November 2025 Thought Notes: Ideas and History, Daily Life, Cities

Murakami’s essay “Abandoning a Cat: What I Talk About When I Talk About My Father”

Haruki Murakami wrote an essay, “Abandoning a Cat: What I Talk About When I Talk About My Father”, about his relationship with his father, war memory and the complexity of human nature. The “abandoned cat” in the title is a detail from his childhood: they once abandoned a cat. That event later became a symbol for him of “abandonment” and “responsibility”

So it’s about people’s tendency when facing troublesome things: for example something used to please a person, then became troublesome or out of control, and people tend to want to discard it

So to some degree, alongside personal restraint, some external restraint is also needed

People seek advantage and avoid harm, and tend to find the energy-optimal solution, so changing jobs, changing partners, changing cities are also extensions of this mechanism

But the problem is that human evolution is limited

Once human rationality and empathy developed, this primitive algorithm conflicts with morality

So we understand why we avoid, and at the same time despise ourselves for avoiding

Looking through a generational lens

Even if it’s due to biological instinct or cultural influence

There’s still a very fascinating part deep in the human subconscious

The resonance zone between biological instinct and cultural adaptation

From an evolutionary psychology angle, “female mate choice” does have a biological basis

But individual humans aren’t slaves to genes. The cortical structure of the human brain allows us to go beyond instinct to design institutions and morality - birth control, art, education and romantic love are all reprogramming of the “primitive biological logic”

Culture is like a fast-evolving shell that can complete adjustments in a few decades that genes would take thousands of years to make

For example, taking health as beauty, taking pale skin as beauty, taking plumpness as beauty…

This is a way for humans to find a new balance in the world

The problem is many people haven’t transcended biological instinct

—— Our brains still want to “eat more and take more”, but culture requires us to be temperate, to share, to reason

—— We’re born with “in-group preference”, but morality tells us to be equal and inclusive

In the new social era, culture is like a ceaseless tide; those who can better rewrite instinct with culture (emphasizing education, cooperation, institutional innovation) occupy a dominant position in society

This is the natural selection of culture

I keep thinking: on one side the Western religious system, blocked by politics

I keep thinking: on one side the Western religious system, but blocked by politics; on the other side the Confucian system shattered by the Cultural Revolution

In the structure we’re left with now, official discourse seems unable to fill the gap, and the new ideology hasn’t been able to provide spiritual comfort at the level of daily life. So most people are left with only the logic of utility and survival, with no answer to “what do you live for”

The public has noise instead of meaning, and fragmented content filling their time

Will future technology and the information era also give rise to a new kind of product

One that can inherit the social ethics of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trust, and also let individuals freely search for meaning

This is a process of rebuilding the sense of meaning

Lung Ying-tai

In her writing - whether “Big River, Big Sea: 1949” about the exile and suffering after the Chinese Civil War, or “Watching You Go” and “Dear Andreas” about generational communication - what she truly cares about is “how people are oppressed by history, and how they survive within memory”

“When I write about 1949, I’m not writing about who won or lost, but about every small person pushed along by the times.”

Her political ethic is “compassion” and “understanding”, not “loyalty” and “hatred”

Not one of the Nationalist Party people of that era failed to hold a deep apology to their mothers

How to describe victory

Darwin’s natural law, survival of the fittest; from a biological angle, victory is a synonym for survival

“Victory” means resources, reproduction and continuation. A predator catching prey is victory, a group driving off a rival is victory

From a sociological angle, victory is a product of narrative; history depends on others’ narratives — whoever wins holds the narrative authority

War is the father of all things; any victory is only a temporary balance; one side’s order is built on another side’s disintegration; victory isn’t an endpoint but a brief state, a stage of stability, a stage of self-consistency

In war, is the word “victory” a prophetic trap

Who occupied whose territory, who signed the instrument of surrender, who kept hold of power - these are political or military victories. But if you broaden the view to the level of humanity as a whole, you’ll find: no “victor” in any war escapes the cost of war itself

The victors lose lives, trust and future often as much as the losers, only covered up by different narratives

Qin unified the six states, yet perished in the second generation

So what is victory? It’s just how we narrate it

A very important point depends on the values we pursue

Whether there is a value system for victory

Is it the side that won by starting the war

Or the small handful on both sides who wanted to promote peace

The ancient city of Chun’an

It sits underwater in today’s Qiandao Lake (the Xin’an River Reservoir) - submerged when the reservoir filled in 1959

After the city was submerged, the underwater ruins were relatively well preserved; city walls, house remains, and components of memorial archways have been detected

Underwater ancient cities are rare: long-term immersion preserves a certain degree of the original appearance, which is relatively uncommon in China’s ancient city preservation

Actually there’s also Shicheng, another ancient city that evolved over a thousand years

It was submerged in 1959 when the Xin’an River Reservoir (hydropower station) filled

It’s also quite magical

During the clearing process Chun’an county town was basically razed, but Sui’an county town was preserved because the water level rose quickly, there was little time for relocation, and on top of that under the political pressure of the Great Leap Forward and given transport conditions, some migrants took almost nothing but a few necessary pieces of furniture and means of production; many cultural relics and historic sites in the city couldn’t be relocated or rescued in time, nor could the reservoir bed be thoroughly cleared, so the city walls, the great majority of houses and the surviving historic sites were largely preserved, and more was demolished in the north than the south, with the north better preserved

So it also escaped the Cultural Revolution, in a way

On the question of identity and position

The difference between Westerners and Chinese

It’s not just where I’m from; it’s more who I am, what group I belong to

Traditional Chinese culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism, emphasizing the layered nesting of “family - clan - hometown - state”. Identity is defined more by the network of relationships than by the individual

Western culture is deeply influenced by Christianity plus Enlightenment thought, emphasizing that the individual is autonomous, independent, with an independent will

How important personal values are, how important personal choice is, and personal rights

The way county gazetteers record things is frighteningly calm

“Few houses did not collapse”

“Starving people go out in groups to beg for food”

“Peeling tree bark, gathering wild plants, digging up Guanyin clay to stave off hunger”

“The primary school closed”

“Nearly a hundred people starved to death”

“Leaving in groups to flee famine”

These are all concise statements, without emotion, without wailing.

But precisely because there is no wailing, they are so real they make you cold.

This era isn’t remote; it’s just the generation of our grandfathers, just one or two generations of silence

So we say civilization really was hard-won, obtained through trial and error at an extremely high cost by countless people

Suffering isn’t the norm; it’s the everyday

The Free China Movement

In the early Cold War (around the early 1950s), a secret anti-communist operation against the People’s Republic of China (the mainland) led by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - the “Free China Movement” (also called the “Free China Resistance Movement” or “Asian Resistance Movement”) and its affiliated agent training activities

At the time the US was carrying out a large-scale anti-communist deployment in Asia, providing resources and training

Participants came mainly from Hong Kong, including intellectuals concerned about the nation (who couldn’t accept leadership by either the Communist Party or Chiang Kai-shek), young Nationalist officers and soldiers from Rennie’s Mill (Tiu Keng Leng), and out-of-school, unemployed youth. They joined out of political conviction or basic livelihood needs

The goal was “to build a beautiful ‘Free China’”. The specific task was airdropping into the mainland, that is, dispatching trained guerrillas to infiltrate the mainland to conduct anti-communist guerrilla warfare, intelligence collection and other secret activities, hoping to subvert or weaken the PRC regime

The training site was Saipan (the “Saipan cadre school”). Trainees there underwent one year and two months of guerrilla warfare, demolition, parachuting and other agent training

The mode of operation was four-man airdrop teams, choosing the guerrillas’ hometowns as drop points, intending to use the familiar environment to operate

Before airdrop missions, each graduate from Saipan was issued a pistol, a submachine gun, ammunition, a radio transmitter, enough dry rations for a month, and renminbi; then they were secretly flown to the mountains of some province, and jumped

Some people’s parachutes didn’t open and they died on the spot. Most people, as soon as they landed, were tied up by local residents and sent off to be shot

On November 29, 1952, a CIA C-47 transport plane on a resupply mission to an airdropped team was shot down by PLA troops lying in ambush; the pilot and navigator died on the spot, and two Americans who parachuted out were captured: instructors at the CIA’s Atsugi spy training facility in Japan, John T. Downey and Richard George Fecteau. It caused a diplomatic conflict between China and the US, and the program was terminated

At the moment of decisive victory, the victor is often not a glossy hero

At the moment of decisive victory, the victor is often not a glossy hero but a ragged, exhausted survivor. This “laurel of victory” is already broken when it arrives

For example the fall of Rome; that moment seemed like civilization retreating, primitive and chaotic

For example the late Qing; some people still supported the Qing because, in their view, those armies of mixed composition were a force aggravating turmoil, not a legitimate royal army

If you look at it on a cosmic scale

Nothing necessarily has meaning

Everything is flowing, changing, centerless

The world is void

Once external meaning fails, there are only two paths:

carry on using social meaning

create your own value

Most people choose A, because creating meaning is hard; it’s a topic of life engineering

People who don’t answer these questions can’t truly leave the old narrative

The old narrative collapses → the new narrative is brewing

See through society’s playbook

Start to question the “stable life”

Feel empty, adrift, lost

At this point people will understand their situation and think about and construct their own meaning

The cognitive trap of treating consequences as motives

It’s really about reversal and dislocation

Knowing the causal relationship between A and B, A produces B; when explaining, deriving B from A is theoretically not wrong either

It’s not that someone wants to eliminate someone,

it’s that the way society is organized is upgrading,

and the upgrade itself squeezes out marginal survival models.

Conspiracy theories explain structural change as “designed oppression”,

which is the easiest and most cathartic explanation cognitively,

but it isn’t the logic of how reality runs

When society’s overall productivity rises, low-productivity jobs will inevitably be squeezed out

And institutions like social security merely ensure this squeezing process won’t directly crush people to death

The sea of suffering is boundless; turn back and the shore is there

People’s suffering, troubles and obsessions are like a boundless sea

If you can stop being obsessed, let go of desire, and wake up

That moment is reaching the other shore, escaping suffering

Don’t swim deeper into the suffering; stop, turn your mind, and you can come ashore

The sea of suffering is an infinite loop in cognitive science; obsession and troubles trap the brain in a closed, high-energy-consuming negative state

Turning the mind in Buddhism is like cognitive reappraisal in psychology: thinking about thinking, realizing that you’re thinking inside the sea of suffering, then interrupting it, modifying the variable, restructuring the framework

Buddhism’s “turn back and the shore is there” is subtraction: the world is like a sea of suffering, all produced by mental appearances, seek inward

Recognize the illusory nature of desire and obsession, thereby liberating yourself from the cycle of suffering

Camus embracing the boulder is addition: facing it directly, resisting, committing. Clearly recognizing the futility of the struggle, yet still choosing to create your own meaning and dignity in the repetitive act of pushing the boulder

Lots of news lately in China about unfriendliness to people with disabilities

The more prominent cases are in the US, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand

In Shanghai, 73.9% of wheelchair routes are delayed due to lack of dedicated facilities; city sidewalks are often crowded, full of steps and with inconsistent ramps, making it hard for wheelchair users to get around. Rural areas are worse; medical and educational resources are unevenly distributed, and disability employment rates and inclusion scores rank in the global lower-middle range

Traditionally, disability is often seen as “personal misfortune” or a problem to “overcome” rather than a social responsibility. This leads to insufficient public awareness and the existence of discrimination (like restrictions in employment and education), and although there are policies for infrastructure, enforcement is weak. For example, some universities can still restrict the enrollment of certain students with disabilities. This mindset makes people with disabilities “invisible”, and social inclusion is low

On top of that, because resources tilt toward big cities, rural areas and small and medium cities lack infrastructure

Many Chinese cities and buildings derive from traditional design (like threshold beams, stepped entrances) and didn’t consider accessibility needs. Even amid modernization, sidewalks often break off abruptly, ramps are too steep or elevators aren’t open, making things inconvenient for wheelchair users and people with visual impairments. Rapid urbanization prioritized economic efficiency over inclusion, so infrastructure retrofitting lags

Monks walking can really find the feeling

I realized this feeling

Adjusting the body: climbing is equal to walking meditation

Long, regular, uninterrupted movement naturally guides the breath into one

When the body is at ease the mind is at ease; when bodily action is settled → the mind quiets itself

Thoughts continuing one after another, without interruption → a state resembling the first jhana

Appearances arising is not enlightenment; it is produced by the state of mind

If the mind is pure, the state turns with the mind

Whoever sees appearances is seeing the shadows of their own mind

It’s not enlightenment, but no-self

Normally I am very thick; in the flow, I became thin

Body and mind in one place, a state of forgetting the self

Walking, standing, sitting and lying down, nothing is not in concentration

What the mind creates is not true enlightenment

True enlightenment must come after appearances cease

Bullets are amazing; they overturned the traditional field of martial arts

If in the past a swordsman’s superhuman physical explosiveness and agility, reaction speed far beyond ordinary people, plus prediction of the opponent, made dodging thrown knives and crossbow bolts possible

But the speed of a handgun bullet is ten times that of a thrown knife

The speed of a rifle bullet is ten times that of a dodged crossbow bolt

A person’s fastest reflex limit is about 0.1 seconds

In 0.1 seconds a rifle bullet can travel over 100 meters

So by the time you hear the gunshot and think, the bullet is already inside your body

At first, Northern and Southern Buddhism: in the Northern Wei, the throne and state led

At the very beginning, Northern and Southern Buddhism were different: the Northern Wei was led by imperial power and the state, while the Southern dynasties were led by scholar-officials and aristocratic clans

One concrete expression was carving cave temples and building giant Buddha statues (such as Longmen); the other was building monasteries, with an emphasis on doctrine and thinking

By the Sui and Tang periods the country was unified and Northern and Southern cultures merged. Only when the North’s “practice of meditation” combined with the South’s “speculation on doctrine” did a truly sinicized Buddhist school like Chan (Zen) emerge — one that shaped the next thousand years

The wisdom of Chan goes beyond religion; understood as practical philosophy it goes deeper. Apple also drew deeply on Chan. Chan is Buddhism absorbing Confucian and Daoist thought — the process of Buddhism becoming Chinese

The division into Northern and Southern schools and the establishment of sudden enlightenment: under Hongren’s lineage, “South Neng, North Xiu” split apart, with the Northern school advocating “gradual cultivation” and the Southern school “sudden enlightenment.” The thought represented by Huineng’s Platform Sutra established the creed of “not relying on words, a special transmission outside the scriptures, pointing directly at the human mind, seeing one’s nature and becoming a Buddha”

Chan is a “revolution of the individual.” It handed the “final right of interpretation” of becoming a Buddha back from the hands of “monks/authorities” to “every single individual”

Ancient Rome was completely obsessed with Chinese silk

They even debated banning silk several times, because silk was too thin and too luxurious, and was even thought to cause Romans’ “moral decline”

But they didn’t know silk came from China; they only knew it came from a distant eastern country called “Seres”

So there’s a phenomenon:

Rome exported huge amounts of precious metals

China and Central Asia absorbed large amounts of gold and silver

The peak civilizational mismatch was China’s Eastern Han and the flourishing of the Silk Road

But the two great civilizations were separated by Parthia (Persia) in between

The Persian Empire deliberately monopolized the profits of the middleman trade

and blocked direct exchange between the two great empires

This is Persia: the central control of the Silk Road, the middle of the Eurasian continent

It controlled the “throat” of almost every overland trade route

China → Central Asia → Persia → the Mediterranean → Rome/Byzantium

Persia wouldn’t force others to speak Persian or convert to the Persian religion; on the contrary, it let:

• Egyptians continue as priests of Egyptian temples

• Babylonians keep using cuneiform

• Jews were even allowed, under Persian rule, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple

There was a cultural magnanimity and confidence

If there had been no Persia:

• Chinese silk would not have reached Rome

• Indian Buddhism would not have spread into Central Asia

• Greek philosophy would not have been preserved by the Arabs and carried back to Europe

Few civilizations in history have managed this

The “Axial Age”

It’s a very famous historical concept; unlike the shock of the Industrial Revolution, it’s more like a big bang of human spirit and thought

Between 800 BCE and 200 BCE (roughly equivalent to China’s Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods), in several far-apart, mutually isolated civilizational centers on Earth, a group of great thinkers emerged almost simultaneously and independently

These people opened a wholly new way of thinking for humanity; the philosophy, religion and ethics they proposed shaped the spiritual core of their respective civilizations for the next two thousand years, and to this day we still live inside their “spiritual legacy”

They raised some basic inward-looking questions: who we are, how we should live, the nature of the world

Before this era, human civilization was diverse, primitive, centered on myth and ritual

After this era, humanity’s spiritual development began to revolve around these “axial” ideas

Call this software

By comparison, what came after the Industrial Revolution is a hardware revolution

The “Axial Age” decided “why we live”

The “Industrial Revolution” decided “how we survive”

It changed the physical face of the Earth and the form of human existence within 200 years

The AI era is called the third revolution in the human process

With AI behind us, we again need to return inward, to walk inward

When AI amplifies our tiniest biases globally at a speed we can’t understand, individual “virtue” is already powerless. What we need is “algorithm ethics” and “system ethics,” and that part of the “code” is missing from the “software” of the Axial Age

The driving forces of the world’s progress

The world’s basic operation is maintained by the majority (agriculture, production, transport, medicine, engineering)

and the world’s direction is changed by a minority (technology, thought, institutions, war, culture)

I can’t help reflecting: does the world really need democracy?

From the standpoint of anthropology, or of value systems, everyone yearns for fairness, yearns for the world’s recognition

But speaking phenomenologically, research in psychology and game theory shows a phenomenon

Collective wisdom, when independence is sufficient, is more accurate than individual judgment

That is, if everyone’s judgment is mutually independent

and the information isn’t manipulated or driven by emotion — that’s the basic premise — then the consensus reached is closer to the true value

But in reality, information, public opinion and emotion couple together

Groups are often not thinking but imitating

This leads to what we call the conformity effect, the herd effect, opinion bubbles, collective blind spots

So, relatively speaking, most people have asymmetric information, most people’s time is fragmented or spent busy surviving, with no investment in deep thinking, and on top of that risk appetites differ

So the key leaps in history come from a minority of people who “think + act” making choices the collective doesn’t understand

The Camino de Santiago in Spain has a very wide reach

The Camino de Santiago in Spain has a very wide reach, covering many European countries

Some people walk from Paris, from Switzerland, from the Netherlands, from Germany, even from Israel — all of it works

On the popular routes, relatively speaking, Camino-related organizations provide advice, lodging and assistance

The main route is the Northern Way, also called the Napoleon Route, the Camino del Norte

The French Way is the most popular one, the Camino Francés

The whole way feels like walking through the United Nations; every day you meet travelers from all over the world, each setting out with different reasons and stories, and it’s wonderful — and ninety percent set off alone, and the most common case is meeting like-minded people on the road and then walking together

Catedral de Sevilla

The full name of the Catedral de Sevilla is the Cathedral of Saint Mary

The largest Gothic cathedral in the world

In the 12th century, Seville was an important city under Islamic dynastic rule. This was originally a great mosque, with a broad courtyard and a tall minaret.

In 1248, Christianity retook Seville, and this mosque was converted into a church.

Then in 1401, the city and church leaders said a line that would be praised ever after:

“Let us build a church so great that those who see it will think us mad.”

A church — walking inside gives you a sense of smallness

The Main Altarpiece (Retablo Mayor): a giant “forest” of golden statues, carved by many craftsmen over nearly 100 years, one of the most intricate and spectacular Gothic altarpieces in the world

The tomb of Columbus: the church holds the coffin of Christopher Columbus — Spain’s era ambition of holding up a New World

A symbol of the flourishing trade between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic

A witness to culture’s transition from Islam to Christianity

A political and spiritual symbol of the golden age of the Spanish Empire

Religion, the state and political parties all belong to “imagined communities”

A narrative method unique to humans

The author Benedict Anderson called the nation an “Imagined Community”

❶ Religion = jointly believing in the same transcendent being, forming a value system

❷ The state = jointly believing that you belong to the same political community

❸ A political party = jointly believing in a kind of social organization and the legitimacy of power

Each of them has its own set of narrative system

Religion’s authority comes from the sacred, which is “unprovable but feelable”

The authority of any political party comes from historical narrative + social organizing capacity + the state’s violent power

Deductive reasoning combined with structured thinking

Right now this feels very anti-fragmented-thinking, used to build a rigorous knowledge framework

The core of deductive reasoning is actually starting from general principles or known facts and deriving a specific conclusion; logically it’s like an “if … then …” chain, making sure each step rests on the reliable foundation of the previous one

Concept A (premise): all mammals need to breathe oxygen

So concept B (inference): dogs are mammals

So concept C (conclusion): dogs need to breathe oxygen

This is a person’s cognitive habit and education system: decompose -> link -> verify

The method used in decomposition is actually element breakdown or first-principles thinking

This method and the resulting thinking system can easily be reused in other fields or problems

It mainly relies on deliberate practice, being trained by the environment or daily life

Complicated people or simple people, as I perceive them

For things a person can’t see through, can’t get a read on, can’t immediately classify as “good person/bad person” or “friend/enemy,” they instinctively feel threatened, and so they stick on a label called “complicated”

Everyone’s evaluation system is different

Including that many people think quiet people are complicated

people who think a lot are complicated

people of the older generation with complicated experiences are complicated

Undeniably, such people do relatively need more tools to peel off their shells

including even the painful complexity of their growing-up experience, the over-reactive defense system that formed from it

Their complexity, setting its source aside, can naturally be understood

So this complexity is the complexity of technique

The other kind of complicated person is the kind I understand as complicated: they study patterns, causality, the Dao; they see the facts clearly, they stay close to the scene, they think a lot, and their complexity is rigor and seeking truth — this is the unfolding of the Dao; in essence they have a self-consistent system, and it’s the complexity of that system

As I understand it, analyzed through cause and effect: people who look very complicated are often simple, and people who look simple may have a really complicated core

All beings suffer; so-called complexity is just everyone struggling in the sea of suffering in different postures

The underlying structure of behavior and thought

Still the old structure: the underlying structure, the underlying drive, the middle-layer model, and the execution system

The underlying structure is the drive in human nature

This is physiology, instinct, desire, emotion

For example hunger, sexual desire, fear, curiosity, belonging, a sense of control, a sense of meaning

These are primal; they don’t listen to explanation

The middle-layer model — the model can naturally be trained and adjusted, and as I understand it, it’s also a way of how we understand this world

One comes from the middle-layer model; this is how we understand the world, and it can be

past experience

personal belief

self-narrative (what kind of person I myself am)

the understanding of the world, the way we understand the world

Finally the execution mode: concrete behavior, concrete choices, concrete actions

Zoning out happens because of a conflict between drive and mental model: the mental model thinks it’s important but the brain finds it boring, so you go scroll Douyin

Focus is the alignment of drive and behavior

Action needs a clear single target (One Target)

Input sources can’t be chaotic (input must converge, not be scattered)

The environment must support the goal (don’t fight the environment)

In processing, a large model is actually the same: to ensure action, you first have to ensure the LLM’s output is clear and has a certain structure; with structure the execution cost becomes very low. To ensure the output is clean, you then have to ensure the input is clean and the information is high quality

Human consciousness looks complicated, but from a systems-theory view, it’s really doing one thing:

constantly making checks based on the difference between the world and the self

When you learn to observe the structure of your own system, instead of being trapped inside the system, you’ll find:

you’re actually not “trying hard to focus”

you’re designing the way your own mind operates

Do people necessarily have a sense of lack and a need for mystery?

Mystery isn’t an attribute that gets added on; it’s a huge existential gap that we humans, on the basis of our own finitude, necessarily produce when facing the infinite and transcendent (the Dao, God, Buddha, the cosmos)

Mystery = possibility. Precisely because the future is unknown (mysterious) do we believe effort is meaningful and that miracles can happen

This is even why certain peoples and groups with no religion still have myths; myths are essentially the same — rooted in history, wrapped and narrated as stories, to carry what can’t be explained by logic and what concerns grand human themes (good and evil, life and death, origins). The mystery of myth lies in its symbolism, pointing to the archetypes deep inside us

If people had no sense of mystery, they would lose their curiosity about the unknown, art would die out, and the spirit would become empty

Wei-Jin Xuanxue was indeed an intellectual way out after the “path to sagehood” was blocked: it took the Dao as substance — the Dao is not a creator but a natural, spontaneous generative principle, where “natural” means spontaneous, the way in which existence exists. The essence of the Dao transcends language and logic and is necessarily mysterious; if it can be understood, it turns into technique (note that the “Dao of patterns” (Dao 2) is the “manifestation” or “projection” of the “ultimate Dao” (Dao 1) in a particular field)

“Mingjiao emerges from the natural,” meaning: human ethics (filial piety, brotherly respect, loyalty, trustworthiness) are not man-made coercion but the expression of following the natural “Dao.” From the cosmos to the human heart, from “Dao” to “nature,” Xuanxue always pressed one ultimate question:

— between heaven and earth, how can a person both follow nature and keep their dignity?

The Xuanxue narrative shown by the Longmen Grottoes

After Xuanxue reached its peak in Wei-Jin, from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through Sui-Tang it gradually merged deeply with Buddhism and Daoism, its features as an independent school of thought weakening, until in the Tang-Song period it dissolved into the grander system of the convergence of the three teachings

So the Longmen Grottoes were carved in the reign of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei (late 5th century), exactly the key stage when Xuanxue was receding and Buddhist learning was flourishing

“Heaven’s mandate and the Dharmakāya are one; imperial power is the protector of the Dharma.”

Ultimately, returning to the essence of the Dao means drawing close to the world’s operating laws and operating with them

But Xuanxue was in the end an elite philosophy, solving intellectuals’ spiritual anxiety; for ordinary people it was too abstract

Buddhist learning offered a settling of the afterlife: it speaks of “reincarnation,” “karmic retribution” and “nirvana,” and provides a clear spiritual structure and an ultimate purpose — there is a way out after death

Buddhist learning had a monastic system and could become a substitute mechanism for social stability and order, and it could also localize and become metaphysics, using “nothingness,” “being,” “nature” and “substance” to explain Buddhist doctrine

Buddhist learning is the “more complete transcendent system” after Xuanxue: it can speak of the substance of the cosmos and also settle the souls of all beings

Marxism looks more like it’s dissected from a worldly and rational angle

Marxism looks more like it’s dissected from a worldly and rational angle: once humanity thoroughly understands the world and masters science and the relations of production, religion will naturally die out

The meaning of this statement is really that religion is a spiritual reflection under specific socioeconomic conditions, a psychological projection when the laws of the world aren’t yet grasped, a kind of human sense of lack and mystery

But the human species itself dooms us to limitations, so humans are only ever constantly approaching understanding, and religion will always have its own reason to exist

Religion and science are essentially two sides, yin and yang

But political parties really do have a certain power-structure problem with religion, and the worldviews of the two sides also conflict

The ontological mapping of Gödel’s incompleteness:

No system can fully prove its own completeness from within itself

Humanity’s understanding of the world always carries this “self-recursive blind spot”

The single-line determinism of materialism

Human consciousness isn’t produced out of thin air; it comes from the material practice of people with nature and society

But it also overemphasizes the one-way determining effect of matter on consciousness

Consciousness (ideas, technology, culture) can in turn change material conditions

Matter isn’t a single factor

Dialectical thinking — dialectical materialism emphasizes that contradiction drives development

The Longmen Grottoes: understanding time

The Longmen Grottoes are a treasure of Chinese history and culture, with thousands of Buddha statues, representing the glorious achievements of ancient Chinese carving art

The historical narrative of the Longmen Grottoes is very interesting: most of the carving work began in the Tang dynasty, when emperors, aristocrats and religious forces drove the project to completion

Buddhism in the Tang period was closely tied to state support; many aristocrats, officials and merchants funded these carving projects

But there are also some cruel realities in history: the building process of the grottoes was often carried out by large numbers of laborers, even convicts, and many endured tremendous suffering from the harsh working conditions. The fates of these laborers were usually not well recorded

The grottoes themselves also witnessed a lot of political turmoil in history, and suffered damage during the Cultural Revolution. At that time many Buddha statues were destroyed or defaced, especially the facial carvings — many statues’ eyes and facial features were damaged. For example, some very exquisite stone statues were treated as “ox-ghosts and snake-spirits” at the time and brutally destroyed

Stone carving has a real aesthetics of time: stone carving itself needs time to be polished out, and needs to undergo time’s baptism

Stone carving is an extremely slow art, needing decades or a hundred years of teamwork; you could say it’s ground out by time, and standing there you can feel it — human patience really is a very high-grade quality. It suddenly occurs to me that the companies that made Toyota, Volkswagen and Apple really do use the compounding of time, long-term polishing into good branded products; long-termism isn’t a concept

The posture and expression of the Buddha statues fit human sensory aesthetics very well; the expression, posture, proportion and lines all correspond to the aesthetics of their era

How politics influences religion, how religion influences art, how art influences the human heart

Buddhism gave Wu Zetian her mandate of heaven; the traditional Confucian system couldn’t give her theoretical support

But Buddhism says all beings are equal, a bodhisattva’s incarnations have no distinction of male or female, and the Buddha is an awakened one rather than a bloodline heir

She even used the Great Cloud Sutra, declaring herself an “incarnation of Maitreya” to receive the mandate of heaven

So in Wu Zetian’s time Buddhist art became part of political aesthetics, a visual declaration of power

Large numbers of monasteries, grottoes and sutra-translation activities reached their peak in her period; the fusion of politics and Buddhist learning reached its summit

The great Buddha took about twenty years to build; conservatively, over a thousand professional talents took part

Wu Zetian used Buddhism to shape political legitimacy

The Vairocana Buddha in turn became her symbol, carrying her aesthetics and political demands

And the great Buddha itself is a miracle bought with the lives and time of several generations of craftsmen over twenty years

Buddhist learning / religion / power narratives

There’s actually one more point: the distinction between learning (-xue), the school/family (-jia) and the religion (-jiao) — many people easily mix them up

Why didn’t Xuanxue and Daoism reach the masses, and instead Confucianism and Buddhist learning were passed down

Buddhism entered national narrative through the hand of emperors

Power definitely needs to borrow Buddhism, but Buddhism to some extent borrowed power too

The Buddha already interacted with kings, accepted offerings and was approached by political forces in his Indian era; this isn’t pollution but an inevitable form of transmission

The core of Buddhist learning is awakening, compassion, dependent origination, impermanence, emptiness

Politics can’t change this; what politics can change is ritual, image, art style and temple economy

Buddha statues being made more solemn may have political purposes behind it

But the calm and awareness that arise in a Buddhist’s heart when practicing in front of a Buddha statue are real, and won’t become invalid because of the emperor’s purposes

The essence of Buddhist learning isn’t to protect purity, but to let humans keep awakening in an impure world

Then there’s the Dharma. The Dharma is different: the Buddha-Dharma is the inner core by which the Buddha freed himself from doctrine, it’s a doctrinal system, and the Dharma itself doesn’t rely on surface existence — it’s a technology of the mind, which is also why Chan became popular

The essential power of Buddhism is a way of explaining the world and a method of untying inner knots; it doesn’t change with outward form

The essence of Dharma is the laws of operation; law is the guarantee of how society runs; the Dharma of mind is how the mind runs. Dharma is discovered, not invented; the essence of law is also discovered, based on “discovered objective justice / social consensus,” which is also the reason the laws of different countries differ

Learning is the study of Dharma, a system built by later generations; “studying the Dharma” is naturally the later scholarly system’s insight into the Dharma — the Dharma isn’t in books but in insight into the laws

Sects are forms that took shape later, concrete ways of landing it, and they can have narrative structure; Buddhism can rise and fall, can deform, can be politicized, can be vulgarized — but the Buddha-Dharma won’t

The Buddhist school is even more different: it can be fully landed. The Buddha-Dharma is empty in nature, but the Buddhist school is the least empty of all

The Buddha-Dharma cares about awakening,

Buddhist learning cares about understanding,

Buddhism cares about transmission,

the Buddhist school cares about survival.

The Buddha-Dharma points to “mind,”

Buddhist learning points to “principle,”

Buddhism points to “society,”

the Buddhist school points to “institutions”

Philosophical Daoism and religious Daoism

Philosophical Daoism is thought, religious Daoism is religion — a difference in form of existence

Daoist thought is a system of ideas about how the universe truly operates

Philosophical Daoism is the deepest philosophical reflection on “how to exist,” a wisdom that dissolves structure and returns to the source

But religious Daoism is a religious system formed by combining Daoist thought with Chinese folk belief, shamanism, alchemy and views of longevity

Religious Daoism needs organization, institutions, temples, believers, economy and political relations

It turns the hard-to-understand, abstract, anti-power “Daoist philosophy”

into a social religious structure that ordinary people can use, participate in and worship

The Dao follows nature — the law of the Dao is naturally the operating law of the universe, natural law; Laozi’s “the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao”

Daoist scholarship corresponds to academic research on Daoist thought: Xuanxue, doctrinal analysis, pure conversation — pursuing understanding, not mysterious power, pursuing what can be understood

Religious Daoism is naturally a religious system, emphasizing ritual and participatory belief; philosophical Daoism is a bit different — Daoism was originally without religion, and the conversion into religion was very difficult

What Daoism pursues

I feel there are so many stories about Daoist alchemy and cultivating immortality hahaha

It’s quite magical at the start: a philosophy that essentially speaks of non-action and living and dying naturally transformed into a religious Daoist system of longevity, ascension and attaining the Dao

In Laozi’s and Zhuangzi’s eyes, “longevity” isn’t bodily immortality; it’s the freedom of the heart, the tranquility of following nature, the stability of a soul not pulled around by desire — so birth, aging, sickness and death are also part of the Dao

Daoist self-cultivation isn’t for ascending to heaven but for returning to nature

Daoism holds that the closer a person is to nature, the closer to the Dao, the stronger the inner self

Later, it’s actually because Daoist thought is too profound — ordinary people find it hard to understand and need an easy-to-grasp version

– “Being with the Dao” → “Attaining the Dao and becoming an immortal”

– “Fearing neither life nor death” → “Neither dying nor decaying”

– “The constancy of nature” → “Supernatural power bestowed by nature”

Ordinary people don’t need philosophy, so religious Daoism derived a religious system for mass use

Also, ascension is misunderstood in modern times: ascension actually seeks spiritual transcendence, not physically flying up — the soul transcending, the spirit entering the great Dao, consciousness highly free

For Mount Hua: peril → stillness → distance → a strong sense of the divine

Places hard for humans to reach are naturally suited for immortals to dwell

Patriarch Chen Tuan (the Sleeping Immortal), the most typical “attainer of the Dao” in Chinese history, didn’t pursue flying up but pursued an ultimate spiritual tranquility

Religious Daoism’s longevity is also a metaphor; what it pursues is alchemy, talismans and incantations, extending life

Longevity equals extended life, health, energy

Alchemy, viewed modernly, is almost entirely wrong

Talismans and incantations are themselves ineffective

In ancient alchemy, external alchemy (alchemy furnaces, ores, mercury, lead) was almost entirely toxic; Qin Shi Huang died from elixirs (a slow death)

The goal of external alchemy was wrong, but its technical route advanced human science — in the end it was also a kind of experiment

Talismans, rituals and blessings can themselves give disaster an explanation, give some sense of order within disorder

Later Daoism turned from external alchemy to internal alchemy: breathing rhythm, the emotional system, the nervous system, the energy of emotion

Flying ascension is spiritual freedom, awakening, worldly liberation, the way of nature

I suddenly realize almost all of China’s great literature, art, aesthetics, spirituality

I suddenly realize that almost all of China’s great literature, art, aesthetics, spirituality and hermit tradition all taste of Daoism

Tang poetry, landscape painting, literati culture — their core aesthetics are all Daoist

This is China’s soul, which shaped its aesthetics and art

Following nature, not contending, the soft and weak overcoming the hard and strong, governing by non-action, the unity of inner and outer, an open heart

and you’ll understand what the inner world of Chinese people is like

Mount Hua

Why choose Mount Hua?

A place to practice, detached from the mundane world

Far from worldly entanglements, letting the heart return to nature

Detached from human order, returning to “the order of heaven and earth”

The more a cultivator must stay away from crowds, power, desire and noise

This makes it easy to understand the traits of cultivators: bold but not rash, inwardly stable, unafraid of loneliness, with a heart detached from the human world, not seeking fame or profit, not seeking convenience, living with nature — this is a process of selection by the way of heaven

Not opposing nature but going with the flow, walking along it; not conquering the mountain but walking with the mountain

What’s most striking about Mount Hua isn’t the peaks but the emptiness

Only where there’s nothing does possibility arise

Non-action isn’t stopping action, but letting action become natural

Those little trees that have withstood wind and snow for decades,

are “stronger” than the thousand-jin boulders you’ve seen on flat ground.

When you see a tree stubbornly forcing its way out of a crack in the rock

what you’re seeing is “the philosophy of weakness prevailing over the philosophy of strength”

Japan’s cultural traces

Taking Yasukuni Shrine as the thread

It was originally called the Tokyo Shōkonsho, and later renamed Yasukuni Shrine

In the Meiji period Japan worked hard to shape itself into a modern nation-state; one of the things it did was to sanctify the emperor and sanctify those who died for the country. Yasukuni Shrine is the heart of that system: making “dying for the country in war” into a “glorious and sacred” national narrative

The purpose isn’t to mourn individual lives but to reinforce the state’s transcendent meaning over the individual

Before World War II it was a mobilization tool: the state brainwashed and educated citizens — “if you die for the emperor, you will become a god at Yasukuni, worshiped forever.”

After World War II Japan became a democracy, and by rights Yasukuni should have become an ordinary religious facility, but it still carries the shadow of the old era

The turning point was 1978:

Yasukuni Shrine secretly enshrined 14 Class-A war criminals

These were the political and military leaders mainly responsible for the war of aggression

From that moment, the meaning of Yasukuni Shrine changed completely:

— it was no longer merely “honoring the war dead”

— but became a political touchstone for “whether one reflects on the history of aggression”

They sanctify the state, beautify war and avoid taking responsibility. Why do it this way? It’s obviously false

The main core of Japan’s avoidance of war responsibility is that acknowledging full war responsibility would crack the structure of Japan’s national identity

The concern about national legitimacy — especially for the LDP, whose political bloodline isn’t a ruptural revolution against the prewar system but a gentle inheritance of it

So I suddenly realize a very good way to analyze this world

Analyze some of the people in this world who currently hold real power and choice

maybe a sitting prime minister, the interest groups he represents, and the historical problems behind them — building the system around how their interests are constructed

Xu Fu’s influence

A voyage commander sent by Qin Shi Huang to search for the elixir of immortality, who later disappeared at sea — a person of enormous influence on the imaginative history of East Asia.

Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with immortality and wanted to find the three sacred mountains “Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou”

– The first time: he gave him a large amount of resources and had him “go east into the sea to seek the immortals.”

– The second time: he again sent him to sea with several thousand boys and girls, artisans of all trades, grain and seeds.

After the second voyage, Xu Fu never came back: “Xu Shi and the others reached the sea, and it is unknown where they are.”

Sima Qian wrote it very clearly in the Book of Feng and Shan in the Records of the Grand Historian:

Philosophical Daoism: speaks of “non-action and nature,” speaks of philosophy

Fangshi (adepts): speak of alchemy, seeking immortals, longevity, illusion arts

The fangshi of Qi in the Warring States period were active in the early Daoist religious cultural circle, but they weren’t philosophical Daoists — they were sorcerer-type figures

Philosophical Daoism has two traditional roads:

At the very beginning, the clear spring is the Daoism of the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, more like a “wisdom that sees through the structure of life”

The group that rose along the southeast coast in the same period — seeking longevity, refining elixirs, reading qi, doing astrology, talking of immortal mountains and sea islands, speaking of the elixir of deathlessness — they were the Xu Fu kind.

These two traditions ran in parallel from the start, and even didn’t much respect each other.

Laozi talked of “returning to the uncarved block and true nature,” while the fangshi talked of “living longer.”

Zhuangzi mocked the fang arts, and the fangshi thought Zhuangzi “didn’t understand practical operations”

Qin Shi Huang favored the fangshi and wasn’t much interested in Zhuangzi

Then came the great fusion of the Han dynasty: Laozi and Zhuangzi’s philosophy, the fangshi’s immortal arts, shamanistic ritual, and Yinyang school cosmology were all woven into one system, creating Daoism in the modern sense

This is a manual for achieving a rich state and strong army, for operating the state machine

Think about the logic of the implementation of the Qin Terracotta Army

Legalism’s starting point and endpoint are one and the same: the absolute power and order of the state

Human nature is evil (or more precisely: loving profit and hating harm): people are innately selfish, seeking benefit and avoiding harm. They can’t be guided by moral education; they must be driven by benefit (reward) and fear (punishment)

This treats the state as a precision machine, efficient and cold; the ruler is the machine’s sole valuer, while the people and the officials are all parts

Law is public law — the most basic thing, which Shang Yang developed to its extreme: law must be written and made public; law must be written down. This is a clear exposition of law: law is discovered, it constrains, unifies thought, regulates behavior, a kind of rule by law; before the law, a prince who breaks the law is as guilty as a commoner

Then there’s shu, the art of the ruler’s control: “shu” is the secret means and political maneuvering the ruler uses to control the bureaucracy, proposed by Shen Buhai (chancellor to Marquis Zhao of Han). “Law” is public, while “shu” must be privately held by the ruler and unpredictable. If the ministers know the ruler’s methods, “shu” loses its effect; the ruler must practice non-action, letting the ministers be active (do things),

Finally there’s shi, the ruler’s position and authority: “wisdom and virtue are not enough to win over the crowd, but position is enough to bend the worthy.” “Shi” comes from the support of “law.” By holding legislative power, the power of reward and punishment, and personnel power, the ruler consolidates his “shi”

Han Fei’s greatness lies in recognizing that law, shu and shi are indispensable to one another. Two key additions in Han Fei’s thought:

The “two handles” (reward and punishment): Han Fei simplified the complex “shu” into the two most effective levers — reward and punishment. The ruler must grip these two powers firmly and never delegate them

The idea of “farming and war” (from Shang Yang): the state has only one goal — a rich state and a strong army. Therefore all social resources must be directed toward “farming” (agricultural production) and “war” (military expansion). Merchants, scholars, craftsmen and other “five vermin” (five kinds of worms) all consume the state’s strength and must be suppressed

Some thoughts on Legalism

Legalism made Qin Shi Huang; Legalism is an extreme tool of “realism” and “goal management” — setting aside its service to imperial power, does it have any other use?

Legalism’s “fa” (law): rules that are open and transparent, with clear rewards and punishments, applied equally to everyone

The individual’s greatest enemy is chaos, procrastination and self-indulgence — in physics this is called “increasing entropy.” Legalism’s “law” is exactly a tool for fighting chaos (entropy)

Many people’s failures are self-negotiation: I’m too tired today, so I’ll work out tomorrow

But in fact the individual must be the supreme enforcer of their own rules, serving their own goals; Legalism’s shu is a method of manipulating oneself — extremely clear-headed in looking at results, not at intentions

Achieving things through shi, using the environment to drive action. Legalism’s “shi” means power, position and trend. Shen Dao held that, positioned on “shi,” even a mediocre person can get things done

Legalism doesn’t believe in sages, nor in an individual’s moral self-awareness or willpower; Legalism holds that put a rabbit on a galloping carriage (shi) and it too can travel a thousand li in a day

Choose a fast-growing industry, an excellent boss, a self-disciplined circle. “Going with the trend” is always easier than “defying heaven to change your fate”

Legalism’s “theory of human nature”: “loving profit and hating harm.” People are innately drawn to benefit and away from harm; acknowledge your own “desires” and instrumentalize them

Stop deceiving yourself with “lofty ideals” and “moral nobility.” The reason you procrastinate is that “immediate pain” (like memorizing vocabulary) > “distant pleasure” (like mastering English)

Sometimes it’s quite magical

I feel the Great Teacher really had a gift for language

Able to turn some complex problems into logic that everyone could understand and was willing to respond to

For example, all reactionaries are paper tigers

A single spark can start a prairie fire

Encircle the cities from the countryside, seize power by armed force

Use your own hands, and you’ll have ample food and clothing

Women hold up half the sky

Serve the people (the philosophical question of where power comes from and whom it serves)

Introducing Dayuan

The kingdom of Dayuan was located in today’s Fergana Valley in Central Asia, an area now divided among Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It sat right in the middle between the Han dynasty and the distant West (such as Persia and the Hellenistic world)

Alexander the Great’s eastern campaign (about 200 years before Emperor Wu of Han) reached the edge of this place, so the area was influenced by Greek civilization and was very developed culturally and commercially

In the era of Emperor Wu of Han, the name “Dayuan” simply didn’t exist in the Central Plains. The Han court only knew that there were the Xiongnu to the west

Zhang Qian (after being captured by the Xiongnu for more than ten years) escaped and, after countless hardships, finally reached Central Asia. He visited Dayuan, the Greater Yuezhi, Daxia and other places

After Zhang Qian returned to the Han court, he submitted a “world geography report” to Emperor Wu. In the report he described Dayuan’s “specialty” in extremely excited tones:

“Dayuan… has excellent horses; the horses sweat blood, and they are the offspring of the ‘heavenly horses.’” — Book of Han

Emperor Wu’s greatest enemy in life was the Xiongnu. He knew well how formidable Xiongnu cavalry was, and Han horses (Mongolian ponies) were at a disadvantage in endurance and speed. He dreamed of getting these “heavenly horses” to improve Han cavalry

At first it was a thousand pieces of gold for a horse — a request to buy the blood-sweating horses — but the king of Dayuan was named “Wugua” (Mugua). He was very arrogant and did the math:

The Han dynasty is too far from me (thousands of kilometers, across deserts).

They’re often plundered by small states on the way.

The “blood-sweating horses” are our country’s “national treasure,” and absolutely can’t be given away

The Han envoy (recorded as “Zhuang A” or “Bao A,” of very violent temper) in his anger smashed that “golden horse” in public and turned and left. The king of Dayuan felt he had suffered a great humiliation, sent men to catch up with the Han mission, killed the envoy and seized the goods

So Emperor Wu appointed Li Guangli, the brother of his favorite consort Lady Li, as “General of Ershi” (“Ershi City” was one of Dayuan’s capitals), and sent him out with tens of thousands (some say six thousand) cavalry and “bad youths” (a force made up of prisoners and criminals). Before the Han army even reached Dayuan, most of it starved, died of thirst or died in battle on the way. Li Guangli fled back in disgrace to Yumen Pass at Dunhuang, leaving ten houses and nine empty

So Emperor Wu was enraged. This time he spent the whole strength of the state, conscripting 60,000 elite troops and using 100,000 oxen, 30,000 horses, tens of thousands of donkeys and camels. The main Han force reached Dayuan’s capital (Ershi City) and surrounded it so tightly that not a drop could get through. The Han army cut off the city’s water supply

The Xiongnu

For the few hundred years surrounding Chinese history, the writers of our historical narrative are all centered on the Han, so naturally those others aren’t our historical narrative either

The Xiongnu were very strong. In the early Han, they were the undisputed “super-empire” of the East Asian continent, and before them the Han for a time could only “sue for peace in humiliation”

The Xiongnu weren’t a single ethnic group but a vast, multi-ethnic nomadic tribal confederation. They were active on the Mongolian Plateau, a typical “people on horseback”

Every citizen a soldier. The Xiongnu grew up on horseback from childhood, skilled at riding and archery. Their army was light cavalry with extremely high mobility, and their tactic was “advance when it’s favorable, retreat when it isn’t” (hit and run), which gave Central Plains armies used to infantry positions enormous headaches

The Xiongnu existed very early; during the Warring States period the state of Zhao (Li Mu) fought them year after year. But what truly made the Xiongnu an “empire” was their “first great ruler of the early Han era” — Modu Chanyu

When Qin Shi Huang unified the six states, he sent General Meng Tian with a 300,000-strong army north to strike the Xiongnu and recovered the Hetao region (“the Hu dare not come south to pasture their horses”)

During the Chu-Han contention at the end of Qin and the great chaos in the Central Plains, the Xiongnu got their “chosen one,” Modu

Modu was the crown prince, but his father (Touman Chanyu) wanted to depose him. Modu invented a whistling arrow (“mingdi”) and trained a guard corps of absolute obedience

Wherever my whistling arrow flies, you must shoot there too

First he shot at game (those who didn’t shoot were killed), then at his own fine horse (those who didn’t shoot were killed), then at his beloved wife (those who didn’t shoot were killed). Finally, when his guard corps had become a machine of absolute obedience, he shot his whistling arrow at his father while hunting

After Modu “killed his father and took power,” he immediately showed astonishing military talent, destroying the strong opponent to the east, the Donghu (predecessors of the Xianbei and Wuhuan). Driving the Greater Yuezhi west: he defeated the “Greater Yuezhi” we talked about yesterday, forced them to migrate west, and made a drinking cup from the skull of the Yuezhi king (this is what led Emperor Wu of Han to send Zhang Qian)

Modu Chanyu built a vast empire stretching east to Liaodong, west to Central Asia and north to Lake Baikal

The Han’s humiliation — Emperor Wu’s core agenda for his whole life — was revenge: washing away the shame of the “siege of Baideng” and of the “heqin” marriage alliance

After the recuperation of the “Rule of Wen and Jing,” the Han treasury was full. Emperor Wu launched an all-out counteroffensive against the Xiongnu, and this war was fought for nearly a hundred years

Wei Qing and Huo Qubing were the two great war gods: they retook the Hetao Plain occupied by the Xiongnu; Huo Qubing “crossed Mount Yanzhi” and “cut off the Xiongnu’s right arm,” opening the route to the Western Regions (the Hexi Corridor); Wei Qing and Huo Qubing led troops deep into the northern desert, “made sacrifice at Mount Langjuxu,” and drove the Xiongnu main force north of the great desert

The steppe and the Central Plains fought for more than two thousand years in history

In the end it was broken by the Mongols and the Manchus

The Qing drew on all the lessons of historical failure and created a wholly new, extremely clever “dual-system” mode of rule, successfully solving the paradox of the “sinicization trap”

The Mongols were never able to sinicize, and extremely rejected the “sinicization trap,” afraid of being devoured by the “weak” Han civilization

They divided people into four classes (Mongols > Semu > Han > Southerners), a naked mentality of “military occupation” and “colonization”

The Qing were the real answer. The Manchus (descendants of the Jurchen) drew on everyone’s lessons

The lesson of Liao/Jin: “complete sinicization” = loss of military power

The lesson of Mongol/Yuan: “refusing sinicization” = unable to rule

The Qing built a perfect “dual-system empire.” It had two faces:

Facing the Han (side A): “I am more Chinese than you” — politically: wholesale inheritance of Ming institutions; culturally: playing the “sage ruler”

Facing itself (side B): “we must never become Han” — militarily: the Eight Banners system, a hereditary military aristocratic group; Banner sons were “kept” by the state (paid in money and grain), and their only duty was to be soldiers, hold office and be loyal to the emperor

Politically: a “fake equality” of Manchu and Han — in the Qing central “six ministries,” each department had two “shangshu” (ministers), one Manchu and one Han, but the real decision-making power was in the hands of Manchu nobles

Culturally: mind control — the cruelest and cleverest move of all. Forcing all Han to shave their heads (“keep the head, lose the hair; keep the hair, lose the head”) and wear Manchu clothing. This thoroughly destroyed the Han’s will to national resistance visually and spiritually, making them “used to” being ruled

The absorption of the Eight Banners

Right to the end, in the late Qing, the whole Eight Banners was absorbed into the Han

In the narrative of Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries, the Qing’s corruption was attributed to “alien rule,” and the identity of “Eight Banners/Manchu” was no longer a symbol of “nobility” but became a “revolutionary target” that was “backward,” “decayed” and “oppressing the Han”

After the Wuchang Uprising, anti-Qing movements in various places turned into anti-Manchu violence; in Xi’an, Guangzhou, Nanjing and other places, brutal massacres took place against the Banner garrisons in the “Manchu cities.” These Banner people, now “too weak to truss a chicken” (including women and children), paid a bloody price for their ancestors’ “conquest”

With the promulgation of the Edict of Abdication of the Qing Emperor, the “Eight Banners,” an institution that had lasted nearly 300 years, “died suddenly” in legal terms

After 1912, the identity of “Banner person” disappeared. The vast majority of former Eight Banners members fell into extreme poverty.

To survive, and to avoid the discrimination and vendetta killings of the “anti-Manchu” movement, they made a collective choice: abandon their identity and merge into the common people

They changed their “Manchu compound surnames” (such as Aisin Gioro, Yehe Nara, Guwalgiya) to Han surnames (Jin, Na, Guan)

The essence of counterintuitive training: metacognition

The most fundamental reason for intuition’s errors: we’ve bound intuition to the self

The “fundamental reason” for this problem is that we can’t (or won’t) separate “our views” from “ourselves”

In our evolution, the “I” is the sum of “my experience.” My intuition is me

When your “invention” (an App or an AI) is proven wrong by data, your intuition (your brain) tells you: “My App failed.”

It won’t say: “A hypothesis was falsified.”

It will say: “I failed.”

It’s like a self-defense system. Being counterintuitive is metacognition; this isn’t a cognitive problem but a self problem — what we fear is the “I did it” that the counterintuitive hints at

We can’t “avoid” counterintuitive phenomena, because the world is complex and nonlinear and full of “counterintuitive” things.

What we must “avoid” is the “intuition trap” — rejecting the truth because of “self-defense,” and thereby failing

What this involves is realizing you might be wrong and admitting it, rather than escaping. An idea you created yourself, an idea you think is brilliant — once it doesn’t succeed, immediately migrate to a new route, rather than persisting stubbornly, and also not being too ego

In Buddhist learning these are self-attachment and dharma-attachment: mistakenly believing that the thoughts, views or intuitions in our minds are real, permanent and substantial

You first “invent” an “I” (self-attachment)

Then you “invent” a “my Idea” (dharma-attachment)

Finally you declare: “the value of ‘I’ = the value of ‘my Idea’”

In reality, of the five aggregates — form, sensation, perception, mental formations — it’s the consciousness aggregate that gets taken as the self, when it’s really only a part of the self

But in fact the self is impermanent; dissolve self-attachment, use non-self. When an Idea arises, you don’t have to “become” it, and you don’t have to “own” it — just observe it as it is. Don’t be the slave of the thought; be the observer of the thought

The positive feedback of learning through curiosity

Einstein said this: “I have no special talent, I’m just passionately curious”

Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, also said: “I think it’s meaningless for someone at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to judge whether a piece of work is noble enough to win an award. I have already received the prize, and that prize is the pleasure of finding things out”

If the human brain didn’t have the mechanism of “curiosity,” humans couldn’t have built a society as technologically and culturally advanced as today’s. Epistemic curiosity — where “epistemic” means related to knowledge and cognition — is people’s instinctive desire to obtain new knowledge

Brain science research shows that when we encounter new information and become curious, the brain’s reward system is activated and releases dopamine. This dopamine release not only stirs our desire to explore new knowledge, but also raises our focus and helps with the absorption of new information (memory and encoding) and its conversion into long-term memory

If you become curious when encountering new information, then as long as time allows you should satisfy this brain desire, even if it’s a bit wild and unconstrained. In my own learning process, whenever curiosity arises I satisfy it as much as I can. This isn’t to deliberately remember anything — it’s just that the learning process itself is enjoyable to me

When our curiosity is stirred, our attention becomes highly focused

When our curiosity is stirred, our attention becomes highly focused, our drive to learn is full, and remembering things becomes easier and less forgettable; we should immerse ourselves in this state. This not only improves learning results but also makes learning itself feel like a pleasure, stirring the desire to learn more

This is also a flow state

The AI era has accelerated the arrival of this process

It’s just that right now there don’t seem to be that many immersive flow experiences

Gao Hua’s Last Twenty Years (Part Two): The Final Years

This society is imperfect, will always be imperfect, and we have to break with perfectionism; we should pursue a perfect world, but not in order to realize it — rather, in the process of pursuing it, to keep improving our society and make it better than it is now

It sparked a new line of thinking for me about perfectionism

Pursuing perfectionism rather than achieving it — that’s the essence of perfectionism, and what it emphasizes is a process, not a result

I can’t give you the full picture of anything, … nobody knows the full picture

I can’t give you the full picture of anything, … nobody knows the full picture. And with a landmass that big, a history that complicated, interpretations that divided, a truth that slippery, and memories that drain away so fast they can’t be restored — I seriously doubt what “the full picture” even means. Besides, even if you knew the “full picture,” how could language and writing ever express it? So all I can give you is a historical impression that “takes a part for the whole.” What I know, what I remember, what I discover, what I feel — all of it can only be an intensely personal bearing, and an absolutely personal transmission

Chat frequency & the connection to logic

Chatting frequently makes you smoother-tongued, a bit like muscle memory, so you organize sentences faster and get more practiced at finding metaphors, words, and ways of saying things

But that isn’t logic or depth

But some people, even though they don’t chat often

they express things only after they’ve thought them through

Every expression is like writing a paper

Or the job itself is high in logical density (engineers, researchers, writers)

How do you upgrade your own language system

Raise the difficulty of your own chatting

Who you chat with matters a lot; chatting with certain kinds of people forces your language ability up — for instance with people who are strongly logical, or who demand a high degree of certainty, you’re forced to improve too

Whether there’s active thinking matters a lot

Actually it feels like the same logic as with LLMs

A small amount of high-quality data + optimizing the algorithm is more helpful for training a high-quality model

Chatting with most people drains your attention resources a lot

Ineffective communication, and draining relationships

A lot of people

only output complaints

don’t accept new viewpoints

there’s no exchange of information

they can’t co-construct meaning

This kind of communication not only has no learning value, it also consumes your attention resources

He says he lives in the wilderness, but he’s less than three kilometers from town

He says he lives secluded in the wilderness, but he’s actually less than three kilometers from the town center; he says he’s self-sufficient, but his mother occasionally does his laundry; he says he lives like a hermit, yet he often goes into Concord to chat, drink tea, and join dinners. So some people accuse Walden of not being a pure “record of wilderness life,” but the filtered work of a romantic

But it’s not settled either; if you watch a work written as a thought experiment, a philosophical essay, and nature observation as if it were a reality show, you’ll get the illusion of having been deceived

The book never describes himself either

Walden was just a social experiment

Thoreau was interested in forests and lakes, but even more interested in “why people live this way”

Xi’an’s Wolong Temple is an ancient monastery from the Eastern Jin

Xi’an’s Wolong Temple is an ancient monastery dating back to the Eastern Jin, and it’s famous because Master Xuanzang once lectured nearby

I see on Amap it’s also called Wolong Chan Temple; I’m curious whether Xuanzang himself was also influenced by Chan Buddhism in his era ..

Bodhidharma came to China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties and emphasized “no reliance on written words, directly pointing at the mind” — this is the backbone of later Chan Buddhism

Xuanzang was born about 80 years after Bodhidharma came east

After Bodhidharma, the Chan lineage passed through the Second Patriarch Huike, the Third Patriarch Sengcan, the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin, the Fifth Patriarch Hongren, and others; by the middle of Xuanzang’s life (mid-7th century), Chan had grown into a real force, especially with large numbers of practitioners in the Central Plains and the Jianghuai region

Xuanzang was not a Chan monk. His most core achievement was bringing Indian Buddhism’s “Consciousness-Only” doctrine (also called the Yogācāra school) back to China, and founding the “Faxiang school” on that basis. The Faxiang school emphasized rigorous logic, strict treatises, and precise concepts — put plainly, it was as systematic as a kind of cosmic science

Chan went the opposite way: emphasizing sudden enlightenment, intuition, experiential wisdom, not relying on a huge theoretical system

These two seem to be opposites after all

So when Xuanzang was at his most active in China, on the other side the Chan landscape was brewing, about to explode into the later great debate of “Southern school sudden enlightenment, Northern school gradual cultivation”

In Emperor Taizong of Tang’s era, political ambition and cultural ambition were both at unprecedented heights, and what was needed was an ideological system that could “explain the universe, explain the mind, explain state orthodoxy”

Chan was extremely attractive culturally, but at the national level it wasn’t so “controllable”

Xuanzang’s line catered more to the empire’s needs

In the end it was Chan that became China’s most localized, most widespread, and most creative Buddhist branch

Chan became China’s most localized, most widespread, and most creative Buddhist branch, even influencing martial arts, literature, tea ceremony, gardens, and Zen aesthetics, permeating all the way into modern life

Why Chan Buddhism localized into China, and yet couldn’t

When Buddhism entered China, it ran into a period of ideological vacuum

Confucianism focused on political ethics

Daoism leaned toward reclusion and nature

and there was no systematic framework for asking about “the meaning of life,” “where suffering comes from,” or “the nature of consciousness”

Buddhism filled that gap; it gave China three tools that Chinese culture previously couldn’t reconcile on its own

a philosophical explanation of death (reincarnation)

a structural model of the mind (Consciousness-Only, meditation)

a method for liberation from suffering (a cultivation path)

Add to that Chinese culture’s three big “appetites”:

likes practice, dislikes pure philosophy → Chan

likes a down-to-earth faith → Pure Land

likes systematization and holism → Tiantai, Huayan

But in India, Hinduism actually absorbed Buddhism, rather than fully eliminating it

India’s indigenous religion was extremely powerful — powerful enough to re-integrate Buddhism as a part of Hinduism

treating the Buddha as one of Vishnu’s avatars

turning meditation into a part of the yoga system

absorbing ideas of karma, reincarnation, and the three realms into the Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita tradition

merging the monastic system into the saṃnyāsin (renunciate) system

In China at the time, Chinese intellectuals were already tired of “metaphysics that can’t be stated clearly,” especially the theoretical debates of the Wei–Jin era. Chan skipped right over language and used “experiential wisdom” to break through the thinking deadlock

Plus the natural fusion of Daoism and Buddhism

“The Dao is in the mind, not in the words.”

This line wasn’t at all abrupt in India, but in China it was

Nepal’s Hinduism carries a bit of a Nepali flavor

Still, both places belong to the South Asian religious-cultural sphere

the Brahma–Vishnu–Shiva trimurti framework

core texts like the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita

concepts like sacrifice, fire ritual, astrology, reincarnation, karma, and liberation

shared worship of Shiva, Vishnu, and the goddess (Shakti)

similar festivals (Diwali, Holi, Shivaratri, etc.)

Nepali Hinduism isn’t “another religion”; it’s the north-Himalayan branch of Hinduism

Nepal’s national deity is Pashupatinath Shiva

Shaivism’s strength in Nepal is enormous, even outweighing Vaishnavism

In Nepalis’ daily religious life, Shiva is almost everywhere: temples, wood carvings, festivals, household deities

Nepali Buddhism, along with Tibetan Buddhism, forms a kind of religious symbiosis with Hinduism

Nepalis worship the “goddess” especially, with an influence that exceeds most of India

For example Nepal’s unique “Kumari,” the living goddess — a phenomenon that doesn’t exist in India proper

Hinduism has a ton of gods

In terms of the ecology of belief, there are countless gods

At the philosophical height, there is only one Brahman

Every god you see is like a beam of light illuminating Brahman, this infinite source

Hinduism holds that truth is like a summit, and there are countless paths to the top

So Hinduism’s worldview is very interesting

It lets a person:

not cling to a single correct answer

not blindly follow authority

allow others to be different from oneself

keep thinking flexible

Like Buddhism, it also has karma

Karma is a shared idea of ancient India

action -> produces consequences -> affects your future state of life

Buddhism’s “karma”: a psychology of causality that doesn’t need a soul

The mind makes all dharmas

Action comes from the mind, and the fruit of karma returns to the mind

Buddhism rejects the “soul” (Atman), and therefore rejects “a fixed self”

Hinduism keeps the concept of the “self (Atman),” and holds:

the soul is real, imperishable, and carries karma across reincarnation

Your actions shape the person you are becoming.

Your choices invisibly carve out your future possibilities

This lines up completely with psychology, behavioral science, and life design

Dharma is often translated as “law,” “the way,” or “destiny,” but its real value is

that everyone has to find the “role responsibility” they should carry right now

So it seems that for Indians, the four great stages of each person’s life

The philosophy of yoga: the unity of body, mind, and divinity

Make the mind steady, make existence whole.

Hinduism divides yoga into four paths, each corresponding to a “life style”:

Karma Yoga

Bhakti Yoga

Raja Yoga

Jnana Yoga

It tells you: there’s no one-size-fits-all method for cultivating the mind; everyone can find their own entry point

Atman = Brahman

(your inner essence = the essence of the universe)

You are not broken

You are not isolated

You are not meaningless

You are an extension of the life of the universe

A priest is a kind of religious-leader role

A priest is a kind of religious leadership role, authorized to perform the sacred rites of a particular religion and to act as the mediating agent between humans and one or more deities. They are responsible for managing religious liturgy, especially rites involving sacrifice and atonement. This role exists across religious traditions worldwide, forming a body collectively called the “priesthood”

A priest’s duties usually include mediating the relationship between believers and the deity, interpreting events, presiding over rituals (such as weddings, birth blessings, and funerals), teaching doctrine, managing religious buildings, and keeping records and sacred texts

How priests are selected varies: hereditary in Judaism, election in some cases, or ordination in Christianity

Isn’t a product’s positioning a lot like a priest’s?

With no language groundwork, no education for cultural fusion

With no language groundwork, no education for cultural fusion, and no well-developed conflict mediation mechanism, using administrative force to shove two groups with enormous cultural differences into the same high-pressure production space will inevitably produce violent friction

Economic development can’t fully solve it either

Cultural assimilation

Assimilation is painful for the individual; it’s inevitably a dimensional strike of one civilization against another

When a child can’t understand a lullaby in their grandmother’s language, a deep cultural gene breaks. This sense of loss causes long-lasting psychological trauma

Huntington spoke of “the clash of civilizations.” When two vastly different ethnic groups on the same land don’t merge but instead reinforce their differences, the result is often Yugoslav-style disintegration and massacre. Assimilation is, to some degree, a cold-blooded calculation: “trade one generation’s pain for several generations of peace”

For anthropologists, this is unquestionably a disaster (the loss of diversity)

For politicians, it’s often a victory (the establishment of order)

And for the individuals caught inside it, it’s an “evolution” they must swallow, with a bitter aftertaste

From where I stand …. with a territory this vast, yet everywhere the same standards, the same check-in photo style, the same experience … this society seems to have a little less vitality

About the Maasai

About the Maasai

I seem to know many concepts and principles, but never really use them

I seem to know many concepts and principles, but never once really used them in reality

Like the 10/10/10 model of thinking

When I run into problems day to day I really never think of using it to solve them

The best way to understand the world is to get hands-on and play with it, really treating the world as a game with many skills and tools of your own to use

Changing this world

What do I actually need

What do I actually want

What can I actually do

What do I actually long for

What kind of person can I become

Some feelings

The person who understands you is yourself; the person who doesn’t understand you is also yourself

The real price tag of opportunity cost

The real cost of any choice you make isn’t its price tag, but the full value of the “best alternative” you give up because of it

Among all the options given up, the value of the single highest-value one

Not just urgency value and time value, but also strategic value and information value

Every choice is paid for by countless noes; every yes is billed by countless noes

Fentanyl in the later stage

Some private chemical companies and intermediaries located in China exploited regulatory loopholes, false declarations of goods and cross-border payment chains to sell precursor chemicals to overseas criminal groups (commonly shipped to Mexico); governments of various countries game, pressure, cooperate and repeatedly clean up in this arena

Since the mid-2010s, US law enforcement has regarded finished fentanyl and its analogues from China as one of the main sources; afterwards the supply chain gradually shifted to the model of precursor chemicals produced in China → synthesized in Mexican drug labs → smuggled into the US. This is the long-standing consensus description of the US Congressional Research Service and think tanks

Starting in 2018, China successively brought key precursors (like NPP, 4-ANPP) under control; in 2019 it implemented “class-wide scheduling”, bringing all fentanyl-class substances into the national controlled list (effective May 1, 2019). At the policy level this runs counter to “intentional export”

Jane Goodall passed away this year and it really moves me

“Always being herself”, “creating cognitive ethology out of thin air”

When “standard” and “self” collide, how should we choose?

What is the essence of a standard? A standard exists to lower the burden of cognitive consensus; the existence of standards is so that “most people” in “most situations” can “most efficiently” replicate known success. It’s an efficiency tool, so a standard is a tool

The limitation of standards: a standard is actually only retrospective; it’s good at summarizing “what has already happened”, but not good at pointing to “what is about to happen”

When what you’re exploring is Uncharted Territory, following “known standards” is not only ineffective but even harmful

“Cognitive ethology” wasn’t created “out of thin air”. It was the “spark” born from the violent collision and friction between the old standard (animals are machines) and her practice (animals have emotions)

That spark is creation

Being yourself is a method; your own experience is also part of the creation, an entry point

Will belongs to life

The common phenomenon in East Asia seems to be the fertility rate problem

Taiwan’s declining birthrate

Most people carry heavy mortgages, squeezing the budget for marriage and children

On top of that there are high child-rearing and education costs and stagnant wage growth, which brings a series of problems

A thought arises and you’re aware; aware without following; awareness-illumination

Three steps in, one breath; three steps, one breath out; entering concentration

The feelings of the five aggregates, the soul transcending the body, one state gathering the mind

Who is walking? Is it me? Who am I, where am I, no-self

Why do I always feel like I’ve never stuck with a product

And what’s the reason the coding passion and joy from before disappeared

I thought about it for a long time …

It’s really that the positive feedback in this process is just too little

Thinking about the standards of morality

which also brings to mind the standards of virtue and goodwill

Something was stolen by a thief

Later the thief’s father returned it

Because when you kindly ask the thief’s father to let the child off, think about it

if it were your own child, how would you handle it

And when you ask someone to “put themselves in your shoes,” you’re actually trying to put emotional understanding into moral judgment

Modern people

Are many people like me, or even more people deeper than me

feeling that life has too many worries

feeling they don’t know what they want

not knowing what kind of life they want to live

Continuing to dissect my own drive to act

If everything turns into experience, and experience comes from action

When the wind stopped, she spun the little pinwheel herself a few turns

People passed by on the road; she raised her eyes a little, then lowered them again

So to some extent, the finiteness of human working memory

does that also determine that the human brain’s working memory has a certain sense of deficiency when facing multithreaded AI processes?

Classic theory holds 7±2 “chunks,” and more modern research even thinks only 4±1. It’s like a single-core processor: although it can simulate multitasking through rapid switching (shifting attention), at any single instant the information we can truly “process online” is extremely limited. When we try to think of three things at once, the brain “stutters” and feels anxious

When a large model like an LLM runs on a GPU, thousands and tens of thousands of compute unit cores do matrix operations at the same time, and it can easily handle hundreds of different requests at the same time, or analyze several thousand fragments of a long document in parallel within one request

So as humans, we need the flow state even more than AI does; finiteness brings focus, finiteness drives creation, and finiteness also makes us externalize

I’m wondering whether a todo tool in the future can solve the working-memory problem, and at the same time satisfy the problem of users’ short working memory, drive users into a flow state, and even, beyond just solving the todo problem, also handle part of the user’s energy management and state management. All of these have one precondition: a fairly deep understanding of the user’s context

Pyramids

#格物 /埃及

Why we need todos

Because people are often unclear about their own direction

or can’t be clear about their own direction at every moment

Each of us has a very small working-memory space

We need to enlarge this workspace

or use tools to relieve the finiteness of that space

Compared with working memory, our spatial memory and semantic memory are far stronger

Genspark — an AI-driven search and productivity tool

It can generate customized “Sparkpages” in real time — interactive information pages with no ads and no bias. It integrates multiple large models and can be used for research, document creation, multimedia generation and more, supporting both browser and App use. A one-sentence prompt can complete tasks ranging from a summary to a complete application, making it a strong replacement for traditional search engines

General use scenarios, mass usage:

Efficient information retrieval

Content and creative production

A personal life assistant

Business automation

But actual user feedback shows somewhat better results, especially for the diverse handling of LLMs

Inspiration is gone in an instant

So how to capture it in a super lightweight way

Especially on desktop, how to make it lightweight — lightweight enough to be triggered by just one key

This fits human nature

because human working memory is very brief

What a todo list means to me

Solving the working-memory problem

Consciousness can’t be online all the time, so you can only remind yourself through tools

I only need to occasionally become aware of how I should do things

Every time I have to both make decisions and execute, the cognitive cost is too high for me

Is the finiteness of the human organism itself also what pushes us

Is the finiteness of the human being as an organism also what pushes us, in the process of handling things,

to first think about and plan our own task routes

and then focus on executing those routes

At the speed of entry of Apple’s latest apps

At the speed of entry of Apple’s latest apps, some inspirations can be triggered instantly

I finally understand why the Great Teacher’s language gift and mobilization power were so strong

A lot of what he said is based on his own understanding of the world and people, telling some complex logic in his own words

In the era of information explosion

does it also obstruct your own behavior

In the era of information explosion, will there be some ideas

and continue to extend around this idea

Is this flomo-style way of recording too niche?

Could there be a better recording form?

After all, what it faces is the user’s scenario

It still rather depends on the user scenario the product corresponds to — finding the form users like most in that scenario

Making products definitely, definitely starts with the process of discovery, and only then creation

Recording the user’s current user state

Of course it can also be a tired state

Record the state, and AI — based on its understanding of you — recommends suitable tasks under energy management and state management

It’s all recording your own state

The things that irritate you, the things that make you anxious — isn’t that the same thing?

Your current state, your predicament, your recent anxiety — don’t they all belong to energy management and state management?

In the end, why manage at all? Our goal is just to live better in the physical world

Limits of existing tools: second-list tools only handle task and time management

Limits of existing tools: using tools like a second list can only satisfy task and time management, and can’t solve the core needs of energy allocation and state adaptation

Pain points in real scenarios: reading every artifact label one by one in a museum drains your energy; pushing through work when your state is poor is inefficient; there’s no method for targeted adjustment

Core need established: through AI, achieve the coordination of “energy management + state management + task management,” to solve the problems of action uncertainty and thinking-driven internal drain

First sort out your own must-do tasks, and with AI break tasks down into “minimal actionable units,” lowering the threshold for execution

Example: break “learn the electronic keyboard” into “use GarageBand to play one simple tune following a Bilibili tutorial,” rather than “systematically learn the electronic keyboard.”

Energy management notes

Energy state notes: use AI to record the energy consumption/replenishment of daily behaviors and build a personal energy model (e.g., a walk +20 points, a museum visit without filtering information -80 points)

Generating targeted solutions: feed high-consumption scenarios back to the AI (such as visiting a museum) and get vertical optimization plans — use intuition to filter the artifacts you’re interested in, dig deep into their historical background, replacing “horizontal browsing” with “vertical exploration,” and reduce wasted energy

Energy replenishment planning: AI recommends suitable replenishment according to the model, e.g., schedule creative tasks in the morning when energy is abundant, and pair a walk or light leisure activity with the afternoon energy trough

State management notes

Real-time state capture: the product collects the user’s immediate state through option-based interaction (such as “Are you tired right now? Are you exercising?”), and AI models it quickly

State-adapted action recommendations: AI recommends 3 executable options based on the state model, and the user picks any 1 to execute immediately (for example, when tired it recommends “drink a cup of coffee,” “walk outdoors for 10 minutes,” “listen to light music for 5 minutes”)

Dynamic feedback adjustment: objectively record task completion (including unfinished tasks), and AI optimizes subsequent task allocation based on the data, avoiding forced scheduling and adapting to the user’s real state

Task, energy and state linkage: AI combines “current energy level + real-time state + unfinished tasks” to dynamically adjust task priority (e.g., schedule high-difficulty tasks when energy is abundant and state is focused, and switch to light tasks when energy is insufficient).

Building an action closed loop: after each micro-action is completed, the AI simultaneously collects state and energy feedback, continuously optimizing the model to form a “capture - recommend - execute - feedback” cycle

Reduced energy loss: after AI optimization, in scenarios like museum visits energy consumption drops noticeably while the value of deep experience is retained

Improved action certainty: minimal actionable units + choose-one-of-three recommendations solve the anxiety of “thinking a lot, doing little” and lower the threshold for action

State-adaptive optimization: avoid the inefficient mode of “pushing through tasks,” and through AI’s dynamic adjustment achieve “doing the right thing at the right time

Are people willing to “learn, consume nourishing, brain-demanding content”?

Whether people are willing to “learn, consume nourishing, brain-demanding content” depends on motivation, and motivation comes from:

1. Immediate experiential feel (comfortable, easy, satisfying)

2. Immediate relevance (related to my present, useful, meaningful)

And most “knowledge feed” products fail because they treat content as an exit rather than an entrance. What can really hook users is the user’s present inner state, troubles, cravings, faint sprouts of interest — those are what’s closest to “me”

Combined with a todo list, it’s actually also a behavioral-science angle: use AI to help you manage your own energy, state and actions, reduce action uncertainty, and let “each day suit you better”

Awareness → motivation → action → feedback → new awareness → ……

But ordinary people don’t think, don’t want to reflect, don’t want to talk deeply

But when AI’s guidance is natural enough, light enough and close to the skin, users don’t even feel that “I’m reflecting”

As long as the interaction design is right, this isn’t niche — it’s a universal need at the level of a hard requirement

Humans are born needing to be understood, to be seen, to be guided

People without predicaments

I realize it’s not that I have no predicament

but that I haven’t discovered my own predicament

People without worries roughly fall into two kinds

one is the legendary saint

the other is a little baby who doesn’t even know what a worry looks like

The basic morality of language is accuracy and truth

I can’t bear to embellish them with my crude language; the only basic morality I can practice is to describe them precisely in words

Unadorned, unpretentious, not pretending to be profound — truth

True feeling grows out of truth, and imagination can fly farther only on the backing of truth

Truth is like soil, true feeling is the root, imagination is the canopy. Without soil, the root dries and the tree drifts

Which phone maker doesn’t do scarcity marketing? I feel none of them have a future

If a luxury brand doesn’t know how to use scarcity marketing, I feel it doesn’t deserve to be called a luxury brand

When emotions can be dissected

can they also be amplified

They can be observed through meta-awareness

But when you’re aware that you’re playing a game, can you still get immersed?

When you analyze “why do I have this emotion,” the “I” that is feeling instantly becomes an “it (an object).” The more thoroughly you analyze, the more the emotion loses its original vitality. You feel that even at the most passionate moment, there’s always a calm voice in your head doing narration

That’s it — no more sense of losing control

So to some extent, some unknown and unexplainable things feel really interesting

For example metaphysics, for example the School of Mind

What logical frameworks can’t analyze or classify can make you genuinely puzzled and amazed, and even short-circuit that precise “rationality machine” of yours

Not only negative emotions either

In short, it can also be some things that make you very emotional

It’s just that this can serve as a starting point

Fish in water, animals in air

Because it lives in water, a fish has no perception of water

People are the same: we take light as source, air as medium, the eye as sensory sensor, and build a subjective understanding of this world

People caught in worries — do they also become so habituated to worries and emotions that they can’t notice them?

Persistent depression and anxious personality — this is the symptom of depression: the exit is masked

Treating persistent pain as the personality itself

They have an ultra-clear perception of their own pain, clear to the point of narcissism, so ego-driven that they feel the pain is part of themselves

Of course it could also be that some people’s granularity of worry is different, or that they calmly accept their own worries

Knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the completion of knowledge

Ineffective accumulation: merely memorizing a sentence, or certain views, or secondhand experience, but when emotional turbulence comes you’re still swallowed up

Effective accumulation (true knowing): when an emotion arrives, you can observe it, accept it, and analyze the rational logic behind it

Action isn’t only visible output, because it also includes a lot of reading poetry, philosophical thinking, appreciating art — which all seem ineffective

Visible Action: writing code, making products, traveling, solving concrete problems

Invisible Action: revising values, soothing emotions, sharpening sensitivity to the world, optimizing decision models

So this acting isn’t only inner, it also includes an upgrade of cognition

The Forest Healing Room and Echo seem to be at the first two layers of the human psyche

The Forest Healing Room and Echo seem essentially to be at the first two layers in front of the human psyche

The first layer is I want to be more comfortable

The second layer is I want to understand myself

I think there’s another layer: drive, a drive for subtle transformation

The third layer: I actually want to move forward a bit, but not by willpower — by being seen

Micro-actions matter a lot

I tested it: how to act can also be language or cards that move you emotionally

I tested it: how to act can also be language or cards that move you emotionally

The effect was pretty good; the language really moved me and stirred up my urge to share

What is the essence of being moved

Language itself is a tool for understanding this world

Language is also this world’s medium of communication

Language can move a person

When we see goodness, love, courage, sacrifice, perseverance, innocence — the values we treasure most — presented in an extremely pure way or at an extreme cost, the brain instantly upgrades “the things I think matter” into “so they can matter to this degree”

Why do people shed tears?

When this “value resonance + self-melting” is too strong, the limbic system (the emotional center) over-activates, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves switch rapidly, and oxytocin, prolactin, dopamine and endorphins all erupt at once; the simplest channel of release is — crying

Tears are a surrender of the self’s normally hard defense line, and also a ritual of belonging: my reconnection with this world

A core value is fervently affirmed or elevated: when we see goodness, love, courage, sacrifice, perseverance, innocence — the values we treasure most — presented in an extremely pure way or at an extreme cost, the brain instantly upgrades “the things I think matter” into “so they can matter to this degree”

A stranger crushed to death saving a child (sacrifice), an old person donating their life-saving money to someone who needs it more (selflessness), a homeless man sharing his only food with a smaller street child (innocence). These all fiercely “confirm and amplify the softest beliefs in our hearts”

Then there’s our empathy: for example, when seeing war or suffering, viewers cry until they can’t breathe — in that moment we’re no longer watching from the sidelines, but personally feeling a cruelty or a great love

They say the older you get, the richer your experience and knowledge, but that’s a lie

They say the older you get, the richer your experience and knowledge, but that’s a lie. Whether experience or knowledge, if you can’t put it to use, it’s completely meaningless. And if it’s experience that makes you narrow, then the less of it the better. I also feel another view isn’t quite right. You often hear people say “it’s best to endure some hardship…” but I think it’s best if you can avoid hardship. People who talk about hardship as something great are usually just showing off how much they suffered. For example, how poor they were as a child, that they couldn’t even go to school, all the hard things they did… in the end it’s just boasting about how hard they had it back then and how much effort they had to put in to achieve what they have today

If it’s the way of various characters, or of characters in various books

Maybe it’s also a box that opens quickly

In fact we’re also shaping our own box, aren’t we?

A character concept — many people have a clear understanding around that character

whether it’s a character in a film or TV drama

a character in a book

or even the character of someone around you

A workspace users can DIY themselves

What exactly would let you DIY your own emotions?

This is just a bit of inspiration hahaha

Maybe it will bring a pretty good effect

If I don’t record, I’ll miss “a self that grows ever more real”

If I don’t record, I’ll miss “a self that grows ever more real and ever more complete”

Coherence in products

It reminds me of watching movies

With a good film you can guess its whole tone from the first five minutes

That’s intuition, and it’s also trust in the film’s coherence

This coherence isn’t just functional coherence

It’s letting the user easily perceive the coherence of the narrative

It lets users perceive that all the interactions, whether voice, dialogue or cards, are it understanding me, this specific person

In what situations to recommend

No habit

Prefers to be passive

A state-driven action guide

Motivation drives behavior

Motivation is what you want to achieve

State is like the internal weather of the current system

State determines how you act, how efficiently you act, even whether the action can be achieved

Behavior is actually both running at the same time

There’s a beautiful framework in neuroscience

Behavior = goal-directed system (motivation) × habit system × physiological-emotional state regulation (state)

They aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re twisted together like three strands of rope

A simple formula (an analogy, not a mathematical truth):

Behavior = expected outcome (motivation) × current state modulation (state)

In the short term it’s state management; in the long term motivation leads

A guide to breaking actions small

That can let the user do it in one second

A state that’s easy to get started in

State -> recommended action -> user choice -> new state

Light, accurate, insightful, close-up

Confidence scoring

A lightweight metacognitive layer

It’s actually also simulating, in the human learning process, the case where you know you’ve learned up to the boundary and can go act — it’s similar

Dialogue reduces uncertainty, so at the start the user’s uncertainty entropy is extremely high, and each round exists to reduce entropy. The criterion for judging the boundary is whether the current amount of information can constitute a minimal viable output

Another piece of logic is the metacognitive layer, which isn’t responsible for answering the user but only for monitoring the progress of the dialogue

One of the methods is confidence, which is also a common method in software engineering: after each round of dialogue, a judge agent does some background reasoning:

whether the information collected so far is enough to generate a high-quality first draft — score it

If the score is sufficient, directly generate a draft (similar to the earlier questionnaire system)

Or preset some hypothetical questions in the questionnaire: the boundary is established, and exploration ends

When people in China look at other countries

If you always rely on your own experience

you’ll generate a lot of misunderstandings

Consumption: the next one is better, the next one surprises us more

so go on

In an age of uncertainty, people long for a bigger group to give them meaning and security

The state is precisely the largest, most stable collective identity

especially for a country without religion

Some people treat patriotism as a kind of “moral currency” —

using it to gain a sense of superiority, a voice, and the legitimacy to attack others within the group

This is called “moral outsourcing”

I want my country to be well, so I’m willing to participate rationally, critically, and constructively, to make the country stronger

Diplomacy isn’t arguing

Diplomacy is:

making the other side uncomfortable at the lowest cost

without paying a big price yourself

What’s sought is a kind of solution

A feeling

an idea, the process of reaching its realization

This naming process is interesting

If you just record what just happened

what’s compelling is never some single event or some single entry, but a self-narrative

what helps the user become — from “what I just did” to “who I am becoming”

The underlying logic of J people and P people

It’s a difference in underlying logic

The J person’s underlying logic likes structure, because structure makes a person feel secure; structure isn’t necessarily control, it’s about reducing uncertainty about the future

The P person is more environment-responsive, and doesn’t like nailing the future down

A ChatGPT-style interface that can have two-way conversation with users

The user inputs by voice; no need to organize language, no need to type, no need to structure thoughts

Speech can carry fuzzy thoughts, but text struggles; typing and writing are actually a process of tidying up

Typing requires “organizing language in advance,” which amounts to forcing the user to go from fuzzy → clear

But a lot of people who are psychologically confused, low-energy, or lost simply can’t organize it at all

Typing is a low cognitive load — you can think while you talk, and even pour out emotions in a “stream of consciousness” way

Weather–mood effects

A bridge between weather and mood

the phenomenon where weather factors (temperature, sunlight, humidity, air pressure, precipitation, etc.) have measurable effects on people’s emotions, behavior, and physiological state

Some classic effects: sunlight and mood, with some people experiencing seasonal affective disorder

And in high temperatures, a person’s patience melts like ice

Overall, weather’s effect on mood is much weaker than our subjective impression. In most cases, weather affects what we do (like not being able to go out, traffic jams), which then affects mood, rather than weather directly determining mood

So weather is one factor — it’s a harmless structure

Of course, that’s the interweaving of an external rhythm and an internal rhythm. Weather isn’t the director, only the background light

AI observing the user’s growth every week, every month, every year

The user’s 30 days of voice snippets, producing long-term trends

Not a persona

More like the presence of a priest

hi , apple … glimmer

I’ve been having some emotional issues lately

Could you call me at 5 pm?

…

Thinking in scenarios

An era dominated by scenarios

Users perceive the entry point more easily

The operation is smoother

In this process, how do you find exactly the right scenario

From small to big, or from big to small?

Talking with myself

A road for one person, a road of nature.

You hand your life’s rhythm over to the mountains, the trees, the fog, the stone-paved path.

Mochou Lake

Mochou Lake, located in the southwest of Nanjing, a place with rich humanistic color

The most widespread story is about a talented woman of the Liang dynasty of the Southern Dynasties - Mochou. Her original name was Mochou; she was born clever and beautiful, accomplished in music, chess, calligraphy and painting, yet because her family was poor she was forced to part from her beloved. After the parting she pined for him day and night, and in the end threw herself into the lake for love. People were moved by the depth of her devotion and called that lake “Mochou Lake”, meaning “the lake of Mochou”. The two characters “Mochou” later also took on a philosophical meaning - not worrying, not grieving, like a piece of ancient psychological comfort

In the Ming dynasty, the Ming capital was Nanjing; in the mid-Ming, Mochou Lake was the villa of Xu Da’s descendants, the Duke of Wei of the Xu family, so in the past it existed as an aristocratic garden

The formation of China’s earliest public park

At first West Lake was a natural water body, called Qiantang Lake; when Bai Juyi served as prefect of Hangzhou he led the building of a causeway (the predecessor of the “Bai Causeway”), and also dug canals, planted lotuses and set up pavilions, so that common people could irrigate fields and also enjoy the scenery

It seems that from when Su Shi was prefect in the Northern Song (building the “Su Causeway”) West Lake became a truly public landscape. Su Shi explicitly advocated that “the lake’s light and mountain scenery are a scene for all under heaven”, and emphasized that the causeway should be “for people to enjoy”. Afterwards temples, teahouses, boatmen and painted boats appeared one after another, and ordinary townspeople could also relax by the lake, watch opera, drink tea. Hangzhou by then was already a commercial city, and boating on the lake became a citywide urban entertainment

Across the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties West Lake had already formed fixed touring routes, with rich street entertainment - performers, fortune tellers, painters; especially in the Qing when Qianlong made six southern tours, which pushed the improvement and beautification of the lake area, and the scenery became ever more magnificent

Although social stratification was obvious - literati had pavilions, commoners had tea sheds - they shared the same lake light. This “publicness” made West Lake one of the few cross-class landscapes in China

Zhengzhou

Zhengzhou enters autumn quickly

As China’s geographic center, Zhengzhou is an important national comprehensive transport hub, with the title “heart of the railways”, Asia’s largest Zhengzhou North Station and the country’s most important airport, Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport

The Zhengdong New District CBD is a classic of Zhengzhou’s urban planning; its design borrowed from internationally famous city centers like La Défense in France, and it has a unique ruyi shape

The overall layout takes “one core, two rings, three lakes” as its skeleton, forming a huge circular ring-shaped architectural complex

🏢 Greenland Center · Qianxi Plaza (the “Big Corn”): once Zhengzhou’s landmark building, named for its resemblance to a corn cob. It sits between the inner and outer rings and is one of the tallest buildings in the CBD area.

🎭 Henan Art Center: uniquely shaped, made up of a cluster of buildings like golden eggshells, an important venue for cultural performances.

🏛️ Zhengzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center: the venue for large exhibitions and conferences, an important part of the CBD

Zhengzhou Longhu Financial Island is called Henan’s Lujiazui

Shanghai’s street naming method

In the mid-19th century concession period, in 1865, the Shanghai Municipal Council (the municipal administration of the concession) formally passed a motion to name roads within the concession after Chinese place names; the first batch included the famous Beijing Road, Nanjing Road, Guangdong Road, Henan Road, Shandong Road and other 27 roads

During the expansion of the concessions, road naming was chaotic - some kept old village names, some used foreigners’ names. For easier management, postal service and traffic in the concessions, a clear, systematic, easy-to-remember naming rule was badly needed; Chinese place names were a common reference system relatively familiar to all parties at the time, far easier to remember than long foreign names or transliterations

By adopting place names from all over China, the Municipal Council could to some extent show “respect” and “inclusiveness” toward China, and strengthen the image of the concession as a commercial center gathering merchants from all over the country

So Shanghai’s road network, spread out, is a map of China

Especially the street naming in central Taipei

Especially the street naming in central Taipei: a large portion is named after cities or place names in mainland China

After Taiwan’s retrocession in 1945, in order to eliminate the influence of the Japanese colonial period, the government at the time renamed Taipei’s streets on a large scale. A Shanghai architect named Zheng Dingbang was responsible for this work

Referring to a map of China, Zheng Dingbang systematically named Taipei’s streets after mainland Chinese cities, roughly distributing them according to the principle of “north at top, south at bottom, west at left, east at right”:

Northeast area: mostly named after places in Northeast China, for example Jinzhou Street, Siping Street.

Southeast area: mostly named after places along the Chinese coast or in the southeast, for example Wenzhou Street, Xiamen Street, Fuzhou Street, Shaoxing South Street.

Northwest area: there is Ningxia Road, etc.

Important arteries: many main roads are named after important cities, such as Nanjing East Road, Chongqing North Road, Hangzhou South Road, Hankou Street, etc.

Cultural and didactic road names: besides place names, some streets are named after traditional Chinese culture and “admonitions”, such as the famous Zhongxiao (loyalty and filial piety), Ren’ai (benevolence), Xinyi (trust and righteousness), Heping (peace) roads

Many roads are named “Guangfu” (retrocession), for example Guangfu Road, to commemorate Taiwan’s return in 1945

The Siege of Changchun

Very interesting - this campaign is rarely recorded on either side of the strait

It’s a classic case of “the construction of historical narrative”. It reveals that historical memory isn’t a purely objective record of facts, but a result filtered and reshaped by power, ideology and collective emotion. To understand this “silence” is to understand the meta-question of “who writes history, and why they write it this way”

Look at Baidu Baike and wiki for details

I want to know whether young people in Changchun today still remember this history

Lin Biao set up a siege command post in mid-May, and on May 30 decided on the deployment to blockade Changchun:

(1) Block all passages large and small, build fortifications on the main positions, and have the main force firmly control the airport outside the city.

(2) Use long-range firepower to control the Free Road inside the city and the New Imperial Palace airport.

(3) Strictly prohibit grain and fuel from entering the enemy area.

(4) Strictly prohibit civilians inside the city from leaving the city

(5) Control appropriate reserves and connect the liaison networks of each station, in order to promptly repel and destroy enemies attacking our dispersed besieging units……

(7) …… Make Changchun a dead city

The top leader approved it

Tactically this campaign seems to have been successful

But this campaign also seems to have had no winners; the losers were miserable, the civilians were miserable

Taiwan under Japanese rule

Colonial modernity: the double-edged sword of Japanese-ruled Taiwan

The absurd control and exploitation - that’s the most basic part: railways, roads and ports were built with the primary task of transporting Taiwan’s inland resources to the ports, then on to Japan

Economy: a unified currency and banking system - let’s ask what this was for: making Taiwan a source of raw materials and a market for goods for Japan, with a single economic structure

Social control, social surveillance, public health enforcement

This actually implanted a set of modern standards and socialized norms and shaped collective memory; it severed the ties with traditional China, and also stabbed at the later Nationalist government; the Nationalist government’s initial awkwardness and lack of rules made it look out of place

County towns

They hold 90% of China’s land area

And 900 million of its 1.4 billion people

The county town is exactly what can represent China

The news and information center of a county is the public security bureau

I feel this is a very interesting thing

In county towns, the flow of information, the organization of public opinion, governance and political security are highly coupled, which directly affects the county town’s occupational structure, life narrative and direction of development

The biggest advantage of a county town isn’t growth speed but low living cost, high density of relationships, stable social order The county town is an acquaintance society, which brings three characteristics

Resource allocation and opportunity depend on relationship chains and local networks

Information flow and public opinion are highly localized and filtered

Career development is more like “niche competition” than an “infinite track” So opportunities are limited, more like relying on zero-sum games and the ecological relationship network to climb

Turkmenistan, a somewhat magical country

Located in Central Asia, near the Caspian Sea, bordering Iran and Afghanistan

Religion is mainly Islam

Most of the land is desert, especially the Karakum Desert. Imagine a vast, boundless sea of sand with wind cutting like a knife. The population is concentrated mainly in cities or near oases

There’s a very famous geographical wonder called the “Door to Hell” (Darvaza Gas Crater), a natural gas pit that was set on fire and has burned for decades, like a real-life Lord of the Rings scene at night

People’s rhythm is slow, they value traditional clans and family

At first a Soviet geological team exploring natural gas found methane venting outward

They were the wealthy-and-crude type; methane is a colorless, odorless gas that is combustible and reduces the oxygen content of the air; approaching it directly causes suffocation - not “poisoned to death” but “oxygen stolen”

What they decided was to set it on fire and let it burn itself out

Capping it failed → it would cause more serious environmental and safety accidents

Not dealing with it → lowest cost, lowest risk, and the return isn’t bad either; develop it into a tourist attraction, and it even has symbolic meaning

Turns out it’s not just China - Turkey isn’t a fully open internet country either

Turns out it’s not just China - Turkey isn’t a fully open internet country either

Wikipedia (was blocked for over 2 years)

Twitter / TikTok / Reddit temporarily blocked in certain periods

Telegram and WhatsApp communications are throttled during sensitive periods

Some political content and news sites get filtered

So everyone uses VPNs too, very naturally

They naturally use tools like Shadowsocks, WireGuard, V2Ray, Psiphon

This kind of digital literacy is far higher than Turkmenistan / North Korea / other Central Asian countries

Turkmen youth ≈ they have smartphones, but truly being able to get online

Turkmen youth ≈ they have smartphones, but the proportion who can truly “get on the outside internet + use a VPN + understand the global information system” is very low

The country’s internet usage rate is far below the global average

Basically the network is very slow, very expensive, and heavily censored

Also, locally the authorities have blocked a lot of websites, so VPNs are needed

Young people with “real ability to access the outside internet” ≈ 15–30%

Finally there’s the ability to understand information; being able to understand English/Russian content matters enormously, and that proportion is even smaller…

The historical origin of the Middle East

The Middle East is a European perspective, the East as seen from Europe’s point of view

The East closest to Europe is called the Near East, and these countries are generally Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Anatolia and so on

The East in the middle is generally called the Middle East, basically the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Iraq and Syria; the far East is generally the Far East - China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia

Singapore is a very magical country

A super orderly country

Singapore makes money by relying on world stability - Southeast Asia + China + the US-Japan global system; the financial hub of the East, while Dubai is even more the world’s flowing free port and hub of opportunity

Singapore’s golden position: the Strait of Malacca; whoever controls it can influence more than half of the world’s maritime trade and energy transport

This is determined by geopolitical value

So this determined Singapore

Build Singapore Port → one of the world’s largest transshipment ports

Build Changi Airport → Asia’s strongest aviation hub

Singapore is a sense of security, Dubai is possibility, Saudi Arabia is the future landscape

Seoul’s hoesik culture

Korea has a very strong collectivist culture; after work there are often hoesik (company dinners), and these gatherings generally continue very late

The pressure and self-management brought by the rat race: Koreans pay a lot of attention to self-management, including appearance, figure and fitness, to stay competitive

Then there are the working hours of Korean office workers; there’s also an overtime culture, so because daytime work and socializing take up a lot of time, they can only use late-night hours for self-management, and the ubiquitous 24-hour gyms support this lifestyle

I’m curious how Korea solves the fertility problem under this involution culture hahaha, after all, having children is a choice

Korea calls itself “Hell Joseon”; this place is like a Korean hell, utterly hopeless, with a single set of values

How Japanese and Spanish hikers are similar

In Spain more pilgrims want to arrive at their lodging early, so they can prepare for the next day’s hike

In Japan it’s because there are too many rules… if you’re late you don’t even get a chance to check in

In Spain everyone in the afternoon is grabbing spots, cleaning, recovering, socializing, having dinner

In Japan everyone checks in, soaks in the bath, has dinner

Japanese pilgrims generally wake at 6:30-7:00 in the morning

Breakfast is generally served at a fixed time

Life in Zhengzhou is really pleasant

Evening residency at the Financial Island

People’s activities by the lake

Friends are also very interesting

In this place, Zhengzhou

Financial Island, and the Zhengzhou New District area, has basically been around Financial Island for a long time

This area gathers Henan’s top policy, financial, educational (though controversial), medical and environmental resources

Then house prices are themselves a market consensus; especially for Henan with nearly 100 million people, high housing prices are themselves a screening mechanism

Zhengzhou is a single-pole provincial capital; the whole province’s resources flow here

Its biggest “card”: the transport hub. This is “given by heaven” (determined by geography), the “body” it relies on for its existence

Its deepest “root”: the population hinterland. It’s the “provincial capital” of 100 million people; this is the “root” of its demand

Its weakest “ring”: high-end industry. It isn’t a tech center (like Shenzhen), nor a financial center (like Shanghai); it lacks the “strong culture” gene for “blood generation”

So it’s hard for it to be a city led by top-level innovation; its fate is to be “the distribution center for the Central Plains’ logistics, people flow, information flow and capital flow”; what matters is how big the volume is - make it big

Before the “demographic dividend” disappears, it must truly build its own core industries (like advanced manufacturing, deep food processing, modern logistics). If industrial upgrading fails while the population starts to flow out or age, it will face the risk of “hollowing out”

The Silk Road: this route carries too much weight

Because it’s so long that you can sense how small and fleeting humans are in this world

But even if I really walked this whole stretch myself, I still couldn’t imagine how the ancients a thousand years ago completed their Silk Road journeys. Standing on the stone city of Tashkurgan gazing toward the Pamirs, looking back at the road from Afghanistan to Xinjiang — this is one of the hardest sections of the old Silk Road. In the first year of the Zhenguan era of Emperor Taizong of Tang, Xuanzang set out west from Chang’an at twenty-eight, narrowly escaping death to reach Yiwu and cross the Pamirs; by the time he returned he was already forty-four. A thousand years later, I walk the road they came by and see the scenery they once saw — but how much of their state of mind back then can I really fathom?

The Primitive Way, compared with the French Way

The Primitive Way is very unique: it’s the first pilgrimage route

In the 9th century, King Alfonso II heard that the tomb of Saint James had been found; he set out from Oviedo, crossing mountains and ridges to go to Santiago himself and confirm whether the remains were genuine

This mountain road is what later gradually became the Camino Primitivo — the Primitive Way

It carries a sense of ancient sedimented faith

On the way you’ll find:

Small villages in the mountain mist

Forest mountain paths whose route hasn’t changed in over 1,000 years

Undisturbed stone churches and Romanesque chapels

Pilgrims say little to each other; meeting, just one line: “Buen Camino”

The route starts at Oviedo and ends at Santiago, a total distance of 320 km, about a bit more than ten days

The French Way is like “a journey between people”

The Primitive Way is “a journey between a person and God (or their own inner self)”

Luoyang

The third city of Henan

Historical positioning: a thousand-year ancient capital, specific figures — Wu Zetian designated Luoyang the “Divine Capital,” one of the world’s centers

As a capital: the first was the Xia dynasty, and successively the Shang, Western Zhou, Eastern Zhou, Eastern Han, Cao Wei, Western Jin, Northern Wei, Sui, Tang, Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin and other thirteen legitimate dynasties established their capitals here

Very close to Mount Song, world cultural heritage:

Longmen Grottoes

The Grand Canal of China

the Silk Road (I thought it started from Xi’an)

In the Sui and Tang periods a two-capital system was practiced; the two-capital system truly took shape in the Tang

Daxing City (present-day Xi’an) → the primary capital, also called Jingshi

Luoyang (present-day Luoyang) → the “Eastern Capital,” serving as a secondary capital, a political and transport center

Chang’an was designated the Jingshi capital, Luoyang the Eastern Capital — an important political center standing alongside Chang’an, often a political and economic stronghold, where emperors would also live long-term and handle state affairs

If an edict was “issued from the Eastern Capital,” its formality was no different from Chang’an’s

China’s geography and politics have a long-standing feature:

Guanzhong (Chang’an) is easy to defend and hard to attack, highly secure; the Central Plains (Luoyang) are dense with economy and population, good for governance and mobilization

• For a long stretch of the Kaiyuan era, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang mainly lived in Luoyang

• Wu Zetian even treated Luoyang directly as the “Divine Capital” and governed from there long-term

To consolidate her rule (and break free of Chang’an’s traditional aristocratic forces), Wu Zetian moved the center of rule entirely to Luoyang and renamed it the “Divine Capital.” For a long period during and after Wu Zetian, Luoyang effectively replaced Chang’an and became the empire’s political center

Yining is in Ili

The most remote place in China, a small town

but precisely also the most beautiful place

Praised as “Jiangnan beyond the frontier”

Natural scenery, rich produce

and it sits at a key overland chokepoint of the Silk Road

Snow mountains, streams, grasslands, the Gobi… the scenery you see each day is never repeated. Rain clearing to sun, hail falling out of nowhere… experiencing four seasons in one day is normal

Tsarist Russia and Mongolia

It’s a bit like the existence of North Korea, creating a moat

and it also exists to protect its own Trans-Siberian Railway

Siberia is all of Russia’s territory in Asia; Russia is very large, and it’s the same idea as what we call North China or Jiangnan

So this area is even bigger than Europe, bigger than China and the United States, vast land with sparse people (only about 25% of Russia’s population), with extremely cold and long winters, yet underground it holds the world’s richest oil, natural gas, timber and mineral resources

The Trans-Siberian Railway is actually the longest railway

9,288 km in total, seven days and six nights end to end, and the world’s longest single rail route

At the end of the 19th century, Tsarist Russia faced a huge geopolitical problem: it possessed vast Siberia and the Far East but couldn’t truly “control” them. From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok overland (by carriage or sleigh) took six months to a year. That meant that if something happened in the Far East (say a conflict with Japan or China), the central government’s troops and supplies simply couldn’t arrive in time. Without a railway, Siberia and the Far East were legally Russia’s, but strategically “out of control”

A very interesting film, also known as the Napoleon Route

A very interesting film, also known as the Napoleon Route, though it looks like they walk the French Way

Several people are all searching for the meaning of their own lives

The father scatters his son’s ashes bit by bit, and in the end scatters them into the sea at Cabo Fisterra, and then starts over

Cabo Fisterra (commonly called the “End of the Earth”); later I found out that the westernmost point of continental Europe is Cabo da Roca in Portugal, and the westernmost point of mainland Spain is Cabo Touriñán in Galicia — both of them are west of Cabo Fisterra. The northwest coastline where Fisterra lies is called the “Coast of Death” (Costa da Morte), famous for its winds, waves and history of shipwrecks (such as the 2002 Prestige oil tanker disaster)

He doesn’t believe, isn’t romantic, doesn’t want to socialize; he just wants to finish walking his son’s road

He just doesn’t want to be swallowed by the fact of his loss

But along the way, the scenery, the exhaustion, the company of strangers, without his noticing, soften his heart bit by bit

Churches give people’s hearts somewhere to rest

Everyone carries a story, but it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud

Jiangbei

Nantong is a very good example

A symbol of Jiangbei

Nantong is north of the Yangtze; Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing are all south of the Yangtze, all belonging to Jiangnan

In the past, the Yangtze was always a natural chasm

Nantong lies north of the Yangtze and belongs to “Jiangbei.” Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing (their main bodies) are all south of the Yangtze and belong to “Jiangnan.”

“Jiangnan” is almost a synonym in China for “wealthy” and “men of letters and refinement.” “Jiangbei,” by contrast, has had a relatively barren image in history (though Nantong is an exception). Before the Sutong Bridge (2008) and the Chongqi Bridge (2011) opened, going from Nantong to Shanghai required a ferry, which was very inconvenient, and this created a long-term isolation psychologically and economically.

Its current positioning is North Shanghai: Nantong instantly went from “across from Shanghai” to “Shanghai’s northern suburbs”

It fully takes on Shanghai’s industrial spillover. A large amount of Shanghai’s manufacturing, logistics and part of its tech industry has moved to Nantong

Many Shanghai people choose to live or retire in Nantong, because housing prices are lower and the environment is more comfortable (it’s praised as the “capital of longevity”), while at the same time they can enjoy Shanghai’s radiation

The Nakahechi route is the most classic in the Kumano Kodō network

The Nakahechi route is one of the most classic and famous routes in the Kumano Kodō network, and the one with the most foreign hiking tourists

The path can be traced back to around the 10th century; in ancient times aristocrats, the imperial family and ascetics set out from old Kyoto, crossed the Yoshino–Kumano area, and went on pilgrimage to the three great Kumano shrines (Kumano Hongū Taisha, Kumano Nachi Taisha, Kumano Hayatama Taisha)

It was inscribed as a World Cultural Heritage site in 2004

The endpoint is one of the three great Kumano shrines, Kumano Nachi Taisha (Nachi)

Itinerary:

Takijiri-oji → Takahara: there’s lodging here

Why do airports choose artificial islands, and what’s the most fundamental reason?

Airports in other cities may not be on islands, but they’re usually very remote too, with requirements on managing the surrounding buildings and residents

Kansai International Airport sits on an artificial island 5 km offshore in the Senshu waters in the southeastern part of Osaka Bay, Japan, called Kankū Island. It’s the world’s first artificial-island airport built entirely by land reclamation, connected to the shore by the Kansai International Airport Access Bridge

Hong Kong International Airport is located on Chek Lap Kok island in the Islands District of the New Territories, Hong Kong SAR, China. The airport was built through land reclamation; its artificial island includes the original Chek Lap Kok island, Lam Chau, and land obtained by reclamation. The airport covers a total area of 1,248 hectares, three quarters of which is reclaimed

Located in the eastern waters of Jinzhou Bay in Dalian, it’s the first offshore “artificial island” airport in the country. The “artificial island” is 6.2 km long and 3.5 km wide, with a closest distance of 3 km offshore; it uses water-based backfilling, with a reclamation area of 20.87 square kilometers, forming a land area of 20.29 square kilometers. The airport is designed to the 4F operational class standard, with plans to build 4 runways and a 900,000-square-meter terminal; once completed it will become the world’s largest offshore “artificial island” airport

Relatively speaking, there are many advantages to building an airport on a small island at sea

An artificial island is like “creating a blank canvas at sea”: no need to demolish large residential areas, occupy farmland, or cut through the existing city layout — it’s an efficient choice of “spatial displacement”

Plus there’s a certain safety benefit at sea: within a certain range at both ends and on both sides of the runway there can’t be obstacles like tall buildings, mountains or high-voltage lines, otherwise they threaten the safety of takeoff and landing (for example, a plane needs “unobstructed” climb space when taking off, and a “clear-sight” glide path when landing)

Finally there’s the noise-pollution factor: reducing “noise pollution” and “urban traffic interference”

Kansai, Japan — the Shikoku Pilgrimage

One of Japan’s most famous Buddhist pilgrimage routes

It’s on the island of Shikoku in Japan, not in Kyoto on Honshu

This pilgrimage route circles the whole of Shikoku, about 1,200 km in total

It includes 88 Shingon school temples

It’s said to commemorate the footsteps of the practice of Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai).

Traditionally believers walk the whole circuit (called “ohenro-san”),

and some complete it by bicycle, car or public transport

Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) was born in Sanuki on Shikoku (present-day Kagawa Prefecture)

Later he spread the Shingon school at Tō-ji in Kyoto and became a nationally recognized eminent monk

So many people visit Tō-ji in Kyoto before going on the Shikoku pilgrimage,

symbolizing “setting out”;

after finishing the pilgrimage, some also return to Tō-ji, symbolizing “dedication of merit” —

gratitude and completion

Undeniably, Kyoto is very beautiful

A balance of culture, environment and pace of life

The pace of life especially is comfortable

The whole city’s environment and cultural atmosphere are strong, and there’s a lot of history, with a rich traditional Japanese flavor

Each ward of Kyoto has its own character

Nakagyō Ward: the heart of Kyoto, gathering bustling commercial districts and traditional alleys — Nishiki Market, Pontochō, Kiyamachi, Sanjō, Shijō and more are all here. It blends old machiya townhouses with modern department stores, and is where “modern life meets ancient charm” in Kyoto

Shimogyō Ward: centered on Kyoto Station, a transport hub and a shopping paradise. Kyoto Tower, Higashi Hongan-ji and Shijō Kawaramachi are all in this ward

Kamigyō Ward: the spiritual symbol of the old city, with sites such as the Kyoto Imperial Palace and Shōkoku-ji. Traditional crafts, kimono and tea ceremony culture still continue here. The streets are quiet, and the residents are mostly old Kyoto locals

Higashiyama Ward: Kyoto in miniature — Kiyomizu-dera, Yasaka Shrine, Gion, the Philosopher’s Path and more are all here. Narrow stone-paved lanes, traditional teahouses, glimpses of maiko: the place that best represents Kyoto’s mood

Sakyō Ward: an academic district where culture and nature coexist. Kyoto University, Ginkaku-ji, Nanzen-ji and Mount Kurama are all here. The ward is broad, extending from the city center to the mountains — a symbol of “letters and nature”

Ukyō Ward: the vast western area, including famous sites such as Arashiyama and Tenryū-ji. The four-season scenery of the bamboo grove, Togetsukyō Bridge and the Katsura River draws countless tourists. The foothill areas retain a lot of rural character

One interesting thing about the Camino: its shelters aren’t that suited to work

One very interesting thing about the Camino is that the shelters inside it are actually not that suitable for working, because of privacy

But relatively speaking, some hostels along the way, or coworking spaces, are very helpful for digital nomads

Along the way you also pass through some cities, and these cities have quiet places to work, such as libraries and cafés

China-Japan issues in the recent news

On November 7, 2025, at the Budget Committee of Japan’s House of Representatives, responding to questions about increasing the defense budget, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi clearly stated that “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency, and constitutes a survival-threatening situation for Japan”

As a right-wing politician, Takaichi took office as prime minister with a tough stance on the Taiwan issue as her platform

China said that if Japan interferes in the Taiwan issue it will suffer a crushing blow, and China’s Ministry of National Defense and People’s Daily also successively stressed the military threat. The Chinese government escalated on this basis: as of November 14 it issued a travel warning for Japan, advising Chinese citizens to “avoid visiting Japan,” and airlines also allowed free cancellation of Japan flights, thereby applying pressure on tourism and the economy

The US State Department condemned China’s remarks as “threatening” and supported Japan under the framework of the Japan-US alliance. President Trump’s visit to Japan (late October) is the background to this, and the Taiwan issue between China and the US has surfaced in a form that draws Japan in

The possibility that the US pushes Japan to take part in China-US Taiwan consultations has increased, with Japan unconsciously acting as one side of a China-US Cold War proxy war

China’s “extreme threats” have instead raised anti-China sentiment inside Japan, pushing forward cooperation in the Japan-US-Australia-India quadrilateral mechanism

Summoning the ambassador, travel warnings, a consul’s “beheading” hint

How it happened, how it developed, and how it ended

Japan (the Takaichi government) publicly codified “a Taiwan contingency” as a “survival-threatening situation for Japan,”

The remark itself is legal but provocative: although it inherits the Abe line, the timing (after Trump’s visit to Japan) + wording (survival-threatening situation) is clearly escalated, going beyond the previous “situations in areas surrounding Japan” formulation and provoking China’s red line

November 8 (Saturday) 10:00 AM: China’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador and delivered a protest note, calling Takaichi’s remarks “extremely dangerous and a reversal of history.” It demanded an “immediate clarification and public apology.”

November 8 (Saturday) 2:30 PM: Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian posts on X (later deleted) — Consul General Xue Jian

「If certain Japanese politicians insist on playing with fire, history will remember their names — along with their fates. 🔪」 (image: a map of Japan + a red bullseye) |

| November 8 (Saturday) 8:00 PM | Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs urgently summons the Chinese ambassador | Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Takehiro Funakoshi | Protests that Xue Jian’s “personal threat already constitutes diplomatic terrorism,” demanding “immediate deletion, a public apology, and removal from office with an investigation.”

| | November 9 (Sunday) 9:00 AM | China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism issues a “Japan travel warning” | Ministry of Culture and Tourism website | Level: orange (second only to red) Content: 「Given recent provocative remarks by Japanese politicians, security risks have risen; non-essential travel is not advised.」

| | November 9 (Sunday) 12:00 noon | The three major airlines follow suit | Air China, China Eastern, China Southern | Announcement: from November 9 to December 31, free refunds and changes on Japan routes.

| | November 10 (Monday) morning | Xue Jian deletes the post + “explains” | Xue Jian’s personal X | New post: 「A personal, emotional expression; it does not represent the official position. But the Japanese side must take responsibility for its provocation.」

How interesting the Terracotta Army is

Why the Terracotta Army? Qin Shi Huang was ambitious: from the moment he took the throne he used 700,000 laborers to build an underground empire covering 98 square kilometers at the foot of Mount Li — his tomb

The core: taking his empire with him to be reborn

Each one has a unique face shape, hairstyle and expression! Craftsmen used local yellow earth to form 10 basic molds, then added details by hand: mustache, eyebrows, armor — all unique. Height 1.75–2 m (generals are taller), assembled step by step (head, hands and body fired separately, then glued together with mud). They were originally covered in pigment: red armor, green robes, blue horses, black hair, but the color faded within 15 seconds of exposure to air (because the ancient lacquer layer oxidized in dry air)

Pit K9901 has an “entertainment troupe”: acrobats, musicians, strongmen, even bronze cranes and ducks. The stone armor pit has stone armor sets weighing up to 18 kg. There are also two bronze chariots half human size, one a “luxury sedan” with an umbrella, detailed enough that every strand of the horses’ manes is carved. Just think: in the underworld the emperor not only wages war but watches performances and walks his birds — what a rich life!

Pit No. 3 is the command post — the smallest but the most important; but there’s no commander there either, because the commander is Qin Shi Huang himself, in the nearby tomb

The 8,000 “thousand people, thousand faces” faces are industrialization at its earliest: “standardization” + “individualization” = efficient customization. The Qin dynasty managed handicraft production the way it managed armies

Torsos, arms and legs are all “standard parts,” mass-produced from molds; first the basic face shape is made from a mold (there are probably 8–10 basic “face molds,” such as the “eye-character” face, the “state-character” face, etc.), and on top of the basic face mold the craftsmen then do “secondary creation”

Why the pyramids are so precise

Like the Terracotta Army

it’s also a very industrial-grade product

And interestingly, the workers weren’t slaves: the workers’ village remains found in archaeology show that they were a paid, organized team of professional technicians. They had dormitories, bakeries, breweries, and even medical care (skeletons have been found that underwent difficult amputations and healed)

Every day, enough bread, beer, fish and meat had to be provided for tens of thousands of heavy laborers. This was a state-level logistics system

More than four thousand years ago, ancient Egypt built a strong and unified centralized state

Its social structure was exactly like the buildings they made: an extremely hierarchical “social pyramid”

The pharaoh had absolute authority and resources, and the pharaoh maintained the order of the cosmos

Why did they spend the whole strength of the state building pyramids

They believed that after death the soul (which they called “ka” and “ba”) continues to exist, and the condition for gaining eternal life is that the body must be intact — this is the origin of mummies. The dead person’s heart was weighed on a scale together with the feather of “Ma’at” (truth). Your life in the afterlife is the same as before death, so you need food, furniture and servants (painted on the walls or made into models

The pyramid of power — the pharaoh

In the ancient Egyptians’ setting of the world, this cosmos must have a pharaoh

Worldview: order vs chaos

Ancient Egyptians lived in an environment that depended extremely on order

The Nile had to flood on time (order) for the crops to grow. If it flooded too late, too early, too much or too little (chaos), everyone would die of famine

The sun had to rise every day, or the world would fall into darkness

The pharaoh’s one and most important job was, through his “divinity” and daily religious ritual, to ensure that “Ma’at” — the cosmos’s order, truth and balance — was maintained, and that “chaos” would not devour the world

Because in everyone’s eyes (including the pharaoh’s own), if the pharaoh went “offline,” the sun might not rise and the Nile might not flood. His status came not from the power of “management,” but from the sacred responsibility of “keeping the cosmos in existence”

Later, the pharaoh’s authority and the economy (pyramid building consumed too much) began to decline; local forces grew stronger, local nobles (governors) grew stronger and began to challenge the center, plus a super-drought lasting decades affected the Nile’s flooding

Why research institutes are denser in Xi’an

In the research layout of the first 30 years of New China, security was the number one variable. Large numbers of core research institutions (aerospace, defense, electronics, materials, etc.) needed to be far from the coast and far from potential strike zones, while staying close to a stable cluster of universities and an industrial base

So the national-team research institutes all chose Xi’an

Once key disciplines and institutions came in, a “self-reinforcing” clustering effect appeared.

Aerospace, electronics, radar and materials are highly dependent on:

Large-scale test bases

Mature basic-research teams

Long-term, stable policy investment

Inside and outside Xi’an’s city wall

Inside the wall there’s history, culture and memory

Outside the wall is the future of this city, Xi’an

Inside is the Bell Tower, the central point, like a timekeeper — people relied on it ringing the bell to tell the time

It sits at the intersection of several main thoroughfares, its position so carefully chosen it’s as if the city’s veins are held in its palm. The Bell Tower’s structure is upright and symmetrical, with an elegant “official” air, symbolizing order

The Drum Tower, by contrast, leans toward being a “warning officer” and an “information announcer.” When the night had to be watched through, it was responsible for beating the drum to announce the watches; when something big happened or the city changed, it was also responsible for striking the great drum to alert the people. The Drum Tower is slightly broader than the Bell Tower, and its grandeur carries the weight of a “night watchman”

The clarity of the north

I went to Hebei and Henan before, and the weather felt pretty ordinary

I really like Xi’an’s weather lately

I found the reason — many physical reasons

Xi’an is a typical city at the edge of an inland basin, and in winter and early spring dry cold air masses often come south. Dry air has low moisture content and fewer light-scattering particles, so sunlight passing through looks especially clear. When humidity drops, the blue of the sky gets “washed bright,” like it’s been wiped once with a microfiber cloth

Clear weather is often also a signal of “dry” and “cold” side by side: thin air, low humidity, few particles — after sunlight tumbles through the atmosphere, all that’s left is pure blue and glaring brightness

Especially since Xi’an has also been cleaning things up in recent years

To some extent Beijing is the same, but compared with the year-round crisp type like Hohhot/Yinchuan, or the plateau-wind type like Xining/Zhangjiakou, and with Xi’an and Lanzhou’s post-cleanup highlight moments, Beijing can rank near the front, but it’s not yet the top

Japanese people are very obedient, passing tradition down unchanged

Chinese people, by contrast, want to do something of their own, adding creativity and clever touches, so Chinese tradition gradually changes. In other words, Japanese people are good at faithfully maintaining tradition, but don’t have much of a knack for creativity; at the same time this shows that Japanese creativity is rather weak

Japan preserves tradition well, and some people may therefore think Japanese people are also rich in creativity, but in fact Japan is a country very bad at creating

Japan walks very steadily; “improvement” is a fitting word for them

China’s 40 years of reform and opening up were a massive transformation, rarely seen in human history

What we’ve always advocated is embracing change; change means opportunity

We’re very good at tearing down and starting over

Chang’an’s present is Xi’an; Chang’an’s branch is Kyoto

The time of Xi’an’s greatest change is now, the present, the past 15–20 years

Before that, Xi’an gave the impression of a gray, heavy northwestern industrial city, with dilapidated old houses inside the city wall and its relics in their original “ruins” state

Through projects like the Grand Tang Mall and Tang Paradise, Xi’an made history into a “super-large live-action amusement park.” It’s no longer only mounds of earth and terracotta warriors — it has become a “cyber Tang” of blazing lights and flowing color

Xi’an’s urban skeleton expanded at extreme speed over the past 20 years; the growth of the High-tech Zone, the Economic and Technological Development Zone and the Xixian New Area made the old idea that “inside the city wall is Xi’an” completely outdated

Kyoto’s visuals have never changed, and that’s enforced by law

Kyoto Station, designed by Hiroshi Hara, is a giant, futuristic steel-and-glass beast. It met strong opposition from Kyoto people at the time, who felt it ruined the feng shui and the scenery. It’s a huge scar (or monument) from Kyoto embracing modernity

What tourists see is refined tranquility; what locals face is the anxiety of being invaded

From a “living ancient capital” it’s gradually becoming an “ancient capital for display”

Downtown Kyoto is becoming a giant “tourist special zone.” Because of overtourism, original residents are moving out due to noise, traffic congestion and rising prices

I haven’t been to Kyoto; Kyoto is very much worth learning from and experiencing

I’m Chinese

so for me Kyoto may be more profound than Xi’an

But setting aside national identity, I like Xi’an a bit more — not because it’s better, but because it has more depth

You walk under the city wall and what you step on isn’t a road but compressed dynasties; dig three shovelfuls anywhere and you might hit a relic. This absurd historical saturation itself carries a hint of science fiction. Xi’an is like a giant archaeology blind box: layer upon layer of time fragments sleeping underground, waiting for someone to touch them lightly and wake them up

The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang still hasn’t been fully excavated and is still under protection; the Yellow Emperor’s mausoleum hasn’t been touched either

Of course, since I’m very familiar with China’s modernization, Xi’an gives me much less of a shock; for discovering the aesthetic order of “a world in a single flower” in the details, I’d choose Kyoto. That’s a place for dialogue with your own inner self

Spent half a morning finishing this film; a lot of the dialogue really drew me in

On the journey the protagonist realizes that “escaping society” doesn’t equal “becoming free.” He originally thought that as long as he left the city behind, he could shake off all human contradictions. But he slowly discovers that a person carries their own problems on the road, and won’t suddenly become lighter just because they changed geographic coordinates. This idea is like a mirror:

Freedom isn’t a geographic location, but whether a person can face themselves

There’s another moment where the film expresses the tension between solitude and sharing in a very simple way. The protagonist experiences everything magnificent, primal, and pure in nature, but as he embraces these experiences, another question quietly arises in his heart:

A beautiful thing — if it can’t be shared with anyone, does it really count as complete

For the human organism itself, this may also be a sign that humans can’t exist independently, outside their own species — meaning is often constituted by relationships. Even if you’re willing to be a “philosopher in the mountains and forests,” there may still be a part of you deep down that craves a response

Society’s rules, family expectations, friction in relationships — they look unbreakable, but when you put yourself into the wilderness, those “structures” are as thin as paper

A lot of what traps people is psychological structure, not a real barrier

The world we see is often a projection of our inner state

Leaving society is easy; leaving yourself is hard

Total freedom suddenly puts a person in front of a vacuum of meaning

Nature itself is there to heal us, but nature is also cold and indifferent — which means we’re destined not to feel the beauty of person-to-person relationships from the person-nature relationship

Every word the old man says to the protagonist feels like a probe

Every word the old man says to the protagonist feels like a probe: “Are you willing to let someone into your life?”

Along the way the protagonist rejects society, rejects connection, rejects labels, rejects being understood

The old man keeps saying that you can choose connection yourself, rather than being forced to accept it

Escaping society isn’t rejecting humanity, it’s rejecting the relationships that don’t belong to you; but the part of connection that does belong to you — you’ll still crave it in the end

The protagonist still keeps hoping for his family’s understanding; on this part he’s just avoiding it

Only “losing people” makes a person understand the value of relationships

Discussing God

For the old man, God isn’t a religious clause; it’s more like a supporting structure for life.

He’s been through losing a child, being old and lonely, the afterglow of life — and in that situation faith is like a walking stick

Philosophically, this is a worldview carrying love and order:

The world isn’t chaos; it has a direction

A person isn’t isolated; he’s held up by some kind of goodwill

It’s mainly not atheism’s denial of God; what’s denied is a way of having meaning dictated by an outside force

He believes human freedom must cut off at the root every externally conferred framework — religion, state, family, social structure. So when the old man talks about God’s “arrangement,” “meaning,” and “blessing,” he feels uneasy, because that’s a life system he’s trying to escape

Is the world’s meaning something you build yourself, or is it already out there?

The old man’s answer:

Meaning comes from relationships, from love, from a force that transcends the individual

This is an understanding where “the world responds to people”

The protagonist’s answer:

Meaning comes from experience itself, built by the individual while passing through loneliness, nature, and risk

This is an understanding where “only your experience gives the world its shape”

Only at the very end of his life does the protagonist understand what the old man’s words really meant:

If you refuse to connect with others, the world becomes a silent wilderness

If you’re willing to connect, then people are each other’s “God”

Qujiang Pool

A friend said it’s newly built

Another friend strongly recommended it, so I came

Qujiang Pool carries the shadow of a royal garden in its genes

People of the Tang loved to feast and roam here, write poems, play cuju, fly kites, and race boats. Every year on the Shangsi Festival on the third day of the third month, scholars performed purification rites (to ward off misfortune) at the pool’s edge and went out to enjoy the spring, while literati used the spring breeze to write lines later generations envied. Bai Juyi, Du Fu, and Li Shangyin all left poems here

Compared with West Lake — West Lake is big and broad

Qujiang Pool suits slow walking, sitting for a while, watching the water surface and the light; West Lake suits circling the lake, gazing into the distance, cycling, boating, and even suits “zoning out on a grander scale.” West Lake’s scenery has layers — distant hills, mid-lake, near shore each have their own drama; Qujiang Pool’s scenery is more “up close to the body” — the closer you walk, the more you can see the harmony between Tang feeling and the modern city

Japanese people’s sense of distance between people

Japanese people’s sense of distance between people

Thoughts on the Vietnam flood release incident

I suddenly came across the dire situation of today’s floods in Vietnam

A claim circulating online that “Vietnam opened its reservoir gates to release floodwater, causing Guangxi to be flooded” has sparked controversy. Vietnam has also accused China’s upstream dams of releasing water and worsening its floods. This kind of transboundary river flooding involves China–Vietnam border rivers like the Ky Cung River (upstream in Vietnam, flowing into Guangxi’s Ping’er River, Zuo River, and Yong River) and the Panlong River (upstream in China, flowing into Vietnam)

Actually, analyzing by river flow direction

Most China–Vietnam border rivers have China upstream and Vietnam downstream (like the Red River and the Panlong River), but the Ky Cung is an exception: it originates in Lang Son, Vietnam, flows into the Ping’er River in Chongzuo, Guangxi, then into the Zuo River and Yong River (Nanning). This is one of the few rivers that flows from Vietnam “upstream” into Guangxi

There are indeed small hydropower stations upstream on Vietnam’s Ky Cung River (like in the Lang Son area), and during a 2024 typhoon the gates were opened to release water to prevent a dam breach. But Guangxi’s Water Resources Department verified: there are no large reservoirs or hydropower stations upstream on the Ping’er River or Shuikou River, so a deliberate “large-scale flood release” isn’t possible. The flooding was mainly natural channel convergence caused by heavy typhoon rainfall, with water levels rising by 9–10 meters

The October 2025 Guangxi floods: officials clearly stated it was the combined effect of multiple typhoons, with the Zuo, You, and Yu rivers all above warning levels across the line, not caused by Vietnam releasing water. Guangxi has already regulated it through reservoir interception and pre-release measures, and the flood peak has passed

Kumano, Japanese people’s fascination with life and death

Death and rebirth

In ancient times, Kumano was regarded as the entrance to Yomi (the world of the dead), and also the source of rebirth

Walking the Kumano Kodo is a bit like a simulation: walk into death, swap out the old self, and come back with a new life

Actually, walking itself — through exhaustion, rain and mist, forests — strips away the thick layer of society, identity, and wealth from daily life, and then you see what’s actually left, and what you actually want

Thoughts on Kumano Nachi Taisha

Nachi Falls — this is the shintai.

A 133-metre drop, Japan’s highest-class single-drop waterfall, worshipped as the “shintai” (the bodily manifestation of the kami itself).

At Nachi, the kami doesn’t live in the hall; it exists directly in the form of “water”.

On the Shinto side: what is worshipped is Kumano Fusumi-no-Okami and the other Kumano deities, tightly bound to the forest, the waterfall and the mountain itself.

On the Buddhist side: one wall away is Seiganto-ji, dedicated to Kannon and others. You’ve surely seen the classic view of the three-storey pagoda plus the waterfall.

Different worldviews allowed to coexist in the same time and space, letting the pilgrim align and integrate them himself.

Experiencing the Kumano Kodo in Japan

Not a single piece of rubbish along the whole way.

Not many people, but a lot of Chinese.

The ancient road has a strong sense of history; big stones laid out one by one.

The moment each person takes responsibility for the environment accumulates, and together it forms what looks like a naturally clean state.

Those huge rocks weren’t laid by modern hands; they were hand-paved hundreds of years ago, even a thousand years ago.

They’re huge, rough, soaked in moss — a kind of history the body can feel.

These stones don’t exist in order to “look good”; over the long years they were walked out, pressed out, polished out —

History isn’t designed, it’s accumulated step by step by people.

Psychological filling mechanism

When information is incomplete the brain hates blank space, so it needs to reduce uncertainty

Psychologically this relates to projection, confirmation bias, and mentalization ability

In research on female psychology, women generally show more emotional resonance and social intuition; the female “sixth sense” is both a gift and a burden

The metacognition trap

Not all consciousness needs meta-consciousness

Not all thinking needs thinking

Not all action needs action

…

These all remind us of one thing: don’t let metacognition itself become the prison of cognition

When we try to conceive of everything, sacrificing blank space brings huge disaster to the sense of mystery

After all, in a park we don’t use navigation, we walk more freely, we don’t worry about getting lost

Even if we get lost, we know we can find our way

Using maps and living in depth in places, I’ve deeply felt one thing

Knowing how not to use navigation matters more than learning to use navigation

Huang Mao really is good at providing emotional value

Just looking at him is hilarious hahahaha

Saw a new perspective

Touching and analyzing the boundaries of law

Why law formed

Basic principles of law

The universality of law

The French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, humans are born free

The protection of law comes from the most fundamental level; unless there’s war, it can almost never be changed

Law is the natural product of this society’s culture and institutions

Catholic love is sacred; Catholic marriage must be based on love

Love is a sacred emotion in Catholicism

This sacred feeling means both spouses need to love each other with their whole being, as they love God; neither spouse may have sexual relations with anyone other than their partner; desecrating marriage is equivalent to desecrating God.

Then under the medieval Catholic marriage system, divorce was basically not allowed. In Catholicism, this love between spouses is higher than reproduction and offspring. Even marriage itself has nothing to do with reproduction, so even without children you can’t divorce

But later this was ruined by the British Empire

I never understood before

In a child’s eyes, domestic violence must be utterly hateful

But why is it that in some victim cases - for example victims showing strengthened emotional attachment or intermittent reinforcement after domestic violence, sometimes violent, sometimes gentle - a kind of psychological attachment confusion is created

The brain lets trauma and fear make the brain mistake danger for love

Lung Ying-tai - parents

In “Watching You Go” Lung Ying-tai wrote: “He was silent, not good with words, but his whole life had order and measure.” This father represented “patriarchy, discipline, silence” in her life

As a child she found her father strict and distant; only as an adult did she gradually understand that the silence hid “a loss of speech toward his hometown”

Lung Ying-tai and her mother, Ying Meijun, passed away in 2018 at the age of 93. Lung Ying-tai at the time publicly wrote a short piece, “My Mother’s Funeral”, with a very moving line:

“The day my mother died, the dawn was unusually quiet.”

She wrote her mother not as tragedy but as a kind of completion - “the moment she left, I knew she had finally gone home.”

She revolves around three themes:

“Displacement”: the father’s sense of losing his homeland shaped her obsession with “1949”; “Big River, Big Sea: 1949” was precisely about that generation’s drifting and silence

“Attachment”: her mother’s aging and dementia made her understand “the art of farewell” - that’s the spiritual core of “Watching You Go”

“Understanding”: she once said, “My parents’ fate is the homework of my whole life. To understand them is to understand history

Lung Ying-tai has no political stance

It’s precisely people without a clear political stance who often please neither side

She’s on the route of refusing hatred, caring about people, not caring about flags

Any party that governs stably for the long term

Must face its own history correctly and objectively

Rather than deceiving in order to consolidate power and maintain stability

In the short term it helps, building faith in authority, but in the long term it destroys social trust, kills critical thinking and innovation capability, and also makes it impossible to draw lessons from history; history becomes discontinuous

The narrator’s angle may be a very subjective one, even carrying its own biases, but history itself is hidden in the interweaving and comparison of multiple records

Opportunity cost and delay cost

Delay cost is generally the value reduction and return reduction caused after action, so it’s the price you pay for being willing to drag out not choosing

Opportunity cost is generally the return of the “best alternative” you gave up after choosing one course of action

What it focuses on is:

what you could have gotten

but lost because you chose another path

It’s about the trade-offs between choices

Decision Fatigue: every choice consumes mental resources (especially the executive function of the prefrontal cortex). When facing too many or too complex options, to avoid “overload” the brain tends to procrastinate or choose the option requiring least effort - maintaining the status quo, even if it brings clear, continuous loss

Fear of Uncertainty: a decision means ending all other possibilities and bearing an uncertain result alone. Procrastination keeps all (beautified) possibilities alive in imagination, which temporarily soothes the brain’s fear of losing control and making mistakes. Delay is essentially exchanging certain, gradual loss (time, opportunity) for a false sense of security of “all possibilities”

Obeying the social script

House, car, marriage, kids, loans, commuting, performance, KPIs

Stable but trending toward repetition, predictability, numbness.

Obeying the social script

House, car, marriage, kids, loans, commuting, performance, KPIs

Stable but trending toward repetition, predictability, numbness

The former is being led along, the latter is not knowing where to go

This is also the price of freedom: not a behavioral pattern, but having the right to choose

Hiking is like life, like doing things

Thinking of my psychological experience climbing to Damo Cave

The flow state, super satisfying

In terms of the behavioral scenario, it’s uphill, then more uphill, a simple route, no decision obstacles and no cognitive load

Every step gives you a reward (altitude, breathing, the burning in your legs), the feedback loop is short and strong

Also I’m somewhat familiar with Damo Cave

The Songshan area where Shaolin Temple is located has clear mountains and water, and a sense of isolated tranquility, very suitable for Zen practice and insight

Zen originated in India (brought to China by Bodhidharma), but really matured and developed in China, influencing all of East Asia, including Japan’s “Zen”, Korea’s “Seon”, Vietnam’s “Thiền” and so on

“Pointing directly at the human mind”: directly pointing out the inner nature of a person.

“Seeing one’s nature and becoming a Buddha”: as long as you see your own “nature” clearly, you can become a Buddha.

“Not relying on words”: not depending on classical texts, not circling around in speech, emphasizing personal experience.

“A special transmission outside the teachings”: the special transmission of the Buddha’s mind-dharma, beyond ordinary doctrinal forms

Sudden enlightenment is a real, living experience, realizing there is no fixed self, no-self

Like a person drinking water, knowing for themselves whether it’s warm or cold

The essence of Zen is to teach according to the person, helping each person find that tranquility and awakening in their own life, rather than being stuck on one fixed form

Bodhidharma sat in this cave for nine years, and finally realized the essence of Zen

And then neurologically and physiologically: norepinephrine & dopamine, endorphins/endogenous cannabinoids

Psychologically and perceptually there’s also a reconstruction of meaning, understanding the inner pilgrim

The brain uses existing beliefs and context to interpret ambiguous stimuli. Damo Cave plus Zen meditation is a strong context; the momentary image of “opening your eyes and seeing the word ’enlightenment’ glowing, and two nuns” may be a brief illusion of intentionality or an anthropomorphic mental image

I suddenly understand the Damo Cave hiking experience

Through extreme physical load, pushing the mind (consciousness) into a highly focused “flow” state, and finally, under the combined action of a specific environment (Damo Cave) and symbolic triggers (the word “enlightenment”, the sound of the bell), achieving a peak experience where “body and mind are one” and “self-detachment” coexist

The body (shen): extreme “climbing”

The mind (xin): pure “flow”

The circumstance (jing): the “trigger” of Damo Cave

This is a process of opening the third eye

If you try to keep up with someone faster than you, you’ll quickly exhaust yourself, your heart rate will rise, your breathing will get chaotic, and in the end you’ll have to stop, actually ending up slower. If you accommodate someone slower than you, your body cools down and the flow is interrupted

This is the source of “anxiety” and “involution”. Seeing others “succeed”, you get “impatient”, so you disrupt your own rhythm of study, work and thinking, trying to “take a shortcut”, and the result is that haste defeats the purpose. Or you stay in your comfort zone and the flow can’t start

Holding your own rhythm is important; knowing yourself well is important; being clear about your boundaries is important

When your eyes are on the finish line, your mindset is anxious; when you’re “not in a hurry”, your eyes are at your feet and your mindset is focused. And only the latter can let you truly “keep going”

It also makes me understand that persistence is a natural process, not forcing yourself to reach or make something happen

A very simple way to change your information input and thinking structure

The purpose of the environment is often just to make us see,

Delete some content sources (Douyin, repetitive complaining in WeChat Moments, emotional mutual-stroking within the same bubble)

Add high-density information sources (long-form deep reads, thinker podcasts, top interviews in the field)

Change from content that “teaches you what to do” to content that “teaches you to think about the structure of the world”

Changing the narrative field of your environment =

change your default language → change the people you get close to → change the action patterns you adopt

For an individual

You must be clear about your own reward mechanism behind every single thing (whether it’s an external reward or an internal reward)

These are the sources of dopamine

One way to motivate your own growth

Once the purpose is set, what you can naturally do is see

Being aware that you are aware

Knowing what you are doing

Most people are very afraid

Afraid of missing out

Afraid of falling behind

Afraid of wasting time

Afraid of others seeing them as not efficient enough, not driven enough

Being in a hurry really is a tense way of surviving

I’ve found it: being in a hurry is like the interpretant among the three elements of semiotics — it isn’t in the present, it’s giving time some explanation of its own

The body is in the present, but consciousness is split

Being able to see what you’re doing, seeing what you’ve become aware of

Mastering rhythm is really mastering your own life

Not being controlled, having margin in every single thing

Being in a hurry is fear-driven

Being at ease is understanding-driven

Since life is all experience

How to enrich your own experience

Different people’s environments are different

People in the same environment are different

Different perspectives, different feelings, different lacks and satisfactions

A small child finds a single piece of candy a surprise

An adult, facing nature’s uncanny craftsmanship, only bothers to take photos recording that they passed by …

What really is the rule of vitality?

The richness of experience? The amount of experience? Or the perspective of the experiencer themselves

Whether the experience is fully noticed

Whether the perspective keeps updating and opening

Whether you allow yourself to be changed by the experience

A person’s raw material of sensibility is a huge fortune

When a person’s perspective becomes many-sided, even sitting on a chair looking at a cup of tea, they are experiencing mountains, rain, time, memory, the world

Sometimes when you think you see many things clearly

there’s again a panic of certainty

less of the surprise that uncertainty brings

Motives get stripped down by yourself into parts, and you even find that many old beliefs suddenly loosen

The “passion, persistence, direction” that used to hold me up seem like they can no longer serve as my fulcrum

A feeling of having no anchor, clarity and certainty

It brought freedom, and it also brought emptiness

Not knowing how to choose ~

It’s like there’s no vitality left

because there’s too little action

To go find a new structure, one that can really settle me

But where is it?

Meta-awareness

You’ve become aware — and then what?

Reinforce (RL), or switch

Consciousness, thinking — if there’s no action, they produce a sense of splitting, a dislocation between thinking and acting

Awareness of awareness — why reinforce it? There are multiple dimensions to reinforcing awareness: one is the self dimension, the process of understanding yourself better; another is the process of you and the world (matter, or the other party) becoming able to consciously use a system or framework to reinforce things, or to set goals. From a systems-theory angle, setting a goal is serving the system: the system trends toward order and energy minimization, the system’s direction vector, and reducing the uncertainty of the state space

The brain’s working-memory capacity is super low, so a todo is a quantification for managing the brain’s memory capacity, lowering the pressure on working memory

The energy management and state management that come after are similar (see the next card)

For humans, or along our journey, there will always be what we don’t know, what we know we don’t know, and what we know; we’re always seeking a sense of balance, so there are conflicts. What is the essence of conflict? The essence of conflict is a dynamic process within human social structure and cultural meaning — social group confrontation arising around scarce resources, rights and identity: because of the distribution of resources and rights, competition for resources (not just material, but status and prestige and control), and then control over self-cognition, our question of cultural belonging, us and them ~

Cognitive behavioral therapy is to some extent similar to reinforcement learning: consciousness isn’t the endpoint but the starting point, and action completes the training

Thinking isn’t an isolated “in-the-head event,” but a multi-layer adaptive process aimed at reducing uncertainty and optimizing resource allocation, in order to maintain the orderliness of the system (individual/society)

With minimum energy, compress uncertainty, act toward order

Energy management & state management

It’s just like a phone: energy management is battery energy, and state management is the phone’s operating mode — airplane mode, low-power mode, or high-performance mode

If the essence of a todo tool is to solve the problem of the brain’s working-memory capacity limit

it makes task states visible, or breaks a big task into an executable next step, and avoids tasks spinning back and forth in the attention system

Energy management is closer to dynamic resource scheduling and feedback regulation

Energy isn’t time; it’s closer to information-processing capacity, emotional stability and willpower self-regulation — based on self-knowledge, dynamically scheduling resources and task difficulty according to your understanding of your own system

High energy — do high-value tasks that need deep thinking

Medium energy — do structured tasks that don’t cost much emotion

Low energy — do routine operations, or rest, recover, take input

Managing time is not as good as managing energy; managing energy is not as good as managing state

The reason ordinary management people with obviously many things to do aren’t tired is state management, because they only need to decide, not dig deep, and brief decisions can even be shifted to intuition-driven, which costs very little

The core of energy management is how to obtain, store and replenish energy; energy management is long-term, and the corresponding approach is choice

Physical capacity, basic energy — sleep and exercise are both methods

Emotion — staying away from people and things that drain you is exactly this; actively create

Thought — focus, learning and creation, keeping the mind clear

Spirit — values, a sense of mission, a sense of meaning

Then state management: its core is quality, and it’s about how to mobilize resources and enter the best working state for the moment, and it involves a series of:

Flow state

Relaxed state

Anxious state

Learning state

State management is immediate; its goal is “high performance.” What it studies is the “switch” — how can I enter the mode I want with “one click”?

Voice recording is a super good habit

Especially for someone who likes to output themselves

It’s a very convenient magic tool

Sometimes even phone calls matter a lot

Because this is a process of subconscious attention: a random call, or a regular call, asking you what happened — this probably leans toward memory

Sorting out my own records

Actually it seems I don’t even know what I’ve recorded

It’s all fuzzy

Some pictures, some videos, some shared to social sites to satisfy my own urge to socialize and share

On and off, I can also predict that the future AI scenario is huge, but I don’t know what kind of scenario it actually is

I feel I can do a lot of things, but I can’t list any concrete items

There are some contradictions and conflicts, but there’s a certain part that can be certain

This is an intuition and meta-awareness

Whatever it is, record it all

You just need to see it and feel it

Record record record the questions …

and naturally, letting things be, you’ll know how to solve them

The real feature of our era is that we’re frantically “inventing”

The real feature of our era is that we’re frantically “inventing” all kinds of new tools (from AI to big-data analysis platforms), for the purpose of “discovering” new laws about nature, society and ourselves more quickly, more deeply, even counterintuitively

Here’s a counterintuitive thought: the crack or misalignment between our evolutionary nature and the truth of the data

Intuition is fast, coming more from biological instinct, but our intuition can only handle things we can perceive

The essence of being counterintuitive is actually how new inventions crush old intuition

For example, after doing user interviews, intuition tells me feature A is the user’s core need — but the invention, the product researching actual user behavior, finds that ninety-nine percent don’t use feature A

The essence of the counterintuitive is a large sample: individual-scale intuition looks negligible; AI and big data let us see a more global truth for the first time

Your “intuition” is emotional, has a position, and hopes to be confirmed. But the “invention” of A/B testing has no emotion and no position. It isn’t a distorting mirror but a flat mirror: it reflects the “truth” you’re unwilling to admit

So the essence is really that our “intuition” is linear, while the real world (whether social systems, biological systems or markets) is nonlinear, complex and emergent

On cognitive load, understood through Buddhist learning

This part can be explained by countless disciplines, and of course by science too

In Buddhist learning there is delusion, or the scattering of the mind

The “antidote” Buddhist learning proposes is “mindfulness” (Sati/Mindfulness), which is what you called “considering the present moment with focus, bit by bit”

To some extent this is also meta-awareness; the method of meditation trains us to return to the present, to bring ourselves back to the breath without any judgment

Break multi-dimensional things apart as much as possible and return to the biological essence: the human brain’s own workspace is limited, and the brain can only focus on one thing

This is the brain’s own central processor: the bandwidth of our consciousness and executive function is very limited, supporting only parallel input and serial processing

That is, our sensory systems (such as the visual and auditory cortex) can process massive amounts of information in parallel. For example, right now you can both see the text on the screen and hear the fan in the room — but when you need to consciously understand, decide about or respond to that information, the bottleneck appears. You can’t at the same instant both think deeply about the meaning of this passage and construct a complex math problem. You have to switch between the two

The prefrontal cortex itself acts as the brain’s CEO, doing attention control and holding working memory; this is very close to computer design

The PFC’s resources are extremely limited. When you perform a task requiring focus (such as programming or analyzing philosophy), the PFC is highly activated. If you try to simultaneously do another complex task that also needs the PFC (such as replying to a carefully worded email), the two tasks will “conflict” over the PFC’s limited resources

The difference with working memory is the same: biologically it depends on the sustained firing of neurons in the PFC. This “memory” is astonishingly small — classic theory holds it’s about 4–7 “chunks” of information

When you focus on a task, such as debugging code, your working memory is full of variables, function logic and target state. At that point, if someone asks you a complex question, the new information tries to squeeze into this already-full working memory, causing the original information to be “pushed out” or “damaged” — this is the biological process of your “train of thought being interrupted”

But the human brain itself has a very fast task-switching ability for multitasking — yet when you focus on a task, such as debugging code, your working memory is full of variables, function logic and target state. At that point, if someone asks you a complex question, the new information tries to squeeze into this already-full working memory, causing the original information to be “pushed out” or “damaged” — this is the biological process of your “train of thought being interrupted”

Biologically this consumes more glucose and oxygen and produces “cognitive friction.” Cognitive friction refers to the psychological resistance the brain meets when processing information. In our current fragmented era, when we learn a brand-new programming framework, reading the docs feels like chewing something you can’t swallow; the opposite concept is flow, or cognitive fluency. We need to create a frictionless environment — that is, when we’re focused on work or study — or to lower the cognitive load of a given behavior; the specific ways are to clarify or break up tasks. We also need to embrace deliberate friction, because the comfort zone is also the low-friction zone. Finally, there are metacognitive strategies: when we realize we have friction or have entered a flow state, record them,

For me

Goal management solves the problem of my workspace’s limitations

Energy management solves how to allocate my good energy in a day to do things, how I can focus on work, or go out for a walk, or study

State management can let me very clearly perceive a certain

When you see some personalized problem, how do you think about it

What’s your action?

Generally for me, if I see a personalized problem, I might subconsciously choose one of them, because the cognitive load doesn’t seem especially high

Good things aren’t thought out

This is also realizing the limits of one’s own thinking

Because the good that gets thought out in the head and the thing I actually want to create are worlds apart; for the thing you want to create, you can’t see it whole at the start — you just push forward by intuition, and this process is a natural, unassisted birth. A naturally born work beats a “good work” that was thought out — that’s just how it is. If you can smoothly grasp that flashing inspiration, the piece you make is bound to succeed

What “it just knows me” really is

People’s longing for beautiful things

There’s a resonance, an inspiration, between emotion and text

How fragmented emotion gets structured — this process seems to be storytelling itself; it’s a slice of you and the story, part of shaping yourself

The user has an inner language structure

building their own understanding in their own way

The essence of emotion

Emotion is a very core part of sensibility

Emotion itself is like a whole “internal dashboard” — it isn’t good or bad, it’s information. Unfortunately many people were trained as children to “only light the green light,” and the moment a red or yellow light comes on it’s treated as a malfunction

Emotion is the body and brain’s instant signal, a fast, mostly automatic feedback system

You get tense when facing danger, feel warmth when understood, suddenly feel a pang when you hear some sentence. These are all emotions; they usually happen very fast and primitively, and to some degree aren’t much under your control

Sensibility is more the way of experiencing, interpreting, amplifying, immersing in and extending these emotions. People who are more sensual are usually sharper about subtle shifts in emotion, able to feel a whole lake from a single drop; people who are more rational are better at breaking the waves of emotion down into logical components, or at letting emotion retreat to the second line

Emotion is like a spark; sensibility is like the lens through which you look at the spark

Most people get trapped by emotions because they treat emotion as the goal itself rather than as information

To be trapped by sensibility is to treat feeling as the final judgment and forget that it’s only a perspective, not the whole picture

People stuck in meaning easily over-explain the world and lose elasticity

You experience emotions,

you use sensibility to understand them in detail

you generate your own meaning to organize the world

This is also why different people facing the same thing see utterly different lives: different information, different lenses, and a different way of telling the story

“Energy management” admits that humans fluctuate, with peaks and troughs, with inspiration

“Energy management” admits that humans are animals that fluctuate — with peaks and troughs, with inspiration, with fatigue, with zoning out

The essence of time management is treating a person as a production line that can be laid out linearly

This view isn’t some fringe idea in psychology either; there’s a similar theory called ultradian rhythms — the brain’s natural 90–120 minute peak cycles

People who manage by energy tend to follow this biological rhythm instead of forcing against it

A lifestyle isn’t a religion; it doesn’t need universality

In cognitive work, energy management really does take priority over time management

Time management: assumes “a person is a stable assembly line,” and that as long as you slice time finely and plan densely, you’ll produce more.

Energy management: admits “a person is a fluctuating system,” with high-energy phases, useless-slob phases, flow phases, and brain-fog phases.

There are two kinds of zoning out:

One is: your eyes go blank, and something in the background is computing (thinking / associating / synthesizing)

The other is: your eyes go blank, and the background has shut down too (pure escape from reality)

Of course, this is also a bit of a social experiment in empiricism, hahaha

Some of my recent life rhythms:

Scene-hopping + coffee-keeping-me-alive mode

Buy the biggest cup at Starbucks

If I can’t finish it, take it to go and wander while walking

When I’m tired of wandering, go to the next cafe and keep working

→ This is using spatial switching to keep my mood fresh and stay in flow.

In the morning I don’t touch the computer; it’s only for zoning out and thinking about product design

Wake up at 7:30

It’s fine if there’s no exercise, but I keep one to two hours of “no-input zoning out + thinking time”

No phone, no computer — thinking about product, about design, about life

→ This is reserving my highest-quality brainpower for “abstract thinking”

In the late morning I structure the thinking, turning it into notes, tasks, plans

→ This is doing the “abstract → concrete” conversion: landing ideas as executable things

Noon and afternoon: go out for a walk + work at a cafe

→ Using light movement + environment switching to restore energy, then moving into light-to-medium work

Evening: write code, mess around, get slightly tipsy, enter flow

→ Putting this evening wave of energy into “building (coding) + playful exploration”

At 11:30 pm I get ready for bed, look at some of the notifications I’ve collected on my iPhone, flip through them, and that closes the day

Emotional community

Define topics according to problems that really do exist in society

And drive it the same way, through community

Other people in the community may face the same problems and need the same solutions

How do we solve this class of problems?

Some new thinking on finding ideas

Almost every product and every idea on the market has basically already been entered by someone

Everyone’s perspective and execution are very fresh

As soon as there’s a new hot spot, or a new domain model

there are immediately a lot of product forms generated around these, or around those two

What do you do when you can’t out-compete them? How do you build differentiation?

Blue-ocean strategy — some new demand, some market gaps

Combinatorial innovation — not inventing new things, but combining existing ideas from different fields

Problem-driven thinking — start from user pain points, not from ideas

Personal brand — create the product as a work of art, fuse in your own experience and values, build a narrative expression

Iterative experimentation — don’t chase the perfect idea; test small, collect feedback, iterate

The individual seems to be just a pawn, a tool in the state’s game

To apply pressure on each other, states often use what’s called “social pressure channels”:

making things inconvenient for the public, markets, and cross-border flows, so the other government comes under pressure

You’re not “being targeted by the state,”

you’re “caught in the crack between state and state”

When the state acts, the cheapest, easiest, lowest-cost target for adjustment is ordinary people

The state’s actions will definitely affect the individual

State behavior is itself a variable in personal decision models

The individual never noticeably affects the state; all they can do is affect their own fate

The state needs you to avoid risk → you’re willing to listen, because it benefits you

The state promotes emotion → you don’t follow blindly, because you know emotion isn’t logic

When the state is unstable → you can protect yourself, and not be swept up by the wave

When the state is strong → you know it’s the result of effort by millions of individuals

As for the relationship between state and individual: blindly merging in loses the self, and cutting off entirely turns you into a floating individual

Emotion is the state’s tool, not the tool of those who excel

How to understand the basis for building the emotional

Understanding the emotional mode of narration — a different kind of construction, unlike rational narrative

These kinds of records have something wonderful about them: they naturally contain continuity. Emotions have inertia, feelings have echoes. Once you track them, they form a “spiritual trajectory” you can’t precisely describe in logical language. That kind of trajectory often maps a person’s true direction better than rational planning

Emotion is very clear-cut — it’s a kind of fuel for action

Emotion unit:

“Irritated → feel like tidying the desk.” (action is clear)

Feeling unit:

“The air feels light → feel like doing something that makes me light too.” (action undecided, but strongly directional)

All human confusion comes from being unable to see one’s own thoughts

“As long as the light is off, the room isn’t just noisy, it’s also dangerous”

If we don’t look at our thoughts, we become the thoughts, and this inability to step out is indeed the root of humans’ mental exhaustion

So all human suffering comes from the body or soul being stuck deep in a swamp, unable to pull itself out

So, how do we let thoughts be seen

It can be the inner me, distinguishing several identities to have a dialogue

Or you can put it into text; writing, notes, and memos are the most efficient developing fluid. Once a thought turns into black words on paper, it goes from the feeling “I’m a failure” to the record “I had a thought that I’m a failure”

And then there’s labeling emotions — naming is itself a kind of certainty

If people like us — people who are lost right now but can’t say why

If all of us — the people who are lost right now but can’t articulate why — could trace it all back to our own perception, and all of it felt self-consistent

then this thing

would really be a spiritual antidote

You’ve used sentences like this a few times:

The fuzzy problem gets called out by name

See clearly what the problem is

AI makes the fuzzy point clear

Behind it is actually a profound psychological rule:

Once a problem is correctly named, it’s already half solved

Humans aren’t crushed by problems; humans are crushed by “problems without names.”

Like a shadow in the night — scarier than the monster inside the shadow

AI’s value isn’t in teaching you, but in helping you name things

This fits the philosophy of language:

language is the knife humans use to cut up chaos

and AI can borrow language to help users cut up chaos

This is a very deep design principle

What religion provides is a “narrative system for the human heart”

What religion provides is a “narrative system for the human heart,” giving people somewhere to place their confusion

But in modern society the narrative has completely broken

People today:

have anxiety

have confusion

have loneliness

have a lack of purpose

have insecurity

have a vacuum of meaning

but there’s no mechanism at all teaching them how to face these things

Especially unemployment ,,, the state doesn’t have the strength to guarantee that no one has to face the pressure of life

AI might become a kind of modernized mental priest (but without religious narrative)

It’s not companionship, not romance, not consulting, but a new kind of social role:

understanding the chaos of your soul and helping you comb it into a shape you can face

People capable of deep thought always have an active inner dialogue

People genuinely capable of deep thought necessarily have an active, high-quality capacity for “inner dialogue” (inner dialogue / inner speech)

Socrates’ “dialectic” is really just internalizing external debate into internal debate

Einstein said that when he thought about physics problems he was “talking to himself,” using muscle sensation (he had very strong inner language and visual-kinesthetic imagination)

Without inner dialogue, complex abstract concepts are very hard to break down, recombine, refute, and iterate — this is the core mechanism of deep thinking

Some deep thinkers on the autism spectrum (like Temple Grandin), though they claim “thinking without images,” usually develop extremely strong inner language to replace visual imagination — still a form of inner dialogue

Observing your own emotions

Observing your own body

When the temperature gets too high and the brain goes into energy-saving mode, a lot of things in the world look murkier, slower, more scattered

Some interesting changes in my own body

Changes in neurotransmitters — basically affecting the central nervous system, lowering your attention, reaction speed, and judgment. It’s like the background forcibly starting a bunch of system updates

A shift in energy priorities — the body prioritizes glucose and oxygen for the immune response, so the brain’s “high-level modules” (like abstract thinking and logical reasoning) get rate-limited

A change in the emotional filter — a fever makes a person more sensitive, more fragile, sometimes more introverted and dull,

A distortion of time perception — many people feel time slow down or speed up when they have a fever; the brain’s processing of continuity drifts. It’s as if someone swapped in a non-linear time renderer

But some people in a feverish state gain strange insight — for example, understanding life, emotions, and memory from a different angle

Suddenly remembered that climbing the Himalayan snow mountains in Nepal felt the same

The day before, I kept losing my hat

The low mood when you’re sick is “sickness behavior.” The brain uses it to force you to stop — less risk-taking, less socializing, less expenditure — so the immune system can use all the energy to fight

The brain’s reward system goes dull, and things that usually feel interesting and motivating suddenly turn gray;

attention gets locked in a “caged animal” way, only able to focus on discomfort, worry, and negative thoughts

With insufficient physical energy, reason and the emotion regulator are as weak as if unplugged

I’m more like a creator

Not just designing products, not just designing myself, not just designing some local worlds

The body also seems to be a way of touching this world as a tool

Freedom isn’t “doing whatever you want” but “doing what is for you” - living for the self you choose, you create, you take responsibility for

This is also why we need to think about how we construct the meaning of our own existence

Muse Park

I saw it in Chengdu before; didn’t expect Zhengzhou to have one too

Zhengzhou’s Muse Park (inside Guomao 360 Plaza) focuses on atmosphere and night views, night lighting, outdoor dining bars; on the second floor there’s a CITIC bookstore, very suitable for working, spacing out, reading

Chengdu’s Muse Park is more valuable for its artistic character, refined life aesthetics and slow-living socializing, art intervening in commerce, independent designer brands, plus tons of cafés and quiet bars; the overall vibe leans toward a refined lifestyle atmosphere

Buddhism: empowerment (jiachi)

A very magical kind of power

Not the intervention of a supernatural force

“Empowerment” isn’t the intervention of a supernatural force, but a set of psychological “hotfix” and performance-optimization protocols aimed at the human mind, based on cognitive science principles. Through ritual, tokens and belief, it re-architects the individual’s psychological “operating system” at a fundamental level, in order to improve psychological efficacy

Empowerment has two parts:

Jia: means buddhas, bodhisattvas, yidams and so on bestowing it on sentient beings through their great compassionate vows and wondrous power

Chi: means sentient beings, through their own faith, practice or prayer, receiving, maintaining and carrying this power

Empowerment = the compassionate power of buddhas and bodhisattvas (jia) + the faith and receptivity of sentient beings (chi). Neither can be missing

Apple’s third-party camera app Blackmagic

Apple’s third-party camera app Blackmagic Camera App

I’ve always been puzzled; image quality doesn’t seem to improve, so why does a market for third-party camera apps exist

With the same iPhone, what’s the essential difference of using the Blackmagic Camera app

I think it’s more automated, making things look prettier when shot, automatic, zero-brain operation, automatically completing a series of tasks

“Avoiding unnecessary degradation of image quality” + “providing more controllability and post-production flexibility”

On the flexibility of institutional systems

What’s considered is a certain boundary and extreme value

maximum and minimum, best and worst

A design guideline derived by considering them together

Binance, OKX and other centralized exchanges are essentially market makers

Exchanges have a huge asymmetric information advantage over the market; they aren’t as innocent as “pure matching”

Blockchain really is decentralized; DeFi protocols vary in degree - some are real DeFi, some are fake decentralization

Centralized exchanges, Binance, OKX and so on, are completely centralized

They are market makers, the people who provide sellers and buyers so the market can always trade

Market maker = the stall owner

The people coming and going in the market = retail investors

So contracts are traps designed for gamblers

The money from liquidations flows to the market makers / platform

So for ordinary people to survive:

don’t play with leverage

don’t do contracts

buy spot assets with long-term consensus

be able to tolerate volatility, don’t chase pumps and dump on dips

The people who survive don’t necessarily make big money,

but those who make big money all survived first

To survive you buy spot, there’s no forced liquidation, you don’t need to guess short-term moves, you don’t need to gamble against the platform

Vibe coding tools

1. Technical developers vs non-technical builders

Technically strong people → Cursor and Claude Code are kings, because you already know how to work with projects, work with code, read errors

Non-technical creators → V0 (Vercel) is currently the most balanced: you don’t need to understand much backend, and it’s not easy to get stuck

Lovable / Bolt → usable but still demand some integration and backend understanding, so more suited to people who know a bit of tech.

2. Mobile vibe coding is a new opportunity

Things like Rourke, VibeCode and Anything are making it possible to write apps on your phone.

This is especially suited to building consumer AI apps aimed at TikTok traffic (like a sleep coach, dating coach, fitness plan coach).

Mobile = easier for users to download → easier to monetize.

3. The real key isn’t the tool but the mindset

The podcast emphasized a very important but overlooked point:

software isn’t a web page; software needs iteration, testing, bug fixing

If you’re non-technical, you need to shift from:

“I give the AI one sentence and it builds the app for me”

to:

“I build together with the AI, repeatedly trying, changing, polishing”

That’s the essence of vibe coding: not skipping thinking, but using AI to amplify your thinking

A very useful method

Sharing the same UI + business logic, wrapping a shell around it for different platforms

Only the platform layer needs various adaptations

UI / logic shared: React / React Native / Flutter

Web: Next.js / Vite / CRA

Mobile: React Native / Expo

Desktop: Electron / Tauri

The history of the Longmen Grottoes

One is the Northern Wei moving its capital to Luoyang, when Buddha statues became a state project, a national-level project, folding the dignified and plain northern pastoral group into the statues

The other is the full eruption of Tang aesthetics with a strong state: the Vairocana Buddha of Fengxian Temple, whose facial lines are said to have been modeled on Wu Zetian’s face. It isn’t “realism” — it symbolizes magnanimity and the air of a sovereign

This should be my central question

What effect should I achieve in the process of creating and interacting

and what I want

What matters should be this

all other things should serve around this

Shouldn’t they?

Human behavior analyzed from a systems-theory perspective

A system is an organism in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, with core features such as emergence, feedback loops, self-organization and openness. Applying systems theory to human behavior patterns, the individual can be seen as an open Complex Adaptive System (CAS)

Human behavior patterns themselves can be abstracted as a dynamic loop system of input - process - output - feedback

Input: external stimuli (such as social pressure, environmental changes) and internal needs (such as hunger, emotion)

Throughput: processing by subsystems, including the physiological system (nerves, endocrine), the psychological system (cognition, emotion) and the behavioral system (habits, decisions)

Output: observable behavior patterns, such as repeated habits, social interaction or avoidance responses

Feedback:

Positive Feedback: amplifies change, promotes innovation or crisis (such as the addiction loop: taking drugs → pleasure → taking drugs again)

Negative Feedback: maintains homeostasis, such as hunger → eating → fullness → stop eating

The emergence and wholeness of systems: behavior patterns “emerge” from the interaction of subsystems and cannot simply be reduced to a sum of parts. For example, procrastination isn’t simply “laziness” (psychology), but an overall pattern of fear (emotion subsystem) + immediate reward (positive feedback) + low self-esteem (social feedback)

Equifinality and multifinality

Equifinality: the same goal can be reached through multiple paths (such as losing weight: diet OR exercise OR drugs)

Multifinality: the same starting point can lead to different outcomes (such as childhood adversity: some become entrepreneurs, some become depressed — depending on the strength of the feedback loop)

Human systems form stable patterns through self-organization, such as habit formation (Hebbian learning: neurons “fire together, wire together”). In complex environments, behavior shows an Edge of Chaos: moderate disturbance promotes adaptation (such as innovation in a crisis), while too much causes collapse (such as burnout)

Procrastination from a systems-science angle

Human behavior isn’t decided by any single variable, but by the dynamic interaction among multiple psycho-physiological-social subsystems

The relationships among these subsystems form feedback loops that produce “emergent behavior” — that is, what even the person themselves feels as “this isn’t what I want, but I always do it anyway”

Many systems are closely connected here and produce the emergence: for example the emotion subsystem, the reward system, self-concept, the social feedback system — this is the positive feedback loop

Fear → avoidance → less gets done → self-evaluation drops → fear grows stronger → avoidance grows stronger

Once you analyze this, you can pin down the essence of how systems science solves problems

Procrastination is an emergence that is predictable but hard to fix at a single point

So why does forcing ourselves always fail? Because we always work hard at the wrong level

What we work on is the behavioral surface, but the core driver is the system’s dynamic structure

• Change how emotions are processed (not suppressing, but containing)

• Redesign the reward structure (chop tasks into pieces so the brain can get immediate rewards too)

• Reshape the self-narrative (not “I can’t do it,” but “I’m training an ability”)

Put that way, we naturally know how to reinforce the training of strong execution

Make it: task → action → sense of achievement → wanting to act more

Make the task startable, lower the task’s startup cost, break it small

The immediate reward must live inside the task, not outside it: task → action → sense of achievement → wanting to act more

Output! Produce visible results, rather than working for a long time (this big pit easily forms procrastination), otherwise you easily end up with terribly low output

So high execution, to some extent, isn’t hard effort either — it’s a natural movement. That’s the charm of systems science

Indeed

Developers should spend all their time on building

rather than endlessly interpreting code

The era of manually reading outdated docs and endlessly reading code is over

The future of development lies in instant understanding

The hierarchical relationship between discovery and invention

From the moment humans became conscious, they realized they were on the Earth, realized the Earth has almost inexhaustible resources: electricity, light, universal gravitation, electromagnetic induction. Based on these things humans created new tools — what can exist in the world — for example, using the principle of electromagnetic induction to invent the generator and the electric motor

Humans discover and build large frameworks, and create within those large frameworks

In modern technology this boundary feels very blurred; the two are more like a constantly accelerating positive feedback mechanism

Discovery itself also serves as the strongest tool of invention

From the angle of “visibility”: what we see more of are the fruits of “invention.” Whether it’s a new App, a new AI model, a new electric car, or a new mRNA vaccine. Modern society demands an extremely high iteration speed for “technological application,” which makes the process of “invention” look more active and more mainstream

A user’s records really should settle down into their own knowledge system

What’s more interesting is whether there’s a good knowledge structure or system to present them with

Maybe that’s what all apps today are doing

all at the tool level: how to hit a user scenario better

Introducing OpenMemory

The official application demo of mem0 — it’s a Chrome extension, a concrete implementation and wrapper of the mem0 library. It provides a user interface (sidebar), a data scraper (capturing chat content), and the logic for communicating with the mem0 backend API

Some of the specific logic it provides:

Cross-platform, basic web capability

Long-term preferences: storing some of the traces of long-term memory preferences passed in by the user

Proactive notes: for some use scenarios it actually opens a sidebar, convenient for users to store or extract some important information

Some current shortcomings: reliability is the biggest problem, and then there’s the shallowness of memory — it leans toward facts and is light on concepts. For example, it can remember very well that “Project Nebula is a project,” but it has trouble remembering the complex logic, design philosophy or subtle tradeoffs behind this project that you discussed with the AI

High-frequency scenarios have to be mobile

Especially those that need to upload some information

With certain requirements on performance and startup speed

The web is only suited to fast iteration, but that is precisely the most important thing

Onboarding Experience

Narrative-driven Onboarding or Emotional Onboarding within the Onboarding Experience

Progressive emotional immersion — not directly showing a feature list, but through a small story, scene or metaphor letting the user understand “why I need this product”

Two-way information exchange — while telling the product story, collect user information (preferences, needs, use scenarios) through interactive Q&A, but without making the process feel like “filling out a form”

Establishing a product persona — the product introduces itself like a warm character, not a cold tool

Gemini’s artifacts approach

ChatGPT’s Code Interpreter mode

User browser -> display results -> Google servers -> gVisor sandbox -> Python interpreter -> return results

Gemini runs a real Python environment in the backend; the user’s code executes in an isolated container on Google Cloud

gVisor is Google’s own container sandbox technology

The Gemini front end is only responsible for display, not for executing code

From a behavioral psychology view, high-retention products basically fit the hook model

From a behavioral psychology view, products with high retention basically fit the characteristics of the hook model: trigger -> action -> reward -> investment (users contributing content)

Differentiating capabilities between iOS and web when designing features

The web platform values immediacy and openness

the app platform values trustworthiness and exclusivity

One is content-driven with link jumping; the other is device-centered and immersive

One prizes the native experiential feel; the other prizes vertical scrolling and standard forms

A key philosophy is Platform Appropriateness: feature design should respect the platform’s conventions and avoid the user confusion caused by “forced unification.” For example, if a feature is implemented on the web through the browser (such as real-time notifications), on a native app you can instead use push services to differentiate and raise user stickiness. Another guide is MVP (minimum viable product) thinking: focus on the core function first, then expand according to platform differences, avoiding the wasted resources caused by over-design

Web platform development usually adopts the philosophy of Responsive Web Design (RWD), whose core is “develop once, adapt to many devices.” Unlike the platform-specific development of native apps, the web places more emphasis on flexibility and accessibility

Putting the modern system of academic disciplines onto the Renaissance

The knowledge structure of the Renaissance was like an open-world game,

today’s knowledge structure is like an MMO class system.

In an open world, crossing classes is completely natural;

in an MMO, crossing classes looks like a violation of your class design

Most people think the purpose of exam-oriented education is to make kids successful

but in the end, the essence of the system’s design is actually just to keep society running in an orderly way

Unified exams →

Unified evaluation dimensions →

Unified stratification →

Allocating resources

It’s more like a tool for calibrating the gears inside the state machine

Education has to guarantee national stability → so it doesn’t encourage too much “systems thinking”

Education also has to make individuals feel there’s “a path upward” → so the exam must look fair

Education also has to maintain a shared narrative → so history gets some chapters deleted

The question of choosing between on-device debugging and TestFlight

Feature development / debugging: on-device debugging > TestFlight

External testing / collecting feedback at scale: TestFlight > on-device debugging

The necessity of on-device debugging, and the differences by comparison:

It’s aimed at the developer themselves, or at most a couple of colleagues / people around them

It lets you quickly verify whether a change works. Debugging crashes, UI issues, performance problems — all of it

Xcode can attach directly: breakpoints, logs, memory, CPU, network — you can see all the low-level data

For normal development state, the on-device mode is more recommended, because it adapts and reproduces problems better, but the TestFlight mode

Some of its characteristics by comparison:

Very strong distribution capability

Lower installation barrier on the user side

Version management, crash collection, a feedback mechanism

Actually, essentially, looking at it from the angle of solving problems

On-device debugging solves “is the code right”

TestFlight solves “is the product right”

Creativity ≈ a long-stably-running life system

Creativity ≈ the by-product of a life system that runs stably over the long term and occasionally dares to open the “turbo” a little. Not a miracle — a system property

We love to imagine “inspiration” as:

a bolt of lightning → strikes my head → I write a masterpiece / build a product / come up with an idea.

From the perspective of cognitive science, what’s closer is:

The brain is a system that constantly predicts the world (predictive processing).

Every day it integrates information and updates its models.

The moment of inspiration is actually just:

the internal model updating to a new structure → the instant it gets subjectively perceived by you

So what really determines the quality of inspiration is:

how much high-quality experience you input (reading, conversation, observing the world, experiencing emotions)

whether you give your brain enough idle time (walking, zoning out, showering, sleeping)

whether your overall physiological and emotional homeostasis is good (when anxious / depleted, the brain just wants to survive, not to innovate)

Our culture loves to tell stories about:

the mad artist, the crazy founder, the masterpiece bought with extreme self-destruction.

But the data usually tells another story:

• Truly persistently prolific creators mostly have their own fixed — even slightly boring — daily rituals;

• Truly mature founders look more and more like they’re finely tuning parameters rather than betting their lives again and again

Extreme self-destruction does produce some works or some moments,

but that’s the joint result of survivorship bias plus reporting preference.

Media and stories love to say “burn yourself out to achieve greatness,”

but the real world looks more like:

most great outcomes are made by people who stay alive for the long haul and keep iterating

If we pull the view out to something more abstract:

• In the physical world, only stable structures can exist long-term and evolve (atom → molecule → life → society).

• In the biological world, systems that maintain homeostasis while fluctuating moderately are more likely to survive evolution.

• In the mental world, conscious structures that can self-regulate, update their models, and run over the long term have more lasting creativity

Get the soil right

Interest grows naturally, like a plant

But the persistence of an interest usually comes from the system you’re living in, not from the interest point itself. If a person has no stable rhythm, no clear goal framework, and insufficient feedback loops, then even the most interesting fulcrum turns into a brief little spark

Don’t get so busy trying to find seeds that you forget to prepare the soil

Some people hunt everywhere for a stone to use as a fulcrum, while the patch they themselves are standing on is still drifting

Because when you build a self-consistent system, your interests, creativity, and drive become more like a river than a rain shower

Use your own unique perspective to magnify certain things in life

Use your own unique perspective to magnify something in life and arrive at a solution — this can be a process of systematic decoupling

After decoupling, see whether there are some combinations

so you can find a solution to this class of problems at the level of essence

This process of magnifying, of parsing, magnified to … can resonate with the general public

and then this solution carries your own subjective experience

This is a process of refining cognition

Magnify: put some pain point / confusion / experience from life under a microscope

Decouple: break it down into the smallest components that can be understood independently

Recombine: explore new combination possibilities for these components

Essence-ize: find the underlying logic that can solve “this class of problems”

Resonate: when this solution happens to touch the cognitive / emotional structures humans share, universality arises

How to understand emotional companionship AI

Why pretend to be human?

An AI that plays human feels like a highly emotional, anthropomorphic AI — it draws attention in the short term, but it loses users in the long term

Right now the loneliness economy is dominant, and a lot of products satisfy the primal need to be understood, to be unconditionally liked

A transparent-state AI would be more helpful in supporting this group of people

Let AI fully be itself — the calmer, more transparent, more “anti-human” the better — and then offer an “optional emotional skin”

There are already enough emotional people in this world; what they lack isn’t another “person” who can cry and laugh

but a “god” who never breaks down, never lies, and always puts results first

The future of products

Products today have interfaces

but in the future it may be more interface-less

agentic web and ambient carriers

AI + IoT will drive “always-on” storytelling and blur the Web / iOS boundary

By 2026, 70% of new apps will use low-code + AI; on X, developers predict that within 5–15 years devices will only need local data storage + AI, and agents will handle everything (social, payments). This includes wearables / the metaverse (like Black Mirror-style interactive agents)

This kind of form will account for over 40%, winning on scale and innovation. Web/iOS is the base, but agents + immersion are the “iPhone moment” — deciding the next hundred-million-scale company

vibe coding, on prompts

vibe coding: thinking about prompt design

A well-designed prompt helps build a high-quality web/app MVP; a prompt needs to have some of the following properties:

Describe the feeling (vibe) first, then lock in technical details — for example a minimalist, healing-style to-do app, like such-and-such, and what the dominant color feels like

Always have the AI help generate the PRD (product requirements document) and the technical plan; don’t let it generate too much content at once

Break tasks down to idiot-proof granularity; don’t have AI generate the whole project at once, but prompt one by one in this order:

generate the project structure and package.json

generate the database schema

generate the login/signup page (with specific UI descriptions or Figma references)

generate the core feature components

generate the API endpoints

write unit tests / E2E tests

deployment config (Vercel / Docker, etc.)

Use role-play + constraints — really, using identity definition to avoid watered-down code

Choosing a database for iOS

SQLite: the local database route, natively integrated, entirely on device

Cloud database: this is the most common one, accessing the database directly through an API layer

Apple-ecosystem-exclusive cloud: CloudKit, no need to write a backend, storage and sync are automated, but not suited to complex applications

#格物/ ios

Quickly iterating some apps

Rapidly iterate on some apps

A person’s life database

A personal life database — a person can only create one in a lifetime

Just like a solo exhibition for one particular person in an art museum

What it amplifies is personal experience

What you browse is the storyline they accumulated stroke by stroke, recorded bit by bit

The misleading caused by Node.js’s caching mechanism

The problem with Node.js’s process and environment variable caching mechanism

When you run next dev (or any Node program), Node reads the contents of the .env file at startup and injects those values into process.env. This means environment variables are a “static snapshot”; once the process has started, it won’t re-read the .env file

So you can understand it as earlier processes sharing the same cache area

Next.js caches compiled results in the .next/ directory, including environment dependencies. When the old process isn’t fully terminated, a new run may also read the old cache, indirectly retaining the old .env values

Cursor extracts key operations as buttons

Cursor extracts key operations as buttons

Underneath it’s actually agent operations

For example code review

Essentially it’s some agent methods helping complete the operation task

Facing Gen Z’s career crisis, the billionaire

Facing Gen Z’s career crisis, billionaire and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that in just 10 years, college graduates will be able to explore the solar system - and these jobs will pay astronomical salaries. The tech leader even said he envies young people, because by comparison our earlier career work looks “boring and dull”

……

The Dutch chip problem

For the past decade or so, the Netherlands has been a key ally of the US

ASML’s uniqueness: ASML is the only company in the world that can produce top-end lithography machines; without ASML, China can’t make high-end chips

When a country has irreplaceable industrial capability, it has diplomatic leverage

But now,

the US is rebuilding lithography and the upstream supply chain on its own soil

Japan, Germany, South Korea and the US are together building a more decentralized alternative system

Part of ASML is being absorbed by the US

A few signals:

The US demands the Netherlands expand its export ban on equipment to China; the Dutch government carried it out, and carried it out very thoroughly. This shows: the Netherlands has no autonomous space on strategic issues

Germany and Japan are being pulled into the “ASML alternative chain”

Lithography has always been a very complex industrial ecosystem

The US originally chose to leave this part to the Netherlands; the US chose to occupy the position with the highest profit and control in the industrial chain: chip design + core software + key supplied components for equipment

The US’s original plan was to leave contract manufacturing to Taiwan and South Korea, and lithography integration to the Netherlands - Dutch technology accumulation + European research subsidies + the US allowing it to be the sole dominant player

But now China’s supply chain is rising and supply chains are de-globalizing; when you depend on one country, there’s often future uncertainty

Global division of labor is of course good, but if you can monopolize it, why divide the labor? Everyone wants the big slice

I once saw the claim that social security is meant to make young people unemployable

I once saw causal reasoning concluding that social security is meant to make it hard for young people to find work, so they flow downward, and to make the older generation pay up to backstop things

There’s also a causal claim that social security is meant to squeeze out and eliminate end-of-chain businesses, eliminating the restaurants at the very end so some chains can move in

These are all reversed causality, explaining a structural result as someone’s deliberate purpose

The core question is really: is the result brought by the social security system the essential purpose of the social security system?

The side effects of the social security system can indeed cause those phenomena

But in design essence, social security is a risk-sharing system established by modern society to maintain baseline stability

For society not to be in chaos, there must be a backstop

For society to have a backstop, there must be efficiency

For efficiency, low-efficiency must be filtered out

In modern society, individuals can no longer bear risk through family and personal savings; they need an institutionalized, mandatory risk-sharing system to maintain society’s basic stability

Rork (also often written Rork/Rourke)

Generate a native mobile app with one sentence

Underneath it generates a React Native + Expo project; it gives you runnable code and real-device preview via Expo Go, you can keep iterating with prompts, then export the source / go through TestFlight or the Play publishing process

Very friendly for validating an MVP, and you can get the source code, convenient for secondary development or handing to an engineering team

By comparison there’s also VibeCode app

This is an iOS / Android AI App Builder; you state your requirements on the phone, get an output, test on the phone, turn an idea into a native app in minutes, it offers code download, subscription billing and so on

This conversion path is very short: you hit a pain point in TikTok content, click the profile link / link card straight to the store page or App Clip download page, and a mobile builder can produce a testable app within hours

And native capability is strong; you can run ads and experiment at the same time

A market VibeCode fits very well

That’s instant demos on mobile

This is very important

It lowers the barrier to trying and getting started

It’s like learning while using, practicing while coding

Actually this gives product people some inspiration: target one specific scenario for development, a convenient entry point

This is an extreme sensitivity to user experience

It lets non-developers, or creators who want to quickly validate an idea, try the flow of “I have an app idea → generate → preview” on their phone without dealing with Xcode/Android Studio and environment debugging

VibeCode vs Rork

Mobile app, users preview Android on their phones, emphasizing non-technical practitioners and lightly technical creators, emphasizing the vision that everyone can build an app

Rork is aimed at cross-platform native mobile apps, generating a described React Native project from plain text, including login, navigation, multiple screens, and a path to production-grade export

Generally, at the validation stage it’s still recommended to use VibeCode for quick project validation

Once validation succeeds, use Rork to migrate and rebuild, and prepare cross-platform deployment

The guy across from me is memorizing aloud

I really don’t get it

After all these years, the first time I’ve seen someone memorizing aloud

…

Especially in the AI era…

And memorizing at night…

A detailed introduction to prpm.dev

prpm.dev is a general-purpose package manager and registry for the “AI coding assistant ecosystem” (the “npm” of prompts/rules/agents). It gathers Cursor rules, Claude Code skills, and prompts, rules, slash commands, agents from IDEs like Windsurf/Continue that are scattered across GitHub and forums, into a searchable registry, and provides a CLI for one-click install, upgrade, publish and collection management

Because different IDEs/assistants (Cursor, Claude Code, Continue, Windsurf, Copilot) each have their own file formats and directory structures

PRPM abstracts them into unified packages and manifests, prpm.json; when installing it automatically lands in the right place (like .cursor/rules/, .claude/skills/)

It’s like using npm to install/upgrade/lock versions rather than manually searching for repos, with search, popular/trending, staleness detection, and a local prpm.lock tracking installed content

It provides a login and publishing flow and a complete Manifest spec, supports single-package or multi-package repos, and can package multiple packages into collections (one command installs a whole workflow/tech stack)

How much of Western

How much of Western unconformity with rules is actually conformity with the fact that we are trained to question the rules? How much of Westerners’ non-compliance with rules is actually compliance with the fact that we are trained to question rules?

cc-sessions

An extension toolset whose purpose is to make the development workflow in the Claude Code environment smoother/more structured and controllable

Install into your codebase: via pipx run cc-sessions or npx cc-sessions

After installation it creates a series of structures in your repo root: sessions/hooks/, sessions/api/, sessions/protocols/, .claude/agents/, .claude/commands, plus sessions/sessions-state.json, sessions/sessions-config.json and so on

It bundles “trigger phrases” + “task management” + “branch/git flow control” + “sub-agents” + “protocols” and other combinations, adding a “structured process” shell over development with Claude Code

If you think of Claude Code as a powerful but rather “bare” AI coding assistant, cc-sessions is a “process normalizer + auxiliary toolset/framework” on top of that assistant, letting you use it for development more systematically

Core ideas:

The DAIC core idea: before Claude starts to “write” it must first discuss (Discussion), then obtain “alignment” approval (Alignment), only then enter the “implementation” phase (Implementation), and finally “check” (Check) whether what was done meets expectations; you need to explicitly give phrases like go ahead / make it so, otherwise Claude gets stuck

In cc-sessions, tasks are defined as Markdown files (with front-matter) placed in sessions/tasks/. Status, branch and success criteria are tracked; tasks can be file-level (a focused objective) or directory-level (supporting subtasks, multi-stage projects); the system automatically creates git branches and enforces branch discipline

Sub-agents: a set of specialized agents running in independent context windows, so the main flow isn’t interrupted by heavy analysis, logging or review tasks; these auxiliary flows can be separated out. Especially useful for large/long-running projects

I suddenly really get one thing about agents

I suddenly really get one thing: an agent, to some degree, can’t replace a workflow

An agent is like the brain, with DL behind it, reinforcing the brain; a workflow is like an assembly line, a screw, it only needs fixed execution

For reinforcement learning (RL) to let an Agent “learn to do tasks on its own,” you need:

A defined reward function (Reward)

Plenty of repeatable environments

Support for reversible operations and error recovery

Experiments that are observable and debuggable

But real-world systems are:

Data can’t be rolled back

External APIs can’t be called without limit

User scenarios are many and messy

The cost is extremely high

So in real companies, the only places RL can truly land are:

Games

Simulated environments

Closed decision spaces

What an agent should be thinking about is how to generate a workflow, and then how to invoke it

Agent (brain & decisions)

↓ generates plans / schedules intent

Workflow (hands and feet & execution & state persistence)

↓ returns execution results

The agent keeps reasoning based on the results

Plan → Act → Observe → Replan

Crystal is pretty good to use

An open-source project that manages multiple AI coding sessions, running in different git worktrees

When you use AI to assist coding/development, having only one session or one branch often causes the pain points of “waiting for the AI to finish” and “losing context when switching tasks.” Crystal starts an isolated environment for each task/prompt, so you can run multiple sessions in parallel

It uses git worktrees — simply put, it’s a mechanism where one repository can have multiple “working directories/branches existing at the same time,” one worktree per task/session, without interfering with each other

Crystal will help you initialize git

But in a parallel-session state the task load can also become large and complicated

You can run several tasks at the same time, switching between different tasks to see the effect‘’

Open source, humanoid, interaction: the triangle of embodied AI’s early paradigm

Open source, humanoid and interaction — these three actually form the triangle of embodied intelligence’s early paradigm

Full-stack open source is a way of establishing standards, a way of competing at the underlying ecosystem level

Humanoid is more of a choice of social interface — not the only technically correct form, but the container that’s easiest to accept culturally and psychologically

From the angle of “embodied intelligence,” a humanoid robot is just a physicalized “interaction node.” It carries people’s projection onto intelligence — gaze, gestures, tone, emotional feedback — and these things make it easier for us to believe the machine is “a subject.” But intelligence in the social sense isn’t in the body, it’s in “understanding” and “interaction”

I think the core competition isn’t necessarily who builds the most human-like robot, but who can define the dialogue logic between humans and intelligence — this could be a multimodal perception system, or it could be a social collaboration mechanism

Embodied intelligence is actually giving AI the closed loop of sensors (eyes, microphones, etc.), a brain (neural networks or control algorithms) and actuators (motors, servos, arms)

The AI forms we have now are actually all focused on disembodied intelligence, but truly real intelligence is still formed by interacting with the world through a body, in the perception–action loop. This form hasn’t been thought through yet; humanoids will definitely be useful, but the proportion may be far smaller than everyone imagines

When a product can’t bring users very high value

at that point you just won’t touch that spot

Jobs’ initial stubbornness was the same: a small screen is the correct human-machine size — an almost engineering-religious insistence on thumb reach

And going bigger brings a whole chain of physical consequences, such as more power consumption, more heat dissipation, a bigger battery — meaning heavier, thicker, less elegant

So the early Android big-screen phones being hot and crude is exactly what confirmed Apple’s caution

Apple’s corporate culture is interesting too: it doesn’t just follow what competitors truly do, and that’s different from domestic phone makers. They closely observe real usage behavior, and only when the three curves of user experience, usage behavior and supply-chain technology aligned for the first time did Apple’s big-screen era close its doors and raise the curtain

In the user experience area they think further ahead and a bit more deeply

The Apple Car

“Apple-style product philosophy” naturally conflicts with the physical world of the auto industry. Apple likes to control every variable and polish experience with extreme fastidiousness: hardware-software integration, deep supply-chain management, materials science precise to the nanometer… On phones and computers these are art, but in the auto industry they turn into hell. The order of magnitude of a car’s parts is completely different, the variables are enormous, the regulations are complex, each country has a pile of standards, and the life cycle is often ten years or more; even a small change brings a flock-like chain reaction. Apple excels at making “precise little universes”; a car is a “giant planetary system”

And then Apple is a high-gross-margin consumer electronics company, while cars are a painful-margin, capital-intensive, hugely scaled industry

Apple’s developer account problem

I ran into a problem and kept getting stuck; later I found it was because my phone number’s region and the store region I selected were different

Many countries are on the unsupported list because of US government sanctions, export controls, or money-laundering/financial risk issues

The App Store (iOS) is a typical “listed by region” system

The App Store lists by region, as a typical case: when you first create a version you can check the US, and with the US checked, the app can only be found in the US region

Google Play seems to distribute entirely by country as region

Mainland China is special: Apple requires you to provide an ICP filing number to list. Without a filing, even if you check mainland China, the system will refuse or the review gets stuck. So the legend that “everywhere in the world is fine, but mainland China isn’t something you can just check if you want to” comes from this

Also, an app uploaded in the China region still needs the US region checked to be found in the US region

Building an AI partner LLM prompt

Persona as the basic core of a person, including the user profile and the AI profile, making the AI’s replies better

Memory — vector databases, automated chunking and so on, automatically updating long-term and short-term memory, able to understand your thoughts at different stages and do deep insight

Agent reasoning — not just answering, but also setting up task chains, including search and stylized reasoning

Mobilization in history had a single goal: win a war (Alexander)

Mobilization in history had a single goal: win a war (Alexander), build a great project (the pharaoh)

Mao’s mobilization was total: he not only used it to fight wars (the Liberation War, resisting America and aiding Korea), but also to “reshape the land” (the Great Leap Forward), “reshape human nature” (thought reform), “reshape society” (the people’s communes), and even “reshape culture” (the Cultural Revolution). He turned “mass mobilization” itself from a “means” into an “end” and a “daily state”

This mobilization model — “fueled by spirit (class will), scaled to the whole society, aimed at transforming everything” — is rarely seen in history

This was a great transformation unseen in three thousand years: the collapse of politics, of thought, of society

In the early 20th century China was a giant “power vacuum” and “meaning vacuum.” Under the heavy pressure of warlords, Japan and landlords, hundreds of millions of peasants and city dwellers were in an extreme state of “political despair” and “spiritual blankness”

Mao Zedong was the first person to truly “see” and “understand” this force.

In 1927, when everyone (including Stalin) was watching Shanghai’s workers, Mao wrote in the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan: they (the peasants) will “burst all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation.” He saw this “powder keg” and realized he could become the “lighter of the fuse”

Who are you? You are no longer “Zhang San” or “Li Si”; you are “the people” (sacred) or a “class enemy” (to be eliminated)

Where does your suffering come from? Not from bad “fate,” but from the “class oppression” of the “three great mountains” (imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism)

Where is your way out? Not “endurance” or “getting rich,” but “revolution” and “struggle”

Who is your leader? The “Party” and “Chairman Mao”

It found an “enemy” for all your suffering, gave “justice” to all your actions, and provided “meaning” for your life

After reform and opening up, this operating system shifted from politics to economics, and the public’s drive was no longer “liberating all humanity” but “becoming someone above others.” What people pursued was interest, security and personal happiness, not “grand narratives”

Plus social atomization appeared, individuals awakened, and the authority of the collective decreased

But is the algorithm of the tech era even more terrifying? The algorithm pushes it virally to a massive number of users with the same “emotional inclination”

In a phase of economic downturn, people also produce a huge meaning vacuum. Today’s machine is the “algorithm,” the “recommendation engine,” the “App” (such as Douyin, TikTok, Weibo, X). Through “attention” it shapes your cognition and desire

The algorithm rules your emotions, rules your reality, rules your meaning

Apple doesn’t build cars

Car-making’s profit structure, industry rhythm and ecosystem returns all don’t fit Apple’s genes

The auto profit structure completely fails to match Apple’s “habit of ultra-high profit margins”

Looking at Xiaomi now, the risk of building cars is still too great

Apple’s culture is fast, extreme, simple, precise

while the car industry is slow, complex, a supply-chain hell, and extremely dependent on experience

And once there’s a news story like “Apple car loses control at highway speed, killing someone”

the brand would suffer major damage

The path truly suited to Apple is the next-generation computing entrance (AR, AI, OS, ecosystem)

The design of Claude’s official Artifacts

Core architecture: a three-layer isolation design

The first is the main application, managing the conversation flow and handling the LLM’s streaming output, including parsing code blocks

The second layer is the iframe, an isolated sandbox with an independent JS execution environment and DOM tree, unable to access the parent page; permissions can be set through the sandbox field. Use localStorage and refined popups or table popups cautiously

The third layer is the dynamic execution layer, the React Runtime: it transpiles JSX, and there are some React or DOM libraries, and execution happens — but there are flaws, for example you can’t use npm packages

The main reason is the design: npm packages were originally designed for build time, but the artifact is at environment runtime

Gemini’s qualitative leap in writing web pages

On November 18, 2025, Google officially launched Gemini 3, the latest iteration of its Gemini series, hailed as the beginning of a “new era of intelligence.” The model has achieved a notable qualitative leap in writing web pages (including front-end UI generation, interactive tools and dynamic applications): from the previous static code snippets or simple Markdown output to generating complete, customized interactive web experiences in real time

An agentic coding framework, integrated with the Google Antigravity platform, supporting tool calls (such as image generation, web search) and autonomous planning; a post-processing mechanism optimizes output and reduces errors

There’s also a series of Agentic coding offerings, such as code execution, browser control and multimodal handling

A review of Gemini 3.0

There are a lot of positive reviews on X

A few advantages

Multimodal capability, some reasoning capability, and also some agent calling capability

It has very obvious advantages in agent scenarios

When combined with RAG, hallucination is still a very obvious phenomenon

The speed is fairly slow; compared with Composer or other models it responds sluggishly in everyday tasks

The phone interface Apple opened up

I saw before that ChatGPT on iPhone feels like you’re making a phone call, and I kept analyzing the reason behind it

Apple opened up CallKit and VoIP / audio routing capabilities

With the release of iPhone iOS 10, VoIP apps could deeply integrate with the iPhone phone system and provide a native phone experience

At first it was provided to some social apps, mainly offering two capabilities:

A phone UI (looking like the system phone interface)

Audio routing (sending sound to the earpiece, headphones, Bluetooth, etc.)

Disguise yourself as a VoIP calling app and the system will treat you as a phone; Android also has the ConnectionService capability

On the surface it has the effect of a phone, and in fact it intervenes more deeply than Siri

ChatGPT can do it with an ordinary app + VoIP capability, so it has lower-level permissions, and its ability to penetrate is even stronger

It uses the CallKit and real-time audio routing that iOS provides to VoIP apps, making the real-time voice conversation experience look like a system phone call, but in essence it’s still a network audio stream

Some new features of flomo

Essentially it also uses some prompts to trigger some of the user’s stories

These might be some exclusive perspectives, customized thinking methods

Strategic advisor, deep excavation, action guide, MBTI analysis, personal profiling, even soul-searching questions

iOS has Reminders, and it also has Things 3

Things 3 focuses entirely on the Apple ecosystem; the interface is more elegant, the user experience feels very strong, and its price and platform support are limited

Reminders is the fastest at capturing into the system, and has the best system integration

Reminders’ capture entry point is also actually the lightest — you think of something and you record it, that’s very lightweight

vision pro vs ios app

Differentiation — they’re all compatible, but the compatibility mode loses: 2D

Images — it makes me think whether the iPhone’s Spatial mode photography has a similar effect

This is essentially an automatic conversion layer

Your finger sliding on the iPad = pinch + drag

In native apps, when you stare at a button, it glows faintly or floats up (hover effect), but iOS-compatible apps don’t have this, so users don’t know whether they’re aiming at something

Business strategy: developers can choose to “refuse”

This matters a lot. Although Apple by default allows iOS apps to run on Vision Pro, developers can check “don’t let my app be listed on Vision Pro” in App Store Connect.

Examples: YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify all blocked Vision Pro at first, forcing users to watch in the browser. Because they felt the compatible version’s experience wasn’t good enough, or even if it only existed as a window, they wanted full control over the experience.

maybe AI can, to some degree, also amplify an individual’s value

It can be social value

It can fully bring out an individual’s value and manifest their scarcity

Treat the product as a work of art, and the art as a scarce collectible

iOS architecture

Generally divided into three layers

Presentation layer (iOS side)

that is, the SwiftUI / UIKit interface

It isn’t responsible for “thinking,” only for displaying:

input boxes

conversation interface

result animations

loading states

local cache display

This is the “facade” between you and the user

Logic layer (inside iOS)

like ViewModel (MVVM), Interactor (Clean Architecture)

Responsible for:

organizing user input

managing state (loading, streaming)

controlling task lifecycle

recording conversation history

Not responsible for AI inference, doesn’t call openai.com’s API directly

Mostly, the innermost layer is orchestration — that’s your own server

managing prompts (instruction templates)

adding business logic

silently swapping models (say from GPT-4 to Claude 3/4)

security: avoiding exposing API keys on the client

caching (saving inference cost)

iOS App → your API → ChatGPT API

Some thoughts on a personal life database

The information age should be an age when individual power is amplified

A personal art gallery, storing personal creativity of the post-AI era

Labeling

A label is equivalent to a prejudice in people’s minds, the brain simplifying its summary of the world in order to be lazy

Labels can be abstracted out, and labels easily conflict and contradict each other; most online arguments come from information asymmetry, and the main cause of information asymmetry is that the two sides are discussing at mismatched levels of labels

Once there are labels, there’s an evaluation system; the brain uses a highly abstract label to cover thousands of different individuals

So a good solution is to establish whether both sides are discussing at the same level of concept

For example, Zhang Zetian is also a label-ized figure - from her name, to “Milk Tea Sister” in high school, to wealthy wife; the labels easily obscure the real her and what she really does, and she’s easily narrated by others

A friend studies medicine; I sent her a recent news story

This 10-year-old boy was from Chengwu County, Heze, Shandong. After a classmate bumped into his stomach at school he felt abdominal pain and was sent to Chengwu County People’s Hospital for examination. During a CT scan the hospital said it found a “space-occupying lesion” (a possible tumor) between the stomach and pancreas, and then recommended laparoscopic surgery

The surgery reportedly lasted about 14 hours. The family says that during the operation, doctors four times asked them to sign new surgical consent forms, on the grounds of “finding new problems”

After surgery the boy had his duodenum, most of his small intestine, pancreas, gallbladder, two-thirds of his stomach, and most of his colon removed (less than 50cm remained). He currently can only survive on intravenous nutrition and can’t eat normally

Later a third-party medical appraisal report pointed out that the hospital had “obvious faults” in the choice of surgical method, preoperative preparation, risk anticipation and duty to inform

A very interesting point: judging by scale or experience, the hospital at the time very likely did not have the qualifications and experience to perform such a complex major surgery (especially a massive resection of a child’s digestive system)

Minor injury → CT shows a suspicious shadow → laparoscopic exploration → unexpected intraoperative findings → repeated additional resections. This suggests the doctor may have encountered unforeseen situations during surgery and decided to keep expanding the scope of the operation, rather than planning it in advance

Most of the organs removed were digestive-system organs (stomach, intestine, pancreas), not organs of high transplant value (like liver, kidney, heart). If it really were organ trafficking, the risk is too great and the profit actually limited

Also, a county-level hospital can hardly have a secret system for large-scale organ trading

Most likely the CT was initially misjudged as a tumor or some other lesion, and in the process of surgical exploration the hospital kept expanding the surgical scope when encountering uncertain situations

A hospital is also a shaky outfit; even if most of the doctors are professional, a minority who aren’t can be fatal

So even as a patient you can’t completely “rely” on the hospital, “rely” on the doctor

The narrative of the US and NATO

The narrative of the US and NATO

Some very abstract concepts — but this one really differs from other concepts

There are some very abstract concepts, but this concept really is different from other concepts

A few examples

A specific discipline: this is a technical term accumulated continuously by top human talent in that field

A specific person: this person is famous, so there’s naturally a lot of information on the internet, and you can concretely model that individual

A specific book: this determines that the book is a convergent structure; the LLM is divergent, a book is convergent

Chatting is one way

It can help a person understand themselves

record themselves

Buddhist learning, saving oneself and saving others

Saving oneself isn’t isolated practice, nor is it shutting the door and grinding levels alone like in a game

Saving oneself is taking responsibility for your own mind, suffering and attachments, using awareness and practice to loosen those karmic conditions that keep you trapped

Here “saving” doesn’t mean “solving problems for others,” and even less a spiritual outsourcing service. The core of saving is “supportive conditions”

Practice is karmic conditions forming each other: when you help others suffer a little less, the anger, attachment and arrogance in your own mind also get worn away. So saving others is never an obligation but a natural extension of practice. Compassion needs no reason, just as light needs no reason to illuminate

It’s like looking at yourself in a mirror; you start to see in the mirror the “possible you,” the “you you hope for,” the “you you fear will appear”

The stronger AI is, the less it’s a passive reflection and the more it participates in generation. The back-and-forth between you and it draws out thoughts you didn’t originally have. You say one line, it extends a line, and you follow it to produce a new path. This already goes beyond the mirror metaphor; it’s more like a mind expander

AI is a discoverer, an observer, a helper

Then at the moment AI appeared, the self became a process, not an entity

Current AI capability can’t qualitatively change the reading experience of nourishing content

Current AI capability can’t qualitatively change the reading experience of nourishing content; it struggles to let users easily keep scrolling nourishing content — the immediate experience isn’t strong enough, and the sense of gain isn’t immediate and is fuzzy

Users find it hard to keep scrolling nourishing content they have no strong interest in; when learning nourishing content, both the immediate experience and the sense of gain are poor, and in the short term it’s hard to achieve the effect of users scrolling continuously with a good experience

But if it’s content the user is interested in themselves, content related to the user themselves, it’s meaningful to the user

What comes first for a composer

Constantly creating

Making creation a daily thing

It’s all a process of quantitative change triggering qualitative change

You have to create a large body of work continuously and persistently

To create a large body of work continuously and persistently, you can’t just let your emotions affect you

Note: be good at using your own emotions, not flattening them

Creating is essentially closer to long-term muscle training or a breathing rhythm — emotions are just waves that come and go

Instead, use emotions and turn them into the texture of the work. And this in turn makes creation itself a way of regulating emotion

This is a personal rhythm: keep a personal rhythm, focused, concise

Creating is mainly sensibility, but note: sensibility isn’t emotion — it can also be creativity, trained intuition, imagination, the capacity for metaphor. Sensation and intuition are more continuous, more stable and broader in scope than a momentary emotion

Composing needs logical thinking as well as inspiration that flashes up suddenly. Logical thinking has to rely on the knowledge, experience and so on accumulated in the brain. What you once learned and once experienced is what gradually forms the flesh and blood of creation — all of this exists in the essence of logical thinking. Isn’t about 95% rationality exactly these things?

Creating needs inspiration, and it seems everyone’s inspiration shows up differently

Most of the inspiration in my experience seems to come from observing in this environment and popping up suddenly during the process of thinking

Occasionally hitting some dead end or something interesting and becoming absorbed in it — that’s when my ideas most easily resurface, that is, in the process of always being ready to create

In other words, compared with thinking about something with your whole body and mind, good ideas are actually more likely to surge up suddenly when you’re unconsciously doing something in daily life. Compared with stubbornly flailing around, inspiration that appears unconsciously is actually more ideal

Intellect

Being able to see clearly

Being able to think more accurately

The patience to understand more complex things

The ability to connect the world together

Intellect isn’t something that needs to be honed through suffering

Intellect is a way we face difficulty

A mental capacity: not evading, not drifting with the current

Whatever you do, please yourself first

You are the first audience

You are the first user

If the work you hand over can’t even move yourself, the people around you won’t be moved either, let alone more listeners

Bi Gan’s understanding of art films is really moving

The audience isn’t there to receive explanations; the audience comes to “participate” in the film with their own life experience

The mountain-climbing metaphor is great. The tedium of the mountain path isn’t there to torture you, but to let your breathing, heartbeat, and senses be re-tuned during the process. When the sunrise suddenly bursts open, that’s when you get hit — and the moment of being hit is actually your own thing: your youth, your regrets, some relative of yours, the sentences you never said out loud

The director doesn’t stuff “meaning” into you; he throws you the puzzle pieces, and you complete it with your own life

When you finish assembling it, then you cry, because standing in the finished picture is yourself

Bi Gan’s sneaky little scheme is that he believes the audience’s subconscious is smarter than the audience themselves

What he respects isn’t “taste,” but the enormous, complex, unspeakable emotional sediment you carry as a person. Even if on the surface you say “I don’t get it,” your body and subconscious have actually already “gotten” it

The purpose of art films and literary fiction has never been to provide clarity …

For some basic user personas

tone

professional background

identity

age range

country

Plus the user’s current state, for instance the current time, device, scenario

“Middle class” is a term capitalists invented to ease contradictions

A set of social identity narratives jointly shaped by the state, capital and the media after capitalist industrialization

Called senior wage workers

It’s also a social design to buffer class contradictions

A real middle-class person isn’t someone with an annual salary of 500k,

but rather:

• has a mortgage

• has education pressure

• has consumption habits

• can’t stop working

• yet is afraid of losing their current class position

AI hits not the bottom-layer workers first, but the middle class

The people in this society who were promised “work hard and you’ll move up”

The changing audience for Moutai

One part — demand driven with power at its core — will slowly decline, and won’t disappear in the short term; that’s the cultural background. Even under the impact of globalization and the collision of technology and tradition, the intergenerational trust token and status signal are hard to change for now, so this scenario shrinks but won’t vanish

Another part — people who genuinely like drinking — will slowly increase, but won’t become the main body either. Compared with whisky, Moutai is stronger in concentration, more complex, and not very friendly to beginners. Still, sauce-aroma culture is becoming more and more mainstream, and Moutai will also face transformation, migrating from a drink of power to a drink of taste

So to some extent, the prediction is that the total amount of Moutai drunk may not increase, but the number of people who come into contact with Moutai may keep growing

Moutai is currently mainly working in two directions: one is going overseas to test the waters, the other is being a core symbol inside China — the collaboration with Luckin is one example

First, the implicit understanding in social culture that “good liquor = sincerity,” and Moutai is the tip of that pyramid

Second, scarcity and the price signal have made it “face capital”

Third, the sauce-aroma flavor itself has a unique memory hook, giving it a “taste symbol”

How Moutai becomes a Chinese symbol in the future — there may really be a long road to walk, like Japanese sake or Scotch whisky, a transformation from a national drink to a global symbol

A big problem for BYD is whether it can break through in overseas markets

I feel a big problem for BYD is whether it will be able to smoothly break through policy and brand barriers in overseas markets in the future

China’s market is limited, not enough for BYD to become a first-tier global giant player

Its advantages are a full industrial chain (batteries, motors, electronic controls, body, blade batteries, DM hybrids), strong cost, high product density and fast iteration

In the car-company space, Tesla is especially differentiated: Tesla’s biggest advantage isn’t the car, but software, cost control and scale, plus its extreme control over the supply chain today

The S&P 500 Index

It’s an “overall performance indicator” formed by piecing together the stock prices of a basket of big companies

It consists of 500 large US listed companies selected by Standard & Poor’s

In other words, buying it is buying America

What’s special about this index is “market-cap weighting.” The bigger the company, the bigger its influence on the index’s rise and fall

So naturally it’s the public constant of modern investing. Buffett even said that the best investment approach for most people is to buy an S&P 500 index fund and then leave it there without touching it — it sounds very boring, but boring in the financial world often means solid

There’s another index: Berkshire Hathaway

It really did start in textiles — more precisely, in a dying textile mill. Later Buffett and Munger dragged it out of the ruins of the industrial age and slowly remade it into the strangest, most unconventional business organism in the world

It isn’t a company in the traditional sense; it’s more like a “slow but incomparably precise investing animal” that keeps absorbing cash and then allocating that cash to better assets. On the surface it’s a company; in substance it’s a super-diversified finance-and-industry ecosystem

Owning real companies across many industries — not investing in a little equity, but buying the whole thing, plus a pile of manufacturing

That’s only the first layer. The more fascinating part is the second layer: Buffett takes the insurance business’s “float” (money an insurer has received in premiums but hasn’t yet paid out) and invests it in the stock market and other assets. This money is like a free loan, making Berkshire seem to have a “cheat code” in the capital markets. Buying good companies with cheap money, given enough time, creates the magic of compounding

The third layer is its investment portfolio. Berkshire has long held large stakes in companies like Apple, Bank of America and Coca-Cola — all high-quality businesses flush with cash and with deep moats. Berkshire treats these shares as long-term partner relationships, not short-term trading objects

The charm of this model lies in its philosophical base: restraint, patience, understanding human nature, seeking certainty, avoiding stupidity — rather than chasing “smart, exciting opportunities”

Tech fast food

Tech fast food is the dopamine features that some tech brands — cars or phones — throw out to cater to hot topics or part of users’ tastes

I suddenly realized the narrative the current car companies are forming: “traditional carmakers = backward, low-end, worse than China’s new forces”

So when you hear Toyota or Volkswagen, you feel these are all traditional, backward carmakers

What China’s new forces show users is “front-end technology”: smart driving, voice, UI, big screens, charging experience, OTA

What Toyota and Volkswagen bring to the world is a “back-end system”

Million-unit-scale supply chain stability, a global quality management system, manufacturing cost curves, overseas channel power, industrial chain depth

The auto industry is one of the heaviest manufacturing industries on Earth — not just innovation, but more system capability, decades of accumulated industrial system

What Toyota and Volkswagen push domestically right now is high-volume cars; in fact their real flagship cars have extremely strong product capability in the global market. Especially in Europe, North America, India and South America, Toyota and Volkswagen are very powerful

This is the same as Apple not pushing full-screen displays at first. In the long run, Toyota and Volkswagen won’t die; instead they’ll become strong again in the future

Once mass production begins, the bigger the scale the lower the cost; the lower the cost the more volume you can sell; the more volume you sell, the more money you have to keep doing R&D

Understanding Buffett is understanding time

Doing the right thing at the right time

Berkshire is the vessel of Buffett’s lifelong wisdom

Feeding long-term investment with insurance float, stabilizing cash flow with diversified businesses, with all capital flowing back for reinvestment, thereby achieving extraordinary compound growth

A capital-wisdom ecosystem with time as its ally

It respects time, time compounds, capital doesn’t flow out, isn’t spent carelessly, isn’t interfered with politically

Capital allocation and business operations are separated, letting companies focus on their own business

Using cheaper capital to buy higher profit elasticity

Culture is the moat

Avoid being too clever for one’s own good

It doesn’t touch a company’s original culture, system and team at all, nor force it into the group system

But there’s a precondition to their buying: they only buy businesses run by founders or managers with a founder-like spirit

These people are often already wealthy, mission-driven, and see the company as their life’s work

They aren’t working hard just for that bit of equity appreciation

So some of the companies they pick are companies with a soul + leaders with a soul

Climbing Mount Hua — it really was all pretty rough

In the morning I was dragged into a restaurant for breakfast, and it was super bad

The experience of going up Mount Hua was super bad, super crowded, and it happened to be the autumn holiday

The scenic area is very commercialized, which I really dislike

Many of the standards inside are done badly — for example the signs in the scenic area aren’t clear, and many route maps don’t feel very accurate

And what else — the operations feel so trashy that we were really disappointed

In the end we were all exhausted, and the downhill shuttle bus still dragged us into the visitor center to spend money once

Following its nature without violating its feeling

Mount Hua’s peril was originally in its rocks and cliffs; today’s peril lies mostly in people’s hearts and the game of chasing profit

The biggest problems between China and Japan are history and Taiwan

Historical issues: Japanese right-wingers often deny the war crimes Japan committed in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, regarding the crimes Japan committed during the war, especially the Nanjing Massacre, offered a personal apology: “As a Japanese citizen, I feel I have an obligation to apologize for even one Chinese civilian brutally killed by Japanese soldiers; such acts cannot be excused on the grounds of war.” Later the Chinese Foreign Ministry also said that Japan’s historical problems are very serious

In the 1970s and 1980s, China rejected Japan’s offers of economic compensation for the losses caused during World War II. [ 64 ] : 226 China rejected these offers, holding that accepting economic compensation was equivalent to accepting an official apology. In particular, China wanted an official apology from the Japanese emperor.

The Japan-Taiwan position divergence is a basic principle of China-Japan relations: since 1975, Japan has recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal government of China,” but has maintained an ambiguous position on the PRC’s sovereignty claim over the island of Taiwan, saying it “fully understands and respects” China’s position

Xiaomi cars seem to be in a rough spot now

Most Xiaomi SU7 accidents are because the car is too strong (fast acceleration) and the driver too green (many are on their first car), plus many users treat it as an “electronic product,” leading to loss of control, hitting walls, failed drifts

Xiaomi hit its target of over 100,000 deliveries a year in its very first year

Xiaomi’s marketing heat in the first year was too high

But in reality, many of these cars are used as ride-hailing vehicles. A ride-hailing car runs 5–10 times the mileage of a private car in a year, and the longer the mileage, the mathematically greater the probability of an accident

The atmosphere of “cursing” Xiaomi cars online is thick, but it’s more an event-driven amplification effect (such as accident videos going viral) rather than a total collapse

The essence of Xiaomi’s car-making is transplanting the internet playbook of “high marketing + value for money” into cars, but the auto industry’s threshold is far higher than phones’ (over 12,000 parts, zero tolerance on safety) — which is why Volkswagen has always been something like the Apple of the auto world

Xiaomi’s high profile (Lei Jun’s live streams, Weibo “flags”) invites “a tall tree catches the wind.” In 2025 CCTV exposed a black-PR chain in new energy: AI-generated fake videos (such as old news about “the collision door won’t open” repeatedly stirred up), spread by account matrices. Lei Jun says dozens of lawsuits have been filed, but out-of-context videos (such as a launch event where “insulting a rival” was actually a tribute) still fly everywhere

Objectively, in terms of underlying capability, this is only a short-term trough for Xiaomi; if it can get through, the essence is “fast-paced internet thinking” hitting the wall of “slow work makes fine goods” in cars. Lei Jun needs to shift to “transparent rectification + user education” (such as publishing accident data), and stop being a “traffic controller.” When users buy a car, don’t blindly believe the marketing — look more at C-NCAP crash tests (the Xiaomi SU7 got five stars). If Xiaomi can survive the 2026 delivery peak, it can still become “China’s Tesla”

That twenty years between China and Japan: a widening chasm

The inertia of memory. National memory and personal memory are very similar: it looks rational, but it’s actually domesticated by memory

China–Japan relations have a strange rhythm: on the surface they’re talking about trade and tech cooperation, but deep down they’re being pushed along by historical trauma. The trauma isn’t past tense; it’s constantly being “re-produced” by social mechanisms

The Japanese political right maintains its identity through historical narrative

and Chinese public collective memory of Japan is intense and long-lasting

On top of that, Japan itself has a strong anxiety brought on by shifts in power; the balance is changing — Japan went from Asia’s largest economy to second

Japanese society’s “self-positioning” is still stuck at some kind of “leading role among advanced nations”

China’s “self-positioning,” meanwhile, is transitioning from “an oppressed civilization” to “the one leading the dance”

And on top of that, both are countries that depend enormously on historical narrative

In China–Japan I seem to see some shadow of Israel–Palestine, except what’s missing is the most core element: competition over land

Japanese conservatives need an external threat to hold unity together

Chinese media sometimes needs an external contrast to shape internal confidence

So part of what both sides say and do is essentially a performance for a “domestic audience”

These behaviors aren’t aimed at the other side, but at the domestic political rhythm

This “performing for each other’s domestic audience” pattern is the most likely thing to create a chasm, because what it strengthens is positions, not understanding

Between China and Japan there’s no that kind of “zero-sum land-oppression — survival conflict”

The China–Japan conflict is mainly psychological narrative, historical memory, and geopolitical competition

Israel–Palestine is a real conflict over life, land, and living space, which makes it almost impossible to resolve through cooperation

So China–Japan is more like a “psychological conflict,” while Israel–Palestine is an “existential conflict”

But really, looking at it from a generational angle

Japan’s younger generation has almost no war memory of China, and a natural fondness for Asian culture

Chinese young people are highly familiar with Japanese culture, technology, and lifestyle, and don’t see Japan as an “enemy nation” either

When this generation comes to power, what state will things be in?

agent application trends

Scenario-based agentic applications

Right now everyone is still fighting over the “super entry point” (dialogue boxes like ChatGPT, Grok, Kimi), but in another 2–3 years users won’t want to open 10 different AI chat windows every day

The real winners will be vertical apps that go deep and thorough on some high-frequency scenario, for example

a super app for travel scenarios (flights + hotels + itinerary + visa + local activities + real-time translation + changes and refunds, all included)

a super app for education scenarios (not online courses, but a real “personal learning operating system,” from K-12 to lifelong workplace learning)

a super app for health scenarios (connecting wearables + checkup reports + genetic data + multimodal real-time collaboration among doctors / nutritionists / psychological counselors)

Dig deep around one specific scenario

What it shapes for founders is also a new way of thinking

Endorphins and dopamine

On the physiological level,

Dopamine is the more “primitive” incentive system. It mainly acts on reward anticipation - when you expect something good (like food, success, a like), it starts secreting and drives you toward the goal. This is the chemical fuel that drives humans to explore, innovate and strive.

Endorphin is more like the body’s own “painkiller”; it’s an endogenous opioid peptide, released after you complete some energy-consuming, painful or tense process (like exercise, childbirth, crying, relaxation after extreme stress). The pleasure it brings is calm and peaceful, a bit like the “mind like still water” happiness after deep meditation or a run

Endorphins more easily form deep happiness; they don’t chase external stimulation but come from an integrated bodily and psychological experience. Many people get it through meditation, long-term exercise, deep interpersonal connection

But as the most complex social animal on earth, humans also depend to a large extent on the dopamine system for a strong drive to explore, to create, and the ability to delay gratification

This is a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, sleep and appetite

This is a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, sleep, appetite, social behavior and learning and memory

One special thing about it is that about 90% of serotonin isn’t actually in the brain but in the gut. That’s why our stomach cramps when we’re emotionally tense, or our mood improves after eating something good - the gut-brain axis really is a miracle of biological engineering

Serotonin also shapes a person’s social identity, because serotonin levels in social animals tend to be related to social status and a sense of belonging

Psychologist Robert Sapolsky’s primate experiments found: in monkey societies, high-status individuals have higher serotonin levels, low-status ones lower

This isn’t just a matter of power, but of “a sense of stability” - when you feel recognized and respected in a group, serotonin stays relatively high, making you calmer and more confident

So, a very complex reality: human happiness is partly constructed by society, not decided solely by individual effort and material things

Pearlescent mode

Or soft light; simply put it gives the image a soft, delicate luster, similar to the slightly glowing texture of a pearl’s surface

Pearlescent mode is mainly a soft-light effect; the light transitions softly, like natural diffuse reflection

Skin tones are more delicate and brightness is distributed more evenly, suitable for portraits or objects that are white or light-colored in the scene

The image is less harsh and looks more premium, more film-like

It doesn’t suit two scenarios: one is a very dark scene, the other is high-contrast hard light (feels a bit too soft)

Pearlescent still depends on the light; the softer the light, the better it looks

Contrast mode

Contrast mode is an intelligent processing strategy for high-contrast scenes

Generally it preserves detail between the shadows and highlights, avoiding a photo that’s all black or all white

So the suitable scenarios are: street scenes and buildings in direct sunlight, giving light and shadow a layered relationship; backlit portraits at sunset, which can give silhouettes and rim light more atmosphere; and also shooting by an indoor window

A silhouette generally means the subject becomes a black outline against a bright background; the point isn’t to see the details of the person or object but to express emotion and story through shape or posture

At sunset, a person standing by the sea, face and body black, but the outline very clear, background a golden or orange sky

That’s a silhouette

These are some new inspirations I’ve had about systems theory

This is some new inspiration I’ve taken from systems theory: inspiration itself is a process that naturally emerges while a system is running healthily and continuously

rather than destroying the system in order to chase inspiration

This is the essence of systems thinking

Iced and hot americano (2)

Iced and hot americano

Hot americano is the “fundamentalist coffee faction”

You can tell the beans’ character apart — gentle, resolute,

Iced and hot americano

Iced and hot americano.

Hot americano is the “fundamentalist coffee faction”.

You can taste the character of the beans — gentle, resolute.

Hayao Miyazaki’s films set the tone very easily at the opening

The opening usually lays out the worldview through a quiet everyday scene that still carries momentum, then suddenly opens the door to the fantastical

In Spirited Away, the driving scene is puttering along gently, but the shadows keep getting longer, and you can feel the world is about to change

This is a bit like tea ceremony — the real flavor starts happening from the first sip’s aroma

I suddenly realized, about us making products

The product itself also fuses in the founder’s values, outlook on life, and worldview

So doesn’t that mean a well-formed product

should let the user feel a hit of satisfaction, starting from the moment they enter the product

Priests among the Maasai

The Maasai’s traditional priest is called a Laibon

Laibons usually come from specific family lineages (several of the most famous Laibon families are well known in both Kenya and Tanzania, such as the Ngosorongi family in Tanzania).

The criterion for validation is spiritual power (orngo), believed to be passed down through bloodline

Usually the previous Laibon designates a successor on his deathbed (often his own son or grandson), and only after long training and secret rituals does that person formally take office

Where it overlaps heavily with Christian priests:

communicating with the supreme god Enkai — the most important mediator between humans and god.

performing blessing rituals for the tribe or family (praying for rain, for livestock fertility, pre-war blessings, healing illness).

presiding over major life rituals: birth naming, circumcision (coming-of-age for both men and women), marriage, and funerals.

prophesying the future, interpreting dreams, divining (using stones, shoes, entrails, etc.).

healing illness (herbs + spells + ritual, combining the double role of medicine man and priest).

providing oracles in tribal war or major decisions, with influence that sometimes exceeds the chief’s.

Where it’s most similar to a Christian priest:

people go to him first when in trouble (like going to church to find a padre).

he gives people “blessings” (smearing saliva on livestock, smearing a milk-and-honey mixture on people).

he can “absolve sins” or perform purification rituals (for example, if someone killed a fellow clansman, a Laibon must perform a ritual before the tribe accepts them back).

he keeps sacred objects (similar to holy relics), and holds collective prayer ceremonies.

Where it differs from a Christian priest:

The Laibon is at once diviner, medicine man, and prophet — more powerful, more mysterious, even fearsome.

They can have multiple wives and live relatively well off (the tribe gives many cattle and sheep as payment).

There’s no fixed “church”; rituals usually take place under a sacred tree, on a particular hilltop, or in the center of the village.

There are no written scriptures — everything relies on oral transmission and memory

Current situation: many Maasai have converted to Christianity (Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Pentecostalism, etc.), and fewer and fewer in the younger generation are willing to inherit the Laibon role

But some famous Laibon families are still very active, and today’s Laibon often has to “compete” with Christian pastors: when someone gets sick, they’ll go to the church pastor to pray and also to the Laibon to slaughter a cow and perform a ritual

Attention mechanisms under a cold

A fever usually means the immune system is running at full output, burning a lot of energy; the body automatically shifts resources away from high-level modules like “attention, creativity, complex thinking” to “the antivirus front line.” Wanting to stay at peak performance then is a bit like trying to run large-model inference on a fully loaded server — theoretically possible, but in practice you drop frames

The stuffy nose, fatigue, and inflammatory response that come with a cold affect sleep quality, oxygen intake, and the ability to focus. A headache is more like the system giving you a big red warning: stop overclocking

This seems to be the boundary of being human