glass ceiling design bringing in natural light, sculptures merging into the park environment.

About Japanese-style cafés

I feel Japanese-style cafés are a refined packaging of loneliness; I thought they were ichigo ichie tea ceremony spaces.

Japanese people feel very introverted, they make super little noise, very gentle.

Their design aesthetic doesn’t come from traditional tea ceremony aesthetics, it comes from urban people’s longing for isolation.

What does a Japanese-style space mean? It means filtering, it decides what kind of people will stay.

A kind of modern urbanite’s longing for isolation: a wooden table, a small wooden table, small table and chairs, and your state of mind naturally turns inward, unshowy.

Every café has traces of time, wabi-sabi aesthetics, letting wood grain and knots show naturally, even deliberately keeping some “defects” as elements of beauty.

The use of natural light: as the light changes, as the sun moves, the indoor atmosphere naturally changes; you don’t need to deliberately look at the clock to know it’s time to go home …

The most ideal environment for being alone: facing the window or a corner, with curtains between tables as partitions.

A Japanese-style café feels more like a spiritual refuge in the modern city.

Discovered, Not Designed

“Discovered, Not Designed” — design is dead, discovery lives forever

Traditional design methods rely on reductionism, that is, understanding the whole by understanding the parts of a system. However, in complex systems the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The macro behavior of a system (like the flight patterns of a flock of birds, the nest-building behavior of an ant colony) isn’t decided by any single individual. It sounds absurd, but it’s actually the nonlinear interaction between a large number of individuals based on simple rules.

Embrace discovery; McClure advocates a “Meta-Design” or “discovery-driven” approach. Under this paradigm, we no longer directly design the final behavior of the system, we design an “environment” or “rule set” that promotes the emergence of the desired behavior. Then, through observation, experimentation and iteration, we “discover” and select the systems that show the properties we want. This is more like a gardener carefully tending the soil and environment so plants grow naturally, rather than mechanically assembling a car.

Actually designing AI systems seems like this too: don’t focus excessively on the AI system learning specific skills, but learn to let AI emerge, define rules, and embrace failure and surprise.

Picasso’s lesson: simplification after complexity and a breakthrough in the senses

Simplification isn’t the same as simple — thinking deeply about it again

Picasso: “It took me a lifetime to paint like a child”

Getting the feeling of a child, expressing and creating like that

Not bound by tradition

Daring to express yourself

Keeping your curiosity and imagination about the world

Expressing the most complex emotions with the simplest method

Once again I feel the luxury of feeling after reason and simplification after complexity.

Picasso had solid classical painting training very early on; the childishness that came later was a conscious artistic choice.

Simplification isn’t the same as simple; expressing the most content with the fewest lines actually requires a very deep understanding of form before you know what the most essential features are.

A new thought on artistic breakthroughs: art has always been tied to human intuition and the senses, because what influences a person’s experience is multifaceted. Take a product: what moves a person isn’t only its appearance, soul, simple design, but also the sense of touch — a new sense of touch comes from a good design experience, like a click or a swipe, the user’s silky feeling.

Art’s extreme pursuit of truth often breaks through form — it may be the sense of touch, or it may be hearing or sight.

No matter how you handle two-dimensional painting, it’s ultimately confined inside the frame. Sculpture exists in real space and has a direct dialogue with the viewer and the environment, like perceiving a statue figure in a real and natural environment.

We’re all pursuing a new kind of expressiveness.

Some aesthetic advice for a Western restaurant

So I gave this restaurant’s owner a suggestion:

I really like this restaurant, I feel you’re doing your interiors seriously in Ho Chi Minh; compared with other interiors or café environments in Ho Chi Minh I think it’s great.

I have some suggestions based on my own aesthetic preferences; I’ve been to a lot of good interior designs, or restaurant designs.

You probably don’t need so much stuff on the table; simplicity matters, and simple is also an aesthetic.

Some cafés have a certain style indoors, whether European or Japanese style, and are allowed to have traces of time; wood materials can naturally show these traces.

Small plants create a delicate “sense of life.” In corners, by windows or at the bar, you can place plants 30-70cm tall, like rubber plants, fiddle-leaf figs, eucalyptus. If it’s modern minimalist style, you can use a single plant with a clear shape (for example a single eucalyptus branch in a vase). You can use air plants / spider plants / vines for some localized hanging design to add layers.

For the tabletop, my favorite plant size can’t be too small — if too small it has no vitality; if too large it isn’t harmonious with the table. So 10cm-20cm is best, with a container diameter no more than 10cm, keeping the table clean; succulents, herbs (like rosemary, thyme), and small evergreen plants (like pepperomia, snake plant) suit most environments.

Music brings surprises, but compared with repeated music I think most people prefer light music that isn’t so monotonous. For music, I’d recommend some Classical, Smooth Jazz, Ambient Piano. It’d be even better if it’s fresh in the morning, brisk at noon, gentle in the evening and deep at night.

Lighting is a very important part of any indoor shop, because lighting affects photos, affects users’ eating, drinking and relaxing. There can be some spotlights; maybe you could carefully feel the light at each seat, the light your own eyes find most comfortable.

Not every table needs a small plant. I think if the shop’s theme wants some natural elements, you can place some large plants; these plants need to reach a balance with the environment. For example if there are too many plants at the entrance it may interfere with the shop; with too many plants people’s eyes will actually overlook that this is a Western restaurant. I see many large plants that may be fake, while the small ones are real, which looks very lifeless.

Simple is far harder to achieve than complex. I suggest you go feel a lot of different shops, feel the café interiors in various countries. I’ve been to many restaurants, cafés and interiors; if you’re interested you can click some of my posts and feel various cafés and aesthetic designs, https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/62a33af9000000001b025dd3

Some food flavor suggestions: I think this beef is too chewy, though that may not suit everyone’s taste; it’d be better if people could choose themselves.

How do neurotic funny girls come to be

Curious how some neurotic funny girls come to be.

Drinking a coffee, a few Chinese girls came by, coming and going in a hurry.

At first they asked whether my power outlet worked; I said yes, it’s public, and pulled the outlet over for them to use. Then came the line: “If it weren’t public, would you still let us use it?”

Me ???

And lots of other topics, really off the beaten track or funny; it felt really interesting.

Their family conditions are all pretty good.

Maybe because they’re performative personalities by nature, or were overprotected growing up, so they use humor and “craziness” to test whether this world is safe.

Maybe it’s also a way they try to open up socially, trying to create an atmosphere and build social connections?

The essence of memory: between reconstruction and replay

What is the essence of memory in the human brain?

Does the essence of memory in the human brain lie in a dynamic combination between reconstruction and replay?

Memory is stored in a distributed way in the connection patterns between neurons (synaptic strength); for example a childhood memory may be distributed across different brain regions for vision, hearing and emotion (happiness).

For events that just happened, people may also miss details, like where objects in a room were placed, so memory can’t extract the original information as it was; it’s more like piecing things together from fragments.

Reconstruction is memory’s most central property; every recall counts as re-creation.

Memory retrieval is essentially a reconstruction process based on existing information and experience: through some elements, activating a judgment about the original memory, then automatically filling in details with present-day knowledge, emotions or suggestion, or even adding extra details.

So a person in an angry state, recalling a conflict, will emphasize the other person’s “aggressiveness” more; this is emotion distorting memory reconstruction.

Memory reconstruction isn’t completely detached from reality; it uses the original experience as an “anchor,” and only processes the details.

Especially details that aren’t solidly fixed, like background music, what people were wearing; these are more easily reconstructed.

The purpose of reconstruction is to save cognitive resources, adapt to new environments, and reduce storage burden.

So the essence of memory is a dynamic process; every recall is a mixed product of original fragments, the current environment and personal experience, like assembling a puzzle from fragments — each time the picture that comes out is similar but not identical.

The four-step habit loop follows “trigger → action → reward → investment”

The four-step habit loop follows a closed-loop design of “trigger → action → reward → investment.” The trigger is realized through daily push notifications, the action is completing a learning task, the rewards include points, badges and progress bar updates, and the investment is the user writing learning notes and joining discussions. The visual display of consecutive learning days exploits the sunk cost psychology, making users unwilling to “break” an existing learning streak.

The 360-degree construction of user profiles is based on three dimensions: behavioral data (learning trajectory, dwell time), interest tags (active choices, search keywords) and social relationships (friends’ behavior, group preferences). The cold-start problem is solved through a new user onboarding flow, letting users clearly express their interest preferences in their first 3 uses, quickly building an initial profile.

github issues are still a very good platform to drive things

To complete releases of the application as fast and as frequently as possible, you need to rely on github issues to record and summarize constantly.

The biggest lie we tell ourselves: ‘I don’t need to write this down, I’ll remember it’

The brain is designed to forget, not to remember; it’s a dynamic editor, as we already know.

Actually the essence of our memory is reconstruction.

What thinking like an engineer teaches us

The power of compounding is enormous; maybe we still haven’t fundamentally understood the philosophy in it, because time is relatively unfamiliar to our perceptual system, and humans face time mostly with powerlessness or fear.

A fundamental mathematical or philosophical truth: a 1% improvement every day brings a 37-fold increase after a year; this is demonstrated from the angle of life.

Successful people never think about pursuing goals, they focus on building systems. A goal is the place you arrive at; a system is the process of getting there.

It seems that for a person who thinks, everything can be abstracted into systems thinking.

How to exercise, how to learn, how to design, how to complete a project.

As a product creator who helps users process information, this principle matters especially to us.

Users don’t need an information feast, they need information they can digest every day; continuous, small, high-quality information input is more valuable than intermittent information bombardment.

So, engineer thinking is very useful.

Thinking about engineer thinking again

Note: the goal isn’t the result, it’s making the system better.

It looks result-oriented, but in fact what’s deeper in engineer thinking is an extreme emphasis on process.

The core is that a reliable process produces predictable results.

The right process — code review, test-driven development, continuous integration — and good results show up naturally.

A good process makes good results more likely; results continuously feed back into optimizing the process.

Whatever we eat, it seems to come back to one problem

Paint will splash onto your clothes, so no matter how much we plan and are careful, this activity will inevitably produce unpredictable accidents. The smartest move may not be trying to avoid it entirely, but putting on the right work clothes.

Prepare ample funding, accumulated team knowledge, appropriate psychological resilience, and a team structure suited to change.

The biggest obstacle to engineer culture: human nature

People are, in the end, short-sighted and self-interested.

When can you do a risk precaution

For an engineer, the most important thing may not be yourself.

A sense of safety comes from understanding the whole system and handling risk well.

You can see it in small daily details:

The first thing on checking into a hotel should be to check the emergency exit. It doesn’t take long, but it’s very useful.

It’s a tiny habit, but over a lifetime it pays a big safety compound interest.

Get APP got investigated

A complaint from some big tech company, suspected unfair competition — Get Notes offers a feature that converts WeChat Channels and livestream content into image-and-text notes.

Giants suppressing innovation?

What counts as damaging the ecosystem? And what counts as unfair competition?

In essence, blockchain is still a very useful technology

Looking at use cases, it still seems hard to show a clear advantage or disruption in current scenarios.

Setting aside cryptocurrency, blockchain is still looking for the right scenarios.

Maybe it’s a technology that I think should be hidden.

Maybe very useful, but only when we don’t know blockchain exists.

“Anonymous coins will always exist,” but because of low trust and uncertainty, they won’t become the dominant currency.

Some of the largest cryptocurrencies should be government-authorized and dominant.

If you analogize a person from an engineering angle

Everyone feels like an operating system; judging whether a person is good is judging whether the system is good.

Is it a continuously iterating, advanced system with a strong kernel and high compatibility, or a system that keeps throwing bugs to fix, freezing and erroring out?

Figma’s ambition

Figma dev mode and code connect mode.

Figma MCP is very powerful.

Configure Figma MCP in Claude.

Drop in the design file link and just have it implement it as the corresponding React component, using whatever framework — say shadcn/ui — and it just does it.

Models also overgeneralize easily

When a model handles highly repetitive tasks, it easily falls into the trap of “overgeneralizing”: it stops analyzing the specific content in fine detail and instead learns a coarser, more rigid “template” or “shortcut.” This state looks efficient but is in fact extremely fragile — any tiny deviation from the template, such as a subtle change in wording or format, may make it fail completely. The key to fighting this fragility is to deliberately introduce diversity to “break” the model’s habitual thinking — for instance by introducing different templates, wordings, and format variations, forcing it to give up its dependence on surface form and instead learn the deeper, more essential logic. This is essentially the core method for forging a model from a fragile “routine executor” into a more resilient “problem solver.”

Some fairly popular workflow designs:

Rewrite, don’t patch.

Multithreaded prompts to get tasks done.

Fast iteration.

A person’s aesthetic ability matters more than their coding ability.

Memory is a very unimportant ability in the AI era

But memory really is the most important ability in exam-oriented education. With memory, effort really does yield results; with memory there are no weak spots — every subject covered, all-round.

Especially for liberal-arts students. The liberal-arts student’s predicament is that many of them didn’t choose it actively — they became liberal-arts students because their mathematical ability was poor or missing.

Many liberal-arts students still don’t know what their abilities are.

There are many idealistic liberal-arts students fighting against this world.

So most of what exam-oriented education cultivates is surface-level ability.

But in fact more people don’t notice the abilities underneath:

Memory

Reasoning

Expression

Perception

Mathematical reasoning

Operation

Obsession

Creation

But some abilities are essential in every field, whether liberal arts, sciences, or engineering: obsession and creation.

When you deeply care about something that others don’t understand, that’s a very precious quality.

There are jobs you can do very well without creativity, but it’s actually hard to create something new — that ability is extremely scarce.

Today’s education is more like training people into machines. It’s a system that arose to match industrial-era talent cultivation, and it’s temporary — until your job is replaced by a machine.

The OODA loop (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act)

It’s a decision process model: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It comes from military operational theory and emphasizes rapid iterative decision-making in dynamic environments.

It’s not only for the military; also for business strategy, personal decisions, and systems modeling.

The key is cyclic iteration: define the goal and plan, then implement the plan, compare against expected results, adjust the approach. Essentially feedback control — continuous calibration and adjustment, achieving incremental improvement and learning.

In product development and personal learning, using the PDCA cycle to improve efficiency is very common. Note that PDCA needs real measurement and data to support the evaluation in the “Check” stage, otherwise you can’t improve precisely.

remember vs. CLAUDE.md in Claude

What’s the difference between remember and CLAUDE.md in Claude?

The CLAUDE.md file usually defines project-level rules, while the # command is better suited to dynamic, task-specific instructions. For example, CLAUDE.md might specify global rules, while # is for ad-hoc task prompts.

The # command reduces the time spent re-entering instructions by 20–30%, especially when working with large codebases (say 200,000 lines) or multi-task workflows.

Teams ensure consistency by sharing # memories (for example through a documented list of memory names). For instance, a team can record commonly used # tags in CLAUDE.md.

Some new thoughts on AI, some new questions:

The timeline of AI development: AI keeps coding for longer and longer stretches.

vibe coding gets more and more powerful.

What have humans lost in this process?

What have humans gained?

Should we be paying attention to the macro part or the micro part?

Don’t we have macro capability?

Or are we slowly losing micro capability?

Is human labour itself part of the social division of labour?

Which things are valuable, which things aren’t?

Which things will be replaced as AI develops?

What exactly are humans (programmers) afraid of in this process?

What should we be thinking about, or what should we hold on to, what should we do?

Answers

AI coding ability is leaping exponentially; AI vibe coding tools keep emerging.

What have we lost (the part we need to slowly let go of)? And what can we gain (the part we need to deliberately train)?

Lost:

control of details

technical satisfaction (there’s rarely the joy of learning and using an algorithm to solve something any more)

professional moats seem gone,,, more and more people from other industries are programming

Gained:

no longer focusing on implementation, but on creation — thinking about what I want to do matters more than thinking about how to do it

an improvement in thinking, more time and energy shifted to system design, product philosophy, user experience

extreme development speed, the ability to trial and error

But because AI is in a development phase, humans are awkward. AI gets more and more capable, but it still needs humans right now; humans are still carrying out part of the division of labour, just replaced into a new role.

And we don’t have AI’s micro-level execution ability — we can’t handle massive detail as fast and accurately as AI — while our macro-level control ability is also being challenged (given the systematic thinking AI displays).

Most of the fear comes from anxiety about skills depreciating and an identity crisis, the fear of uncertainty.

As a professional, what should you hold on to?

From coder to designer: rather than programming, I prefer thinking about how to design systems, how to design interactions and interfaces. System capability matters especially: shifting from feature implementation to system architecture.

Taste: Jobs talked about this too. How to put it — look at the very best things in the world, and think more.

Translator: expressing yourself matters, and what matters more is expressing this world, being able to articulate ideas and needs clearly.

The meta-ability of learning: not how to learn, but learning how to learn, how to learn fast.

“Why” matters far more than “how”.

Some very good methods, really, are to design from the perspective of an architect and a builder.

Treat AI as a pair-programming partner that can help you finish tasks 7/24; then in that process you can truly treat it as an assistant, and design and implement the whole system together.

For instance AWS Kiro’s spec mode can help you complete tasks quickly, and it fits human development habits: confirming requirements, listing tasks, organizing tasks, executing tasks.

Collaborate with AI to create more valuable products.

A glimpse of seaside cafés in Rizhao

The seaside cafés in Rizhao

Also the second café in Rizhao; yesterday was sea sea coffee, today it’s Coffee and Sea.

Lots of people coming and going taking photos.

Rizhao experience: a tourist city missing the details

Rizhao is one of the cities with the worst experience in my life.

No power outlets in the cafés

The air conditioning at the high-speed rail station is set too warm

At the beach the public shower costs two yuan per minute

Service is pretty mediocre

The café air conditioning is set too warm

The architectural aesthetics are too poor

The aesthetics are too poor

Lots of people with kids, very noisy in public places

The online services for public facilities are garbage (websites, mini programs, no details, no user feeling)

Lots of smoking

It’s not that other cities don’t have these; it’s not just that these things happen less elsewhere, but it’s also hard for one city to have so many at once

Repeat visitors to a tourist city like this will be very rare.

The aesthetics of Japanese streets: refinement and tacit understanding under scarcity

Perceptions about Japanese street design

They say Kyoto is more like Chang’an than Chang’an is?

So far the design sense I like most is people reaching a certain tacit understanding with space, for example people and nature, people and art.

With today’s information overload, density too high and resources limited, the width of Japanese streets is always just enough to hold the necessary functions, not an inch more.

It’s an aesthetic forced out of resource scarcity.

The centrifugal conservatism of culture: whose Chang’an

Do you think innate culture matters more, or transmitted culture?

They say Kyoto is the closest observation point for Eastern culture, that Kyoto is closer to “Chang’an” than today’s Chang’an.

More like a snapshot, preserving the Chang’an of that time, and this preservation has lasted over a thousand years.

Historians call it “the centrifugal conservatism of culture.”

The further an edge culture is from the core, the more devoutly it holds to the “original appearance of the core,” the less it dares to modify it.

Like Buddhism preserving the original Indian teachings in Tibet, while in India itself there’s almost no trace of Buddhism left.

“Who and where the birthplace of a culture is” isn’t the most important question.

The vitality of a culture doesn’t only exist in the “physical coordinate” of its origin, it lies more in how it is inherited and reconstructed in later transmission and evolution.

The meaning of a culture lies in how later generations “use” and “imagine” it, not in guarding the “purity” of the origin.

Notes and thoughts about a friend

This hike was mainly three people: me, Sister Xiaomei, and this friend.

But on this trip out, these two seemed very incompatible; it felt like both sides didn’t understand each other, and each couldn’t stand everything the other did.

Understanding is hard; understanding requires reason. Most people, most of the time, are unwilling to think rationally (using your brain is too tiring), and instead go by feeling.

But from the details, I can actually see what a person is really made of underneath. For example, he looks very rough, does things sloppily and carelessly, but it’s exactly this kind of person who, after every meal, carefully wipes the table and cleans up the trash. In every small detail of our time together — for instance when the train ticket was lost, even though it had nothing to do with him, he was still the first to rush in and help me solve it. For instance he later invited another companion (someone he didn’t know at all, from the internet), and she was repeatedly late, didn’t follow advice; even though the day before he was disappointed and resigned to it, the next day that girl still caught up, and the whole time he still helped her enthusiastically.

A lot of the time it feels like surface roughness is often a disguise for inner fineness, and real character hides in moments no one notices.

What actually exposes a person is habit; habit exposes character, and choices expose a person’s essence.

The imagined Europe: the Western longing in Japanese culture

The Western longing Japanese people once had

Kawaguchiko Music Forest Museum is a music-themed park designed around the concept of the European Alps; behind this theme park is actually a deep cultural psychology and historical background.

After Japan opened its borders, it developed a deep fascination with refined European culture, especially the European court culture that represented “elegance” and “aristocratic temperament.”

Japanese people love going to the Swiss Alps.

This museum represents Japan’s unique cultural phenomenon of the “imagined Europe,” a feeling of an ideal, perfect European small town.

A music box is like a snapshot concept, sealing up the ideas and visions of that time, an eternal preservation of good times and a recollection of the past.

At bottom it also feels like a kind of other-culture.

Sand painting performance

Like tragedy, creation isn’t just doing addition; subtraction is more painful but also more aesthetic.

Every wave of the hand takes away our possibility of grasping, fixing and possessing beauty.

And it forces you to go through complete attachment, loss and rebirth in just a dozen seconds.

Things that are passing away, dissipating, seem to move me more — the charm of impermanence and flux.

At first I was quite afraid of that light wipe, as if everything returned to nothingness, but it seems our life itself is just a sliver of light trapped between two boundless poles of darkness; what we cling to, isn’t it also a brief existence?

Suddenly I have a kind of power to live in the present again.

Tokyo café observations: cashless, women’s territory, and few digital nomads

Any café in Tokyo, fairly hidden away; it feels like they’re all Japanese girls, Korean girls, Taiwanese girls.

This café refuses to take cash, which is absurd; in Tokyo I also ran into ones that only take cash. That’s just too unfriendly, so do you bring cash or not?

I feel there are very few digital nomads in Japanese cafés, a lot fewer than in Korea, from what I’ve observed.

Shinjuku | Kabukicho

I stayed here one night; even Saturday accommodation seems to have doubled. On the Tokyo side I had just arrived in Shinjuku, so I chose this Kintaro DVD — it seems the place only takes male guests. I picked an eight-hour rest room.

Tokyo’s most famous entertainment district

Basically a lot of Japanese office workers, plus tourists from everywhere, and groups of young people all like to come to this place.

Day and night are completely different scenes; it’s also open 24 hours. Daytime is relatively calm, mainly ordinary shopping and dining traffic; at night it becomes very lively, with all kinds of people looking for entertainment gathering.

I went to this place three times, so to speak. In the afternoon I passed by walking to a jazz bar up front; basically in the afternoon it’s idlers, and people out to eat, drink and play. At ten at night on the way back to where I was staying it was all neon and nightlife, with lots of touts. Leaving the next morning, a bit past six, the ground was basically covered in trash, drunk men and women; one man just peed right on the street … I don’t know if he remembers after sobering up, but I do.

It also illustrates Japan’s traditional culture of the public face and the private face: public places are relatively orderly, privately pressure is allowed to be released. Singapore and other countries are like this too — “concentrated in a specific district to avoid affecting order elsewhere,” a kind of orderly chaos.

The Japanese rental market: the future trend of a mature market

The maturity of Japan’s rental market

Few local Japanese buy homes now; housing prices keep soaring, and income doesn’t match housing prices.

More young Japanese choose renting over buying.

The rental industry getting more and more mature is certainly a trend, decided by market demand, and it naturally has a growth character.

A mature rental market means landlords have to improve the quality of the housing, otherwise they face vacancy.

The law should stand more on the side of tenants (the weaker group).

Choices will get richer, like long-term rent, short-term rent, renting a whole house, and so on.

Different income levels and life stages adjust in different ways.

That old man at Kawaguchiko

He opened a small local cuisine restaurant here, going on forty years

Shop name: Non hei のん兵

He’s 70, but still very spry. The years carved wrinkles into his face; having seen seventy years of Mount Fuji’s wind and snow, his eyes are still clear and gentle.

“My childhood was built on ruins.”

His childhood was spent during the postwar period of rapid growth. The whole country was like a giant construction site; everyone worked at full stretch, believing tomorrow was sure to be better than today.

“In Tokyo I was just a screw in a company. Here I can see customers’ smiling faces, I can feel the changing of the four seasons. I think this is what it means to live like a human being.”

“Flavor is something that stays in a customer’s memory. I can’t just change it, that would be a betrayal of my customers.”

What changes is the world outside the shop. With the opening of the Shinkansen and the spread of the internet, more and more foreign tourists come to Kawaguchiko. Especially in the last few years, the small town has almost been “occupied” by tourists. The menu went from Japanese only to having English, Chinese and Korean. Grandpa Watanabe also learned a few simple bits of English, like “Welcome” and “Thank you.”

I think this is a really interesting thing.

I really hope the old man’s shop keeps getting better, and that he stays in good health.

We ordered a yakitori, it was especially delicious, but we didn’t know which part it was, so we asked the old man, and he said it was chicken butt (chicken butt); hearing “butt” was a bit baffling, we’d never eaten butt. Seeing we didn’t understand, the old man patted his own butt, and we died laughing.

The old man secretly gave us a drinking snack on the house. We hadn’t ordered one, because it felt like bad value — a plate of drinking snacks converts to ten or twenty yuan. He secretly gave it to us, and shushed us, telling us not to spread the word. The two Westerners next to us saw it and were snickering hahaha. So Japanese people aren’t completely rigid, there’s some warmth in them. Was he afraid his wife would see? Or afraid other customers would find out? It really felt so funny.

Before we left the old man walked us out, personally walked us out, then had us check our luggage was all there. That serious, solemn expression made him seem so cute hahaha.

First impressions on landing in Ho Chi Minh

I flew in from Tokyo,, actually the plane service was pretty mediocre, the flight attendants in the back kept chatting the whole time, so noisy … I asked them and they had no earplugs.

I still feel I didn’t prepare in advance this time, because I felt Ho Chi Minh was different from Japan, and no matter how much you wing it, it’s fine, the cost is small.

But actually that’s not true, the cost is actually very high.

I only prepared the Taobao e-visa; actually whether you prepare or not you still have to go get a separate paper visa. That separate-paper-visa window feels like it exists specifically to fleece Chinese people; I was stuck there for at least an hour and a half, with procedures blocked the whole time, until the end when they force you to pay.

The customs side was super slow; I’ve never seen such a slow customs office in my life, it was really painful.

The embassy wasn’t open yet at that time.

I didn’t prepare two-inch photos in advance; from now on I definitely need to keep multiple kinds of photos in my backpack.

And the most absurd thing was they said the electronic version of the visa needed to be printed out (actually after I paid they didn’t print it either; I paid ten US dollars each, they said it was hard to make change, and just pocketed all of it).

After landing there’s no good way to get back to the city; you can only take Grab back to the city.

I drank a coffee and did some work at the airport café, and waited for a car back into the city; there were people smoking in front of me …

The process of recording

What I recorded is the process of coming to Ho Chi Minh; of course this is just the beginning. I think there will definitely be a lot of fun in this city’s life; writing the above down counts as a kind of reflection: take any absurd system or state institution seriously, don’t underestimate it …. the outcome is miserable, painful waits of two or three hours, wrangling with the sxxb over here, and in the end losing money again …

The purpose of living abroad: putting the world inside yourself

The purpose of living abroad isn’t to be a passer-by, checking off the places you’ve been

It’s putting the world inside yourself

Every place you’ve been is shaping you

Ultimately forming a unique life map

Living abroad isn’t shallow sightseeing.

Drunk

A bit hazy, it feels unreal

It feels like this world doesn’t belong to me

Everyone is indulging or acting

It feels like this world isn’t real

It’s not the one I want

Everyone is acting for the sake of something else

The drunkenness lets me temporarily take off the fake glasses I’ve grown used to

We’re all actors

We’re all insincere; we choose to remember, we choose pain

Whether pain or happiness, this world is just like this; I can’t make a choice contrary to my own values. Is it that my subjective cognition constrains my own choices?

Only those who feel out of place have any chance of actually changing something.

Whether Tokyo or Vietnam, why can’t it hold another face of this world, and why can it?

Let me first ask: why can’t I live more truthfully?

Complex society itself means escape, companionship, and the pursuit of stimulation; these are themselves part of human nature, but the industries built around them have a lot of problems: exploitation, inequality, health, and so on.

I hope everyone at a key crossroads has the right to choose, and can be guaranteed basic safety, dignity and choice.

Consumers having this kind of demand is what produces this kind of market; it’s just whether this consumer relationship will have corresponding respect and equality?

Sitting alone by the roadside, spacing out, watching the trams come and go

Sitting alone by the roadside spacing out, watching the trams come and go, the noise on every street in this city.

Today’s Ho Chi Minh is like Shanghai back then; the Paramount, Del Monte and other nightclubs of that era represented the luxury and indulgence of the “Paris of the East.”

Everyone believes in the excitement that anything can happen in this city.

Nightclub culture is more like the imagination of a city made manifest; everyone believes tomorrow will be better, and is willing to invest in experience and pleasure.

Just like Japan’s lost three decades.

Today’s Ho Chi Minh is more like a child in a period of wild growth.

Only the most regrettable thing is that prosperous times are mediocre.

Order and vitality are often inversely related.

Or maybe a city’s vitality is more like a tension.

I’m thinking, actually as we enter the process of modernization, if you extend time backward infinitely,

every country right now is like an infant or an adolescent.

The hormones of a city — vigorous when young, steady when mature; this isn’t decline, it’s the natural evolution of a life cycle.

My personal politeness ranking

My ranking of politeness

Japan > Thailand > Singapore > Vietnam > China > Korea

The dream of a café drifting around the world

What if in the future I’m also a traveler, drifting around the world?

Hahaha

Maybe I’ll open a hotel or a café too.

Big brother makes a lot of sense, but

Because I found that Vietnamese people habitually grab small gains; this is the second time I’ve been shortchanged, and this time it was even at a so-called Michelin restaurant.

Similar to the earlier guy not giving change, pretending he didn’t understand English; this time they directly mixed 100k short (about thirty yuan) into your change. Same as the earlier guy, short by 100k hahaha.

I remember in Nepal, such a poor country, or in developed countries like Japan, basically I never deliberately counted the change; it feels like the level of trust between people is relatively high.

But here in Vietnam, it feels a bit like offline trust has been shattered. I can’t help thinking about why online payment flourished in China — everyone’s little calculations are all here.

Big brother said, don’t bother about small money, your own time matters most, focus on what’s really important. I certainly agree with the necessity of focusing on more important things. What I’m reflecting on is why this phenomenon happens, the cultural attributes behind it. If nobody bothers, what kind of social system will everyone form? If everyone slips money at customs, what kind of opaque or multi-layered, rule-ridden, inefficient system will that create?

How does social trust actually form? If she loses a lasting customer because she shortchanged this time, or creates a lasting and somewhat bad impression on the internet, will she regulate her own behavior? Then does it feel like social trust isn’t a product of virtue, but the result of repeated games?

Why did mobile payment flourish in China? Online payment redefined the rules of the game, created a new extreme of trust; cheating becomes difficult or not worth it, and at the bottom it’s also the effect of game theory.

Poverty doesn’t necessarily lead to dishonesty, and wealth doesn’t necessarily bring integrity — the key is whether society provides enough incentive structure for honest behavior.

Of course when you find it you still have to stop it hahaha; it’s fine if everyone is unintentional, fine if you don’t notice it — be tolerant without burning yourself out, and without compromising.

Vietnamese guys

They feel very much like Chinese guys from earlier times

It also seems to be influenced by Vietnam’s traditional culture

Silence is golden, and they place great importance on face and propriety

They emphasize men’s sense of responsibility and reliability more

So many men are taught from childhood to restrain their emotions, to be more pragmatic, to have a more manly image

Actually after talking with them in depth, you find they also have a lot of very good qualities.

As a conscious person ~

As a self-aware person, growth should come from a lot of conversations or exchanges you don’t enjoy, accumulated through experience.

Comfort is the enemy of consciousness.

But long term, if we only stay in the comfort zone, our consciousness stops evolving. Like the “Red Queen effect” in biology — you have to keep running just to stay in place.

Seeking wisdom, heading toward discomfort — it’s not a contradiction, it’s an evolution of consciousness.

About Linh Sơn Pagoda

A Buddhist temple with a long history and Buddhist cultural character, Mahayana Buddhism.

In the courtyard at the back there’s a miniature world, and inside it I even saw the White Horse and Tang Sanzang — so fun.

I hadn’t originally planned to come here, because this is a very local Buddhist temple, with local tourists often coming by to visit.

As a backpacker, I was wandering around alone with a backpack; this place isn’t far, and I figured I’d look at the Buddha statues, feel it a bit, then go eat something and head back to the café.

Linh Sơn Pagoda was funded and built jointly by the Buddhist association of the time and local believers, to spread the Dharma and provide a place for Dalat Buddhists to practice and pray.

Some of the aunties at the temple invited me to eat with them; I didn’t understand Vietnamese, so I found a little girl who could speak Chinese, and thus got a free, generous lunch. What moved me was their warmth. One tomboyish girl said she’d ride me to Ho Chi Minh on a motorbike (I said I’d just come back hahaha and needed to code, and declined), and another girl was so warm-hearted, she invited me to stay at their home for two or three days (I declined, not wanting to bother their family hahaha; I said I hoped to treat them to a meal and coffee).

Incredible new friends; they’re only three years younger than me, twenty, and look like tender little kids hahaha, so simple, so pure.

This is the meaning of traveling alone — wandering without a plan.

A rather interesting point

When you talk with a smart person, watch where they pause, and let their pauses guide your own thinking.

They pause after things they consider important.

And so, when I talk with others,

if they’re really perceptive,

I also pause where I feel something matters.

I met a principled owner

And a very cheap local restaurant I found by searching on Google.

This restaurant’s prices were also quite low.

I thought the food was great, so when I paid at the end I tossed in some extra change.

The owner counted it and found the extra change. I subconsciously assumed he’d just pocket it, so I smiled, waved, and got ready to leave — after all, free money.

Unexpectedly, the owner pulled me back and pushed the change into my hand, then counted it again.

We both laughed, and I felt a bit ashamed — hadn’t I too subconsciously assumed Vietnamese people like to take small advantages? And wasn’t I, while protecting my own sense of morality, steadily eroding this healthy order?

At every checkout, confirm the exact amount, and sincerely express your appreciation for the food.

Isn’t doing good deeds everywhere also a kind of foolishness? At bottom it feels like a violation of the rules.

I think of Sun Shaoping, who gave his entire 100 yuan of hard-earned money to help Xiaocui, the girl going home.

In essence this kind of help isn’t sustainable either.

I think of engineer thinking: what we should keep trying to do is build an elegant, healthy system.

Two Chinese people whispering next to me

Asking whether I’m the owner of this coffee apartment…

Am I already this local and this relaxed?

Another day of being taken for a local

In a café, in a corner, hanging out very relaxed.

A Chinese couple was quietly discussing whether I was the owner (I was secretly pleased — here comes the drama).

A girl came begging — how do you treat a begging girl the right way

The phenomenon behind it may actually be a systemic problem.

I happened to see organized begging; street kids in developing countries often have someone behind them, even involving human trafficking, gangs, or begging companies.

If a child begging on the street gets a response, she very likely won’t go to school or get a proper work education. It’s a vicious cycle that perpetuates poverty.

Don’t give money, don’t give money. You can buy some food, give her something to eat. Don’t shoo her away, don’t humiliate her.

Don’t stop for love; keep moving forward

A Spanish guy: studied in Japan, then traveled everywhere, then met a guy he liked (gay) in Vietnam and stayed. Basically half the year in Spain, half in Vietnam.

Then the two of them broke up… and that was it.

Complaining that a city’s hotels are dirty and unhygienic

I complained that a city’s hotels were dirty and unhygienic, and got told by people from that city that if you have no money you should expect that kind of service — who told you not to stay in a luxury hotel.

I think most people, like me, basically choose ordinary hotels in whatever city — whether it’s a third- or fourth-tier city in China or a first-tier one, a developed country or a less developed one. You can just clearly feel which places fall short on service, and that determines the tourist’s experience: whether they want to come back, or never again…

As a consumer, you paid to stay at a hotel and it turned out “dirty” and “unhygienic.” You have the right to express dissatisfaction; that’s legitimate consumer feedback.

Whether a budget hotel or a five-star one, basic hygiene and safety standards are the bottom line for all lodging. Being cheap isn’t a reason to be unclean — this is a very basic bottom-line issue. Cheap ≠ not deserving basic hygiene?

The “who told you not to stay in a luxury hotel” line is more like a condescending class perspective — you’re poor, so you don’t deserve to complain? I think it privatizes the problem somewhat.

The curious selfie phenomenon

Indians especially love selfies; every year you see lots of Indians taking selfies when they go out.

Then uncles and aunties from China and Korea? Like they want to leave more traces in this world before they die?

Proving they were present — I feel it’s the most meaningful phenomenon of the modernization process, or the datafication era.

Countries and cities have life cycles

Even amid the modernization process.

Just like a person’s life cycle.

London, Paris, and New York first — they seem to have been through the full industrialization and post-industrialization cycle, facing mature-city problems: aging infrastructure, industrial transformation, gentrification.

Then Tokyo and Seoul, which went through postwar reconstruction and rapid development; their urban management tends to be finely tuned.

Then the newer modern cities like Shenzhen and Dubai — more like cities in adolescence: energetic, fast-growing, lacking deep historical and cultural foundations, with simple social structures. But these cities often have a higher density of opportunity and steeper growth curves.

Then the cities currently modernizing — in their adolescence, expanding fast, full of contradictions, tradition and modernity side by side.

Seen this way, it makes sense.

A city like Ho Chi Minh — currently modernizing, a new-style modern city in rapid ascent — is just like Shanghai and Hangzhou used to be.

How reading changes in the AI era: from thinning a book to deepening it

Before the AI era, we were thinning books down

After the AI era, we are deepening books.

A brief account of the cognitive process

Everything we experience is, first, the acquisition of information and then the processing of it.

It can be a stimulus, something that draws our attention, or perception, interpreting sensory information to form meaningful material.

There may also be some memory ability, like the process of storing or retrieving information; all these processing steps are extremely fast, finishing in a few seconds or less.

Of course, the process of recalling and modeling may also involve reasoning, for example not remembering a person, but remembering having been to a certain mall and through that remembering the person.

Behind every behavior is actually a cognitive process; the event of looking at a map is also made up of countless cognitions.

Deep thoughts on uncertainty: the consensus of beauty and prejudice

Deep thoughts on uncertainty

A lot of uncertainty really seems to have no answer.

Where do our visual preferences come from, where does this image of everything we consider good and beautiful come from

If beauty really is subjective, why does it reach a certain consensus?

Maybe even AI is subject to cultural bias.

Descriptions of beauty are influenced by mainstream culture.

Aesthetic bias may really exist, but maybe that’s also a kind of plurality.

The world is very complex, but it’s precisely because of this complexity that human curiosity is forever in a process that keeps growing larger

and keeps being satisfied.

This is also the most magical and most interesting part of this world.

Hardware progress and user preferences

Some thoughts on preferences from the user’s point of view

Setting aside the short-term fact that the software form is still image-and-text visual presentation, this seems to be forcing hardware progress too.

On human memory, and the form of the storage concept (some language nouns)

Like the specific language nouns of many countries, they need enough context provided, and thought. For example Japan’s ichigo ichie, mono no aware, ma; Thailand’s shabaishabi.

Humans process information the same way AI and LLMs do.

For symbols, propositional characters, it’s just that what’s experienced is psychological computation.

The input information can be language, text, or visual and olfactory; it forms a short-term memory, and through rehearsal it forms a long-term memory, and produces the corresponding output.

From the angle of brain neuroscience, when we encounter a concept, the brain doesn’t encode it in a single location, but forms an associative network across multiple brain regions.

The hippocampus is responsible for encoding short-term experience into long-term memory, the temporal lobe stores semantic information, and the prefrontal cortex carries out abstract thinking and conceptual manipulation.

Every time we recall a concept, we’re actually reactivating and reconstructing this neural network, rather than simply “reading” fixed data.

People from different cultural backgrounds also activate different patterns of brain regions when processing the same stimulus; for example, East Asian relational thinking activates more brain regions related to social cognition, while Western analytic thinking relies more on neural circuits focused on the features of the object.

Language is our tool for understanding the world, but language and concepts also do affect our allocation of attention and our cognitive tendencies.

Human memory isn’t a faithful record like a videotape, it’s reconstructive. Every recall is a reconstruction based on the current state. This explains why the understanding of a concept keeps deepening and changing as experience accumulates.

We’re both shaped by concepts and constantly reshaping concepts, and in this dynamic interaction we build our understanding of the world.

The Ho Chi Minh offline AI gathering

About the Ho Chi Minh offline AI gathering

I met a very interesting American who helps Taiwanese companies go global, does marketing, some localization work.

He was born and grew up in Shanghai.

In chips, NVIDIA is still the boss

In chips, NVIDIA is still the boss, especially for training the most cutting-edge AI, but more and more new companies’ chips can wrestle with it.

78% of organizations use Nvidia chips to train AI, far ahead of Google (27%), AMD (17%) and other companies’ hardware.

About stochastic gradient descent (SGD)

It’s also the most basic and most important optimization algorithm in machine learning.

A plain-language example: in the post-AI era we may lean toward learning professional knowledge while using it, like fast-food learning — you don’t need to remember all the information, you solve the random surprises that come up in practice. Just like learning vocabulary: words basically appear at random, and you learn the ones you don’t know when you run into them.

A pretty good approach is also to handle Gemini asynchronously

A pretty good approach is also to operate Gemini or Claude asynchronously

This depends on the fact that LLM output takes time; operating an LLM is perhaps like operating an employee, even

LLMs loading tools on demand

There are too many tools now, that’s the problem.

Being fully armed makes you dumber.

A good approach is to extend through RAG.

Unless absolutely necessary, avoid dynamically adding or removing tools during iteration.

You can design a dynamic action space, using rag-like tools to load on demand.

Tools are basically serialized near the front of the context.

You can have a context-aware state machine to manage the availability of tools.

I used to think adding tools should be user-visible, but actually doing that might cause a big defect.

The state machine + logits masking approach is indeed very handy.

Three function calling modes:

Auto mode: the model can choose whether to call a function.

Required mode: it must call a function, but the specific choice isn’t restricted.

Specified mode: it must choose a function from a specific subset.

Implementation tricks:

Constrain the choice space via response prefill.

Design consistent name prefixes (like starting with browser_, shell_).

Mask token logits directly rather than modifying tool definitions.

Put a “face mask” on unneeded tools to hide them, rather than directly “taking them off.”

Some advice on passing context

The usefulness of using the file system as context

Real scenarios are very complex; the traditional token window can hardly meet the need.

The observable data is huge, and when it exceeds a certain context length model performance tends to drop.

Even with prefix caching, long input is still expensive.

Traditional approaches use summarizing the context used, or compressing it, but actually any irreversible compression carries risk.

The file system is a way of passing context, with no size limit, essentially persistable, and directly operated by the agent itself; the file system isn’t only used for storage, it can also serve as structured external storage memory.

Compression is designed with recoverability as the design principle, so if the URL is kept, the web content can be omitted from the context output; if the document path is available, the document content can be omitted.

Manipulating attention

Some tasks are too long, with too many call links, very long loops. Because Manus relies on the LLM to make decisions, it easily drifts off topic or forgets earlier goals, especially when handling longer context or executing complex tasks.

Constantly writing a todolist, repeating the goal to the end of the context, avoids losing attention midway.

Keep the errors, pass on the errors

In multi-link tasks, the most effective way to improve behavior is also the simplest: keep the wrong actions in the context.

When the model sees the failed operation and the resulting observation or stack trace, it implicitly updates its internal beliefs. This transfers its prior knowledge away from similar operations, reducing the chance of repeating the same mistake.

Keep the wrong actions in the context; the model sees the failed operation and observes the stack, and implicitly updates its internal beliefs.

Erasing the failure removes the evidence; without evidence, the model can’t adapt.

The few-shot prompt approach

Language models are excellent imitators.

The model easily learns past best practices.

But actually handling complex tasks is very risky.

It leads to bias, over-generalization, even hallucination.

The solution is to increase diversity. Manus introduces a small amount of structured variation in actions and observations — different serialization templates, different wording, small perturbations in order or format. This controlled randomness helps break patterns and re-adjusts the model’s attention.

In other words, don’t let yourself get stuck in a rut. The more uniform your environment, the more fragile your agent.

So in today’s LLM-centric Agent architecture

So in today’s Agent architecture centered on large language models (LLMs), its essential work is to a large extent efficient, intelligent context management.

merge suits AI better than rebase

I feel merge suits the frequent-commit state of the AI era better than rebase.

The cost of keeping rebase linear is too high.

Instead, merge is what matters; do one merge at once.

git pull origin feat/prompt –rebase

In the AI era, you should use

git pull origin feat/prompt –no-rebase

Efficiency and rationality have been overemphasized; the AI era will slowly return to normal

We need to make sure we have the morals of resting well.

Why exam-oriented education won’t matter much in the future

The abilities that exam-oriented education filters for seem more and more to be the least important abilities in the coming AI era.

In what circumstances do people develop religious emotions

He’s bearing enormous suffering, but he can’t explain why he’s doing these things.

What is the purpose of studying, really?

It’s confusing. What is everyone trying to say? Seeking knowledge, seeking wealth, or seeking self-realization?

In the AI era, seeking knowledge? The internet is all information, all knowledge — that doesn’t seem to be the bottleneck anymore.

Seeking wealth? These days everyone can at least survive somehow — it’s just a difference in degree.

It turns out games were also a very key indicator for unearthing students’ abilities.

Agile observation, superb hand speed — these abilities can’t be put to use anywhere in life. They’re not assessed anymore; education no longer assesses these abilities. People left primitive society behind long ago.

The abilities most students gain from twelve years of study are actually very thin

The abilities most students gain from twelve years of study are actually very thin. Setting knowledge aside, no one believes in the post-AI era that knowledge changes your fate anymore.

The most important human abilities: memory, reasoning, and mathematical reasoning.

Mathematical ability is very important. Math trains you to abstract core laws out of the concrete, then map them back to reality to solve problems. It asks us to see through to the essence behind phenomena.

A question I often ask AI: most of the time I don’t want it to think as me

A question I often ask AI: most of the time I don’t want AI to think about the problem by imitating my role. I want it to stand on the opposite side of me and think about the other side’s position, or think from the other party’s role.

This emphasizes analyzing from the reverse — thinking upside down. Charlie Munger strongly advocates this method, inverting the goal to think about the problem. For example, think about failure rather than success.

When you want to enhance innovation, think more about what suppresses innovation.

When you don’t know how to obtain happiness, think more about what won’t bring happiness.

Using Claude Code Max to the fullest

Claude Code Max is really needed; the $200 tier can basically keep your project running in full.

Integrate Claude Code Max into daily tasks — writing code, debugging, code review — saving time and improving efficiency.

And you can also treat Claude as your pair-programming partner.

It can also be used for complex tasks like refactoring code blocks, implementing features, or optimizing.

Use /clear often to clear the context, so the model focuses on what really matters.

Also the memory system — it can store your commonly used instructions.

Multiple tasks can run in parallel, but you should keep tasks as clean and independent as possible to avoid conflicts. You can run 10–12 Claude Code instances at once, but avoid filling context windows too fast.

Evolution is really about creating order out of disorder

On the positive side, when you identify with an obsession-worthy goal, your mind automatically notices opportunities in the environment that reinforce the higher version of yourself you’re becoming.

Attention is essentially a survival mechanism. The focusing system our ancestors developed on the African savanna — concentrating on making tools while staying alert to changes around us — that dual mode still operates in our brains today.

But the interesting part now is that our attention system has met a challenge evolution never anticipated: information overload. Our brains still operate on the logic of a scarce environment — see information, want to grab it, just like seeing fruit and wanting to pick it. That’s why building an AI information-processing product matters so much — you’re helping humans adapt to this new environment of information abundance.

About the July 5, 2025 🇯🇵 Japan prophecy

The 1999 manga “The Future I Saw” — the author’s prophecy is tied to records of her dreams.

What draws the most attention is a line on the back cover: “A truly great disaster will come in July 2025.”

In the course of it spreading online, this date was further pinned down to “July 5, 2025,” and linked to a dream the author had at 4:18 a.m. on July 5, 2021 about a massive tsunami.

According to the dream’s description, the disaster would be an undersea volcanic eruption between Japan and the Philippines, triggering an unprecedented giant tsunami, far larger than the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, dealing a devastating blow to Japan’s Pacific coast, Taiwan, Hong Kong and even the Philippines.

Verifying it myself feels pretty interesting; humans always use reason to deny superstition on one hand, and on the other can’t resist wanting to verify it themselves.

It provoked my most fundamental curiosity, to feel Japanese culture inside uncertainty.

How much uncontrollable collective anxiety do modern people have? Even in Japan, under the influence of a culture of ichigo ichie and living in the moment, is everyone still trying to hold onto something?

Knowing the next disaster will definitely come, but not knowing when the next disaster is.

Japanese society has a word, “空気を読む” (read the air); when the whole society is discussing this prophecy, even if you don’t believe it, you’ll be influenced by the collective atmosphere.

Could what really unsettles Japanese people be this feeling of being chosen? Why must the disaster always fall on Japan, why must it bear so much suffering — there’s a kind of tragic pride in it.

When a civilization faces an irresistible force for a long time, it gradually develops a mechanism for coexisting with fear. Japan’s aesthetics, philosophy and social organization are all deeply branded with this awareness of “impermanence.”

Mono no aware, yugen, wabi-sabi: a philosophy of living that dances with imperfection

Mono no aware isn’t just sadness, it’s a kind of feeling moved by witnessing something fade.

Mono no aware is a gentle fading of existence itself, because to exist means ultimately to lose.

If mono no aware is an aesthetic of feeling the fading, what is yugen?

It’s an intuitive perception of depth. The moon half-hidden by clouds is more moving than a full moon, because it hints at infinity. True profundity is always achieved through suggestion rather than display.

Yugen isn’t pretending to be deep, it’s acknowledging the complexity of reality. When you realize that any simple explanation is insufficient to exhaust the essence of a thing, you have touched yugen.

Wabi-sabi is the most seriously misread. It isn’t “the beauty of the worn,” it’s a celebration of imperfection. A cracked tea bowl is more beautiful than perfect porcelain not because of the crack itself, but because it bears witness to time, use, and human touch. Perfection is dead; only imperfection has life.

But there’s a paradox here: when you deliberately pursue wabi-sabi, you lose it. Real wabi-sabi happens naturally, like the mug in your room you’ve used for a long time, its rim a little worn — and it’s exactly that wear that makes it precious.

Rejecting perfect / complete / eternal / clearly defined beauty

The deeper inspiration is this: through these concepts, Japanese culture expresses a philosophy of living — neither fleeing the cruelty of reality nor being crushed by it, but on the premise of acknowledging impermanence, imperfection and mystery, still being able to feel beauty and meaning.

Classical Chinese poetry has a lot of logic of transformation, or grand narrative, for example “fallen blossoms are not heartless things, they turn into spring soil and protect the flowers.”

But Japanese people feel that a fallen blossom is a fallen blossom; its beauty lies in its falling, and it doesn’t need anything else to prove its value.

Perhaps what’s most worth reflecting on is this: we modern people always want certainty, perfection and eternity, but real wisdom may lie precisely in learning to dance with uncertainty, imperfection and transience.

The Tale of Genji and Dream of the Red Chamber: the cultural power of construction and deconstruction

Two systems built by The Tale of Genji and Dream of the Red Chamber

The Tale of Genji shaped the Japanese emotional structure; Dream of the Red Chamber tore apart the Chinese value system.

The Tale of Genji seeped into every pore of Japanese culture like water, from the negative space of the tea ceremony to the emotional expression of anime, from the spatial feeling of architecture to the subtle measure of interpersonal relations. For a thousand years, through The Tale of Genji the Japanese learned how to feel delicate emotions, how to find beauty in imperfection, how to face impermanence gracefully. It taught a people how to “feel.”

Dream of the Red Chamber didn’t teach the Chinese anything; it made China doubt its existing way of working, and made it doubt its former traditional order.

The Tale of Genji made Japanese culture stable and deep; Dream of the Red Chamber kept Chinese culture turbulent and alive.

Destruction is often more powerful than construction.

The aesthetics of an era: the imprint of collective psychological needs

Good and bad have always been subjective choices, so aesthetics represents different values and worldviews.

Social groups breed public value systems, so an era also carries part of the collective aesthetic preference, the inner needs and psychological state of the people of that era. From this, in the period when internet information exploded and flourished, Apple’s minimalist aesthetic was widely loved by the era — simple operations and interfaces behind complex technology.

Aesthetics to some extent also carries the needs of the era and the collective psychological state.

The Industrial Revolution → an aesthetic pursuing grandness and a sense of power (Neoclassical architecture)

Postwar reconstruction → simple, functional modernist aesthetics

The rise of consumerism → Pop Art, commercial aesthetics

The information age → the popularity of minimalism and Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics

So it’s also a kind of imprint of the era:

the longing for quiet in a fast-paced life

the need for simplicity in an age of information overload

the pursuit of the spiritual after material abundance

the yearning for harmony with nature under environmental crisis

SO beauty is also the outward manifestation of an era and a civilization.

The Mount Omuro burning: beauty continued through destruction and cycle

A half-day trip to Mount Omuro (the burning)

Mount Omuro is beautiful, very green; the weather wasn’t good, but there was still a green shadow of it.

Mount Omuro is in Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture; it’s a volcanic cinder cone formed 4000 years ago, about 580 meters tall. What’s more interesting is that the annual burning ritual has continued for over 700 years; countless generations repeat the same act of “destruction,” and it’s exactly this destruction that lets Mount Omuro’s beauty last forever.

A perfect silhouette + the burning ritual every spring, when they set the whole mountain’s grassland on fire.

We maintain through destruction, protect through burning.

It seems true eternity isn’t being static and unchanging, but cycling and renewing within a dynamic balance.

Mount Omuro is a beauty of human intervention, adding some accent to letting nature take its course.

Some beauty that looks natural is actually the result of long-term collaboration between humans and nature, an elegant acceptance of fading, a beauty of impermanence, a beauty of mono no aware.

To go up you take a ropeway; it’s actually a kind of “ma” in Japanese culture, a deliberately left blank space — the burning creates space, and rebirth becomes possible.

Gorai-ko: the sacred meaning of sunrise in Japanese culture

Sunrise means far more than sunset in Japan.

Sunrise on a high mountain is called “gorai-ko” (the coming of the light), considered sacred like the Buddha’s light. Gorai-ko at the summit of Mount Fuji is an even rarer spectacle, considered something you must see with your own eyes at least once in your life, so for Japanese people the sunrise experience is very important.

My core is resilience

So my core is resilience

A resilience that can settle down, head toward death and live, and fight to the bitter end.

Not just burying my head in hard work, but also knowing to look up and check the road.

The core of “a whole new life paradigm” is that the individual is being “liberated” from the huge, centralized social machine, becoming an independent, mobile creative unit that carries its own value.

The “ma” of the National Art Center: negative space more important than the works

Some thoughts on Japan’s National Art Center

The most aesthetic work so far, I feel, is the wavy glass curtain wall, which largely satisfies the need for natural light, and also has a visual sense of flow.

And this idea of form following function crosses cultural boundaries.

Whether it’s Eastern garden design or Western architectural composition, both pursue a certain rhythm and cadence. The internal spatial sequence of the new museum, its rises and falls, expresses this universal aesthetic need.

The contrast of transparent glass and concrete, the pairing of natural light and artificial lighting, finding resonance in designs from different cultures.

There’s also the use of “ma” in Japanese aesthetic culture, the pursuit of refinement in details, showing the Japanese design tradition.

Design aesthetics doesn’t demand filling space; there’s a lot of negative space, transitions, and this emptiness is actually very important — the viewer has room to breathe and think. The pause seems far more important than the work itself.

Not rushing to show more, leaving enough weight in every moment. Unlike Western negative space, this “ma” is more like an active, vital negative space; it’s not absence, it’s a positive existence.

It seems to apply to the philosophy of life too: sometimes doing nothing is more important than doing something.

China vs. Japan on imperial power: the mobility of the mandate of heaven and one unbroken line

It seems the Japanese emperor’s influence is far greater than China’s.

Dynasties in Japan change very slowly; China is different, it changes fast. China’s political legitimacy comes from virtue.

Every ruler proclaimed that he had virtue.

China’s class structure is very clear, administration is very stratified; even the lowest laborers were recorded, taxed, and then given Confucian education.

But in Japan the lower levels were managed by the daimyo — the feudal lords and territorial nobles who held large tracts of land and samurai armies. The daimyo in various regions each held their own territory, with real power far exceeding the emperor’s; the emperor’s power was actually more limited and constrained.

China’s imperial power took the form of acting as the agent of divine authority, and changing the mandate of heaven was allowed; but the Japanese imperial family is one unbroken line, irreplaceable.

Everyone’s subjective experience of the truth, and much of it may be wrong or beside the point

Everyone’s subjective experience of the truth, and much of it may be wrong or beside the point

It easily breeds cultism.

Thinking too much isn’t necessarily true, but it’s yours.

Prosperous times are mediocre; the talent all goes into poetry, having never tasted hardship.

The “craftsman spirit” of Japanese restaurants abroad

A small Japanese shop I saw in Ho Chi Minh

The flavor is a very faithful recreation of Japan’s, both the taste and the environment style, and the environment is even a bit better, with better value.

Japanese restaurants abroad almost represent the “craftsman spirit”; small shops are refined too, the process rigorous, detail control first-rate. Both chains and independent shops maintain a stable high standard.

Whether sushi, ramen, izakaya, or even dessert shops, they maintain a consistent “Japanese standard” globally.

Even kitchen layout, table spacing and staff training are extremely standardized.

A strange encounter with a local

A local holding a Buddha statue

Seemed to know a lot about Buddha statues

He explained to me all kinds of differences between the cities.

Changing the world comes from being unable to tolerate mediocrity

Full of curiosity about this world, but also won’t put on airs.

Or be fake.

This is the person you really want to become

Whether in a back alley or a fancy restaurant

Whether a big company or a small one

Not choosing it because the company gives you some title

But thinking about whether it’s really a company you love

Living truthfully, in whichever country, developed or not

An issue I’ve been learning about all along is how to make myself more real, more sincere.

But the reality is, we can never completely escape the external system of judgment to make choices.

Curiosity is a luxury for many people, it needs enough security as support; when a person is still fighting for survival, it’s hard to keep curiosity pure.

Thoughts on book-breakdown apps

A book-breakdown app?

The purpose of reading isn’t to remember what every book says, it’s to build a sense of how this world works.

It divides into a few types:

Knowledge type: collecting unexpected new cognition, or knowledge content the author summarized well.

Some cases: observing how the author sets out a piece of knowledge, what kind of story or example he used as evidence?

Quote type: collecting some of the author’s distilled sentences; this sentence may be a fairly precise description of something or a concept, and it resonates with you.

Inspiration type: actually triggering some new thinking, insight, ideas emerging.

Actually rather than reading a book it’s flipping through a book, because it’s reading with a main sense of purpose.

The successful strategy behind the $200M ARR book breakdown app

Its core growth engine relies on a precise flywheel effect: ad spending brings paying users, and user revenue is then reinvested in ads, forming a continuous positive loop.

It cleverly sidesteps traditional book copyright.

And uses web payment to avoid the Apple tax.

Plus precise investment-bank-level ROI.

The annual prepayment model accelerates cash turnover.

blinkist is a very good example

How to strike a balance between reading and books

First there’s a recommended “for you,” targeted at

There’s an explore as a space for exploration

If everything has a transformation

If everything has a transformation, how do I understand this transformation?

From something as big as the experience of a country, down to the behavior in some elevator or café.

Let others get off first before you get on, return things to the café or bookstore.

Insignificant behaviors, but they’re how we practice systems thinking: how my behavior affects others or shapes myself, it’s all a transformer process.

In the tech world it should be called a positive-sum game? We helped them become something — is the cognitive ability stronger? Have I become a better person, a wiser person, a better creator, a better quality?

Decency doesn’t require spending money.

Is creation self-centered?

Art, books, software services — is making them really about the creator’s own self at the center?

Existence precedes essence. Once we become aware of our own unique existence, we have a responsibility to contribute that uniqueness to the world — my AI product and my ideas, my understanding of how information should be processed.

We serve others with our own understanding.

If we don’t express or create from the unique perspective we hold, the world loses that unique perspective.

So: keep recording, keep thinking, keep sharing.

Emergence: spontaneous order in complex systems

Thoughts on emergence

The essence of emergence is that in a complex system, low-level individual interactions spontaneously produce new structures at a macro scale.

Like the market economy, it’s a spontaneous continuous thing; no central planner can grasp all the information about production and consumption to accurately price every kind of good — it’s an emergent signal from the interaction of countless buyers and sellers.

My Tokyo contemporaries: order and self-consistency in the “3.11 generation”

This generation of young people in Tokyo

This generation of Japanese Gen Z, my age, may have their hometowns in other Tohoku regions.

Dressed very plainly but still stylish, some Uniqlo clothes.

Each has their own hobbies, likes music, likes jazz, likes art …

Wearing black-framed glasses, in a plain-color Uniqlo shirt, walking in the surging crowd of Shibuya, like a drop of water merging into the sea, completely inconspicuous.

His childhood grew up on the Nintendo DS and the One Piece manga; Japan’s lost three decades, an atmosphere that’s a bit gloomy, but they went to school step by step as usual.

Japan often has disasters — earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes — and he and his generation (called the “3.11 generation”) became more realistic. They no longer hold unrealistic optimism about the future the way their parents did. What they long for is a “small happiness you can hold onto.”

Getting into a private university, and coming to Tokyo; they feel Tokyo is the heart of Japan, the safest place and the most secure.

At interviews, he feels like he’s playing a big cosplay, playing a “mature, motivated, company-loving member of society.” He clearly has zero interest in the company’s business, yet has to show enormous enthusiasm in the interview.

His job is system maintenance. Every morning he squeezes onto the Yamanote Line, packed like sardines, to go to work. At the company he strictly follows the etiquette between seniors and juniors, speaks with complex honorifics, and even if he has his own ideas he never easily puts them forward. Most of his work is executing his boss’s orders and making sure the system doesn’t break.

He rarely works overtime, because Japan is promoting “work style reform.” But he also never leaves on time, always leaving a dozen-odd minutes later than his seniors. He also tries to attend the after-work nomikai (drinking parties), because it’s an important part of building relationships, even if he doesn’t like drinking.

If the keyword for Chinese young people is “competition and confusion,” then the keyword for Japanese young people is “order and self-consistency.”

A utilitarian faith

Is religious belief in China really belief? It’s a bit like buying stocks, hoping the stock will appreciate in the future.

A Ho Chi Minh companion-chat café: quality sacrificed to the business model

I randomly found a café in Ho Chi Minh; basically everyone in the shop was male, it centers on paying girls to chat with you rather than selling coffee.

The coffee was super bad …

It feels like the customers who come here aren’t here for coffee.

From a business angle it seems they have no need to make the coffee well.

It’s really too poorly done, I suspect the owner here doesn’t have an ounce of aesthetics …

Japanese maid cafés at least know the maid service is the finishing touch.

The stages of a city’s rise: from tourist gentrification to local consumption

It seems every city’s rise goes through several stages

Developed cities, like Paris, London, New York, Tokyo

Early on they rose by relying on foreign tourists, then local consumption rose, and finally they reached a balanced stage of development.

I feel this is also a process of globalization and localization reaching a balance and harmony.

It’s also an objective law of economic development.

Every city in the very earliest stage of development is unfair; early local residents are seen as low-value customers.

Tourist gentrification refers to the process by which developing leisure, entertainment and tourism transforms middle-class residential neighborhoods into relatively affluent, exclusive areas.

It also seems to be the basic evolution of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; foreign tourists are willing to pay for experience.

Long term, foreign exchange income and an improved international reputation ultimately benefit the whole city, and lay the foundation for the rise of the local consumer market; the infrastructure built is ultimately given back to the whole city.

Shanghai seems to have gone through this stage too, a shift from “the discriminated-against” to “the discriminators.”

It’s like a kind of “intergenerational transmission” of psychological trauma.

What historical inevitability teaches us

Even without Socrates, someone else would have appeared.

Ancient Greece’s social conditions at the time — the city-state system, developed commerce, relatively open thought — really did create the soil for philosophical speculation.

But on one hand there’s historical inevitability, and on the other it’s actually hard to say how an individual could be replaced in this process; maybe the trajectory of cultural development would be similar, but the details and depth would inevitably differ.

Earlier a blogger said it was because of gender status in Dalat and other reasons

Earlier a blogger said it was because of gender status in Dalat and other reasons; a lot of the people working on the street are women, and you rarely see men out running stalls.

Actually there are two essential reasons. Dalat’s economic structure is mainly tourism and agriculture; these industries are friendlier to women, and men are more likely to go to industrial cities or strong-economy cities to find work.

Then there’s the cultural reason in Vietnam: Vietnam’s female labor force participation rate is relatively high globally.

The new Gen Z stems from the preference for sons over daughters: the proportion of males is far higher than females, while overall the ratio only tends toward balance, with women at 50.1%. The Vietnam War reduced the male population, especially among the prime working-age labor force aged 25-54, which forced women into the labor market to fill the gap.

An investor’s real value isn’t money, or isn’t only money

An investor’s real value isn’t money, or isn’t only money, it’s their judgment and their network.

If you ask them for money, they get very defensive: “this person wants to take something from me.”

What is investment money essentially? I feel at the most fundamental level it’s the natural product of a relationship of trust; the other party believes in you, building trust matters.

Systems thinking model

A holistic approach that treats a complex problem as an interconnected whole of parts, rather than breaking it into isolated parts for analysis. It comes from engineering and systems science, used to understand the behavior of complex systems.

It’s generally used in a few scenarios: systems modeling and learning, business strategy, personal decision-making, and understanding investments.

It focuses on the whole and interconnectedness, feedback loops, and dynamic evolution, avoiding short-sighted behavior or decisions.

In complex scenarios, choose the simple one

Among multiple explanations with the same predictive power, choose the one with the fewest assumptions and the greatest simplicity.

Unnecessary entities should not be multiplied.

Whether it’s systems modeling, personal decisions, or business decisions, stay concise and simple. When one question has two equally valid explanations, choose the one with fewer assumptions.

Occam’s Razor — essentially it’s about eliminating noise and being as simple as possible.

A very useful model for deep reasoning: second-order thinking

It’s essentially deep reasoning and judgment about first-order effects, reasoning through to long-term and indirect consequences.

Think about a problem at the second, third, or even further levels.

You keep asking, and then? And then? What’s the evolution over time and the chain reaction?

For example, when shopping, think about what financial pressure overconsumption would create, and weigh how to consume and invest accordingly.

Opportunity cost

Mentioning this concept: it comes from economics. Choosing one option and giving up the most valuable return among the alternatives means that in choosing A you lose the greatest benefit that choosing B might have brought.

In choosing A, you lose the greatest benefit that choosing B might have brought.

So it requires that when deciding, you clearly define the alternatives and list each one’s expected return and cost. For example, when investing, calculate the difference in expected gain from investing in A versus B.

Avoid looking only at absolute returns one-sidedly; consider the profit and loss from the relative difference.

The core, I think, is comparison: through mathematical calculation, list a comparison sheet, and finally choose.

On the growth of a city’s GDP

Industrial structure and quality matter especially to a city.

They determine the city’s growth potential and sustainability.

Understanding it as a positive loop: industrial upgrading → high-income employment → consumption upgrading → market expansion → increased investment → industrial upgrading.

From this you can see that industrial structure is also the root of the concentration of capital, talent and technology.

Some evaluation metrics:

industrial structure and quality

ability to attract inflows of factors

scale of market demand

institutional and policy environment

the city’s stage of development

The inflow effect of key factors:

quality enterprises enter -> talent gathers -> entrepreneurship becomes active -> industrial clusters -> more enterprises enter

For emerging cities, the most fundamental thing is the ability to attract inflows of factors, and then, very importantly, the corresponding policy and market demand.

Different types of cities should adjust the weight of each factor according to their own characteristics:

resource-based cities: more emphasis on industrial transformation (industrial structure weight raised to 40%).

coastal open cities: more emphasis on foreign trade and foreign investment (factor inflow weight raised).

inland central cities: more emphasis on regional spillover capacity (market demand weight raised).

science-and-technology innovation cities: more emphasis on talent and R&D (talent weight within factor inflow increased).

The core definition of a dual economic structure

A dual economic structure usually exists in developing countries, or cities in the middle of modernization: two utterly different economic sectors, differing greatly in resource allocation, production efficiency and income levels.

Three stages:

Unlimited labour supply,

the modern sector uses its profits for reinvestment and expands production scale, absorbing further labour, forming a “profit → investment → employment → more profit” cycle.

Change in the traditional sector: the outflow of labour doesn’t affect agricultural output (because the marginal productivity is zero), and rural income stays at subsistence level.

Labour shortage appears (the “Lewis turning point”).

The marginal productivity of the traditional sector starts to rise: as labour decreases, agricultural production has to improve efficiency (adopting new technology, for instance), rural income rises accordingly, and the urban-rural gap narrows.

The two sectors merge (the “commercialization stage”).

Wage levels in the traditional and modern sectors converge, labour movement between the two sectors is decided by market mechanisms (marginal productivity), the dual structure disappears, and the economy enters a “unified” stage of development.

Latecomer advantage and latecomer disadvantage

It refers to countries or companies that started relatively late being able, in the course of development, to use the technology, experience, management models and even institutions that the forerunners already explored, thereby avoiding detours and achieving development, even catching up, at lower cost and faster speed.

For example: the rise of Japan and South Korea.

Latecomer disadvantage is one of the important reasons many countries fall into the middle-income trap.

Many developing countries, after reaching middle-income level, see economic growth slow or even stall, and fail to successfully enter the ranks of high-income countries.

The main cause is excessive reliance on imitation and a lack of independent innovation.

The shackles of format: the tug of war between LLM output quality and format

Does the output format of an LLM affect the quality of its output content?

If you ask an LLM to write an article in JSON, in markdown, and in yaml, how do the articles rank in quality?

markdown is still the most efficient and readable format, natural language support is always the best, and it’s considered the most suitable format for article writing. It allows headings, lists and links and other formatting.

But as models get smarter, the bigger, cleverer models actually show much less difference in format output.

The action-guide module in the feed

A block can also be an action guide, or an actions operation

For example, for the tasks the block pushes to you, you execute them one by one.

Feed design: balancing LLM output structure with business rendering

About the design of the feed part

Two parts:

In the business you need to render a specified structure.

Then there’s the question of whether the user’s prompt needs to define the structure.

One thing is that the LLM needs to output according to the structure we need.

The other is that the business program needs to render according to the structure that suits the LLM.

But the user can define the prompt themselves.

The user can perhaps define a basic example in the prompt.

How does the user pass the example conveniently? The user doesn’t know the rules.

I think when the user doesn’t know the rules, you can leave it to the LLM to improvise, and allow defining a general template.

But the rules still need to be passed through a specified rules file.

Using blinkist to quickly read through a chapter

Actually it’s still a bit unfamiliar to operate, as far as fast-reading content goes,

The scarcity of attention

Actually there are a lot of creators on the streets or on the road performing or creating in public.

Sometimes I stop, sometimes I walk gently past.

Actually if you stop, whether because of an experience of beauty, an emotional touch, or a momentary pause or thought, it’s a kind of recognition of the value of the creation.

Especially in today’s age of information overload, content that makes someone stop for more than a minute is already scarce; attention is essentially a currency.

Giving something back then naturally becomes a kind of moral obligation.

So what kind of value can make a “user” stop for more than a minute? In today’s scarcity of attention, at what moments are they willing to pause, think, even pay?

Judging the value of information

Information value = relevance × timeliness × actionability × cognitive readiness

On the time dimension, it shifts with the world’s complexity and its course.

Relevance isn’t just person-to-person; value depends on the receiver’s cognitive structure and capacity for action. Value can be activated. The real value of information lies in whether it can be turned into cognition or a framework.

All information is predictable. For us, what matters is predicting the potential for information to be transformed for a particular user at a particular moment.

Claude’s Shift + Tab

I feel like Claude’s Shift+Tab plan mode and auto-edit mode

are like when you’re doing a task yourself: if you want to discuss a fairly firm idea of your own, use plan mode and treat it as a collaborator.

If it’s something you trust more, just hand it to Claude to handle — auto-edit is enough.

High-altitude apparent temperature is usually very low, because it’s far from the surface layer

The atmosphere’s main direct heat source is radiation from the ground, not direct radiation from the sun.

So although high altitude still gets direct sunlight, the temperature isn’t very high, and a big part of the reason is that the atmosphere’s insulation effect is weakened.

But the burning feeling on your skin is very obvious: the air at high altitude is thin, the atmosphere’s weakening effect on solar radiation is small, so the direct solar radiation reaching the surface, especially ultraviolet radiation, is very strong.

This also seems to explain why there’s such a thing as two different heavens on the same day: after the sun sets the temperature drops abruptly, because the air lacks effective heat storage.

A brief intro to brain regions

The part above the midbrain is called the forebrain.

The hindbrain is made up of the pons, the medulla and the cerebellum.

The cerebellum contains neurons that regulate muscle activity.

A hostel roommate and inner adaptability

Recording one thing about sleeping last night

Last night the hostel owner said there was another Chinese person in the room; at first I was quite delighted, I’d met a compatriot.

Last night I was woken up, in the middle of the night; it’s a hostel, and my roommate didn’t care about my feelings at all. I don’t know, maybe because he knew someone else was in the room… he didn’t check, turned on the light, and scared me awake. Then after I made some noise, he fell asleep again, which left me super alert for the rest of the night, waking up easily. He likes to snore, so I got woken up several times, very sensitive.

What really struck me is that most people actually don’t live inside your perceptual world; they don’t even know that their existence or behavior affects others.

Is it really the objective noise and light, or is it that my expectation of other people’s behavior was violated?

Actually I’m still a fragile person, my inner self still isn’t strong enough, I still want a certain control over the environment.

And on the flip side, isn’t it also judging others by my own standards, then getting angry that they don’t meet that standard?

External perfection can never be achieved, but inner adaptability can strengthen without limit.

This can be understood and tolerated, but it doesn’t deserve to be indulged.

Meditation is a new way of living

I used to think meditation meant closing your eyes in a dark room, focusing on your breath, letting thoughts flow through (which is of course correct).

But for me, meditation is more a way of living — feeling the beauty of life. It’s a deep kind of awareness, escaping the trap of a superficial life.

For example, in a café, focusing on the details — dissecting, listening, feeling. Go simple, don’t be complicated, be simple.

The motorbike driver took me to a rather hidden café

On the way we passed a little grove.

The driver seemed happy too.

Slowed down.

Hummed a little tune.

Just naturally — humans instinctively love those scenes, that sense of atmosphere.