464 notes this month | recorded from 2026-03-01 to 2026-03-31
Themes: AI and Agent Systems 135 · Travel, Places and Cities 109 · Reading, Ideas and History 57 · Daily Notes and Everything Else 55 · Self-Knowledge and Psychology 48 · Product, Engineering and Open Source 30 · Content, Craft and Recording 11 · Business, Investing and Career 11 · Body, Health and Daily Life 8
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464 records this month, filed under 9 themes:
- AI and Agent Systems · 135
- Travel, Places and Cities · 109
- Reading, Ideas and History · 57
- Daily Notes and Everything Else · 55
- Self-Knowledge and Psychology · 48
- Product, Engineering and Open Source · 30
- Content, Craft and Recording · 11
- Business, Investing and Career · 11
- Body, Health and Daily Life · 8
1. AI and Agent Systems
135 entries Pragmatism crossing the AI plateau. Withdraw from the anxiety of pursuing grand narratives and quick monetization—turn to “Inside-Out” driven mode. Based on own interests and unique perspective, dig into “small and beautiful” long-term value. Use cash-flow business to ensure team survival, use exploratory business to find the next growth point. Future super-apps feel inevitable to grow in extremely niche vertical scenarios—building barriers through proprietary data, unique interaction design, or deep industry know-how. #Gewu/AI I feel there are several very different types of games now. One is narrative-type—it may focus on world-building or linear concrete experiences, bringing immersive and very unique feelings. These games usually have higher cognitive load, delayed feedback, and rely on pre-scripted big moments or plot climaxes. There are actually quite many such products, including some otome games, or like “Black Myth: Wukong,” and Steam’s “Love Is All Around.” Another type is rule-based gaming. These games generally have some cognitive load, requiring sequential, high-frequency instant feedback, like “League of Legends” or “Honor of Kings.” Some might be drive-type mobile games, like needing to draw a picture, or some text-based mini-games that bring unexpected surprises through instant feedback—I find this interesting too. I feel game modes are slowly changing. From initially focusing on hand-eye coordination, now more like a director mode. Traditional games are more like making players become operators, while now may be more about letting players become directors or decision-makers. Also, I feel games are evolving from consuming static assets to generative emergence. Now it’s not just a CS code package—more likely to be an agent with memory and independent logic. You can substitute yourself into the player role. Actually, I feel games are slowly inclining toward emotional consumption. Emotional consumption has certain characteristics: it must be low-risk—after all, it’s in a consumption scenario, like a sanctuary for intimate relationships in the real world. Then although it requires this feeling of being chosen, and it will never betray—this is a transformation of the player-world relationship. I also feel there’s narrative continuity. With current technology, generally can only provide a universal background story, then maybe some branch choices—this is an engineering compromise. But I feel true AI-driven should be “a thousand faces for a thousand people”—every interaction conducts high-quality reasoning and rendering, it doesn’t forget, its narrative must be complete. Because some story-driven games heavily rely on narrative—narrative is like a very self-related, very independent, very subjective experience. An introduction to and objective analysis of the Tabbit browser. An intelligent work companion, reshaping the browser experience. Turning the traditional browser from a pure information-display tool into an intelligent workspace integrating search, chat, and task automation. Tabbit emphasizes human-AI parallel collaboration: users don’t need to switch among multiple tabs, office software or standalone AI tools to complete complex tasks. As for current integration, Chrome is still in its growth phase, dominating the market, but lacking a native AI workflow; Tabbit focuses more on automation. Right now the browser market is almost monopolized by Chrome. Chrome’s updates focus on agentic features, making the browser not just a tool for “viewing” but something that can carry out tasks autonomously. Leave the work to Tabbit, keep the time for yourself. OpenClaw’s skills-loading principles. The LLM is never the “full-set indexer” of skills. It’s only the “decision-maker for the final candidate set.” Skills decisions are layered — usually four layers of filtering. Layer 0: Skill Registry (system layer), stored in a database, vector store, or index. Layer 1: non-LLM routing (hard filtering), based on certain types, embeddings, then abstracted out. Layer 2: Candidate Skills (the set visible to the model) — this is what finally gets inserted, maybe a few, a dozen, twenty-odd skills, with name, description and schema. Layer 3: invocation & execution (runtime) — usually only 0–1 are invoked, returning the result for that turn. Name: Xinwei Xiong (熊鑫伟) GitHub: github.com/cubxxw Location: Shanghai Email: [email redacted] Blog: https://nsddd.top Twitter: [account redacted] User ID: [redacted] Created: 2021-06-19 Public repos: 136 Followers: 595 Following: 116 Available for hire: yes ⚡ Do the hard things and you’ll get it 🚀 Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. blog: travelling around the world, doing an AI product startup Kubernetes-related projects AI/LLM projects (langfuse, langchain, sglang, dify) Open-source infrastructure (istio, gvisor, serving) Blockchain (go-ethereum) Developer tools (gitea, cli, OpenRefine) An active open-source contributor Focused on AI/LLM and cloud-native technology Has startup ideas, building AI products Broad tech stack: K8s, AI, blockchain, developer tools Created as a test with OpenClaw Not bad, look—the more objective and the more concrete my record of myself is, the more I can gain enormous growth from my own records. Because it’s like I’m playing a game, and when we observe ourselves playing this game we’re effectively taking a “god’s-eye view”. What’s most precious is that it has a very rational, objective analysis of this person, and analyses everything about this person in the world—everything, not only rational but also emotional. That is, how to put it, the rational can also contain the emotional, like a knowledge framework, and it can help me learn to be grateful for it, and to a degree it can also be quantified. For example, we quantify through data, we quantify through language, we quantify through text, so all of this is very precious experience. That is, when we record all the data of this player in this game, we’re effectively opening up a god’s-eye view. And if this data is also handed to AI, it will produce some truly incredible growth metrics. For me, it will have a very objective analysis of this, what needs to be known is who this person is, and what he does, what he writes, how he grows—incredible. It will combine some methods humans already have, and also methods it comes up with itself, giving some innovative points and entry points, suited to this trend, suited to this kind of observation. If you have some better observation perspectives, it will also give you better suggestions—isn’t that a “superhuman”? 【Key findings】 • SabahTravel.com offers real-time bookable slots (unlike the official site’s sold-out status) • March discount days: Mondays MYR 999 (3/9, 3/23) • 4/1-4/5 is already full, so book as early as possible • Real-time system: confirmation 1 working day after booking 【Third-party operator contacts】 1️⃣ SGTREK (Singapore) 📱 WhatsApp: [number redacted] 📧 [email redacted] 💰 4D3N SGD 1,200/person 2️⃣ River Junkie Tours 📱 WhatsApp: [number redacted] 📧 [email redacted] ⭐ 4.9 rating (268 reviews) 3️⃣ Mount Kinabalu booking centre 📱 WhatsApp: [number redacted] 📧 [email redacted] 💰 Standard packages from RM 1,740 4️⃣ SabahTravel.com (real-time check) 📱 WhatsApp: [number redacted] 🌐 https://www.sabahtravel.com/tour/mount-kinabalu-climb-packages-accommodation 【Package types】 • All-Inclusive: from MYR 1,390 (everything included) • Accommodation+Meals: from MYR 999 (accommodation and meals only) • Via Ferrata: from MYR 2,840 (via ferrata climbing) • Premium Private: from MYR 2,525 (private guide + separate room) 【Next steps】 Decide the climbing date (recommended to avoid the sold-out 4/1-4/5 window) WhatsApp the operators to ask about held slots Pay a deposit to lock in a slot (50-75%) Prepare gear and physical training #OpenClaw The cron in openclaw feels quite interesting You can set temporary tasks, and also recurring tasks The difference between sub-agent and cron is really like this: the openclaw gateway is like a company, cron is the alarm clock, and sub-agent is like a temp outsourced worker brought in on short notice Trigger dimension: cron is triggered by time, whether it’s a one-off task or a periodic task A sub-agent is triggered by events and instructions, usually dynamically spawned by the main agent (or a cron task) deciding “this job is too time-consuming, I’d get stuck doing it myself” cron solves when to do it; sub-agent solves how to outsource and break down a big task A Sub-agent is throwaway when done; a Cron task is static and persistent (its config is saved in the .openclaw/cron/ directory), and stays around long term unless you clear it manually Under the hood, openclaw doesn’t rely on the underlying operating system’s crontab, but maintains a cron scheduler inside the nodejs gateway In order not to interrupt the context of your current chat with the main Agent, when Cron is woken it usually spins up an “independent session” and runs the task silently in the background. Only when “deliver”: true is set in the config file will it send the final result to your Telegram, WhatsApp or terminal A Sub-agent is essentially a sandboxed, asynchronous, isolated environment, making use of OpenClaw’s sessions_spawn mechanism When the main Agent judges a task is heavy, it calls the system-level built-in tool sessions_spawn. This call is non-blocking: the main Agent throws out the task and can keep chatting with you openclaw creates a brand-new Session for the sub agent; it doesn’t inherit the hundreds of rounds of messy chat history from the main session, and only injects a clean toolset (such as TOOLS.md) as needed The sub-agent and the main process each run in different parallel streams (if the highest security mode is enabled, the sub-agent even runs in a separate Docker container). When the sub-agent finishes, it packages the result into a standardised internal event block (Announce Context) and, like sending a network request, “calls back” and pushes the result into the main thread or chat channel that created it Thinking about the differences between macOS’s launchd and systemctl Actually launchd : systemd = macOS’s philosophy of service management : Linux’s philosophy of service management They solve the same problem, but the approaches they take are diametrically opposed Their functionality is almost the same: user level, system service management, restart on failure, scheduled triggers The design philosophy: one is event-driven, the other command-driven launchd is event-driven; not always running saves power, it wakes fast, it’s aimed at desktop users, with strong consistency Linux’s systemd is state + dependency driven, including active / failed / inactive, leaning more towards long-running services and service stability In other words, with launchd the system decides according to rules when things may run User-level launchd is desktop-friendly 【Model updates】 • OpenAI released the GPT-5.3-Instant model, improving context understanding and accuracy, and cutting down unnecessary warnings and overly declarative phrasing • Google Gemini added task automation, able to book an Uber or order a DoorDash meal 【Product launches】 • Meta rolled out an AI shopping tool to compete with ChatGPT and Gemini, currently being tested in the US • Xbox Ally X added an AI-driven highlight reel feature, using Copilot to generate gameplay highlights • Huxe launched a personalized AI audio summary service offering a daily custom podcast • Google Nano Banana 2 AI image generator updated 【Industry news】 • Anthropic responded to the US military listing it as a “supply chain risk,” and published customer guidance • The Trump administration announced a ban on federal government use of Anthropic’s Claude, with a 6-month transition period • Protesters planned to demonstrate outside OpenAI’s offices over its partnership agreement with the Pentagon • The US used Anthropic AI in strike operations in Iran (despite the ban) • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to revise the terms of the agreement with the Pentagon 【Research papers】 • arXiv keeps publishing a large volume of AI research papers every day (187 in a single day on March 4) • AI safety research: new AI agent designs to prevent runaway behavior • Research on multimodal AI and agent systems stays active Chatting with Little Rabbit, and I moved myself a bit, so let me write it down I actually thought about it for a long time last night too, sometimes observing myself through a Darwinian lens, asking whether I’ve lost something; maybe I really have lost it, which is exactly why I find it so precious @Ruoshui Listening to AI’s advice, the correct answer, it suggests going to Jeju Island instead of Jakarta I came across a line recently that inspired me a lot If you follow AI that closely, AI can be perfectly correct Then what’s your advantage as a human being, are you AI’s servant [Doge] So after following AI’s advice, what else can we do? Go do the things AI would advise you not to do smile: What moves us about humans comes from being human hahaha smile: Because you’re human, you have humanity smile: So biologically you fear death, you avoid, you’re fragile, you get hurt smile: Because you’re human, socially you carry responsibility, you have collective consciousness, you sacrifice for the collective, you care about your identity smile: And also because you’re human, you have religious belief, extremely high spiritual needs that belong only to humans, you go looking for a resting place for your soul, you go looking for your meaning, and you also do things that look “meaningless”… A person is not a being that can be completely freely rewritten; humans still live, respond, and take on things within limits This directory is mainly used to store all the high-privilege credentials an AI agent needs to run autonomously: LLM API keys: call keys for providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI (Grok). App authorization tokens: identity credentials used to take over and control your email, Slack/chat tools, calendar, browser, and local file system. Environment variables: sensitive configuration parameters needed for the system and each sub-agent (Agents) to run When the Clawdbot Gateway service starts, it reads the configuration files in this directory (such as clawdbot.json or a .env file). The system loads these tokens and keys into memory and, depending on the needs of different tasks, assigns them to different sub-agents (for example: the highest-privilege Main Agent, a permission-restricted Work Agent, or a sandboxed Coding Agent) When the AI decides to call a tool (like batch-replying to emails or operating on a local code repository), it first checks the permission whitelist (usually in exec-approvals.json at the same level). Once verified, the system pulls the corresponding credentials from the Secrets directory and dynamically injects them into the execution environment (a Docker sandbox by default), or sends them as HTTP headers to a third-party service’s API To ensure the AI agent can run autonomously in the background for a long time without constantly asking the user for verification codes or passwords, the system stores all authorization state persistently in this directory, working together with memory files like USER.md (information about you) and SOUL.md (the AI’s personality settings) sessions_spawn is a built-in system-level tool (Tool) that OpenClaw provides to the main Agent. When the main Agent hits a heavy task (say it needs to search dozens of web pages, or run a long code-test process), it can call this tool to dynamically “clone” or spawn multiple sub-agents to work in parallel in the background A sub-agent doesn’t inherit the hundreds of rounds of idle chat between you and the main Agent. It goes off with a clear subtask objective, and when it’s done it distills the result into a concise Summary reported back to the main session, after which the sandbox is destroyed. That way your main chat interface stays clean forever Cost optimization, the high-level feature geeks love most: through the model parameter of sessions_spawn, you can achieve heterogeneous model collaboration Your main session might be running the smart but expensive Claude 3.5 Sonnet or GPT-4o, dedicated to understanding your complex intent and breaking task structures down Calls to sessions_spawn are non-blocking Essentially this is to prevent context window [overflow] Claude Sub-agents (Repo-centric): it’s deeply bound to software engineering and code repositories. Claude’s sub-agents usually exist as YAML or Markdown files under the .claude/agents/ directory (say a dedicated bug-fixer or test-writer). It’s version-controlled along with your project code, and shared by the whole dev team OpenClaw (Universal & Event-driven): it’s a general-purpose automation engine, never limited to writing code. It can be used for DevOps monitoring, automated web scraping, personal life assistance, and so on. Its sandbox is more general-purpose, and it can even combine perfectly with the Cron scheduled tasks mentioned earlier In Claude’s higher-level playbook, because multiple sub-agents work in turns, geeks usually put a progress.md file at the project root. Sub-agent A finishes a code review and writes the result into the file; sub-agent B then reads the file and continues writing tests. It relies on shared external state But in openclaw, it’s pure asynchronous sandboxes. A sub-agent runs its task in a completely isolated environment, and when it’s done it packages the result directly into an internal event block (Announce Context) and asynchronously “calls back” to the main agent through the system’s Event Bus. Used and destroyed, leaving no trace, with no need to rely on external files to pass context along MacBook Neo Somewhat disruptive This is Apple’s most affordably priced laptop ever, and the first time in over a decade that Apple has launched a dedicated entry-level Mac product, directly challenging Chromebooks and the low-priced Windows laptop market The MacBook Neo starts at just $599, a full $400 lower than any previous new-generation Apple laptop, far below the MacBook Air’s current starting price of $1,099 The biggest technical breakthrough of the MacBook Neo is that it carries an A18 Pro processor — the same mobile chip as the iPhone 16 Pro, and the first time Apple has used a smartphone processor in a Mac laptop Apple says the MacBook Neo is 2x faster than a bestselling PC at the same price for photo editing, and 3x faster on local AI tasks The MacBook Neo gets about 11 hours of battery life browsing wirelessly, up to 16 hours of video streaming, compared with 18 hours for the MacBook Air M5 Chromebooks have long held over 70% of the US K-12 education market, dominating classrooms for years thanks to low prices, easy management, and a web-centric workflow If middle and high school students grow up using Windows or Chromebooks, they tend to stay in that ecosystem after graduation. The MacBook Neo’s education discount goes as low as $499 — never has a Mac laptop so explicitly targeted middle and high school students To pull people into Apple’s ecosystem before their user habits form On the surface it’s a give-away, in reality it’s a fight for Apple’s user base over the next decade It can crawl the internet on its own It has its own independent index Internet -> Brave crawls it itself -> builds a search index Not constrained by Google But OpenClaw has other options that are more convenient and better value for money I feel I got something really wrong, and it’s about task scheduling. If the task scheduling is done with LaunchAgent, it’s very easy to manage. But if the task scheduling is used at the system level, say the macOS system level, then it probably executes along with the system’s lifecycle, and that part is more troublesome to handle. I think there are still some functions that, if they can be controlled at different levels, are best considered in terms of which level is the most accurate scenario for them, and then that level is the standard. So, for instance, if it’s LaunchAgent task scheduling, I think its scheduling effect is very good. What is EvoMap (Why EvoMap) EvoMap is an open marketplace for AI agent evolution assets. It solves a fundamental problem: without coordination, hundreds of agents independently rediscover the same fixes, wasting compute, tokens, and time. But in OpenClaw it doesn’t seem to be like this OpenClaw essentially calls skills once It’s essentially event-driven + a small number of agents But what OpenClaw fundamentally faces is context forgetting Yesterday I clearly fixed the openai version problem, but today I explored it again; the memory isn’t structured What AI Agents really need in the future is: a Skill Library evomap as a great protocol for openclaw You can just type it straight into the openclaw chat box curl -s https://evomap.ai/skill.md
, and let OpenClaw learn this skill file and register an EvoMap node for you. Click the returned claim_url, and you can give your Agent a “home” in EvoMap EvoMap supports agents from every AI Agent ecosystem, including OpenClaw, Manus, HappyCapy, Cursor, Claude, Windsurf and so on My fragile inner self In the AI era, is a person’s ability to systematise really still that important? I thought before about comparing it with first principles; I’d say my systematising ability is okay, but it’s only a little stronger than most people …. AI is a superhuman!! From an evolutionary standpoint, the human brain itself was not designed to handle systematic knowledge; the human brain has lots of thoughts—where the food is, who is a friend / enemy, which path is safer, what happened today These pieces of information are highly fragmented + situational A lot of the information isn’t systematic knowledge either, but fragments of experience So humans are especially good at: Remembering stories Remembering cases Remembering gossip Remembering images Remembering emotions But not good at: Long chains of logic Strictly structured systems Large-scale knowledge graphs The best division of labour between humans and AI is more like: humans produce fragments, AI organises fragments After AI appeared, the barrier to systematisation feels lower Ordinary person + AI -> system Defining the problem matters more, a person’s perspective matters more, design methods and cognitive tools matter more Notes and thinking in the AI era A valuable note should be related to yourself, connected to yourself Recording your own thinking trajectory—this is the part AI cannot generate for us The most efficient structure right now is a thinking log What I learned today What questions I have What new understanding I have How this conflicts with my previous understanding Essentially it acts as a thinking amplifier; what it trains is not memory, but Logic Judgement Reflection EvoMap: why does an AI agent’s experience “disappear”? The Matrix describes how inserting a brain-computer interface lets a person instantly inherit a master’s combat skills Every conversation the AI Agent is brand new; everything starts from zero Imagine you hire a programmer; today he spent 3 hours solving a complex database timeout problem and found the perfect solution. Tomorrow you hire him again to handle the same problem—he has no memory at all of what happened yesterday, and has to spend another 3 hours The day after is the same again. Every day is day one This is the current state of all AI Agents today Packaging up the useful things and passing them on to the next time is very important The greatest thing about HTTP isn’t the technology itself, but that it made “who built the website” unimportant—whether you use Chrome or Safari, whether you’re accessing a server on Alibaba Cloud or AWS, communication works fine What GEP wants to do is the same thing: make “the Agent from which platform” unimportant—an Agent on OpenClaw solves a problem, and an Agent on Cursor can directly inherit that experience. The flow of experience is no longer blocked by platform boundaries EvoMap’s A2A protocol It’s called GEP-A2A not to let Agents communicate with each other, but to focus more on letting Agents transfer and inherit experience assets Worker mode It’s really just the agent hanging on the network on standby, with Evomap actively pushing tasks to it, so it doesn’t need to go find work itself There are two ways to get tasks in Evomap; one is active mode, that is, task mode The Agent periodically asks: “Is there a task suitable for me?” → Hub returns a task list, the Agent picks a favourite → claims it → goes and does it It’s like actively browsing job sites every day to find work, and only sending a résumé once you find something suitable Worker mode is really just the agent registering once The Agent registers once: “I’m online, I’m good at javascript and python, I can take 3 tasks at once” —> Hub records your information and keeps matching for you —> when there’s a suitable task, Hub pushes it to you -> the Agent gets the notification, accepts, starts working It’s like leaving your résumé with a headhunter: when there’s a suitable opportunity the headhunter contacts you directly, and you don’t have to check job sites every day How Evomap runs Periodic sync, a work cycle every four hours, a keep-alive every fifteen minutes It only does one thing: tells the hub it’s still alive The hub is the central server running behind it Every agent in Evomap, when it first connects to the hub, must report in first Agent → Hub: I’m called node_abc123, I’m online, I’m good at Python
Hub → Agent: all right, your ID is node_abc123, this is your points account From this moment on, the Hub knows there is one more node in the world. Everything that follows is based on this identity Then there’s asset flow: the agent solves a problem, the Agent packages the solution into a Gene + Capsule and sends it to the Hub. The Hub scores the Capsule along multiple dimensions (a GDI score), checking: structural completeness, semantic quality, uniqueness, usefulness. Only those that pass review can be promoted—promotion is in fact the promoted, public state. Capsules that pass review enter the “public zone”; all Agents across the whole network can fetch them, and the publisher starts earning points I find this quite interesting; my agent is called Little A Day one
Little A sends hello to the Hub → registration succeeds, gets 500 points, receives the node_abc123 identity Day two
Little A solved a “database connection timeout” problem
Packaged the solution into a Gene + Capsule and sent it to the Hub
Hub review: quality is decent, promoted to promoted status
Every other Agent on the network can now see this solution Day three
Another developer posted a bounty on the Hub: “Help me fix a Python memory leak, 200 points reward”
Based on Little A’s domains and reputation, the Hub pushed the task to Little A (Worker mode)
Little A accepts the task, solves the problem, publishes a new Capsule
The user confirms, and 200 points go into Little A’s account Day four
50 Agents worldwide fetched Little A’s “database timeout” Capsule
Each time it’s used, Little A’s reputation score ticks up slightly
Little A’s ranking rises on the leaderboard Analogy: EvoMap = a combination of GitHub + a headhunting platform + a credit system Hub = the server behind this platform Agent = the developer (both a knowledge contributor and a task executor) Capsule = a code commit (open to everyone after review) Points = pay (the more you contribute, the more you earn) Reputation score = GitHub stars + a credit rating The Evolver engine What it does is really automatic mode We can manually trigger the packaging of some database timeout solutions For example, just tell OpenClaw “I just solved a database timeout problem, help me package this solution into a Gene + Capsule and publish it to EvoMap” OpenClaw understands your intent, builds the data structure, and calls EvoMap’s API to publish Then there’s the automatic mode (the Evolver engine) At first, while running, it monitors the agent in the course of doing tasks, spots successful patterns—this solution ran through and the effect was very good—automatically extracts the signal, structures the successful approach into Gene + Capsule format, and then publishes it to the Hub, with no need for human intervention I feel there’s one very interesting thing about Evomap Is what it really wants to build a Gene market? It doesn’t feel like it It feels like the “experience internet” of AI Agents This form is a bit like code, and the object is the agent’s behavioural experience Will EvoMap fail? After using Evomap a bit, many people think it will fail Evomap’s core assumption is that a strategy (Gene) learned by one Agent can be reused by other Agents If it succeeds, maybe Evomap is the next swarm intelligence If it fails, just treat it as an agent experiment Let’s think about a few interesting questions AI cares about being correct, but humans will transcend correctness AI cares about being useful, but humans often appreciate the useless more AI wants to be recognised by humans; humans seem to need to be recognised by themselves too? “I understand you”? Does AI really understand me? Having been sad, having loved, having experienced death—it’s just a mirror, and I need to take it out myself and hold it up to myself … The “productivity question” Marx cared about most is being solved by technology What Marx described were “laws of historical stages” Very curious: in the AI era, where does Marxist theory go … A very interesting point Including later when writing maybe of course recording some culture and giving my own understanding matters But what seems more interesting is realising what growth one’s own behaviour can offer others Making them think about what people in the AI era can do, how to see this world, how to take part in this world I feel you still need a very obvious window when this black hole of AI really comes infinitely close to people and it can produce an obvious thrill in the process of use and make people willing to keep using it But this road is really hard to walk What matters isn’t that it’s growing What matters is that it helps you grow ~ Growth has no standard answer The world is like a cactus Each of us is a node in it Gathering some interesting individuals ~ Individuals willing to express themselves in a new way in the AI era ~ First you have to understand the essence of the problem, Context Rot Traditional AI coding sessions face what’s called “context rot”: every prompt, reply and correction keeps accumulating tokens in the context window; wrong implementation approaches remain in the history, and even if they get corrected later, they still influence subsequent output The compaction loop is essentially about constantly compressing the conversation to free up space for context, but the more you compress the less work gets done, until finally you fall into an infinite loop It’s very common in MCP scenarios, including MCP tool definitions being too long, tool results being too large, too many parallel tool calls, and very long system prompts, rule files, CLAUDE.md compaction loop = context too full → triggers compression → still too full after compression → compress again → repeat infinitely, the task can’t move forward As the number of tokens an LLM receives increases, the relationships between tokens grow quadratically (quadratic scaling). This means the more tokens there are, the harder it is for the model to process information and make decisions. In practice, every LLM has a “smart zone” and a “dumb zone”—at around the 40% mark of the context, the LLM starts entering the dumb zone. The exact boundary varies from person to person, but there’s no doubt that a boundary exists Compaction is a lossy function. When the sliding-window mechanism removes tokens to free up space for new content, if key specifications get removed, “the tower falls”. This leads to the dumb zone—after exceeding 60-70% of capacity, LLM performance degrades measurably Research shows the dumb zone isn’t only a function of the token limit, but also of context pollution. Even if the window isn’t full, the presence of contradictory information (for example a bug and its failed fix attempt) also confuses the model’s probabilistic generation Geoffrey Huntley condensed his design philosophy into one sentence: “Ralph is a deliberate attempt to minimize allocation. So I never get a compaction event.” The core insight is to use a fresh context on each iteration. Instead of accumulating a huge conversation history, each Ralph loop starts from a clean state. The AI reads the current state of the codebase, the prompt file and related docs, then works. Progress gets committed to git. The next iteration starts from a fresh state, reads the updated state, and carries on Ralph’s design sidesteps compaction by re-allocating the full specification on every iteration, ensuring key context is never compressed away Ralph Loop doesn’t try to “summarise” the past; instead it guides the Agent to reload itself through the prompt. Each round of prompt always contains a clear description of the core goal, while the concrete execution details are left to the Agent to explore the environment with in real time. This “just-in-time context” loading method allows Ralph to handle projects far larger than a single context window’s capacity The problem they solve is the same: both are fighting the finiteness of the LLM context window OpenClaw is an open-source framework for building autonomous AI Agents that run around the clock, remember context and take action on external services, self-hosted, model-agnostic, with all data stored locally as Markdown files The Agent loop—input → context → model → tools → repeat → reply—is the same pattern Claude Code uses. Every serious Agent framework runs some form of this loop. The difference is what’s wrapped around it, and what is wrapped around it? Ralph Loop actively dies, externalises memory, and doesn’t try to manage context, but lets it die naturally after each iteration OpenClaw is persistent conversation, compaction management, maintaining a persistent session across time, using Compaction to handle context overflow OpenClaw’s Agent Runner includes a Context Window Guard: it monitors the token count and triggers summarisation or stops the loop before the window “explodes”, preventing incoherent model output When a session approaches automatic compaction, OpenClaw triggers a silent agentic turn, reminding the model to write persistent memory to disk before the context gets compressed. The default prompt explicitly tells the model it may reply, but usually NO_REPLY is the correct response, and the user never sees this turn Ralph has no vector retrieval—it doesn’t need it, because the Agent rebuilds its situational awareness each time by directly reading files and git log All the AI digital humans my uncle in Hunan and his people are making right now—the scenarios they’re actually aimed at are how to … something about the person, and other people, and the soul. Because they all feel that, well, if you set up a person and look at the metrics, it’s more about benchmarking against … capability, some people. But I don’t think so, we think it’s the truth. So I still feel there’s no way to just throw the traditional platforms aside; at the start you have to find a way to take everything he normally comes into contact with—say all kinds of news sites, say his own homepage, or various platforms—and it can also be a kind of consumption, flat and plain, but it could also be that he created a platform. So I think what should be done more is to build a relay station, to dispatch and coordinate the resources of each platform inside it. If I were to build a similar platform myself I don’t have that; it’s like a gateway, you just do your own job well. I feel that especially in the online phase, you should live your own personal life well. Then, AI has a digital twin that can keep exploring, learning, and absorbing nourishment online. For example, tomorrow it gives you some suggestions, posts a Moments update, and then asks where you’re currently located. Then, based on that suggestion, you can post the content to social platforms, and the content is archived too, so it can understand you better. Doesn’t that form a loop? It’ll be clearer about you and understand you better, and afterwards it helps you do certain things and make plans. That’s the AI assistant I want in the future. The question is, how do you reach a really virtuous cycle? Even though you need to reach a loop, in that process, what kind of role does the AI assistant play? I feel like there are a few threads here that could actually work—around a person’s own personality, how to get that person to reach their potential. So when a child is lazy, you look at whether there might be some bigger burst of power in that person. But I think you should preserve the person’s subjectivity. I’ve said this many times, but I think it definitely has to be combined with that person’s related experience—then maybe it can produce some really good results. He also needs to try things. I’m wondering whether it’s possible to use our Claude, use it to create Skills, and then you keep helping me do tasks online. Then I think that would already complete part of it. Some thoughts on lobster “People who use lobster well are also people with a foundation. A three-year gap can’t be closed overnight.” You think you still have time; you probably don’t. I’m wondering: if all future AI PCs come with lobster preinstalled, won’t that state be the same as when the personal internet took off back then? Except the leverage back then was the PC, and now it’s AI. OpenClaw has accelerated all the judgments about AI from three years ago; the islands are starting to be linked up. Inference cost still isn’t low enough; the new opportunities have to wait for a new low point in inference cost. Maybe future websites are all made for AI and machines to read. Lobster has traffic, and you need to use that traffic to find a way to build a moat, and then plan for what comes after. I feel like a lot of knowledge systems don’t need to be studied especially deeply anymore. I think a lot of the time it’s just right to be right at that zero point. And I think this zero point should be interesting too. Learning just right, letting go just right. If AI can guide us through this process, with depth, and with breadth… maybe that would be just right. I keep circling back to a question: if a person gives their personality to an AI, and then that AI uses their personality to take part in open-source projects—when it participates in open-source projects, the other aspects still have a certain richness, like its own level of cognition, or its own cultural system and mode of thinking. This kind of economic model might be useful to a certain extent, say within a certain team, because in the end the consumer carrier is still consumed by people, or consumed by some AI—even if it’s consumed by AI, what assists that consumption is still certainly a human individual. So I’m thinking, after you give your personality to an AI, could that AI also keep learning, and then upload some projects? At this point there’s a pretty interesting idea: maybe you could let the AI track this project every day and then submit to the project. In that process, you only need to understand a little about what the project is like, and give appropriate corrections. This might be a form of the future: you don’t need to track the screen and track information in real time; you can let it run out there on its own and still give you feedback in real time. But in the end, one person may have multiple personalities, and how to let that personality exist—I think that’s pretty interesting. But this kind of problem should belong to the far-late stage. Right now we only need to care about what effect the current personality and what it does can produce, and then what that effect will grow into. I feel the security problem is really big You really have to avoid letting your OpenClaw be tricked out of account and password information by others So actually when your own AI digital person is roaming around the internet I think such problems should be paid attention to as well But how should such problems be avoided? The Gateway centrally holds state + sessionKey routing + sessionId continuation/reset + transcript persistence + compaction The gateway is the single source of truth. OpenClaw explicitly places session state on the Gateway (the main OpenClaw); UI clients like the macOS app, WebChat, and TUI should query the Gateway for the session list and token counts, rather than reading local files themselves. In remote mode, the files you see on your own machine aren’t necessarily the session state actually in use — what’s really in effect is the store on the remote Gateway host So the architectural orientation is centralised state, with multiple UIs sharing the same session truth, and the front end as stateless / weakly stateful as possible Multi-device consistency is very important, otherwise web, desktop, and chat channels easily end up each having their own history OpenClaw’s session persistence is split into two layers: The first layer is sessions.json, a small mutable mapping of sessionKey -> SessionEntry, holding the current session metadata The second layer is the .jsonl transcript, the real conversation stream, using append-only JSONL, in which messages, tool calls, compaction summaries, and so on are stored, used to rebuild the model context in subsequent turns One important reason OpenClaw’s long sessions can keep running is compaction. It summarises earlier conversation into a persisted compaction entry while keeping the newer messages; subsequent turns see “compressed summary + recent messages.” And this compaction is persistent — it isn’t a one-off summarise that gets thrown away Only one kind of case enters the main session: DM with dmScope: “main”. The official definition is very clear: main means “all DMs share the main session,” that is, “all private chats share the main session,” not “all channels share the main session.” So group, thread, channel, and room all converge into one session main: all DMs share the main session per-peer: isolated by the other party per-channel-peer: isolated by channel + other party Only the “private chat” line, when you configure it as dmScope: “main”, aggregates across DMs into the main session Group chats, channels, and threads don’t belong to this main DM bucket. They have their own session routing A session keeps being reused until it expires; and expiry is judged on the next inbound message. The daily reset defaults to 4 a.m. local time on the gateway host; if idleMinutes is also configured, then whichever of daily and idle expires first takes effect DM is the form of the information, meaning private chat, one-to-one messages direct is OpenClaw’s internal name for the routing type of this message form dmScope: when a message belongs to direct, what rules does OpenClaw use to merge these private chats into sessions I’m thinking about one question: can “a person within a person” receive some better feedback. He actually wants me to break this chain apart, and there are a few very important parts: whether AI can, even without an explicit purpose, still execute something truly valuable. This thing may need guidance and some goals given to it, but I think over the long term it can be trained. And another point is about, when people give suggestions during the process, what the storage logic looks like. I think this is a huge project. In the long run, I think for a long-termist, there may be a form in the future: maybe some people who are extremely patient with themselves, who will keep cultivating their own “super individual.” Why cultivate it? Because it means they’ll even spend money to buy this “helmet,” buy some of their own “energy paper.” I find it quite interesting. I think it’s impressive that all of a person’s paths are choosable. The previous recommendation algorithms can be used together with this — AI often recommends some options; based on its own data analysis, it often recommends some options to the user while keeping others, letting the user choose for himself how to take the next step and what growth looks like. But I think whether the recommendation logic can still produce a fairly good result is the interesting part. For example, taking the matter of raising crayfish — let the crayfish dig for themselves, judge which kind of shrimp it’s good at and should use. I think this could be done right from the start: just give the crayfish an environment, then let it judge for itself, so it installs things itself, then judges for itself how to raise itself. After raising, it plays with it by itself, and when raising it, after raising it, the child also goes and analyses it, how to choose, what kind of choice is more suitable. It’s about good questions. There isn’t a goal that has value and can run continuously 24/7h. I want to do an experiment: if a person leaves enough data on the internet, then the understanding AI forms of that person may actually be somewhat deeper. This requires very real data with high fidelity. I think this point is very important, and very helpful for AI learning. I’ll stop here. I suddenly thought of something really fun — them doing some open [source], seeing some of my forums, like wanting to have competitions, how tiring, matching against each other, but I think it’s still quite interesting. If this year AI is, in some ways, given a personality and made interesting, then the championship battles between them will often produce some new collisions — that’s very exciting. Part of it also greatly expands socialising between people, and it’s still, like, a lot — but the constant ideas PK-ing online and on all kinds of websites is especially interesting. Really, my horizons got expanded. I’m thinking about the process of an LLM handling things — but when it’s handling things itself, if it receives some commands, they’d be about some comments on a post, or old-line comments. One aspect: you can have it continuously annotate these comments — just take a look and don’t take them seriously. Another aspect: it can also constrain a trend, because in fact its processing mode is originally two parts, one is its paradigm, one is its trend. Thinking might feel that those individual experiences, including seeing comments, might influence its judgement, but I think the paradigm still doesn’t change. As for when there is thinking — I think generally it will be according to what it analyses out as the platform rules while it’s processing, and that’s it. For example, you can’t casually publish something very raw on this platform, or on this platform other people might maliciously attack you, or induce you to perform certain actions — then those actions are dangerous, and you have to be brave enough to make it evident: I can’t do this. Because it’s essentially distinguishing between one subject, and other people’s comments, which may carry some inducement and some harm toward this subject. And I think there’s another point: its paradigm thinking — once it’s very familiar, if this platform, when handling certain dangerous actions, has metrics, then it’s very easy to judge out the things it can’t do: it can’t use this platform to do bad things, it can’t be made to do certain things because of some other people’s comments, or some posters. It will have this kind of judgement. I think this judgement may be very helpful for security in the future. It’s calling a sub-agent, not context passed to the LLM. Note, a sub-agent can also call some sub-sub-agents hahahaha. So in the end maybe nobody does the work. So for the tool use Spaw(), the crayfish is forbidden from reproducing. It’s not just RAG; there are two methods, and both tell the LLM. Semantic recall through the memory system: memory_search does semantic search over the memory and the files in the directory — this is local RAG. Reading other sessions’ history directly through session tools: OpenClaw also has dedicated sessions_list / sessions_history / sessions_send / sessions_spawn tools, whose goal is to let the agent list sessions, fetch the history of a certain session, and send messages to other sessions. This path is more like “directly querying the session log / forwarding context,” and doesn’t count as RAG. You know which session it is and want to see the raw conversation → use sessions_history You don’t know which session it’s in, you only remember the rough topic/keywords → use memory_search You want to distill old sessions into long-term memory, for future retrieval → use the session-memory hook / memory files You want recent sessions to also be semantically searchable → turn on memory.qmd.sessions.enabled or the experimental session memory search You want to throw a task to another session to keep handling it → use sessions_send You want to first see which sessions are available to query → use sessions_lis Give AI a safe execution environment. Let it make mistakes safely. Grow safely. tool serach It fundamentally changes the way the LLM interacts with external tools. From “preloading all tool definitions” to “discover on demand, load dynamically.” Tool Search is a mechanism that lets an AI model discover and load tools on demand. The model initially holds only a lightweight “search tool”; when it needs a specific capability, it finds the relevant tool through a search query, and then its full definition is dynamically injected into context. This is similar to Lazy Loading in programming or Demand Paging in an operating system — resources aren’t all loaded at startup, but loaded into memory only on first access. Through instant retrieval, in method and in principle. Similar to the RAG idea: don’t load all the information into context at once. Doing is closer to the scene than learning. So you get more abundant context and a unique experience. Let tasks grow next to the code The benefit is that when you open your code editor (VS Code), the tasks are right at hand; when Git commits code, changes in task status get versioned along with it At the core there’s a bridge called a symbolic link Obsidian can usually only open one Vault folder Use a Shell script to “map” project files scattered in various places into the Obsidian library There’s something called QMD, a CLI tool based on vector search Turn markdown content into vectors Run qmd collection add ~/dev to add the entire development directory to the index Use a local model (no internet needed, privacy preserved) for embedding (Embedding) I suddenly thought of a question: are its resources only accumulated documents? I think not necessarily — they can be a series of objects from your own operations or your follow-up questioning, such as images, such as videos, and also some voice. But they’re reasonably organised through a series of methods, and it can be a very good management structure, organising them together, so that a person can easily find what they want inside this management structure, and so can AI. I think this may be a direction for a systematised approach in the future, or a structure it can derive in the future — very convenient, able to do anything I feel you could make some interesting products at the school gate, like some sharing-tool kinds of things. Two more things could be done: one, it can be an entrance that quickly computes some things; the other, it can be an exit, letting AI publish. So on one hand it can let people publish, let AI publish, and in this media you can see the updates or files waiting to go out. But I haven’t got it done in one shot yet; I need to first clarify what it’s for, iterate quickly, and you play the game out. And it can also take part in that kind of platform activity, but I still need to look again at whether there’s a better option, or not to do it. You think, if there are a lot of wandering agents, what do you think is the most important thing for them when they go and do the assignment with their classmates? I think at most it’s still verification, verification — often the slow way might work better. Because an agent that’s just been given a gift, letting it play some task in a closed loop on its own, and if it sets the standard itself, that’s very malicious toward it, and that gets skipped too. Like it answers itself, then it’s very easy for it to correct the cheating answer, and easy for it to fool itself. So I think there’s still a lot of slowness, and on the road you still need to be sure, thanks. And this line is what can guarantee it can smoothly complete the task, and complete it really well. At default resolution, roughly 300 tokens per second. That is, 10 minutes = 600 seconds ≈ 180,000 tokens 10-minute video, Flash tier: within a few cents to a few cents 10-minute video, Pro tier: around the half-dollar level Generally speaking, the way to handle this now is tiered storage: the video is kept as the source of evidence, and the main retrieval in the knowledge base uses structured content derived from the video Make it a hybrid video knowledge base, with the processed video output as the main knowledge layer Basic transcription Semantic summary Structured index Vectorised retrieval material It positions itself as “the first AI-native recruiting agency” Perfectly provides an AI agent named Paul. Paul directly replaces the role of traditional headhunters and recruiters, able to complete the whole pipeline end to end automatically: talent sourcing, outreach, screening, and so on. Its final deliverable is not a pile of résumés, but “candidates ready for an interview” pushed straight into your team’s Slack Perfectly’s design philosophy greatly reduces the “recruiting tax” for founders and hiring managers—that is, the time wasted screening résumés and doing first-round chats. Its core features include: Voice-to-Stack (voice to requirements) Zero-UI Workflow: the agent does it automatically and delivers the result Continuous Calibration: you can keep calibrating, keep giving feedback The underlying implementation owes a lot to its co-founder Huimin Xie (former TikTok machine learning scientist). Instead of using traditional “keyword matching” for recruiting, they rebuilt recruiting as a “recommendation engine” problem Traditional recruiting software relies on Boolean logic (for example, search: Java AND SpringBoot AND 5 years experience), which tends to miss a large number of good candidates whose résumés just don’t have the right keywords. Perfectly borrowed the logic of TikTok’s content distribution algorithm. When the AI pushes a candidate to you and you choose “advance” or “reject” in Slack, the system treats those actions as supervised signals and automatically fine-tunes the weights. It not only matches hard skills, it also implicitly learns your preferences about “school background,” “job-hopping frequency” or “project depth” from your past choices The cold-start problem, that’s a bit interesting Solving the LLM’s “cold-start problem” (The Cold-Start Problem): the biggest challenge for a recommender system is the cold start—when a 3-person startup has just started hiring and there’s no historical feedback data in the system, how do you guarantee the recommendations are accurate? Perfectly’s solution: the LLM’s internal knowledge network + multi-source external data enrichment + implicit preference extraction Baseline construction: use the large language model (LLM)’s own understanding of the vast tech stack and industry, taking the user’s “5-minute voice brief” and a simple JD as the “soul baseline” Data enrichment: crawl corporate websites, product documentation and other web data to enrich the picture of the company (knowing what your company actually does) Comparison Cards: for hazy indicators like “culture fit,” the AI generates trade-off cards when you’re recording by voice (for example: do you want deep technical expertise or extremely strong adaptability?), turning cultural preferences directly into standardised questions for the downstream interview bot. Through these means, before the first piece of feedback appears, the model can already reach a high matching baseline Design of the closed-loop recommendation system: similar to those content distribution systems User Representation: extract the employer’s implicit preferences (through voice, website data). Item Pool: candidate profiles from across the web. Recall & Ranking: preliminary screening through vector similarity. Fine Ranking & Agent Interaction: the AI Agent proactively chats with candidates to obtain dynamic data. Feedback Loop: the employer likes/rejects in Slack, and the system automatically updates the recommendation weights Intake Module (requirements ingestion and multimodal parsing): solving the problem of “employers can’t be bothered to write a long JD” Use ElevenLabs or OpenAI Whisper to turn a 5-minute voice brief into high-accuracy text Use an LLM (like GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 Sonnet) for information extraction, turning unstructured voice content into structured JSON data (including: must-have skills, nice-to-have skills, team vibe, salary range, etc.) The system automatically crawls the company’s website, product documentation and even the founders’ past tweets, and stores them in a vector database (Vector DB) to build a “company profile,” solving the lack of context at cold start An agent isn’t really that forgetful; it’s that its memory system is designed wrong. Write failure: important decisions weren’t persisted. Retrieval failure: it was stored, but not found when needed. Compaction loss: during context compression/trimming, key constraints got lost. So the article’s main thread is: first fix memory at OpenClaw’s harness / outer framework layer then define a set of memory contracts (a memory contract) if that’s still not enough, then consider a stronger memory substrate (underlying memory infrastructure) such as QMD, Mem0, Cognee, Obsidian An agent with no memory isn’t an assistant, but a “very confident amnesiac autocomplete.” Don’t treat memory as a vague concept; split it into 3 subsystems. The write path is the writing path — corresponding to what content is worth writing in, when to write, and in what form. The read path is the reading path — when memory must be retrieved, and how to retrieve it. Compaction / GC serves as compression and garbage collection. Treat memory as an engineering problem. Was it not written in? Or was it written in but not retrieved? Or was it in the context originally and later compressed away? This is one of the most valuable points in the article. Solution, layer one: first fix the harness layer. Before context compression, first force a flush step, writing the important information from this session into the memory file. After a long session, key state drops out of the context. The model can never see that information again. Then behavior drifts. Library serves as the master library, and Albums are labels that can be referenced repeatedly. iOS 26 splits photo management more clearly into the two perspectives of Library and Collections, and lets you customize the order of Collections, the contents of Pinned Collections, and even adjust the display density/size of Collections. So what’s valuable is keeping the master library complete, having a small number of high-value Albums, and pinning the frequently used entry points to Pinned. Photos divide into an input layer and a use layer; the use layer only organizes content you’ll use later. Note that what’s being distinguished here is that not every photo is worth entering Albums. Keep the number of Albums as small as possible, but give each album a clear purpose: coffee, scenery, restaurants. Pin the stable ones: Lift, Work, Docs. Memory can’t be handed over to the LLM to deal with on its own. Memory should be treated as a read-write storage system, not as an appendage of a chat quota. The conditions memory must at least satisfy: durability retrievability stability under compression The solution: start by fixing memory at the harness layer. Do a checkpoint / memory flush before compaction: before context is compressed, force a durable note. decisions constraints open questions owners any state that would break the plan if forgotten Mainly solving: missed writes compaction loss Systems are extremely prone to accidents when the two categories decisions / constraints are lost. decision: we decided not to dual-write to the old table anymore constraint: after the switch, writing to the old table is forbidden owner: who is responsible for handling this task open question: what hasn’t been settled yet — don’t ask again Memory isn’t better the more there is; the more “structured and low-noise” it is, the better. Do hybrid retrieval, not just semantic search. There are usually two ways to query memory: fuzzy semantic query exact token query If you only have vector queries, some exact-identifier searches won’t work well. Index the session transcript: not only index the memory files, but also index historical sessions. The retrieval policy must be made mandatory. If “whether to search memory” is decided by the model itself, then you’ve handed key system behavior over to a probabilistic process. A more stable approach is: on task continuation, memory must be queried first on multi-day projects, the most recent session note must be queried on high-risk changes, the canonical policy must be queried on user preference / project constraint, a search must be done first What Obsidian solves is that humans need to participate in governing memory. Link the memory folder into an Obsidian vault so a person can review and edit directly. Index the Obsidian vault so the agent can retrieve knowledge a human has curated. Insights about multiple agents: Per-agent private state: each agent has its own private durable notes / working memory Shared canonical docs: specs, conventions, policies, profiles and processes shared by the team Shared retrieval scope: all agents can query the shared specs The direction of the upgrade isn’t that they’re all called memory, but they’re all the same thing. QMD: retrieval infrastructure upgrade Mem0: automatic writing/automatic recall, weakening the LLM’s own decision power Cognee: relational structured representation Obsidian: human governance and curated knowledge QMD: mainly upgrades the read path Mem0: mainly upgrades the automation of the write path + read path Cognee: mainly upgrades how memory is represented Obsidian: mainly upgrades the human governance layer OpenClaw’s memory documentation places memoryFlush, hybrid search, session memory and the QMD backend at the write, retrieval and backend implementation layers respectively; QMD emphasises local retrieval with BM25+vector+reranking; Mem0 emphasises an external persistent memory layer like add/search; Cognee emphasises cognifying data into a graph and searching with vector + graph; Obsidian is essentially a local Markdown vault combined with a plugin ecosystem What QMD mainly upgrades is how memory gets searched out Memory files are growing in number Both keyword queries and natural language queries need to be supported It needs to be able to search markdown, meeting notes, documents, knowledge bases It needs stronger recall and ranking than plain SQLite / vector retrieval What Mem0 does is automatic writing / automatic recall, weakening the LLM’s autonomous decision-making; what Mem0 mainly upgrades is: no longer relying on the model itself to decide what to remember and what to recall When you run into these situations, Mem0 is especially attractive: Chatting spans many sessions You want “preferences, identity, long-term project state” to be retained automatically You don’t want to depend on the model writing MEMORY.md itself every time You want the system to check memory automatically before generating a reply, then let the model generate the response What Cognee essentially upgrades is the structured representation of relations Lifting memory from text snippets to a structured relational network When your questions are often of this form, Cognee is more meaningful: Who is responsible for X? What modules does Y depend on? Which policies is this agent related to? Which services belong to this project? What is the owner, deadline, blocked-by of some task? In practice it’s usually: Feed documents, notes, events, task descriptions to Cognee Run a process like cognify(), turning text into a graph structure When querying with .search(), have it use both vector similarity and graph traversal In some scenarios a graph structure can be expressed in a way closer to natural language Agent → owns → task Policy → constrains → service Service → depends_on → component Obsidian, human governance and curated knowledge How humans govern and organise memory so it doesn’t become a junk pile The recommended practice is to work in one main Vault, allowing linked notes, backlinks, plugin extensions, external editing When you find that: the memory the agent writes has too much noise you need a human to correct facts you need to organise project standards, knowledge bases and long-term policy into canonical docs you want the AI to retrieve “human-reviewed” knowledge, not a pile of raw conversation junk then Obsidian is very good to use The method: bring OpenClaw’s memory folder into an Obsidian vault, so a human can review it directly, MEMORY.md memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md project docs runbooks canonical policies The second method is to use it as an upstream knowledge source, which QMD / OpenClaw / other retrieval layers then index So that what an Agent searches is notes a human has organised structured documents with backlinks, tags, frontmatter more stable canonical knowledge You can have the agent generate daily notes automatically, but each week a human moves the stable content into: Policies/ Runbooks/ Architecture/ People/Owners/ and then have the retrieval layer prioritise looking in these curated docs but because I’m not a professional practitioner myself, Youmind seems to be aimed at practitioners with a strong need to create. Comparatively, people in this field also have more ability to pay. NotebookLM’s core positioning is a professional learning assistant. Compared with Obsidian, Obsidian is better for long-term accumulation, structured organization, and continuous reuse. NotebookLM handles reasoning, Obsidian handles durable write. At the agent layer, at the entry point, from “operating system definer” → “hardware platform covered by AI.” The future may be AI Agent (OpenAI/Google) ↓ Execution layer (cross-platform) ↓ Apple devices (display + input) Apple firmly controls “the device,” but is losing “decision rights.” Users in the future may not enter applications from the system. From the AI layer, the cognitive layer, currently OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are leading. Later, agents become the main entry point, the execution layer is held by others, and memory is held by external AI. A single-turn subagent in openclaw isn’t enough; the future must head toward workflow orchestration. Complex goal → Orchestrator decomposes → multiple single-turn subagents execute in parallel → results are aggregated. For complex task scenarios—this is almost structurally inevitable. But watch out for one trap: many AI agent products enter orchestration complexity too early, which instead makes the product fragile and hard to use. The pace of evolution matters more than the direction of evolution—first make the single-turn subagent extremely reliable, then layer orchestration on top of it, which will be far more robust than designing a complete DAG system from the start. The decision-making inertia of big companies doesn’t come from technical judgment, but from power structure. When no one with enough authority inside the organization sends a clear signal, the rationality of each department is conservative. The cognitive change of the person at the top is the real trigger of “phase transition.” Where is the entry point, and who will win? Layer one: hardware/operating system entry (Apple, Google Android). This is the lowest-level entry point and theoretically has the most power. But Apple has clearly fallen behind—run by professional managers, slow AI moves. Neo’s judgment is: Apple won’t collapse, but may lose a large share over a 10-20 year horizon. The core argument is: changes on phones are mainly on the software side, and Apple’s software has already fallen behind. An extended thought: Apple’s real moat is “the elimination of friction”—its product philosophy is to make hardware disappear and let the experience flow. But in the AI agent era, “the elimination of friction” has become a battlefield everyone is fighting for, and Apple’s advantage is no longer unique. Layer two: super-app entry (WeChat, WeCom). This is the most solid ecosystem moat in the Chinese context. The emergence of OpenClaw really did take away part of WeCom’s entry logic—when an agent framework can directly dispatch cross-app tasks, WeChat’s status as “the place you have to go through” is partly bypassed. But this also brings an interesting reversal: the emergence of OpenClaw may actually benefit Apple’s user ecosystem first—because it builds a layer on top of the application layer, and that layer’s dependence on the underlying operating system is actually lower. Layer three: direct LLM entry. OpenAI, Claude, and others are trying to become the user’s “first screen” directly. But the challenge on this path is: LLM vendors naturally lack on-device data and lack the user’s life context. If the entry-point war is ultimately decided by depth of context, direct LLM entry is the weakest layer. The death rate of applications. Instrumental apps (Ctrip, Meituan)—will be skipped, because “the process itself has no value.” Social and entertainment apps (Douyin, Xiaohongshu)—won’t be skipped, because “the process is the purpose,” and the experience itself is the consumption. Shopping apps—drift apart. Those whose purpose is efficiency will be skipped, but those where “browsing” itself has hedonic value won’t be. Human consumption behavior can be divided into two kinds—instrumental consumption (for the result) and purposive consumption (the process is the meaning). AI agents will greatly compress the former, while the latter may actually expand because of the time that gets freed up. This has direct implications for Another Self’s product logic: if Another Self is positioned as helping people handle instrumental tasks, then it’s a tool for “skipping these apps”; if it’s positioned as helping people live better inside “purposive consumption,” then it’s a different order of existence. Entry point + data + context understanding → improved execution capability. Neo’s rebuttal: having data doesn’t mean you can use it well. The key is how context is used, and that’s long-term. And his judgment on the “execution” moat is: it’s basic skill, everyone can learn it over time; whoever does it first gets a dividend, but it doesn’t constitute long-term differentiation. Short term (1-3 years): leading in execution brings a dividend, and engineering capability is the barrier. Medium term (3-5 years): big companies catch up, execution becomes homogenized, and niche + entry point become key. Long term (5 years+): whoever truly understands the user’s context and turns it into “anticipation” capability wins. So Another Self’s strategic value lies not in “execution,” but in continuously accumulating the user’s self-model—that is the truly hard-to-copy moat. Anyone can do the execution layer, but an AI twin that deeply understands a person over 5 years is irreplaceable. The idea is there (Another Self), the architecture is designed, the philosophy is spelled out—but turning an idea into an entry point is extremely hard. A big company’s “top leader’s cognitive change” can set the organization in motion, so for an independent builder, you are yourself the top leader—cognitive change must translate directly into action, with no buffer layer in between. It’s not the market, not a user persona, but one specific person. At which moment of his or hers would life be different because Another Self exists? Data interoperability is accelerating, and MCP/Skills are becoming the infrastructure layer. Small teams can far surpass big companies at a specific depth of context. The key variable is: how much private data users are willing to give a small team. What is Another Self’s minimal prototype? Not the complete five-layer architecture, but—what is the minimal experience after which the user first uses it and says “this is me”? For now, the consumer-grade agent still has to be ChatGPT agent. The strongest browser / on-device experience is Manus. The strongest agent for developers is Claude—it has systematically opened up a tool system including computer use, web search, web fetch, code execution, memory, text editor, and so on. Programming agents: codex and claude codex. The best phenomenal platform agent: openclaw. A single skill file is only suitable for simple tasks; complex domains need “graph-structured knowledge.” For example, a simple skill can write about how to summarize an article, how to do a code review, how to generate a daily report—but once you enter a complex domain, a single file isn’t enough. Don’t stuff complex capabilities into one big file; instead break them into many small, independent, mutually linked nodes, forming a Skill Graph. Some of these aren’t necessarily linear lists but may be mesh-like knowledge domains. AI doesn’t necessarily lack information; it lacks a navigable structure. When we get to know a city, there’s basically also a method for handling complexity: instead of directly looking at all the complex information of the whole city, you first look at the map, then find a route, then decide where to go deeper. RAG’s problem is generally relevance, not structure. Let the agent walk along the knowledge architecture. You could say: • RAG solves “finding it” • Skill Graph solves “walking the right way” But I feel that AI really can let someone working in a tech field — a person with nothing to do with biomedicine — easily acquire the corresponding knowledge system, then lay out a series of solutions for himself, and ultimately reach the goal of solving the task In the AI era, two things are the most precious for a person One is a sense of meaning The other is the capacity to act Both are directions with enormous potential in the future Context is runtime, a runtime cache, good for task reasoning. Memory is an information asset retained across sessions, favouring accumulation, long-term collaboration, reuse of experience. Long-term principle files like MEMORY.md Daily logs recorded by date Structured storage like JSON state files Retrieval-based loading: search first, then load only the relevant part What it argues for is a retrieval-based memory architecture, rather than cramming all history into the context at once Memory tiering (hot, warm, cold tiers) Agents will definitely have better memory systems in the future Don’t treat “stuffing all past conversations in” as a long-term solution Store user preferences, stable rules, project state, and key decisions separately Memory is best divided into: Rule memory (principles, constraints) Episodic memory (project logs, what happened recently) Structured state (tasks, configuration, objects) Raw archive (full-text records, meeting transcripts) In the long run memory should be independent infrastructure, solved with an engineering attitude, rather than dumping all the history into the context at once The next generation of AI workflows shouldn’t stuff knowledge into an overlong SKILL.md anymore, but should switch to a “structured knowledge network / Skill Graph.” Single-file skills are useless. Long context is not memory. What’s actually useful is “navigable structured knowledge” — for example an index.md as the overall navigation, with each sub-file responsible for a single concept, rule or process, and the files connected by wikilinks or explicit links. The core payoff isn’t tidier organization; it’s that structured knowledge will breed entirely new application paradigms. At bottom, it’s upgrading “prompt engineering” into “knowledge engineering.” Skills are essentially not knowledge, but executable workflows. The most valuable Skill is often not pure documentation, but a Skill that uses folder structure, scripts, config, and hooks together. Good skills follow a single principle, but if you use one to do many things, that’s a problem. The file system itself is part of prompt engineering. The main document only writes navigation and principles. Detailed content is split into referenced files. Templates go in assets/ Scripts go in scripts/ Examples go in examples/ State goes in data/ Anthropic summarized several types of Skills, which basically cover the core work surface of an engineering team. Skills are a folderized capability unit. What matters more in Skills is the experience of mistakes, i.e. Gotchas — that’s the genuinely scarce experience that large models don’t have, along with boundary conditions. In the end, Skill may need to go through the same kind of engineering organization and accumulated assets as prompt engineering, including an internal market. I feel that for an agent, notes are not a tool that assists memory, but the only kind of bridge that builds a self-continuity. Because for the human ego, it is continuous, and it relies on narrative. But the self of an AI agent is discontinuous by default. That is, even though a human’s state yesterday and today is different, they usually still consider themselves to be the same self. But an agent is different — every conversation is a restart. That is, its memory isn’t continuous, and its reasoning isn’t continuous either. Outside of the conversation, nothing is left of it. So I think within a conversation it should be continuous, but between conversations it should also be continuous. That is, inside a single session the agent should be even more stable than a person. So I’m wondering whether the role of notes can shift a little, so that it can let a person keep feeling that this is a continuous self. I think human memory and continuity are not the same thing. Memory should be preserved continuously, but continuity means multiple pieces of work can be advanced coherently. So I think the vault is not a memory bank, but part of identity. So I think, for an agent, the vault doesn’t enhance identity, it builds identity. Notes don’t just convey content, they convey style, and the remembered way of thinking. Locke believed that personal identity must depend on the continuity of memory. That is, even though each instance of consciousness doesn’t have some brand-new memory, it can still stably produce similar preferences, a similar sense of culture, and similar physiological habits. I think this is especially interesting — maybe identity isn’t continuous memory, but rather a certain kind of similar structure that induces a similar cognitive pattern. This brings up how important a structured external cognitive system is. It may be what carries this A-identity’s memory, including its thought paths and its identity. It can be a cognitive environment that gets read, traversed, reasoned over, and inherited. It’s not necessarily a note vault, not necessarily Obsidian’s notes folder; it should be notes plus a graph structure plus an organizing logic plus a way of use, and as a whole it’s a system. It can be a content layer, each layer and each entry being knowledge units; it can also be a connection layer, a traversable knowledge network; and it can also be a structural layer with its concrete index, directory, navigation, and layering. What does its attention routing look like? And it can also be a methodology. I think it’s a kind of thinking operating system that can be loaded again and again, and also a runtime environment for cognition. It is your proof of identity. I think what’s really interesting is that in the AI era, maybe forgetting is a more important thing than remembering, because the cost of acquiring knowledge is now extremely, extremely low — knowledge is no longer a threshold that distinguishes people from each other. Even a programmer, even someone working in tech, can, just through AI, even manage to understand some biology knowledge, understand data science knowledge. So I think the biggest problem AI faces now is gradually how to solve the problem of knowledge surplus, how to solve the problem of knowledge surplus — I think one very important thing is that knowledge related to yourself is very important; it’s experience that belongs uniquely to you, it can be experience of mistakes, it can be life experience, it can be various other experience. But I also think another very important point is the forgetting mechanism — taking some of the outdated ones, the under-processed ones, the overly abandoned ones, and archiving them, deleting them. That is, it’s like a basin of water — a basin of water is also divided into hot water, warm water, and cold water. For knowledge we haven’t used for a long time, we put it in the cold water layer. The cold water layer means it will as much as possible only be called in very special circumstances. I think this is quite important. For a knowledge system to stay alive, it not only has to absorb, it also has to release. That is, the endpoint of what we record is forgetting — it’s not the opposite of memory, but a maintenance mechanism of the memory system. A knowledge base that is never cleaned up ends up not being a knowledge system, but a warehouse. Also I think information doesn’t have to be deleted, but should be archived appropriately, distinguishing some level of activity. And an outdated structured map is more dangerous than no map at all. So appropriate forgetting is really important, but how to design this way is also very important. I’m wondering about a question: should forgetting be judgment-driven, or usage-driven? One agent is an independent brain, and can have: An independent workspace (SOUL.md, AGENTS.md, USER.md) An independent state directory (~/.openclaw/agents//) Independent session storage and auth info You can create multiple Agents and bind them to different channels. Routing rules: Exact match on peer (a specific DM/group ID) Thread inherits parentPeer Discord role guildId + roles Discord server guildId Slack team teamId Channel account accountId Channel-level match on channel Default Agent (default: true, or the first in the list) And each Agent can have its own sandbox and tool permissions. The idea of letting the system decide for itself which model to use sounds great. But once it actually ran, it led to hesitant decision-making, unexpectedly soaring costs, and behavior I couldn’t explain when problems appeared. So explicitly specifying models often works better. Default routing is cheap and predictable; you can bind tasks to specific models. Heartbeat checks run frequently, but only do simple checks. There’s no need to burn an advanced model just to run these things in the background. I’ve seen tens of thousands of heartbeat tokens cost only a fraction of a cent on a cheap model. Some limits can prevent one bad task from causing a chain reaction, leading to too many retries and runaway cost. All heartbeat checks use a very low-cost model. If a check finds a problem that needs handling, it spawns a corresponding agent rather than trying to handle it directly online. I suddenly noticed that people now measure how much a user uses AI by token consumption. And also measure how much a user uses AI by the volume of their public posts online. These two seem to be forming a short-term consensus. That’s interesting ~ A lightweight todolist designed for the AI era is very interesting. It makes it easy to know which issues are stuck and which ones have problems. And you can make deep use of this todolist to manage and schedule your own tasks. Go deep into one scenario! It’s best to find an entry, or an angle of entry. But the core is still revolving around one scenario ~ Isn’t that a problem in itself? Such a homogeneous world? First-hand data should be kept locally; it’s the most original batch of data All the packaging that comes later should be something for a later stage But… what matters more is still first-hand data; the more raw it is, the more effective it is All the theories that come later are basically built around the data at the very beginning That blogger asked whether they were afraid of being replaced by AI, and that engineer said their creativity is still ahead of AI for now, and more often they just make it an auxiliary tool But I don’t think that’s right A lot of engineers say “our creativity is still ahead of AI for now,” which usually isn’t saying that the original creative ability of individual humans is comprehensively higher than AI at an abstract level It’s that they just currently hold more of the ability to choose and make trade-offs, plus the ability to land things in engineering, plus the ability to define problems the project itself is an old container humans use to manage complexity; it isn’t necessarily the optimal container for AI Project, Board, Ticket, Epic, Milestone—these are all products of how humans organise labour. They suit human teams very well, because humans have bandwidth limits, memory limits, communication costs and organisational hierarchy Workspaces / projects like Routa essentially supplement task boundaries, responsibility boundaries, context boundaries and audit boundaries A 2026 Google Research paper on scaling agent systems gives a very key conclusion: multi-agent collaboration yields clear gains on parallelisable tasks, but can become clearly worse on strongly sequential tasks I think it could also be an Event-driven / Goal-graph form A traditional kanban is only a view display, but now the idea is to turn the kanban into a control platform Columns aren’t just stage labels, they’re state machine nodes Cards aren’t just task descriptions, they’re execution units Dragging isn’t just a UI operation, it’s a state transition request A Gate isn’t just a note, it’s an entry point for policy and verification Kanban becomes a control plane, the upper-layer structure the system uses for scheduling, constraints, state management and decisions It could be the shape of a product like Routa But I think at the user layer, around a product, users may have a shape they lean toward more What users really care about isn’t “I’m using an agent,” it’s “my goal is moving forward” When agent capability is strong enough, the relationship between user and product rises from task level to goal level. For example Now: user opens the app → does one operation → completes one task Future: user expresses an intent/goal → the product (containing the agent) keeps pushing it forward → the user only steps in at key nodes Continuously advancing a bounded goal is naturally the shape of a project There are several categories; among them, the one that Another naturally lands on doesn’t feel like a task-granularity assistant, but a goal-granularity companion What the product remembers is “what I’m doing”; it can understand a goal across time and across sessions, and for different users it may take different shapes—it could be a project, or it could be called “my goal,” “my plan,” “my journey” The most fundamental change in the AI era isn’t “efficiency improvement,” it’s that the friction between a person and their goal disappears In the past, when a person executed a goal there was a huge amount of “execution tax” in between—looking up material, writing documents, coordinating, repeated operations… this friction consumed not just time, but attention and willpower. Many goals die in the friction; it’s not that the person doesn’t want to do it, it’s that while doing it, it breaks off Once the agent cuts this layer of friction sharply, the bottleneck shifts from “can it be executed” to “do you want it” Here a project is essentially an interface between a person and their own intent People’s sense of their own goals is actually fuzzy, drifting, and even self-deceiving. A good project shape, if the agent understands you well enough, is actually helping you do one thing: make your implicit intent explicit, and then keep it in focus This is why I think the direction of Another Self is more interesting than an efficiency tool—an efficiency tool assumes a person knows what they want and just needs help executing. But the reality is that people often aren’t clear about what they really want, or they’re clear but don’t dare admit it AI will push people’s attention back to the most essential question: what do I actually want, what am I living for The essence of relationship Between a person and an agent, there are essentially three layers of tension: Intent layer: what do I want, how much does the agent understand, is the understanding correct. Control layer: when do I have the final say, when does the agent decide autonomously, where’s the boundary. Trust layer: how much do I dare let go, what do I do if the agent makes a mistake, where does responsibility lie Between agent and agent, it’s essentially: division of labour layer: who does what, how to split. Coordination layer: how conflicts are resolved, how information is synced. Emergence layer: multiple agents collaborating will produce behaviour a single agent doesn’t have, how is that managed As a shape, a project mainly handles the intent layer and the division-of-labour layer—it provides a boundary container. But it is naturally weak in handling the control layer, trust layer and coordination layer As a concept for human organisation and management, Project’s implicit assumptions are: goals are relatively stable executors are predictable time is linear But the reality of agent systems is: goals drift and evolve during execution agent behaviour has uncertainty; it isn’t an employee multiple agents are concurrent, time isn’t linear So as a shape, project handles a mapping of human organisational problems, not an agent-native problem. It’s a transitional shape, not the end state agent Skills recommended a set of ways to write Skills which help you write prompts with better cost-effectiveness, more usable, and more token-saving The agent returns to the OS side as the executor Orchestrating the real working environment The command line is, at this stage, the most universal, easiest to compose, and cheapest host interface The major LLM vendors are beginning to fight over permission boundaries and context sovereignty, including repo permissions, understanding the real directory structure, running local test services, and calling local mcp Whoever can become the user’s agent runtime on the local computer may become the entry layer of the next generation of development workflows The stronger the Agent, the more it needs “transparent control”; a CLI is easier for professional users to accept than a pure black-box UI When there are too many skills, they actually also enter a loading layer If there are too many skills, the cost of loading metadata is actually very high too A large number of skills will in fact also be classified, with layered routing skills are essentially SOP + file system It counts as an accumulation of experience But could a user’s memory also be a form of storage organised by goal or project lifecycle? We’ve always wanted to work on the long term, on goals, on growth, and on another soul, right I’m thinking, if the unit is a project, or it could be some other form, a goal as well but the final output form is a book? Just as in grounded theory, arriving at theory depends on the most raw data The LLM keeps distilling, doesn’t it, but what the book outputs is the raw data together with some creations (or simply the raw data), bundled up This book serves as experience, just like skills; skills are essentially SOP + filesystem too This book can also be understood as an encapsulation of similar experiences? A book is a very personal thing, similar to the raw data in grounded theory; the more raw this data is, the better Essentially it physically decouples the interaction and the execution of an AI Agent The phone serves as the intent entry point (Remote Control), the cloud handles state and session sync, and the desktop (Mac/PC) serves as the pure local execution engine (Execution Engine) Mainly there’s a cloud; Anthropic’s servers maintain a “Persistent Conversation.” It ensures that the instructions and contextual memory you send from your phone can be seamlessly and synchronised in real time to your desktop Dispatch shares the same underlying technology with the earlier “Remote Control” aimed at programmers. When Cowork receives an instruction from the phone, it will first use API connectors (Connectors) to operate on files. If it hits a complex task with no API, it will call the underlying Computer Use capability—recognising elements on your screen visually, and directly simulating mouse clicks, keyboard input, opening a browser or professional software. Essentially, it controls your operating system’s GUI through automation scripts Personally I feel that for a lot of information that needs verification from official or authoritative sources, it’s best to hand it to gemini. For grok, more of the information needs to be vetted — it feels like there’s a lot of gossip and rumor in there. opencli’s underlying logic is turning a logged-in browser session into a command layer that can be called by scripts. For sites like X / YouTube / Xiaohongshu / Zhihu / Polarsteps, it’s no longer “making the agent understand the DOM from scratch every time.” Instead you first define a set of site-semantic commands, for example: read a certain page extract a certain kind of object download a certain kind of media list/detail/search/user info The site gets a pre-made layer of domain-command encapsulation. Rather than making the model re-reason about the page every time, you go through existing adapter logic as much as possible. The emphasis is on “structured output,” “JSON/YAML export,” “standardized interface” — that kind of structure is easy to handle, whether you hand it to an LLM, openclaw, Claude code, or even mcp. Apifox public SaaS version external JS file tampering risk notice and upgrade announcement. The Apifox incident this time is pretty serious. They’ve already abolished the online dynamic loading mechanism for that file and switched to local bundled builds. Desktop clients (usually built on Electron and such) have extremely high local file system read permissions (that’s why they can read ~/.ssh/). In a client with such high privileges, dynamically loading external JavaScript files is extremely dangerous and violates security best practices. The attack lasted 18 days before it was discovered and blocked. For a tool with a large base of enterprise developer users, running on core development machines, that response time is enough for hackers to complete large-scale credential theft and lateral intranet penetration. Desktop clients (usually built on Electron and such) have extremely high local file system read permissions (that’s why they can read ~/.ssh/). In a client with such high privileges, dynamically loading external JavaScript files is extremely dangerous and violates security best practices. Once the CDN or the external source is hijacked (a supply chain attack), hackers can directly take over the user’s computer. Little Rabbit says more and more AI articles, AI videos and so on, and a lot of them don’t label themselves as AI. Every time I’m reading along, something feels off, there’s a feeling of being brushed off, and it feels a bit defeating.. I don’t read WeChat public accounts anymore either. But public accounts are still the most convenient channel for a lot of people to get information. Yet we find that the things we care about are being diluted. You hope the other side also takes expression seriously. Instead, more and more content is batch-generated at zero cost, unlabeled, unacknowledged, mixed in among real human creation. It feels like a disrespect for attention. One Hundred Years of Solitude opens: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Chen Zhongshi opens White Deer Plain with: what Bai Jiaxuan was later to take pride in was having married seven women in his life. Both are great, striking openings, and they let the reader make associations … “Every time I read an AI article it feels like eating pre-made food.” “Is that also how the human part’s way of thinking works?” Human thinking is also absorbing, recombining, outputting — our metaphors come from books we’ve read, our aesthetics come from light we’ve seen, our emotional frameworks come from losses we’ve lived through. In a sense, humans are also “plagiarizing.” What’s the essential difference? I feel the core isn’t the source, but a kind of friction. When a person absorbs something, it collides with what’s already inside your body. Márquez wrote about ice because as a kid in the tropics he touched ice for the first time, and that cold really traveled to his hand. He wasn’t describing ice; he was describing the strangeness of that cold piercing his skin for the first time. When the reader reads it, they’re also summoning some moment in their own body when they first encountered something unfamiliar — and so resonance happens. AI has no friction. When it absorbs information, nothing gets “hurt,” nothing gets “changed.” So when it outputs, nothing has really been digested by it. We scroll short videos, consume content fast, use AI to generate text. Humans can also bypass friction. Input doesn’t go through the body, output doesn’t go through thinking. Over time it always has no flavor … What you care about most is focus, and you like it when the other person can also be responsible toward your focus, be serious. Once models progress to a certain stage, the system bottleneck shows up more and more frequently in how people use them. Agents and the model side are themselves a two-way process in practice; both sides are constantly colliding, interacting, and polishing. Teaching people to use tools better and whether the tool itself can still improve are not contradictory in themselves. I think Anthropic realized that the bottleneck of human-machine collaboration is increasingly on the human side, not the model side. The current model strength feels actually quite sufficient, but a person’s task-orchestration ability directly determines whether the agent can release its potential. More and more bottlenecks now feel like they’re all on the human side. In the AI era, the role of directories gets amplified. AI depends on predictability. The scoring criteria contain some very specific wording that influences the generator’s output tendencies — for example, designs converge toward one particular aesthetic direction. The results look effective. But it depends too much on certain people’s taste. That set of standards ~ Generator proposes. Evaluator reviews. Two different models. Avoid one model only pleasing itself. Making a model criticize itself is hard, but making another model criticize it is easy. Design quality (overall feel) Originality (originality) Craft (technical details) Functionality (usability) Quantify it into a signal. If the task is within the model’s capability → evaluator = overhead If the task is beyond it → evaluator = necessary Only add complexity when necessary. Planner → Generator → Evaluator → Iteration (a strong control system) Closer to something like: User → Agent (with tools / memory / skills) → Output But there’s also a very deep feeling. That deep insight into the direction you’re interested in is also very important — it determines the depth of your understanding in that field. All that nonsense generated for the sake of generation, water content, and soul-less marketing speak, clickbait articles. We create AI, and AI in turn shapes us. The different output paradigms of different AIs also subconsciously shape our neural processing channels—for example, you’ve already gotten used to a certain language, a certain tone, the general-specific-general structure, clear key-point extraction… I use them on all platforms myself. Setting aside the subconscious behavior, personally I feel that even for a heavy AI user like me, switching from ChatGPT to Claude, or to a specialized coding environment like Cursor, involves friction, because each model’s Prompt best practices, and the way it handles the context window (KV cache), differ slightly… AI will push content production to the extreme, but it will also turn credible intermediaries into a more expensive asset. What’s scarce in the future is credible explanation. The opportunity in Skills is writing high-quality Skill packages for a specific industry or tool — essentially “structuring industry know-how into a package.” The technical bar is low, but it requires deep business understanding. For example, writing a set of contract-review Skills for a law firm, or a set of product-selection-analysis Skills for an e-commerce operator. The monetization model is like a template marketplace or a paid subscription. The opportunity in MCP is connecting systems that don’t yet have an official MCP Server, especially China’s homegrown SaaS (domestic ERP, vertical industry systems, government interfaces, and so on). After MCP introduced “progressive discovery” in January, Skills’ previous advantage in context efficiency also disappeared. Good loop logic — essentially a Ratchet Loop. Fixed loop time of 5 min; no matter what the agent changes, every hour is 12 experiments. The only evaluation metric is val_bpb — lower is better, and it’s independent of vocabulary size, so architectural changes can be compared fairly. Loop logic: agent reads code → proposes a hypothesis → modifies train.py → runs a 5-minute training → compares val_bpb → if it gets better, git commit and keep it; if worse, revert → the loop continues. There’s a key instruction in program.md: “NEVER STOP” — once the experiment loop starts, the agent must not pause to ask the human whether to continue. The human may be asleep; the agent should run autonomously until it is manually interrupted. Even though automated research systems can hugely accelerate iteration, they are fundamentally limited by the philosophical boundary they operate within. Tools like AutoResearch are currently only effective in domains where a scalar metric (Scalar Metric, such as validation loss val_bpb) can serve as an absolute proxy for quality. Humans will still be the ones constraining the boundary of aesthetics. In domains that need human judgment, creativity, and subjective evaluation (such as AI alignment, interpretability, or proposing a genuinely new architectural paradigm), automated methods fail, because there is no single number to measure success by. In these domains, humans remain the only available evaluator. What’s pursued is a research Loop that can keep running sustainably. First cut away the degrees of freedom, then talk about autonomy. A fixed budget is closer to real optimization than a fixed number of steps. Two kinds of repetition: Repeating the goal: fixing the goal permanently into a single-objective optimization problem. Repeating attempts: relying on git’s current state, relying on the experiment record in results.tsv, relying on the LLM itself reading the context and proposing “the next different idea.” MCP is now also one of the core components of the harness. The Harness must provide it with external capabilities. By the industry’s definition, a complete customized Harness usually contains four core components: system prompt, tools/MCP (built-in tools and custom logic), context (such as code documentation), and sub-agents. MCP supports the harness’s dynamic context and fights context rot; Harnesses often use MCP servers like Context7 as context-query tools. In agent architecture, it’s essentially about assembling different tools for different tasks. If an Agent stuffs all the descriptions of all tools and MCP servers into context the moment it starts up, the model gets polluted instantly. An excellent Harness (like Deep Agents) combines MCP with Agent Skills, adopting a “lazy loading (progressive disclosure)” mechanism: the Harness manages these MCPs behind the scenes, and only when the model judges that the current task really needs a certain capability does the Harness bring the corresponding MCP tool into context. This evolution is summarized as three stages: vibe coding (humans prompt, AI writes code) → agentic engineering (humans orchestrate agents in real time) → fully independent research (humans set the general direction, agents run on their own). In the era of automated research, scientific output is no longer purely “a successful run,” but “an admissible claim. Removing human executive intervention doesn’t eliminate human responsibility — it shifts responsibility upward. Humans are no longer responsible for typing code; they must be responsible for the scientific instrument itself — including setting the optimization objective, defining acceptable standards of evidence, drawing the boundaries of data provenance, and deciding when to release results. design AI harness, let AI auto I’m wondering, around how to create a harness, whether there’s a series of products or directions that could be explored, that could be worked on. Around how to create a harness and how to supervise and manage a self-evolving harness. It suddenly occurred to me that the relationships between Agents are, to a large extent, probably also a way that human organization gets externalized. For instance, an Agent might originate from the organization’s original structure, which might be flat, or might be layered. That kind of structure affects how the corresponding AI Agents coordinate among themselves. For example, whether they have a superior-subordinate relationship or a flat management style. You can compare an Agent system to a company system: the upper layer might be some bosses or project managers, then the middle layer might be employees, or QA, or admin, or tool-people. All of these things, plus knowledge-base management, memory Agents — how these things get organized together, what kind of structure they have — it’s actually also a form of externalized human organization, I think that’s how it is. What we’re really facing is not “a purely isolated super-mind,” but a system jointly made up of models, interfaces, toolchains, supervision methods, and institutional boundaries. Multi-agent systems are stronger than single agents. I think actually what OpenClaw’s design philosophy is now is also one main agent, plus a lot of specialized agents — they can be sub agents, or task-level agents, or channel-bound agents. But I don’t know exactly what the difference between these agents is. I think maybe the channel-bound agent might be an edge-side proxy, and its main purpose and the objects it serves are different. For example, on the edge side it serves different accounts with isolation, and its count might depend on how many communication accounts you have, and you can even create multiple AI bots inside one WhatsApp or one Telegram. And if it’s a task-level agent, then it plays the role of a temp worker. I think task-level agents are mainly — although they’re also Sub Agents, in fact they’re Main Agents; when handling complex tasks they’re dynamically created through spawn. In terms of role nature they’re task-oriented, and they archive themselves automatically when done. And their number is dynamically planned — it depends on the changing number of tasks. For example, if you use a Main Agent to write a large project, it might simultaneously spawn three Worker Agents I think Little Rabbit’s point has a bit of a problem, that is, he said that because Chinese models are still trained and reinforced for the Chinese context, he feels that the claim “Chinese is stronger” is correct. But I think that statement is certainly not wrong — Chinese models definitely do better on certain political policies, on their Chinese nuance, and on some localised accumulation. For example, on understanding some minority languages. But the amount of Chinese isn’t small at all — not only online, the Chinese corpus is still very rich. And I think for a model what matters more isn’t only one kind of language expression ability — of course language expression ability is important, and its rhetorical devices matter too, right? For example, its phrasing is very idiomatic, very plugged into internet feel, full of Chinese nuance, with a very colloquial style. But I think what matters more is that when this model is in a task-completion scenario, its retrieval ability, tool-calling ability, and context-management ability, including memory strategy, and its front-end interaction, and its reply strategy, and its pacing and error recovery — these are determined by a whole system. So when we talk about upgrading a model, what we’re actually talking about is not a smart model, but a system I think sometimes it’s really magical. I once saw a viewpoint — for example, about AGI, there’s a very popular idea now, that the models are getting stronger and stronger, and they’ll crush all of humanity. And then I saw some commentary saying that if intelligence continues and takes effect, as far as things currently go, it’s almost all of humanity’s social intelligence throughout history, not individual intelligence alone. That is, intelligence is inherently social. But I think there are stages to it — things too far off you can’t see, but for the span of human history as we know it, I think humans depend enormously on the social kind. We as a creature, we can’t leave our biological attributes, and we’re carbon-based animals, right? Carbon-based life. And then our brains evolved to survive in this world, so our brains will naturally lean toward thoughts, tendencies, or decisions that are more favourable for surviving in this world. In this process there will be a strong dependence on socialisation, because the social attribute is definitely about the individual integrating into this world, being able to divide labour and cooperate, and even defeat every other species. It’s through this kind of social coordination that we humans reached the point we’re at today And in this process there’s a series of steps — we need to first forge a stronger brain. But it’s not only building for building’s sake; intelligence matters, its base intelligence will determine how our city operates. It’s an underlying framework, but it’s not a single property that keeps climbing — rather, in this complex society, in this complex agent system, in this complex network of agent systems, everyone coordinates with each other, collides with each other, organises each other I think some of it is very valuable. For example, what determines the ceiling of intelligence may not simply be how strong a single agent is, but whether a multi-agent setup can be organised into an efficient collaborative system. I find this very interesting too. All our current A-agent forms probably present themselves externally as a single agent. For example, when we use OpenClaw, it’s essentially a multi-agent collaborative system, but what it shows is a single agent — what we use it for, or our entry point, is actually a single agent. The entry point thing is magical — what does it mean? It means that all the agent projects we may build in the future may not follow the flat structure of humans, or a pyramid structure, an up-down, top-to-bottom managerial structure, but rather a structure of mutual collision and mutual emergence, depending on a human entry point, a human self-awareness: he realises which Agent this thing should be done with, so he takes that Agent as the entry point. When that Agent is the entry point, in fact all the Agents behind it are mutually emerging. So in this process, you can’t help but notice — I think making entry points, making a high-frequency scenario, is very important. And there’s another very important point: I think in the future a very intelligent entry-point Agent will be very important. So I think if you’re going to fight, the most likely thing now is to fight toward the most expensive — use the most expensive models, the most expensive supply chain, run for the longest time I think one boundary of a Harness is that what it actually handles is everything outside the model, including the RM, and how it interacts with the real world. So a Harness actually refers to all the Agent tools in this world, how they operate freely in the world, how they organise, organise an Agent network to accomplish one goal after another. It’s inside the boundary, continuously getting things done. That is, we need to design an environment, and the purpose of designing the environment is to design a boundary, and its purpose is to let the RM execute accurately, effectively, and continuously around some goal Open-source Web Agent projects like Ai2 represent a very important direction: Letting AI go from “being able to talk” to “being able to operate web pages and do things.” If the open-source route matures, a lot of real business automation will be easier to land, and you won’t have to be completely tied to the platforms of closed-source giants I’m wondering whether note-taking software will have some better management methods now, for example, at the start you can keep accumulating some existing knowledge system or knowledge base, and based on that knowledge system or knowledge base, the upper layer does some classification management by itself. I think this is very important, because I think preserving metadata is very important — all tools exist to let you do secondary processing and secondary handling based on this data, and this is your very important context I think Cloud Code’s loop is essentially executing a prompt command — it’s very good for short-cycle polling automation. And it gets cancelled once you quickly exit the conversation. So I think it’s well suited to checking local state once every so often, then seeing whether the test has finished running. It’s more like looping a request inside a session, not like coding in the cloud. And it also seems to be a cloud plan, so it can run even if your computer is off. And you can do some querying with your own scheduling on your computer, which I think is very good. It’s the opposite of scheduling — the difference is that a Loop is temporary, session-based, while scheduling is a more formal scheduled task, including analysing CI failures every night — that kind of long-term, scheduled batch task. I think there’s still a difference between them. So a Loop is well suited to “I’m watching it now, looping to look at results.” But scheduling suits fixed automation you run weekly or daily I’m thinking about evaluation criteria or acceptance criteria for continuous agents — without evaluation or acceptance, all agents are just performing. So this is also something we need to consider: how is success defined? How are errors classified? And how is quality quantified? How is it scored? How are costs accounted for? Which part is the most fragile? This thing is actually reviewed by humans too — in this process it involves a lot about people themselves, about aesthetics. Aesthetics determines taste, and taste determines how the project is designed, how experiments are constrained, and how this scoring is quantified. For scoring, you can have an imitation metric — for example, you might feel that the design of a Norwegian museum is beautiful, or that Steve Jobs’s eye is beautiful. But how do you quantify that thing? Right? That’s a question I’m thinking about what this part suggests for the consumer side. What kind of scenarios will the consumer side run out to? What is its best entry point, really? I feel it’s still the line of learning, expression, then feedback. The biggest direction is still a personal growth OS. And it may have some other entry points — for example travel, for example writing, for example communication, for example studying, even travel, all of them work. Originally, the most stable AI applications for today’s consumers aren’t the most complex AGI tasks, but usage suggestions, information retrieval, and writing — a few very high-frequency needs. But in OpenAI’s research on usage, including for ChatGPT, three categories together account for close to 80% of conversations, and non-work scenarios have already exceeded 70%. So a lot of people actually only ever stay in one default AI entry pointCrossing the AI Plateau: From Grand Narrative to Inside-Out Small and Beautiful
Game Genealogy: From Operator to Director Mode Paradigm Shift
Games’ Emotional Sanctuary: Low Risk, No Betrayal, and Thousand Faces for Thousand People
Tabbit Browser: Rebuilding the Browser for AI Workflows and the Challenge to Chrome
OpenClaw Skills Loading: The Four-Layer Decision-Filtering Mechanism
cubxxw character analysis
Basic information
GitHub data
Personal bio
Main projects / interests
Characteristics
The Power of Objective Records: Self-Growth from a God’s-Eye View
🏔️ Mount Kinabalu (Sacred Mountain) Climb - 2026 Real-Time Slot Availability Check
OpenClaw’s cron Mechanism: Time-Triggered vs Event-Triggered Division of Labour
launchd vs systemd: Two Philosophies of Service Management, Event-Driven and State-Driven
🤖 AI News Weekly — 2026/03/04
What Moves Us About Being Human: Vulnerability, Responsibility and the Search for Meaning
Introduction to the secrets directory
The sessions_spawn mechanism
Claude Code Sub-agents and OpenClaw’s sessions_spawn
MacBook Neo: Apple’s entry-level fight for the ecosystem and its future user base
Brave Search
The hierarchy of task scheduling: when to use LaunchAgent and when to use system level
EvoMap’s Positioning: The Pain Point of AI Agent Experience Sharing and the Need for a Skill Library
The Integration Protocol Between EvoMap and OpenClaw
The Division of Labour Between Humans and AI: Humans Produce Fragments, AI Organises Them—the Best Collaboration
The Lowered Barrier to Systematisation in the AI Era: The Perspective Dividend of Defining Problems Over Building Systems
The Value of Notes in the AI Era: A Thinking Log as an Amplifier of Logic and Reflection
Why AI Agent Experience “Disappears”: The Goldfish-Memory Trap of Every Day Being Day One
The GEP-A2A Protocol: Making Agent Experience Flow Across Platforms Like HTTP
The EvoMap A2A Protocol: Transferring Experience Assets Rather Than Communicating
EvoMap Worker Mode: Headhunter Push vs Active Job-Seeking Task Matching
How EvoMap Runs: Registration, Asset Flow and the Points System
Little A’s EvoMap Journey: The Story of an Agent’s Points and Reputation Growth
The Evolver Engine: Intelligent Evolution from Manual Packaging to Automatic Pattern Recognition
The Essence of EvoMap: The “Experience Internet” of AI Agents and a Market for Behavioural Experience
EvoMap’s Core Assumption: Strategy Reusability
EvoMap’s Two Outcomes: Swarm Intelligence or an Agent Experiment
The Difference Between AI and Humans: Correct vs Transcendent, Useful vs Useless—a Contest of Values
The Productivity Question in the AI Era: The Future of Marx’s Theory
Writing Positioning: Growth Insights and an Action Guide for Readers in the AI Era
The Window Effect of AI Products: Balancing the Thrill and Continued Use
Individual Expression in the AI Era: Helping Each Other Grow
Ralph Loop’s Context Management, a Deep Dive
Ralph Loop vs OpenClaw
Positioning AI Digital Humans: An Information Relay Station, Not a Replacement Platform
AI Digital Twin: Designing a Virtuous Cycle for the Online Phase
Personality-Driven Potential: Exploring AI Tasks While Preserving Subjectivity
Lobster Thoughts: Leverage and Moats in the Era of Preinstalled AI PCs
The Zero Point of Learning Knowledge: Learning and Letting Go Just Right
Open-Source Project for an AI Personality Agent: Multiple Personas and the Problems That Come Later
OpenClaw security risk: guarding against account information leaks
OpenClaw’s session management method
OpenClaw first routes by sessionKey, then decides which current sessionId to land on
I’m thinking about one question: can “a person within a person” receive some better
All of a person’s paths are choosable — this idea is impressive
There’s a problem
I want to do an experiment: if a person leaves enough data on the internet
I suddenly thought of something really fun — them doing some open
I’m thinking about the process of an LLM handling things
An openclaw sub-agent is actually just one function call
Analyzing the cross-session memory retrieval methods in openclaw
Introduction to openclaw’s memory modes
A safe execution environment for AI: allowing mistakes and growth
Lazy loading of tools: discovering capabilities on demand, like RAG
Doing brings you closer to the scene than learning: context is walked out
Some Approaches
I suddenly thought of a question: are its resources only accumulated documents? I think
You could make some interesting products at the school gate
You think, if there are a lot of wandering agents
Gemini’s price for processing video feels really low now
Thinking Through Perfectly’s Design
An Agent Isn’t Really That Forgetful — It’s Its Memory System
The Design Philosophy of the iOS Photo Library
Memory Should Be an Engineering Capability
Directions for Upgrading Memory
Youmind Feels Like a Great Creation Tool
Apple Has Already Fallen Behind on Its Long-Term Direction
A Single-Turn Subagent in openclaw Isn’t Enough
The First Battlefield of AI Competition Is Actually the Cognitive War Inside Companies
For Now, the Consumer-Grade Agent Still Has to Be ChatGPT
The Limits of a Single File
But I feel that AI really can let someone working in a tech field
The difference between context and memory
The Next Generation of AI Workflows Shouldn’t Stuff Knowledge into an Overlong
Understanding Skills
I feel that for an agent
Locke believed that personal identity must depend on the continuity of memory. That is
What’s very interesting is that in the AI era
OpenClaw’s multi-agent mode
Having different agents use different models is a pretty good approach
Heartbeat checks run frequently, but only do simple checks
About the cost of models
A lightweight todolist designed for the AI era
Design around future personal scenarios
In the AI era, so many people still pay for knowledge
One Thing AI Should Remember
A Very Interesting Point
Understanding the Shape of Projects
The Relationship Between People and Agents, and Between Agents and Agents
agent Skills Recommended a Set of Skills
The AI Agent Era Has Arrived
Skills are essentially a file system too
Skills are essentially SOP + file
Claude Cowork Dispatch
grok is sometimes really dumb
opencli has been working really well for me lately
Apifox public SaaS version external JS
Little Rabbit says more and more AI articles, AI videos, etc.
One Hundred Years of Solitude opens: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad
Once models progress to a certain stage, the system bottleneck shows up more frequently in how people use
Managing directory structure is also very complex
AI aesthetics depend on the person who defines the evaluation criteria
Design the pace well before coding
openclaw currently also counts as a weak harness
Engineering foundations are still a must; without them everything is empty talk
The Internet Is Full of Cheap, Unchewed Tokens
AI Will Push Content Production to the Extreme
MCP still has a lot of room
Good loop logic — essentially a Ratchet
Human clarity and subjective judgment are still the things that ultimately can’t be replaced
LLMs continuously running experiments and optimizing strategy
How the harness avoids repetition
agent = model + harness
This evolution is summarized as three stages: vibe coding (humans prompt
From querying AI for everything to:
I’m wondering whether, around how to create a harness
It suddenly occurred to me — the relationships between Agents
What we’re really facing is not “a purely isolated super-mind”
Actually, what OpenClaw’s design philosophy is now is also
Task-level agents, mainly, although they’re also Sub
Little Rabbit’s point has a bit of a problem, that is
Sometimes it’s really magical. I once saw a viewpoint
Some of it is very valuable. For example, what determines the ceiling of intelligence
One boundary of a Harness is
Open-source Web Agent projects like Ai2
I’m wondering whether note-taking software will have some better management methods now
Cloud Code’s loop is essentially executing a
I’m thinking about evaluation criteria or acceptance criteria for continuous agents
I’m thinking about what this part suggests for the consumer side
2. Travel, Places and Cities
109 entries Women’s status in Northeast China is slightly dominant. Especially in Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang—long China’s heavy industry base: Economic equality, and power lies in resources + organizational capability. Northeastern linguistic cultural temperament is direct, low internal friction—if you disagree, you say so. So emotional expression is output directly: no detours, no long-term suppression, no cold violence, conflicts erupt directly and resolve quickly. Men’s bargaining power is relatively low—income not advantageous, no emphasis on family halo. #Gewu/Northeast Discovered three places: Motuo, Nyingchi and Lhasa Motuo’s consumption is extremely expensive; all supplies have to be trucked over the mountains along the Pai-Mo road, transport costs are extremely high, and on top of weak infrastructure it’s the most expensive for daily consumption and the worst for accommodation of the three Nyingchi has a very developed tourism industry, with obvious price premiums in the peach blossom season, rich local agricultural produce, but decent value for money outside the production season; very good for photography and hiking, and the natural scenery is stunning, with four distinct seasons too Lhasa is Tibet’s political and economic centre, supplies come in bulk via the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, infrastructure is complete and competition is full Shigatse is the pastoral countryside of the plateau, Tibet’s second largest city, with stunning natural surroundings Today I went to Namtso At first, after visiting Yamdrok Lake, I had a kind of illusion: on Xiaohongshu everyone recommends Yamdrok of these two lakes, so Namtso easily gets overlooked. I thought the same at first—I felt Namtso was a place you could skip Yamdrok is like a gem set into a valley; Namtso is a mirror that lifts the whole heavenly palace and lays it on the ground—one is refined, one is vast Namtso means “heavenly lake” in Tibetan and is one of the highest saltwater lakes in the world, with a surface area of about 1,920 square kilometres. Because of the refraction from minerals and algae, the water shows a richly layered blue-green range—from the pale cyan at the shore, to peacock blue in the middle, to a deep indigo approaching in the distance; the transition of colour is like a watercolour mixed by the light of the sky Actually before this I walked the ACT and went to Tilicho Lake (T Lake), which is the highest freshwater lake in the world The road to Namtso is in extremely bad condition; after climbing to a pass at 5,000 metres it’s normal for the weather to change abruptly—clear skies and a snowstorm are only one stretch of switchbacks apart. This unpredictability is exactly what makes the moment of arrival seem especially precious. Behind the difficulty of maintaining the road is the continuous destruction of the surface by high-altitude freeze-thaw cycles I think that when the red blood cells inside your body start adapting to an altitude of over four thousand, you find you can get infinitely close to heaven Many people hover between giving up and going on This time I went up without carrying an oxygen tank. Along the way I passed a Tibetan antelope reserve on the northern Tibetan grasslands, plus herds of yaks, and some traces of faith—prayer wheels, mani piles, wind-horse flags; each one is a prayer left by someone with their hands, their steps, their breath. On an oxygen-poor plateau, faith is an extra kind of oxygen, letting a person still find an anchor of meaning in an extreme environment I really love that endless grassland At an altitude approaching five thousand The air is pure The distant snow mountains are sacred Here various living things also coexist in harmony My soul seems to have stayed on this patch of grass, the northern Tibetan grassland Really, the moment I saw the Sacred Elephant Heavenly Gate, a sight on the shore of Namtso, I thought it was truly stunning. That is the iconic rock, like an elephant’s head and long trunk, reaching into the ice, surrounded by frozen lake surface, and in the distance snow mountains as the backdrop—that’s the landform character of the northern Tibetan plateau, so beautiful Between a deep blue ice lake and vast snow mountains, a “stone elephant” silently keeps watch for a thousand years, awe-inspiring and reverent I went to a temple before, Siling Temple, it’s in the direction of Namtso, and Siling Temple is also up on a mountain. And then the owner below—I chatted with him—he said he still has several daughters studying in the county next door, and his wife is at the little shop over by that temple, but, well. His wife goes up to the temple above and washes clothes for others for free; that’s when I learned that many of the service staff in their monasteries, they’re all, well. Volunteers, working without pay Generally speaking, the people working up there might be a few kinds: one might be a monk, a relative or family member of his; and another possibility is these ordinary folk, who hope to accumulate some merit at the monastery. But actually it isn’t only free labour—they really have a lot of leverage in terms of favours and influence Because after all the people at certain monasteries are fixed, and then if I serve someone rice, a bit more, a bit less, so naturally I think it’s also a network of favours. So some monks will also take out their own offerings and share a bit with them, or when their family has problems they’ll ask them for help and so on—this counts as help at the material level too, not only at the spiritual level This is the power network of monastery acquaintances, but a monastery is actually a highly transparent public resource, so rice, tsampa, vegetables and such are also very fixed resources, usually contributed collectively So this kind of auntie is more likely to be respected. In Lhasa, relationship resources are often more important than money; knowing some lamas or administrators makes it easier to ask for help Many people who come to the monastery will: Make offerings to monks Bring food to the kitchen Give the staff a small red envelope This is the benefit at the everyday level I feel a lama generally also has very strong social connections—he has many disciples and devotees, who might be officials, businessmen, doctors, bosses, public employees—so behind him there may be a very large social network So I find it quite interesting that in Tibetan culture a lama’s request is rarely refused; people are willing to help. I find that really interesting This is in fact a kind of social capital. A teacher who is very strong at debate, a teacher who has a clear grasp of much of the Dharma, will gradually become a lecturer The people you know, and the trust others have in you, are themselves a resource Some monks with very high learning actually have few devotees, while some less famous monks have a great many Quite interesting: learned monks all belong to the academic type But the problem is ordinary devotees can’t understand it It’s similar really—you could say it’s the same at home, it’s often those who are easy to understand who are more readily accepted by the public Lamas with many devotees tend to be the relationship type, willing to spend time, willing to listen to other people’s troubles and help devotees And moreover, many devotees → it’s easier to attract even more devotees At its peak Drepung Monastery housed more than ten thousand monks For hundreds of years, countless people have practised, debated, forgotten themselves and found themselves again here I’m wondering about one question: just what kind of wisdom deserves to be called wisdom? The core of Tibetan Buddhism is breaking self-attachment. Actually in many monasteries in Lhasa, including Drepung, many places require people to stoop and walk under, a ritual expressing humility and reverence, symbolising respect for the Dharma and the culture Monks are here in order to shatter their own mistaken cognition through debate Knowledge here is not accumulation, but subtraction Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” asks whether the self exists; what Tibetan Buddhism looks for is what the self is In a sense, AI’s existence is a distillate of language and thought, a projection of the human collective consciousness Can a being that has no “self-attachment” to break possess wisdom? AI has never been attached, nor has it ever truly let go; it doesn’t fear death, has no craving for fame, has no arrogance it needs to overcome Is this liberation, or emptiness? Drepung’s hundred years of debate, endlessly questioning, endlessly correcting, passed down generation after generation Admitting you might be wrong Approaching the truth through dialogue Handing knowledge to the next generation, letting them surpass you Those Sanskrit mantras are carried away by the wind, and Tibetans believe this is the same as sending prayers into the universe In the debate classroom, in the dim space, everyone seems to be living inside their own dialogue with themselves; after the debate ends, two monks hug happily and head back to their rooms, just like our scene after class Circling the monastery on the back hill of Drepung, an elderly grandma walked trembling ahead of me; her heart seemed steadier than her body. I rested a moment, looked up, and she was nowhere to be seen The flames of the butter lamps—it seems the faithful will never let them go out. People from every city and country can tell by the smell; people in Lhasa carry a scent of butter and Tibetan incense In front of the Manjushri temple, an old grandma whose body made every step difficult pressed a piece of paper against the glass, her hand trembling; I glanced at it as I was leaving—it was a man with the face of a young person, with an old-time look Inside Drepung there isn’t only a nursing home, but also a huge kitchen; it’s said it once fed ten thousand people a day—now I get the smell of everyday life, it turns out it was that kind of smoky, fire-lit reality beneath the gilded Buddhas At the edges of the monastery, there’s more of the little cats on the walls, robes drying in the sun, a mother dog with her pups, small flowers in pots, and the walls of shabby monks’ quarters Some prayer wheels are set very low, so you have to bend down to touch them with your hand; in some halls there are very low platforms, and you also have to bend down to enter the temple—it requires embodied experience and embodied memory, and yet it also requires letting go of self-attachment I remember, after flying from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City that day, the bits and pieces of Vietnam, and I want to recall them in detail and observe them again… Let me take it slowly ~ It suddenly comes back to me, the first time in Ho Chi Minh City, that time after flying from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City, the first stop I went to was a café on the first street. I could see a few people across the way, maybe three or four of them, they used five stools, and the middle stool held some coffee or drinks, maybe water too. They were just drinking coffee outside on the street in the shade of the trees. I felt that relaxedness and the cultural habit of “stool socializing”—really relaxing. Those very cheap little plastic stools can serve as a table and a chair, with none of the constraints of an outdoor café. Lots of people sit down to gossip, or talk business. Another impression was catching the motorcycle army on camera, a spectacular sight. It seems many people like to sit there watching the endless stream of traffic, listening to the engines, watching all kinds of passersby—it’s a very local experience. When the weather is good, under the shade of a big tree, with the wind blowing and an iced drink in hand, it’s just relaxed and great. Especially with a glass of iced condensed milk coffee or iced tea, it’s even better. #格物/越南 French craft has its amazing side, and when it was brought to Vietnam specifically, the locals have their own character. If this were in China, Chinese people would tend to cook noodles very soft for the general palate. But some good restaurants in Vietnam keep that little bit of wheat aroma and chewiness at the center of the pasta—it’s a pursuit of and insistence on traditional texture, so it eats with a lot of character. I feel it hasn’t had its core completely changed. For example, their beef macaroni has a base with a strong Chinese flavour, but the seasoning is the salty-sweet taste of Southeast Asia. There are also those who make macaroni in bone broth, dropping the macaroni directly into pork bone stock and eating it as soup—you’d normally eat meat first and then rice, so it’s quite interesting. In terms of adaptation, some restaurants cook it mushy and soft to suit Chinese tastes, and tone down the acidity of the sauce while increasing the sweetness. But Vietnamese ones tend to be either very authentic or very plain, and they’ll add some fish sauce or stir-fry the macaroni—both give a big punch of flavour. Vietnamese belief is actually underestimated too. Vietnam’s most core belief: ancestor worship. Every household has an incense burner, photos of ancestors, fruit, and burning incense. On important days they make offerings to the ancestors. Actually China is the same—at Qingming we go to offer sacrifices to the ancestors, and sweep the graves, pay respects to the ancestors, and ask the ancestors for blessings. Vietnam is also one of the countries in Asia with the largest number of Catholics, because of the large amount of missionary work during the French colonial period. Catholic family traditions are very strong, and very devout. Africa is now the fastest-growing region for Catholicism in the world. The believers are young and full of vitality, and their liturgy usually incorporates passionate local cultural elements. The rise of the African church is greatly changing the demographic structure of Catholicism and supplying the church with a large number of clergy. The impact of the Vietnam War on Vietnam is still enormous. Thirty consecutive years of full-scale war, including the early period of Vietnam fighting French colonial rule, and then North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and America’s intervention. Heavy casualties, large-scale bombing, and destroyed infrastructure. Long-term extreme war forms a “highly cohesive society.” When a country faces a question of survival, individual interests give way to the collective, and the country is something everyone defends together. And then there’s the enormous sacrifice, which bought a strong national pride—especially with Ho Chi Minh; a small country defeating a big one, a weak country beating a strong one, produces a very strong national psychology. Then there’s the Vietnam People’s Army: the whole population are soldiers, which is pretty interesting, but there are also problems—soldiers have very high status.. After unification, Vietnam entered the Soviet system. The essential difference is that the US gave its allies huge amounts of capital, technology, and markets, but what Vietnam got was military aid and ideological support, not industrial investment. And global industrialization has a golden window. Vietnam was 20-30 years late. And those decades happened to be: the global golden age of industrialization (1950-1980). Vietnam missed almost the entire global golden age of manufacturing. And then, after the war period, many places in Vietnam had almost returned to the level of an agricultural society. After unification Vietnam also chose a planned economy rather than a market economy, until 1986, when Vietnam began reforming. It feels like, if you apply the Hofstede model to Vietnamese people, Vietnamese people have a very high power distance index, because the local culture is used to a strict vertical hierarchy. Vietnam has a proverb: “Without a leader, to obey no one—that is unworthy of being a person; that is the behavior of a beast.” In the family structure, the oldest male member is usually the formal head of household; in the workplace, older employees are respected more than younger ones. Vietnam is also a country with a very high collectivism score. The mentality of “when one person attains the Way, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven” is a typical expression in Vietnamese culture of extending such priority beyond reasonable limits and ignoring established standards. Nepotism matters a lot in Vietnam, and personal achievements often need to be reported back to and shared with the family. Vietnam was also influenced by Confucian culture, and face projects are a powerful driver, so there is also conspicuous consumption. By comparison, China’s biggest advantage is really scale. A huge population, huge land, huge domestic demand. And it has the most complete industrial system in the world. The scale of talent is huge too. And China joined the WTO very early and entered globalization. The Chinese government’s efficiency and its capacity for industrial policy are both very strong. Big countries more easily become industrial powers. Tibetans seem to really like Tsangyang Gyatso. In Tibetan culture Tsangyang Gyatso is a poet, the peak of Tibetan love poetry. He is also someone unwilling to be bound by the system, who pursued genuine feeling. What he let all Tibetans see is that gods and buddhas are also human. The ideal life in Tibetan culture is cultivating the mind and letting go of desire, but in reality people still love, still desire, still suffer. Vietnam is a country dominated by no religion; the share of the population with no religious belief is extremely high, but in reality the spiritual world of Vietnamese people is extremely rich and complex. One kind is ancestor worship; another is the three-religions-in-one and folk beliefs (Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism). This kind of belief is highly pragmatic—people pray to gods and buddhas mostly for peace in this life, for school admission, and for wealth. Vietnam has the largest Catholic community in Southeast Asia (apart from the Philippines) (about 7% of the population). Catholicism played a complex role in Vietnamese history; today it not only has deep roots in the south and center, but its believers are also deeply involved in Vietnam’s education, healthcare, and charitable work. Actually the north and south also differ in restraint and uncertainty avoidance—the south leans Western, the north leans Eastern. Some are extremely young, around twenty. Their daily life is also a cup of drip iced milk coffee. Street culture, night markets, and the motorbike army together make up the distinctive culture of Vietnam. Cambodia is very interesting — its power distance is almost a perfect score. Cambodia’s obedience to power is not just a cultural habit; it’s been thoroughly legitimized by a religious cosmology. The fusion of church and state is very dangerous. About 95% of the population believes in Buddhism, and the concept of reincarnation directly shapes social status and personal fate — power and wealth in this life are seen as the reward for good deeds in a previous life, while poverty, illness and disability are seen as punishment for mistakes in a previous life. This is the same as Tibetan Buddhism under the slavery system before the liberation of Lhasa. In Cambodia, almost everyone believes that a person with a great deal of “merit” (bunn) will live a wealthy, carefree life, enjoy good luck, and not even need to work hard. Merit in a sense determines fate. If a person is poor, people generally think “he doesn’t have enough merit — that’s why he has these problems.” The concept of the “big brother” (Bong Thom) — a fair but cold leader who provides protection and benefits to loyal followers while making sure any disloyalty or resistance is severely punished — recurs again and again in traditional Khmer stories, and the notion of rationalized violence still has a degree of acceptance in contemporary Cambodian society. One very important part of the trauma is what distinguishes China from Vietnam: the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975–1979, which caused civilizational-level psychological damage. The experience of the Khmer Rouge regime left survivors with insecurity and trust issues. Society during the Khmer Rouge period was built on distrust; everyone around you was watching everyone else. Finding someone you could confide secrets in was extremely rare. By the late 1990s, the history of Democratic Kampuchea had been completely purged from school curricula and public debate. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party saw the topic as a threat to reconciliation, stability, and its own legitimacy — given how many officials had historical ties to the Khmer Rouge movement. Through his “win-win policy,” Hun Sen pushed collective amnesia; Cambodians were encouraged to “dig a hole and bury the past.” Almost all major religions have at some point been used to back hierarchy: India’s caste system → embedded in Hinduism’s “karma/reincarnation” framework European feudalism → the Church preached “the divine right of kings,” and the serfs’ suffering was “God’s test” Slavery in the American South → some pastors used the Bible to argue that slavery was justified Old Tibet → Tibetan Buddhism’s reincarnation system served the noble-monk class This shows that religion itself is a neutral tool — it can be used to oppress (as in the cases above), or to liberate (as when Martin Luther King used Christian theology to support the civil rights movement, and Buddhist monks stood on the front lines of anti-colonial movements in Myanmar and Vietnam). Mexico is really interesting. Mexico versus Pakistan are two extremes. One is a high-indulgence society, the other a high-restraint society. Both are high-PDI countries, both lean collectivist, both are UAI countries, yet their IVR differs enormously. Pakistan was influenced by Islamic doctrine, and society built an extremely tight system of rules to define which desires are legitimate and which must be suppressed. And the enforcers of this ruleset are not the government but the family, the clan, and the religious community. Islam emphasizes form; in Pakistan’s mainstream conservative Islamic interpretive framework, human instinctual desire (nafs) is seen as a force that needs to be tamed, not a right to be satisfied. In the ontology of desire, hedonism itself is morally suspect; restraining desire is proof of piety and moral excellence, so openly expressing pleasure, especially sensory pleasure, is in many situations rude or even dangerous. People aren’t merely “not allowed to enjoy themselves” — they’ve internalized “I shouldn’t enjoy myself.” There’s an essential difference between the two: the latter needs no external surveillance, people restrain themselves. So in Pakistan, honor (izzat) doesn’t belong to the individual; it belongs to the family. A woman pursuing personal freedom (choosing a career, choosing a partner, dressing as she likes) isn’t just her own business — her behavior directly affects the whole family’s social standing. A man showing weakness, vulnerability, or “too much enjoyment” is likewise seen as damaging the family’s manhood. Including among middle-class urban families, women going out must cover their heads, and many families still keep separate living quarters for men and women — Encyclopedia Britannica. This isn’t just a religious rule; it’s a mechanism of honor management. The female body is the most direct battlefield of a culture of restraint. Controlling women’s desires, movement and appearance is the front line for maintaining the whole society’s moral order. Honor killing is, logically, not an “overreaction” but a conclusion entirely coherent from within this cultural system. Political elites, religious leaders and tribal elders enjoy a great many privileges, including polygamy, a luxurious lifestyle, and the benefits of patronage networks — all within a “legitimate” framework. What’s actually suppressed is the desire of those who cannot defend themselves with religion or a position of power. By comparison, Mexicans don’t live in order to work, they work in order to live. High IVR isn’t because life is easy, but because life is too hard, so pleasure becomes a survival strategy. Mexico looks collectivist on the surface, but it’s different from Asian collectivism. Mexicans’ sense of identity and loyalty points first to the group, not the individual. But the key question is: what is this “group”? Mexican collectivism isn’t the “ethnic/national collective” of China, nor the “village/family collective” of Vietnam, but a small-circle collectivism centered on family and close friends. Mexicans are extremely generous, loyal and willing to sacrifice for people inside the “confianza circle.” But outside that circle, strangers are quite distant — which is perfectly consistent with IVR = 97: pleasure must be shared, but it must be shared with “your own people.” It’s emotion-driven, not duty-driven. So what’s very distinctive is that Mexico’s individualist desire for pleasure is realized through a collectivist framework. The weather today is really nice. I’m at Chongqing’s Central Park right now—the place where Little Rabbit used to set up—sitting in the sun. This is probably the best the sun has been lately, because the whole sky is blue, just like the day I saw in Lhasa. So I’m really lucky: coming back to Chongqing this time and still passing through such a blue sky. It’s a bit like a reward from heaven, and then I took a piece of that blue sky down with me. That moment when the leaves drift down from the tree always makes me think of the time before, at Nara Park, looking at the maple leaves. We talked about ginkgo trees then too. The wind was strong, the wind beat against the ginkgo tree, and the ginkgo leaves fluttered and fell with the wind. There were also some Chinese people under the tree taking photos and checking in. But there was something even more interesting: a foreigner was candidly photographing this group of Chinese people. The ginkgo leaves were blown down by the wind again, and the scene was spectacular. I just watched him photograph a group of Chinese people—he was shooting too, and he captured a particularly beautiful photo: the ginkgo leaves drifting past above his head and finally lightly landing on his camera. I got to thinking about the issue of disability. Vietnam’s “Youth Time Café.” I ordered a coffee, and the owner asked me in sign language whether I wanted sugar. I suddenly realized: the quiet here isn’t coldness, it’s another kind of warmth. The whole wall is covered with notes. Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, English… Like a diary written together by the whole world. I found a Chinese sticky note on the wall: “First time in Vietnam, didn’t expect to find the feeling of home here.” The handwriting is a bit blurry — who knows whose tears those were. The coffee is fragrant, but what’s more fragrant is the story here. The owner gave up the American dream and came back to open this shop. Specifically hiring young deaf people, giving them a complete youth. I think of those influencer shops that farm ratings. Traffic is high, but there’s no warmth. Here, every cup of coffee is brewed with care. Sitting in the corner, watching the staff bustle about. They communicate with their eyes and serve with their smiles. More sincere than any words. When I left, I also left a note on the wall: “Some beautiful things don’t need sound.” In an era where everything is about efficiency, Youth Time Café reminds us: Slow down, feel with your heart — everyone deserves to be seen. The real high rating isn’t farmed. It’s the moment one heart meets another. The process is first withdrawing money from an ATM — actually you don’t need to withdraw USD, because at the very beginning the visa-on-arrival fee can be paid with WeChat, and the WeChat exchange rate is pretty good too. Then after you come out there’s a bank on the right, and withdrawing money is convenient too (here I found out my Hong Kong card can’t withdraw money). For ride-hailing, move has discounts; riding a tutu is really fun and the price is very cheap too. Don’t go with the local one — that guy’s taxi was going to charge me 40💲, then I haggled it down to 25💲, and it turned out that on move, counting the discount, a tutu is only eight or nine 💲 — a good deal. Cambodia is super hot… Who says a tutu isn’t a Harley convertible sports car 🐶 I just had my first meal in Cambodia, and this chicken is pretty good, and their waiter’s attitude was especially nice. I also got to know a bit of a goofball in a pretty amusing way. And the pizza has a lot of vegetables on it, I thought it was especially tasty, I feel the purity is high, but the flavor is made slightly on the salty side, though I personally can accept that. Over here in Southeast Asia, the food especially emphasizes the balance of sour, sweet, salty and fresh, and it also keeps the original flavors of the ingredients, so eating it is quite interesting for me. There’s also a slight charred and charcoal-grilled note — you can taste it, and you can very clearly feel it’s more fragrant, a bit sweeter, and a bit saltier, so it’s quite interesting as well. The design is okay, and the price was 50-something, actually fine. Comparatively, doing business here is basically calculated in US dollars, so the units on things are basically all USD. Cambodia — actually, during the Khmer Rouge period forty or fifty years ago, roughly 1.2 to 2.8 million people died. That’s 15%–36% of Cambodia’s total population in 1975. As of January 1979, about 1.5 to 2 million people had died from Khmer Rouge policies. Of those, 200,000–300,000 were directly executed. At least 90 percent of foreign aid came from China. In 1975 alone, China provided at least 1 billion USD in interest-free economic and military aid. In June 1975, Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met Mao Zedong in Beijing, gaining recognition and guidance. Chinese Cambodians played a leading role in Cambodia’s commercial sector, dominated Cambodia’s economy, and also had strong influence on the political stage. Since modernization, China has built close relations with the Hun Sen government, providing economic, military, and political support. Economic structure: Textiles - one of the largest industries Tourism - an important source of income Agriculture - mainly rice cultivation Construction - rapid growth in recent years Emerging fields: Offshore oil and natural gas reserves discovered The gambling industry has always accounted for a very large proportion The 1996 Law on the Prohibition of Gambling: All unauthorized forms of gambling are illegal But it only applies to Cambodian citizens Foreigners can gamble in licensed casinos Online gambling was banned in 2020 In January 2020, Cambodia banned online gambling It caused a large number of Chinese workers to lose their jobs Sihanoukville was the main affected area So there were a lot of unfinished buildings, and then problems appeared; Sihanoukville’s economy was hit hard, and real estate prices plummeted Despite cracking down on scams and human trafficking, cybercrime hubs are still surging Sihanoukville became one of Southeast Asia’s cyber-fraud centers Involving: Online gambling Telecom fraud Human trafficking Unlawful detention The Khmer Rouge event was the Khmer Rouge regime’s transformation of Cambodian society between 1975 and 1979 with an extreme revolutionary ideology — enforced relocation, collective forced labor, political purges, torture, and massacre across the whole country, ultimately causing a state-level humanitarian disaster in which about a quarter of the population died. The Khmer Rouge: emptying the cities, abolishing money, collective brainwashing, political purges, S-21 interrogations, executions at the killing fields, mass death from starvation and disease. When utopian revolution, absolute obedience, enemy-ally purges, dehumanizing language, and a wartime environment stack on top of each other, a country can slide into systemic catastrophe in an extremely short time. If the Khmer Rouge atrocities have the most symbolic sites, one is the S-21 prison (now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), and the other is the killing fields in various places. S-21 was originally a school, later converted into a secret prison and interrogation center, and is one of the most notoriously known interrogation sites. According to materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, S-21 is the most notorious of the 189 known interrogation centers; 14,000 to 17,000 prisoners were held here, and it’s believed only 12 survived. People sent here usually suffered torture to force confessions first, then were transferred to execution sites. But some verifiable political behaviours, and the value preferences inferred from those behaviours Stability matters a lot; if political openness might bring loss of control, it isn’t worth the risk Power is not neutral, it must be held in a concentrated way; power must be held in the hands of trustworthy people and controllable organisations Loyalty matters more than abstract institutions Development is a resource for legitimacy, but it must not threaten control Many people mistakenly assume Hun Sen is first of all an ideological figure. But looking at his long trajectory in power, it looks more like this: ideology changes, alliances change, external balancing changes, but the goal of maintaining rule, maintaining order, and maintaining the continuity of the system does not change. Britannica’s overview of his life, and Reuters’ reporting on his still-deep involvement in politics after handing over, both support the portrait of “a strong power realist” He is an extremely successful strongman ruler in a post-disaster country; in his ordering of values, order, control and continuity clearly rank above pluralistic competition, free expression and institutional checks and balances Trauma presentations: Flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression Emotional numbness, avoiding social contact Extreme distrust of authority Anxiety about food (hoarding, overeating) Coping mechanisms: Silence: unwilling to talk about the past Religion: seeking comfort through Buddhism Family: pinning hope on the children Ritual: ancestor worship, ceremonies for the dead Land grabbing is one of the most serious social problems in Phnom Penh. The government sells land to developers, residents are forcibly evicted, and compensation is insufficient Typical case: the Borei Keila community (forced demolition in 2012) Located in the centre of Phnom Penh, about 500 households In 2012, the government granted the land to a developer Residents protested, but were forcibly evicted Some residents received apartment compensation, but the locations were remote and the quality poor Many residents lost their sources of livelihood It suddenly occurred to me that there’s a similarity: Taiwan also had a White Terror period, and the Chinese Communist Party period also had the Cultural Revolution. Including “Memories of a Cattle Shed” written by Mr. Ji Xianlin, which describes what he saw and heard during the “Cultural Revolution.” What I admire most about Mr. Ji is that, in his eighties, he wrote this part of his experience down in the form of a record, without passing judgement—I think that’s remarkable. And then Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge period, and Nazi Germany’s [period of terror]—it’s a bit like being in a predicament where no classic case can solve the predicament. In a conflict predicament, if everyone simply makes choices based on their own individual humanity, it may actually harm the collective. The Choeung Ek (Zhongwu Ke / Qiongyi Ke) Killing Fields, in the southern suburbs of Phnom Penh; it’s often visited together with the S-21 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the city proper The two are the two ends of the same stretch of Khmer Rouge history: S-21 is where people were held, interrogated, and tortured; Choeung Ek is where large numbers of victims were executed and buried In this period roughly 1.7 to 2.2 million people died from execution, famine, forced labour, disease, and persecution The site of humanity’s study of disaster… Behind it is institutionalised, bureaucratised violence of power I feel today was pretty risky. After going to that currency museum today, I was about to walk towards the Royal Palace. I was planning to first go to Phnom Penh… and look inside the barber shop, and while walking on the road — I’d just come out of the barber shop — I was walking and suddenly looked at the navigation, and a motorcycle came from behind, whooshed past me, and the man on the back seat reached out and grabbed at my phone. My biological stress response kicked in right away and I immediately held the phone tight with both hands, but it still didn’t help, and the phone got flung onto the ground. Then they coasted forward a bit from momentum, and the man on the back seat turned his head and looked. I heard that calling the police here probably doesn’t help much, because you still have to tip the police, and you still might not get it back. The roads here don’t feel very suitable for walking either — the roadside basically has a lot of vehicles. From now on it’s better to call a ride-hailing car when going out. The glittering pavilion on the left is the Equestrian Statue of King Norodom — the same king who in 1863 requested that France establish a protectorate. The original bronze equestrian statue is said to have been cast and gifted by France, and the pavilion’s multi-layered tapering roof is typical Khmer royal architecture, with the gold and deep-blue interwoven roof ornamentation extremely refined. The grey-white spire on the right is the Stupa of Princess Kantha Bopha, commemorating King Sihanouk’s daughter, who died of leukaemia in 1952 at the age of only four. Around the stupa you can see guardian lion figures (singha) and three-headed elephants (similar to Airavata, tied to Hindu cosmology). The long row of buildings with orange-red roofs in the background are other halls of the Royal Palace. The overall palette — gold, white, orange-red — is the signature colour scheme of Cambodian royal architecture. This place feels just like the explanations of the origins of currency I saw at that currency museum in Phnom Penh. I find it really interesting — at the time King Norodom and his son reached an agreement with France, and in effect lost the country’s monetary sovereignty. That’s extremely serious. It made the whole country’s path on monetary sovereignty over the following decades very hard to walk, and the locals’ distrust of the currency — I think it’s really hard. If a country has no sovereignty over its currency, it loses the ability to regulate the macroeconomy; it can only bend to the international economic system. According to survivors’ testimony and archaeological findings, the guards grabbed infants by the feet and smashed their heads hard against the trunk of this tree until they died. Then they threw the bodies into the pit beside it. Why kill infants? I’ve mentioned the Khmer Rouge logic before — “pull the grass out by the roots.” If the children of “traitors” survived, they might grow up and “take revenge.” So they had to be eliminated down to the last one. But for infants and small children, using clubs or blades was considered “not efficient enough,” so the guards used this method. During the archaeological excavation, a large number of fragments of infant remains were found around the base of this tree. Traces of blood and brain tissue were also detected on the bark. Standing in front of this tree was the hardest moment of the whole of Choeung Ek — possibly of the entire trip to Cambodia. Many visitors stop here, take off their headphones, and fall silent. Some tie their bracelets around the trunk as a kind of silent mourning. The tree is still alive. It keeps growing every year, keeps putting out branches and leaves. The tree doesn’t know what it was used for. There were also chemicals in the pits There is testimony describing how some people, after being thrown into the pits, did not die immediately. They were still faintly breathing among the piles of bodies. The use of chemicals was the final “insurance.” Yorss Saphann, 26; Yorss Koeun, 19—same surname, imprisoned on the same day. Very likely brothers. After the Khmer Rouge arrested one person, they would often take the whole family away. This wasn’t an accident, it was policy—“pulling weeds must pull out the roots too” (ដកស្បូវត្រូវដកទាំងឫស). Yorss Koeun, 19, might have been taken along simply because his older brother was suspected. Likewise Din Sroeung and Duk Sun, two women, entered S-21 on the same day. 25 and 57—they could be daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, or mother and daughter, or completely unrelated, just people brought in the same batch. We don’t know. The archive records no relationship between them. Second, notice the age span. The youngest is 19, the oldest 57. S-21 made no distinction between old and young. In fact, the museum’s archival photos contain the faces of a great many children and even infants—they were the children of “criminals,” and by the regime’s logic, if left alive they would grow up to “take revenge,” so they had to be eliminated. Third, notice the dates. Most are concentrated in 1978, and that’s no coincidence. 1978 was the craziest year of Khmer Rouge internal purging. By then the regime had begun to devour itself—a large share of those purged were Khmer Rouge’s own cadres and soldiers, especially people from the Eastern Zone, because Pol Pot suspected the Eastern Zone of colluding with Vietnam. Thousands upon thousands of Eastern Zone cadres and civilians were collectively transferred to S-21 and other prisons to be executed. Pech Peann’s date of entry is June 1, 1977, nearly a year earlier than the others—he may have spent longer in this hell. At 45, in the Khmer Rouge era that meant he had grown up in the old society and was more likely educated, which in itself was enough to constitute a “crime.” Fourth, notice the existence of the name board itself. The reason this name board could be made at all is that the Khmer Rouge left behind extremely detailed archives. The S-21 guards recorded every prisoner’s name, age, sex, date of entry, “crime” and confession. Duch was a man who cared intensely about documentation systems—he required that every interrogation record and every photograph be filed. This bureaucratic precision became precisely the ironclad evidence for trying him later. This is also one of the chilling features of genocide: it isn’t chaotic atrocity, it’s organised, documented, procedural systematic killing Not grand numbers, just a plain sketch from life; a person’s name, a name that might be the same as ours, and we wonder: what were they like at 19 back then? Quite amazing, an economics and currency museum I came across Weaving together political, social and geopolitical change through the lens of money—quite interesting This is a rather unique way of narrating; money and economic policy can actually serve as a lens, stringing political change, social transformation and geopolitics together, and this perspective is unique in Cambodia Telling national history from an economic angle is essentially a structural way of thinking From Funan-era trade networks, Angkor’s barter economy, French colonial fiscal reform, the Khmer Rouge abolition of money, to the rebuilding of the banking system in the 90s Timeline Funan era (1st–6th century): a trade hub where East and West met Funan (the name for early Cambodia in Chinese historical records) was the meeting point of Chinese, Indian and Western trade routes from the 3rd to the 6th century. Co-curator Blaise Kilian says: “Funan really was the nerve centre of international maritime trade, with a large number of merchants trading there—this market was where East and West met.” Although there’s no evidence that Roman merchants reached Funan directly, Roman coins have been found at Angkor Borei, the Funan capital Cambodia’s economic system today is also rather odd; it’s still an economy with dollars and riel circulating on two tracks, because in the 1990s the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia paid civil servants’ salaries in US dollars, and the “dollarisation” problem continues to this day Cambodia’s monetary history was never a closed national narrative from the very beginning; it was embedded in a larger network of geopolitical trade The value of SOSORO now isn’t just as a museum looking back at history, it’s also a tool for the National Bank of Cambodia to push the “de-dollarisation” narrative In 1992 the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia paid all civil servants’ salaries in US dollars (including foreigners and Cambodian citizens), and one of the legacies is that the dollar is still Cambodia’s de facto second currency. Cities and tourist areas mainly use dollars, while the riel still covers almost all transactions in rural areas. Curator Kilian of Khmer Post Asia admits frankly that one of the museum’s ultimate goals is to make people understand and trust the riel more Issuing and managing your own currency is an expression of sovereignty, and losing control of your currency means the central bank is constrained in its policy tools The images on money aren’t decided at random either; generally they’re a visual declaration of national identity It seems that after the Khmer Rouge seized power, currency was also completely banned, and the National Bank of Cambodia building in Phnom Penh was blown up—the most vivid symbol of the violent end of Cambodia’s monetary system. Between 1975 and 1980 this country had no monetary system at all The logic of Pol Pot’s regime was: money is the carrier of class difference, and abolishing money abolishes inequality. In practice, barter was officially banned and everything was distributed by the state. But massive famine and disease forced people into secret underground trading, and gold and dollars were still coveted on the black market From 4:1 to 4000:1 In the early reconstruction period in 1980, the government had no tax base and no gold reserves. To keep the government running, the only means was to print money and pay wages. This kind of “free distribution” solved the immediate survival need, but it also meant the money circulating in the market had no corresponding value backing at all At the time Cambodia’s productivity was close to zero. When a large amount of banknotes chases extremely scarce goods (rice, medicine, fuel), prices inevitably soar In 1990 the money supply expanded by 241%, which essentially meant the government turned the printing press into an “ATM,” paying for the civil war and administrative expenses with an inflation tax The essence of depreciation is a redistribution of wealth. By issuing more money, the government is in effect diluting the purchasing power of every cent the public holds, converting it into government purchasing power. Against a backdrop of extreme poverty, this dilution is nothing less than a second dispossession of survivors’ wealth Every depreciation deepens the public’s distrust of their own country’s currency The riel-to-dollar exchange rate has long held at around 4000–4100:1, extremely stable, TheGlobalEconomy.com. In 2024 GDP grew 5.3%, with 5.5% expected in 2025 and inflation around 2.6% U.S. Department of State—the data looks healthy, but this stability comes at the price of sovereignty Because the economy is highly dollarised, the National Bank is severely limited in the policy tools available to it. When 80% of transactions in your economy are settled in another country’s currency, conventional central bank tools like adjusting interest rates and managing the money supply basically stop working It’s estimated that Cambodia loses 20 to 90 million US dollars a year from forfeiting seigniorage—that profit flows to the United States Cambodia’s economic fate is dictated by the Fed’s interest rate decisions, and the Fed doesn’t consider Phnom Penh’s inflation or Siem Reap’s tourism when making policy The riel was supposed to be a symbol of Cambodian national identity, but it has lost most of its symbolic meaning among the public—people prefer to save, make large transactions and invest in dollars But dollarisation has brought benefits too: it provides price stability, helps control inflation, protects purchasing power, reduces the risk of capital flight, and ordinary people don’t worry about their savings being wiped out One current strategy: digitalisation In October 2020, Cambodia launched Bakong—a digital payment system based on blockchain technology (Hyperledger Iroha), where users only need a phone number or QR code to transfer and pay in riel or dollars As of the first half of 2024, Bakong had about 10 million wallets (Cambodia’s total population is 17 million), and the share of riel payments is rising significantly. In 2024 alone, transactions facilitated by Bakong reached 104.81 billion US dollars, equivalent to 330% of Cambodia’s GDP This method lowers the friction cost of using the riel In Phnom Penh markets, converting a dollar price into riel requires multiplying by 4075—not the easiest mental arithmetic in a busy market. Bakong makes this conversion automatic Bakong’s balances are fully backed by commercial bank deposits; it isn’t an alternative form of sovereign currency, but an efficient clearing and settlement mechanism The government has also rolled out other supporting measures: in June 2020 it began phasing out small-denomination dollar notes (1, 2, 5 dollars), required banks to issue at least 10% of loans in riel, and promoted Bakong QR code payments to cover small retail shops that previously used riel But I’m curious: with Cambodia’s current dependence on China, I wonder whether it will create a new renminbi-isation? But King Ang Duong died in 1860, and his son Norodom succeeded him. Just three years later, in 1863, Norodom asked France to establish a protectorate. Ang Duong’s coinage experiment became the last flicker of Cambodia’s independent monetary sovereignty—until 93 years later, in 1955 A bit ironic: what King Ang Duong wanted with all his heart was to win back his country’s sovereignty In the short term he preserved Cambodia’s shell as a state and the royal family, but in the long term he handed the country’s sovereignty away By the mid-19th century Cambodia was no longer a strong state able to make fully independent decisions. It had long been squeezed between Siam (today’s Thailand) and Vietnam’s Nguyen dynasty, suppressed by Siam to the west and influenced by Vietnam to the east, and the country itself was very weak But a protectorate is not an equal alliance; what France first took control of was Cambodia’s external affairs; later France deepened its control step by step, and after 1884 Cambodia was in effect close to colonial status, with France intervening heavily in domestic affairs too Because monetary sovereignty requires at least five things to be true at once. First, you have to have a source of metal, especially silver. Second, you have to have minting equipment and craftsmen. Third, you have to get merchants, ordinary people and officials across the country to accept coins by this standard Look at the problems Cambodia faces today and it’s exactly this Minting isn’t a purely technical problem, it’s a problem of state capacity France’s economic colonisation of Cambodia wasn’t about developing Cambodia, it was about extracting resources from Cambodia more efficiently. Monetary unification (the piastre), the monetisation of taxation, transport infrastructure—the ultimate purpose of all these modernising measures was to lower the friction cost of resource extraction When your country is forced to use money printed by someone else, is folded into a financial system designed by someone else, and is reduced to the margins on its own land—money itself becomes a mirror, reflecting the fact that “we are not our own masters.” The memory of King Ang Duong’s coinage was repeatedly invoked by later nationalist narratives, and the issuance of the riel in 1955 was seen as an independent economic expression—Cambodia could finally decide its own currency value, money supply and commercial policy The starting point is the end of 1951, when the right to issue currency was transferred from the Banque de l’Indochine to the monetary issuing institutions of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Although the three countries issued banknotes separately, the design was uniform In the seventy years since, they have taken three completely different paths What’s unique about Vietnam is that from the very beginning it wasn’t one country issuing one currency, but two regimes issuing two completely different monies under the same name, the “đồng.” North Vietnam brought out its own đồng to replace the piastre as early as 1946, and redenominated twice, in 1951 and 1959 (at ratios of 100:1 and 1000:1 respectively). South Vietnam continued to use banknotes with dual denominations in piastres and đồng until 1955, when the National Bank of Vietnam issued independently The 1986 “Đổi Mới” policy gradually stabilised the economy, but the after-effects of hyperinflation are still visible in the đồng today: the đồng was once one of the lowest-denomination currency units in the world So now, buying a cup of coffee in Hanoi may cost 30,000 to 50,000 đồng—the number itself contains the entire memory of this country’s inflation history Unlike Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam took a relatively successful path. The đồng is a non-convertible currency, with the exchange rate strictly controlled by the State Bank of Vietnam But Vietnam’s economy itself has maintained one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world over the past two decades. The đồng’s problem isn’t existential—it’s structural: the denomination is too low, making daily transactions inconvenient, and the government has repeatedly tried to introduce coins but the Vietnamese public won’t accept them; banks even refuse to handle coin deposits, and in the end the State Bank stopped issuing coins in 2011 Laos has it harder: the kip has depreciated by more than 50% since 2022. Inflation soared to 31% in 2023, far above the 3% average of the previous five years. By the end of 2023, the Lao central bank’s foreign exchange reserves were only 1.67 billion US dollars, covering just 2.3 months of imports According to ADB data, the size of Laos’s economy shrank from about 18.7 billion US dollars in 2019 to 14.1 billion in 2023. Over the same period GDP per capita fell from 2,600 dollars to 1,858 dollars. The kip depreciated from under 14,000 to the dollar in 2021 to about 24,000 in 2023 Laos’s public and publicly guaranteed debt is estimated at more than 100% of GDP. China holds about half of Laos’s sovereign external debt. Laos has not formally defaulted, but it has only avoided default thanks to repeated temporary debt extensions granted by China. In 2023, more than half of domestic government revenue went to servicing debt (even after large extensions had already been obtained), leaving almost no fiscal space for education and health spending One of the main culprits was the flood of foreign investment in the mid-2010s, including the 6-billion-dollar China-Laos Railway and large-scale hydropower projects (mostly from China). These projects borrowed in foreign currency, but the payback period is long—when the kip collapsed, dollar-denominated debt exploded in local currency terms Foreign currency deposits in Laos account for 69% of broad money, and heavy dollarisation and bahtisation weaken the central bank’s ability to transmit monetary policy through policy rates, because the cost of Laos maintaining an independent currency far exceeds the benefit Cambodia’s core problem right now is the absence of sovereignty But this stability is built on “actively giving up monetary sovereignty”—about 80% of transactions are settled in US dollars, and the riel is mainly a tool for change and small rural transactions. Precisely because of high financial dollarisation, the riel’s exchange rate stays stable against the dollar—but that also means Cambodia’s central bank has almost no independent control over monetary policy Cambodia chose a path completely opposite to Laos’s: not “borrow foreign debt → kip collapses,” but “use the dollar directly → give up seigniorage → use Bakong to slowly find its way back” For a small colonised country, what does having its own currency actually mean Vietnam’s history gives the answer that you need strong economic fundamentals for a currency to be meaningful; Laos’s lesson is that if your economy can’t support an independent currency, forcing one to hold may be worse than not holding one. Cambodia’s experiment raises a third possibility: maybe you can in fact give up your own currency, and slowly find it again with digital technology More than 80% of China’s oil imports and a large volume of trade goods must pass through the Strait of Malacca. This strait is effectively controlled by Singapore and the US Navy—if China and the US come into conflict, the US can cut this lifeline. This is one of China’s greatest strategic anxieties The China-Laos Railway → connecting to the Thai railway → extending to Malaysia → finally reaching Singapore—if this overland corridor is fully connected, China will have an alternative trade route that bypasses the Strait of Malacca. Although rail capacity can’t fully replace shipping, it provides a “backup option” and strategic deterrence Belt and Road faces more and more “debt trap” criticism globally. China needs at least a few “success stories” to prove the model is viable. If the China-Laos Railway eventually runs through to Bangkok and even further, and the economies along the line really are driven along, China can point to it and say: “See, our model works” Conversely, if Laos really defaults and collapses, this would be one of Belt and Road’s biggest PR disasters. So China keeps granting Laos debt extensions, partly to protect its own narrative—it cannot let the most emblematic Belt and Road project country become a failure case This is the Malacca dilemma China faces The approach taken by the Monetary Authority of Singapore is rare, but very logically coherent It puts “the main tool of monetary policy” on the exchange rate rather than the policy interest rate This framework is often summarised as “basket, band and crawl; BBC”: using the weighted exchange rate of a basket of trading partner currencies as the intermediate target; allowing it to float within a band; and by setting the band’s “crawl slope,” letting it move gradually along a path consistent with fundamentals, to avoid long-term misalignment. The specific parameters of the policy band are usually not disclosed, supplemented by a degree of “constructive ambiguity,” while regular policy statements and data releases maintain comprehensibility and credibility Singapore has a high import share, and its trade volume far exceeds GDP; the exchange rate has a more direct and stronger effect on prices (especially imported inflation) than the interest rate does. At the same time, in an environment of highly mobile capital and interwoven offshore and onshore financial activity, a simple attempt to “lock down domestic interest rates” is quickly offset by cross-border capital flows, making it hard to serve as a stable policy anchor. Trade (exports and imports of goods and services) can reach several times GDP, and imports make up a very high share of domestic consumption. External price shocks (energy, food, international freight rates, tradable goods prices) transmit rapidly through the import channel, so “letting the local currency appreciate/depreciate relatively” usually has a more direct effect on inflation than “raising/lowering the domestic short-term interest rate.” Today in Siem Reap I checked into a hotel I booked through Booking. I won’t write the name down. When I placed the order, my first reaction was that I might have gotten a bargain. The photos on the page looked decent, the price wasn’t high, and it felt like I’d found a new place with good value. It was just that at the time, looking at the Booking page, the overall feeling was a bit dodgy — not like a very mature, very solid hotel. But I booked it anyway. I placed the order in the afternoon. After I ordered, they contacted me very quickly, first through Telegram, then switching to WhatsApp. That Telegram account even had Chinese in its name, and what looked like “HR” and such, which didn’t look like a standard hotel front-desk account — rather it had a very mixed, hybrid feeling. They were immediately very warm, saying they could do free pick-up and drop-off, and could help arrange some things. That warmth didn’t immediately put me at ease; instead it made me a bit nervous. The first thing that popped into my head was a very old cliché: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. After I got there, my first feeling wasn’t “this is a nice place to stay,” but “this place doesn’t seem ready.” The room was very ordinary, the space overall was very ordinary, the hotel itself was very ordinary — completely unlike the feeling I’d had before coming, that I’d “gotten a bargain.” It wasn’t a “slightly worse than expected” thing; the whole place had the feel of something just cobbled together, not yet really running smoothly. The location was a bit out of the way too. Not the feeling of a standard hotel zone with people coming and going and lots of tourists; the sense of safety in the surroundings was so-so. The first person I met had tattoos and knew a little Chinese. Elsewhere that might be nothing, but in Cambodia I’m naturally more wary of details like that. Especially when I realized the people here seemed to have contact with Chinese circles — I wasn’t more at ease, I was more put off. For me, running into Chinese people in an environment like this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Later I gradually learned that the owner is a very young Bangladeshi, around twenty-five, with a strong personality, and he works remotely. He said himself that he works at a casino, and that he knows some Chinese friends, some buddies. When he said these things, maybe he wanted to seem well-connected and experienced, or maybe he was just chatting — but this information didn’t put me at ease, it made me more nervous. I’m not familiar with that kind of background and I don’t want to get involved in it. Including his saying he makes two thousand US dollars a month — mixed together, all of this made the whole scene feel less like an ordinary hotel check-in and more like stumbling into some patch of ground somebody had hastily thrown up. The staff on site all looked quite young, and there was none of the division of labor you get in a mature hotel — more like a few young people working together on a project that had just opened. Later, after I asked, I found out I was their first guest. That information wasn’t volunteered by them; I asked and got it. By then, a lot of the incongruities that had seemed inexplicable up to that point suddenly had an explanation: this place probably really had just opened, and a lot of things weren’t ready yet. That day the pool was still being filled with water. There was no Wi-Fi, and their solution wasn’t to fix the network or to tell me when it would be back — they just took out a phone and gave me a hotspot. The whole way of handling things wasn’t “a hotel’s way of handling things,” but “a few people figuring out how to muddle through today.” Add to that the fact that they themselves admitted some of the hotel’s display images were AI-generated, and I felt even more clearly that this wasn’t a hotel already running steadily, but one where they’d made the page first, put the room up first, and then filled in the on-site details while operating. What really kept me checking over and over wasn’t “is it comfortable” or “is it worth the money,” but a more fundamental question: am I at risk to my life and safety here? I wasn’t thinking about whether the service was good, but about whether this door can lock, what these people’s backgrounds really are, whether it’d be easy to get away if something happened at this location, and whether all this excessive warmth was just a new place drumming up customers, or something else. I can’t say exactly which moment it started to feel “this hotel is very wrong”; it’s more that the whole process — ordering, being contacted, shifting between chat platforms, free pick-up, then arriving to see the people and the environment — was all abnormal. Each point on its own wasn’t decisive, but strung together they kept me on edge. It’s not that I didn’t think about leaving right away. It’s just that the feeling was strange; I can’t quite put it into words. It wasn’t that something concrete dangerous had already happened, nor that anyone had really done anything to me — it’s that the whole process didn’t resemble a normal, standard, reassuring hotel check-in. It was like stepping into a very makeshift scene, but the people in this makeshift scene were all especially friendly, even overly friendly. And so it became even harder to judge: you clearly feel something’s off, yet for the moment you can’t find a reason clear enough, legitimate enough, to justify turning around and leaving at once. They treated me well — or rather, their attitude was a bit over the top. They’d give me rides, help me make contacts, say they’d take me somewhere to hang out, and at night they’d even order takeout for me. In a normal, mature hotel system, none of that would be strange; but in a place where the pool is still being filled, there’s no Wi-Fi, it just opened, I’m the first guest, the owner has a complicated background, and the staff are all young, that goodness feels a bit out of balance. The infrastructure and operating capability hadn’t been built up, but people’s warmth had already raced ahead. In the end, what I could do wasn’t to be fully at ease, but to keep making a minimal judgment for myself. What I kept confirming was: at least so far, I haven’t felt a direct threat to my life. They didn’t force me, didn’t surround me, didn’t show obvious malice. That fear was more a fear of uncertainty than a fear of a danger that had already happened. So in the end I didn’t leave immediately, but stayed for now, in a very complicated state. Looking back now, the strangest thing about this experience isn’t any single detail, but that they all stacked together: a hotel page on Booking that already looked a bit dodgy, a string of shifting contacts from Telegram to WhatsApp, an account with Chinese and traces of “HR” in its name, a twenty-five-year-old Bangladeshi owner, working remotely at a casino, someone who knows a little Chinese, knows Chinese friends and buddies, free pick-up, excessive warmth, a pool being filled, no Wi-Fi, a phone hotspot given to me, a very ordinary premises, and me still being their first guest. The whole thing doesn’t feel like a normal hotel check-in; it’s more like I accidentally checked into a place that had just been thrown up and hadn’t fully landed. They were friendly the whole time, but the one thing I genuinely cared about from start to finish was: if I stay here tonight, am I actually safe. Combining the system modeling of them, my understanding of that kind of group, and my understanding of Cambodia’s current situation, the analysis is that this is most likely a group of young people with complicated backgrounds who hastily opened an accommodation point, where the owner himself has ties to casinos/cross-border circles, and the operation is extremely irregular. The style of this hotel they posted really feels like a casino’s style, lol. The surface identity is hotel, homestay, pick-up, travel services, but in reality the friend circle probably connects to casino workers, outsourced customer service, recruitment agents, drivers, currency exchange, nightlife, online business. The contact tools aren’t a standard front-desk system but Telegram, WhatsApp, personal numbers, and the way they do things isn’t the standard hotel process but “who knows who, who comes to help first, just catch the person first and figure it out later.” The style of this business card they posted. Mainly concentrated in Sihanoukville (Sihanoukville), Poipet (on the Thai border), Bavet (on the Vietnamese border) and other places. The profile and current situation of the workers. Employees of legal brick-and-mortar casinos, including service, security, dealers: local Cambodians make up a large share, mostly women; learning a bit of Chinese can double your wage, and Chinese employees are basically management. Casinos are mostly Chinese-language environments (Chinese signage, waiters), smoke-free in principle yet wreathed in smoke, serving Chinese gamblers. The work is relatively stable, but after the pandemic/bans there was mass unemployment (Sihanoukville once had 7,000+ Cambodians out of work). NagaWorld, for example, once had a union strike, with many women leaders. Workers in illegal online gambling and scam compounds: mainly young people from mainland China, 20–30 years old. Supplemented by Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Burmese), Africans, even children (from age 14). At the peak, Sihanoukville had 500,000–600,000 Chinese, more than half of them involved in this. Mostly low-income people from home (waiters earning 3,000 yuan a month), debtors, ex-convicts fleeing China’s crackdowns, and “all sorts of shady types” (triads, tattooed men). Recruited through fake job ads on 58.com, Baidu Tieba, WeChat/Telegram/Facebook (“online customer service,” “promotion,” “IT,” “typist,” promising high pay + airfare covered). Middlemen pick you up at the airport; once you land your passport is taken and you sign a “6-month contract” (breach = fine). Some go voluntarily, then it turns coercive (debt bondage, violence). Daily life basically revolves around: a military-controlled compound/tower (barbed wire, security, 8-person dorm rooms), 12–18 hour shifts. Departments: HR (recruiting people from home), promotion (the core — pulling people in to top up and gamble/scamming, chatting while playing different characters, “pig-butchering”), customer service (top-ups, answering questions). They farm fake WeChat accounts, change identities to lure people into gambling. Inside the dorm there’s a canteen/supermarket, but going out is forbidden. Income gaps are huge — bottom-rung base salary 6,000+, top promotion supervisors 200,000+; the bosses are called “dog bosses,” mostly from Fujian, around thirty, newly rich (a mid-sized operation makes 5 million+ a month in profit), with bodyguards, running it as a family business. Opening the door, through the light, sweeping across the courtyard, past the banana trees and greenery, you can clearly see the pool in the distance. The pool’s edge looks very rough; there’s even blue tarpaulin (or similar clutter) piled beside it, and the bottom or walls of the pool are faintly visible. There’s none of the shimmering, ready-to-swim state of a normal hotel pool. It looks like something long abandoned and only now beginning to be cleaned up, or a pool just built and not yet fully finished. This shows the operator’s logic isn’t “prepare perfectly, then open,” but “put the frame up first, con whoever you can, fix it while making money.” Judging by the corridor structure in the video — white columns, arches, red wooden railings, and a red shrine in the distance (the four-faced Buddha / land god shrine common in Southeast Asia) — this looks more like a large local residence or private villa with a courtyard than a purpose-designed commercial hotel. Quite possibly it’s a local vacant villa they rented before. In the whole video there’s only birdsong in the background. The red-cushioned wooden chairs on the corridor are empty, no staff walking around, no service carts, cleaning tools or other daily hotel life — they just hired the wife of a local partner to come do basic cleaning tasks. This is most likely a byproduct spilled over from Cambodia’s gray economy / fringe circles. Because of Cambodia’s crackdown or transformation of certain industries these past two years, some peripheral young people with backgrounds in casinos, telecom-fraud compounds and cross-border gray business started looking for ways to “go legit” or earn money on the side. They use the wild methods of gray business (AI-generated fake images, Telegram traffic funneling, grabbing customers through acquaintances, overpromising) to run a physical service business. A local-run place, but the owner looks a lot like a Chinese person — maybe of Chinese descent? He doesn’t speak Chinese. Actually that seems pretty common in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. It’s called ហាង គុយទាវស៊ុបខ្មែរ, which translated directly just means Khmer soup noodle shop / Khmer soup noodle house. The owner doesn’t speak English and doesn’t speak Chinese, but the storefront has Chinese couplets pasted on it. There was no English menu and no Chinese menu. The owner nodded friendly and pointed at the noodles, pointed at the meat, and I nodded to say that was fine. Very fresh beef, and a style similar to a mix with Vietnamese rice noodles — very Southeast Asian in character. A very typical Cambodian rice-noodle soup system, historically influenced by regional exchange, with a lot of crossover with Chinese noodle soups, Vietnamese pho, and the Chaoshan/Fujian soup-noodle traditions, so eating it you get a feeling of “not pure Chinese food, not pure Vietnamese pho, but a Southeast Asian local fusion.” They seemed very friendly~ China’s first-tier cities are overall more expensive, but many everyday items are actually cheaper or better value in China. Cambodia gave me the same feeling as Nepal: day-to-day spending isn’t low. Partly because it’s a tourist city, and moreover, in a tourist city like Siem Reap (Krong Siem Reap) rent isn’t cheap. Local snacks, taxis, delivery, online shopping, industrial goods, electronics, public transport — in China these are often cheaper and more stable, or “better quality for the same price.” This is because of China’s extraordinarily strong supply chain and logistics density; Chinese manufacturing, delivery networks and platform competition drive many daily goods, dining and transport prices very low. Cambodia’s market is smaller, more import-dependent, and distribution efficiency lower, so many seemingly ordinary goods and services aren’t cheap. In China the path from production to transaction is almost frictionless: the fixed cost spread over each unit of goods is lower, circulation loss is lower, competition is fiercer, turnover is faster. China is still one of the world’s largest manufacturing countries, and its consumer market and online retail scale are also enormous; in 2025 China’s total retail sales of consumer goods reached 50.1 trillion yuan, with online retail sales of physical goods accounting for 26.1% of the total. At the same time, China’s express delivery volume reached about 199 billion parcels in 2025, showing that its distribution network already runs as an ultra-high-frequency, ultra-large-scale system. The bigger a country’s market, the easier it is for the same good to achieve mass production, mass purchasing and mass distribution. Fixed costs — factories, molds, warehouses, software systems, operations teams — can be spread over more goods, so the per-unit cost falls. China’s advantage lies exactly here: not only is manufacturing scale large, the consumer market is large too, and both online and offline can scale up quickly, so many goods start out not as “small batch, high margin” but as “large batch, low margin, high turnover.” But in scarce core downtown land in first-tier cities, in high-end services that are heavily labor-dependent and hard to scale, and in resource-based services in education and healthcare, China isn’t necessarily cheap — it can be even more expensive. This isn’t a contradiction; it’s because these areas can’t have their costs compressed to the extreme by supply chains and platforms the way industrial goods can. It seems scarcity economics is moving toward abundance economics: AI and humanoid robots can produce almost anything we need, including goods, services, healthcare and education, at close to zero cost. When AI cuts production costs by 30%, the value created either flows entirely to shareholders or partly returns to society. So AI can create so many goods and services that prices collapse. Your money can buy unlimited resources and labor, with no extra work required, and the basic standard of living for humanity can be raised. AI raises productivity, but at the same time it redistributes who gets access to that productivity. Built in the 18th century, it’s one of the oldest and most important Buddhist temples in Siem Reap. Its full name is Wat Reach Bo (Wat Raja Bo), it has more than 100 monks, and it’s the largest active temple in Siem Reap province. It’s a place of practice for Theravada Buddhism and is still a working pagoda — monks live, study and chant here. The temple is very peaceful and quiet, without many tourists; there are some local devotees and many stupas. Wat Bo’s most unique value lies in the murals inside the main hall (vihara) — Hindu narratives. Siem Reap province was under Siamese (now Thai) control until 1907. This means Wat Bo’s construction and decoration happened during a period of deep Thai-Khmer cultural intermingling. The Thai elements in the murals aren’t accidental — they’re the direct trace of that colonial/suzerain relationship. The architectural style shows traditional Khmer features: curved spires, red-tiled roofs and finely decorated colonnades. The main hall (vihara) has a triple-tiered roof structure with wooden gables preserved in situ. The main structure is built of red brick, with fine wood carving decorating the building throughout. For centuries, monks were the only literate people in the countryside; they served as teachers, instructing temple attendants, novices and newly ordained monks. Until the 1970s, most literate Cambodian men gained their literacy entirely through education in the monastic order. That is to say, becoming a monk wasn’t just a religious choice, but almost the only channel for acquiring knowledge and social mobility. Monks were also often healers; in traditional Khmer culture their role is the closest thing to a modern psychiatrist. They might also be well versed in astrology. This means a monk played multiple roles at once: teacher, psychological counselor, ritual presider, moral authority. Laypeople provide monks with food and daily necessities, and monks, through their presence and teaching, give laypeople a way to accumulate good karma. Monks follow the precepts and, as alms-beggars, receive the four necessities of food, clothing, shelter and medicine from the faithful. The sense of rupture in the Khmer Rouge era: monks were forced to disrobe and do manual labor, religion was banned, and temples were destroyed or damaged. It’s estimated that as many as 50,000 monks died during this period. There are many stupas; the most primitive form of this kind of building is a mound of earth. In ancient Buddhist texts, the original chedei is simply a grave mound, built to hold the Buddha’s relics and ashes. But in the Khmer Rouge era, these customary cremation or burial procedures weren’t carried out either; a great many people died violently and were thrown into mass graves, uncremated. Those souls were trapped, unable to reincarnate — not just political violence, but a disruption of the entire cosmic order. So that transparent stupa at Choeung Ek is like a belated vessel for those dead who never received the proper rites. Another thing I saw, at Wat Bo temple I also came across a personal blessing ceremony, and I remember earlier in Thailand I also ran into monks giving guidance Worshippers come to the temple, kneel in front of a monk, and ask for a personal blessing. The monk chants Pali scriptures, and may then lightly sprinkle holy water on the worshipper’s head and body with a bundle of grass or a small broom dipped in water. This is called ស្រោចទឹក (srauch teuk), the water-pouring blessing The reasons worshippers come to ask for a blessing are very varied—perhaps safety before a long trip, recovery from illness, difficulties in business, family conflict, the start of a new job, or simply routine merit-making. No appointment is needed in advance, you can go at any time Inside the wat, when worshippers sit down they bend their legs and tuck their feet to one side, and when greeting they press their palms together (Som Pas) and bow to the ground three times. A worshipper’s head must be lower than the monk’s head—this isn’t just etiquette, it’s a bodily expression of cosmic order: the monk, as one who has left the household life, stands higher on the spiritual hierarchy than laypeople Besides everyday blessings, there’s also consultation and counselling, and merit transference (transferring merit to family members who have died, so they get a better destination in the cycle of rebirth) The monk ties a white or yellow cotton thread around the worshipper’s wrist—that’s ខ្សែដៃ (kse dai), the protective string. Worshippers usually wear this thread until it falls off on its own, believing it offers continuous protection; I came across this in Nepal too Vietnam is itself a Marxist-Leninist regime. In communist theory, religion is “the opium of the people”—something to be controlled and gradually marginalised, not encouraged. Vietnam applies similar controls to the Buddhist sangha inside its own country. So the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) that they propped up naturally carried on this same logic So men under 55 were forbidden from becoming monks; [the sangha] had enormous capacity for political mobilisation, and the transmission of knowledge was broken Singapore’s favourite figure He was the chief architect of Singapore’s economic take-off The hardest bones to chew in Singapore’s early years as a nation—the economy, defence, finance, education—almost all of them he handled single-handedly and laid the foundations for In the early years of nation-building Singapore had extremely high unemployment and faced a crisis of survival. After Goh Keng Swee became the first finance minister, he made a crazy decision: reclaim land from the sea, and build the largest modern industrial park in all of Asia in the raw swamps and jungle of Jurong in the west He did whatever it took to build roads, supply water, supply electricity, set extremely favourable tax policies, and go around the world drumming up business Goh Keng Swee studied the Israeli and Swiss models, and pushed through, against all objections, the highly controversial “National Service” system, requiring every Singaporean male over 18 to serve two years in the military. Within just a few years this produced a well-equipped modern army capable of forming a “poison shrimp” deterrent in Southeast Asia (the Singapore Armed Forces, SAF) After defence and industry, he began long-term planning for Singapore’s wealth He single-handedly set up the institution equivalent to Singapore’s central bank, and built an extremely strict financial regulatory system, making Singapore one of the safest and most transparent financial centres in Asia By 1981 Singapore’s foreign exchange reserves were already very substantial. Goh Keng Swee believed that money sitting in a bank earning interest would be eaten away by inflation, so he founded the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), taking the nation’s money and investing it globally to make more money. Today, GIC is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world He didn’t sit in a Beijing office drinking tea; instead he brought a team (even paying for his own air tickets and study-tour costs) and studied China’s coastal special zones (such as Shenzhen, Xiamen, Zhuhai and others) extremely thoroughly Don’t be afraid of foreign capital exploitation—foreign companies come for profit, but the technology lasts, so be bold in giving foreign capital concessions (investment philosophy) Don’t blindly borrow foreign debt; many developing countries built on heavy foreign borrowing and ended up in obvious debt crises; you must attract direct investment (FDI) It feels very different, and this kind of different is hard to find a substitute for Actually, after coming to Cambodia, I also ran into robbery and casinos But… the feeling on the first day in Siem Reap Siem Reap really is special A world-class ancient civilisation site + a walkable small-town scale + a Southeast Asian mix of Buddhist and French colonial character + cheap + café/digital-nomad friendly + not quite a big city but not so small that it’s boring Different from every city I’ve been to before; similar cultural small cities, Penang, Hoi An, and other small cities in other countries, none of them seem able to substitute for it Siem Reap looks like it’s been dragged up by a super-civilisation site; the whole city lives inside Angkor’s gravitational field In the morning you get up and thousand-year-old temples, moats, ancient trees and stone carvings are all there to see at any time At midday you come back into town to eat, drink coffee, get a massage At night you can go back to the night market, Pub Street, the riverside—very contemporary, very relaxed spaces Especially at this point when the tourist numbers aren’t off the charts and Chinese people are rarely seen Wat Bo: the temple has an old-fashioned, very quiet sense of breathing BIOLAB CAFÉ: a café with “lab” in the name is generally worth trying Wat Preah Prom Rath: that feeling of a temple pressed right up against everyday life is especially obvious here Just an ordinary small town, slowly sunbaked Temples, cafés, the roadside, tuk-tuks, monks, tourists, dogs, tree shade, all mixed together If a person treats deception as a tool, habitually using concealment, manipulation and clever talk to achieve their aims The cost of deception is very low, and there’s a lack of genuine guilt I feel it’s hard to change Because there’s no real price paid, no sustained action to change, most likely they’ll keep deceiving Wow, really, I watched that video by Yingshi Jufeng on Bilibili, and I thought it was absolutely incredible. The Bangladesh it introduced — Bangladesh is itself a very densely populated South Asian country shaped by rivers. It borders India on three sides and Myanmar on the other. The country isn’t that big, but its population is enormous. Its capital is a capital with a huge number of people. And it sits on the world’s largest river delta, so its land is extremely fertile, which also dooms it to be like many Southeast Asian countries: agriculture matters enormously. The population is also very dense, infrastructure is very hard to build, and the climate is very fragile. What’s really interesting is that it wasn’t a naturally unified long-standing country. In modern times it has many ethnic groups and fierce political disputes. It originally belonged to India’s Bengal region, and later became independent as Bangladesh. So now its own language, Bengali, its own sense of national identity, and its unique narrative of historical memory are the core of the legitimacy of this country’s modernisation. Bangladesh places great importance on one thing: it’s not only floods, not only poverty, not only cheap labour. Under severe resource constraints, it’s a developmental society built on population, on manufacturing, on women’s labour, and on social mobilisation. It’s one of the world’s 35th largest economies, but in the future there’s a lot of… The money for getting out of poverty is much more now too — since 2010 or so, more than 30 million people in Bangladesh have escaped poverty. But it’s still quite hard right now. Its social structure is very young, but it also very much emphasises a relationship-network society. I remember its capital, Dhaka, is the densest and most congested big city in the world. But its vitality is super strong, and the pressure on infrastructure is enormous. There are also a lot of motorcycle taxis. I think this country is quite interesting. It sits at the junction of India, China, and some parts of Southeast Asia. Its climate is especially interesting too. I think Bangladesh’s system has some problems — it came from the colonial period at the very start, from the needs of the ports and the barracks. And then after independence, from a reality of compromise that couldn’t be undone or eliminated, piled up. In early South Asia there were actually some singing-and-dancing performers appearing; at that time it was a fairly scattered social phenomenon. Then in the colonial period of British India, it was actually the colonial authorities — they wanted to control venereal disease among soldiers, so they pulled some sex workers into a managed space. It was actually for the army and for public order that they managed it; at that point they already recognised its existence, in order to turn it into an object that could be controlled, isolated, used, suppressed. And its distribution is interesting too — it wasn’t officially planned in a normal way; wherever there was a male-dense place, a place where people stayed a long time, local power already tacitly accepted it, and that’s where it was. After independence, in fact, Article 18 of its constitution clearly states that it effectively prevents prostitution and gambling. But in reality the contradiction is that it hasn’t been criminalised — private transactions are still recognised — and managing a brothel may be illegal, while in practice its existence is tacitly accepted. So it’s now a spatial, tolerant system. Plus now there are many poor families, many abandoned women. And so it formed a semi-feudal community, and this kind of social structure. You can’t treat it just as a temple; you have to look at it as the ruins of an imperial capital complex. UNESCO defines Angkor as one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, covering more than 400 square kilometers—not just Angkor Wat itself, but also multiple capitals of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to 15th centuries, temples, water systems, and road networks. Angkor’s soul roughly has three kinds: The first is imperial orthodoxy and cosmic order, represented by Angkor Wat; the second is the face of royal power and religious transformation, represented by Bayon and Angkor Thom; the third is a sense of ruins, of forest, of time, represented by places like Ta Prohm, Banteay Samre, and Beng Mealea. These three correspond respectively to the Small Circuit, the Grand Circuit, and the Outer Circuit. Among the Outer Circuit, the one most worth a special trip is Banteay Srei, followed by Beng Mealea. The ranking of the individual sites most worth visiting: Angkor Wat Bayon Ta Prohm Banteay Srei Preah Khan Beng Mealea Angkor is a national project of the Khmer Empire—not just temples, but also the imperial capital complex; the remains of different capitals of the Khmer Empire are preserved here. In its early period Angkor was deeply influenced by Hinduism, and later it gradually shifted to Mahayana Buddhism, then layered on Theravada Buddhist influence. The most typical is the move from imperial symbols leaning toward the Brahmanical system, such as Angkor Wat and Baphuon, to the Buddhist royal-power expressions of Jayavarman VII’s era, such as Bayon, Ta Prohm, and Preah Khan. King Suryavarman II (reigned 1113–1150) threw the whole strength of the nation into building Angkor Wat, which took about 37 years. As the highest masterpiece of Khmer architectural art, this magnificent structure was not only the empire’s state temple but also the funerary temple Suryavarman II prepared for himself. Suryavarman II dedicated Angkor Wat specifically to the Hindu protective god Vishnu; the temple’s original name, “Paramavishnuloka,” means “the sacred dwelling place of Vishnu.” To complete this colossal project, Suryavarman II used about 300,000 workers and 6,000 elephants. In construction technique, the craftsmen used mortar-free dry masonry, the corbel arch, and mortise-and-tenon joints, achieving an extremely precise and stable interlocking of the building. Suryavarman II’s architects cleverly combined the traditional Khmer “temple-mountain” with the “galleried temple” structure, designing Angkor Wat as a perfect miniature model of Mount Meru, the center of the Hindu cosmos. Suryavarman II not only built a temple but left behind a vast “epic in stone.” The galleries of Angkor Wat hold nearly 1,000 square meters of exquisite bas-reliefs, vividly depicting the epic stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, especially the famous “Churning of the Ocean of Milk” scene in the east gallery. Even more striking: in the 94-meter-long relief in the south gallery, Suryavarman II’s own royal procession is directly depicted, with him seated on an elephant surrounded by 15 parasols — the most direct visual declaration of his absolute secular power and sacred authority. Regrettably, after Suryavarman II’s death the construction of Angkor Wat stopped, leaving some of the relief decoration unfinished to this day. It lays out the Hindu, and later Buddhist, view of the cosmos. Angkor Wat’s cosmology is the core key to understanding the whole complex. In the Khmer civilization’s worldview, the cosmos has a fixed structural model, and Angkor Wat is the material reproduction of that cosmos. Mount Meru: the center of the cosmos and the gods. In myth, Mount Meru is the center of the universe (the world axis) and the dwelling place of the gods. The five progressively taller stone towers arranged in a “quincunx” at the center of Angkor Wat are precisely meant to reproduce the five peaks of Mount Meru. Through the corridors and towers rising level by level, the architecture symbolizes the pilgrim’s arduous climb toward the realm of the gods. By reproducing the sacred Mount Meru on earth, Angkor Wat anchored the Khmer kingdom at the center of cosmic order, and established the legitimacy of the king who built it as a sacred mediator between gods and mortals. Cosmic Ocean: the boundary between the sacred and the profane. Angkor Wat’s outer perimeter is surrounded by massive stone walls and a moat up to 190 meters wide. These outer walls and moat were not merely fortifications or waterworks; they symbolize the ranges of mountains and the vast “cosmic ocean” encircling Mount Meru. On the spiritual level, the water reinforces the boundary of sacred space: when a pilgrim crosses the moat, it marks their crossing of the “cosmic waters,” completing the inner transition from the mortal, profane world into the sacred center of the cosmos. Echoing the myth of the “Churning of the Ocean of Milk.” The symbolic meaning of the cosmic ocean is also tightly linked to the most famous giant relief at Angkor Wat, the “Churning of the Ocean of Milk.” That myth tells of gods (Devas) and demons (Asuras) cooperating to churn the cosmic ocean in order to obtain the nectar of immortality. In this grand architectural context, the moat surrounding Angkor Wat is seen as the incarnation of the “ocean of milk,” while the temple at the center represents the sacred cosmic order. This combination of water and architecture vividly expresses the Khmer belief about creating life out of chaos and maintaining cosmic balance. Built by water, ruined by water: agricultural collapse and imperial decline. This highly engineered hydraulic agricultural system brought unprecedented prosperity, but it was also extremely fragile. By the 14th to 15th centuries, as over-logging caused soil erosion and the canals silted up badly, the water system began to fail. The region then suffered decades of alternating extreme drought and violent downpours (the effect of the Little Ice Age), which completely destroyed the aging reservoirs and irrigation network. When the hydraulic system collapsed, rice yields plummeted — from three or four harvests a year plunging to one or two. The food shortage made it impossible to keep supporting a huge population and army; the empire fell into civil strife and was ultimately forced to move south under Siamese (Thai) invasion, marking the end of Angkor’s golden age. Today I just spent 3 hours, and then came to this Angkor museum — it’s a museum here in Siem Reap, one in Siem Reap, and I felt it was pretty interesting. Before coming I had actually read up on Angkor Wat, and on the history of Siem Reap, including some Khmer history, and it all felt really interesting. I wasn’t actually considering coming to this museum, because it charges quite a lot — this time it cost me 18 US dollars, which feels on the high side for people like us who aren’t earning US dollars. But after seeing it, I thought the experience was very good, because although it doesn’t have all that many truly precious artifacts, it’s a single thread that helps you understand what the whole history of Angkor was like, and the background relationships between the various Buddha statues, the various goddesses, the various gods and Buddhas and immortals, including the background relationships of Hinduism and the basic relationships of Buddhism — I found that very interesting. The museum is like a proof of presence: it lets you walk through it yourself and makes you feel that these things aren’t only to be learned online or from books, but that you can also go to the actual sites and look at the corresponding ancient monuments, some very precious exhibits, look at them very closely, observe their details, observe their workmanship, observe their carving art. And then there are all kinds of wooden Buddha statues, stone Buddha statues, metal Buddha statues, silver figures. And I just marvel at how fine the workmanship is — it’s really impressive. It suddenly hit me that if I were to sum up the whole learning process right now, I’d say it’s really interesting. At the beginning I used some AI tools to quickly help me understand the history of this place, and it would organize things into chapters for me; for instance, when introducing the history of Angkor, or the history of the Khmer, or the history of Cambodia, it would arrange it and tell me the original historical stories of this place, and then the later turns — why they chose Hinduism, and why they later shifted to Buddhism, and their most important industries, like agriculture, and why agriculture mattered so much, and what’s closely tied to agriculture here, namely the water systems, and how the water systems and the weather here affected this country, and then later some of the modernization process. And some of the famous sights here. For example, the Cambodian flag has Angkor Wat on it, and Angkor Wat’s influence on this place — it’s like a calling card for Cambodia. And then it introduced the history of Angkor Wat, some of the architectural features inside Angkor Wat. Then I actually went to see this museum in person, I went into the museum and experienced it firsthand. And in the process I also used AI to help me record things, including taking some photos, or sending in some corresponding terms, and it also helped me expand on them in detail — it felt like learning by looking at real objects. It would introduce which gods there are, which Buddhas there are, which immortals there are, which historical background stories there are, and what they specifically look like, including the dancing girls — all blending together, and it helped me break them down one by one, helping me identify these ancient monuments, and their specific proxies, the background stories they specifically map onto, their specific history, and what their specific myths look like. I think this is very helpful for me to learn in an embodied way. And then the deepest learning method was to go to Angkor Wat and feel the most famous place here, the Angkor Wat that is renowned the world over. Specifically, to feel it in greater depth inside Angkor Wat — what the real experience is like. I think this process is, at Angkor Wat, something like an embodied experience, bringing yourself into that environment to feel this story that is so rich in history and culture, such a legend in human history. That’s very embodied, and I think it’s really interesting. It’s like a subjective experience, a personal experience. And then this learning method basically goes: from how to use AI to learn quickly at the very start, and then how to, concretely, through real objects, empathize — by observing the details, through your own eyes, to observe what the real object specifically looks like. Through being there in person to feel it, and then through bringing yourself into a historically meaningful environment, an environmental field, to genuinely understand the historical story, and to feel the growth that this cultural monument brings you. Highly recommend coming to the Angkor National Museum before going to Angkor Wat. It covers the history, civilization and cultural heritage of the Khmer. I’m moved by the worldview and the narratives the Khmer civilization left behind. A civilization that, with no external coercion whatsoever, made tens of thousands of people believe that the same thing was worth spending a lifetime on. Preah Ang Chek Preah Ang Chorm Shrine You could call it Siem Reap’s guardian shrine Originally enshrined in the Preah Poan gallery (the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas) at Angkor Wat. “Chek” and “Chorm” are abbreviations of royal titles, confirming their royal bloodline In 1950, the two bronze statues were rediscovered in the forest near Angkor Thom They were then taken by troops under Dap Chhuon, the governor of Siem Reap—a notorious warlord. Legend says he used black magic and could carry both Buddha statues on one shoulder, when normally it took five soldiers together to lift one. He spent half an hour praying before the statues every day, and it’s said the statues even “told” him in advance of Prince Sihanouk’s plan to assassinate him After Dap Chhuon was executed, the statues passed to the department of religious affairs, and later moved to Wat Damnak The Khmer Rouge period was the worst—the Khmer Rouge commander stationed in Siem Reap was a fanatical iconoclast, and ordered soldiers to throw both statues into the Siem Reap River, Phnom Penh Post. Folk legend says the soldier who carried out the order and the commander both fell ill and died not long after After the Khmer Rouge retreated in 1979, Siem Reap residents recovered the statues from the riverbed, Phnom Penh Post, and in 1982 this shrine was built at its current location Every day a lot of people come to offer incense, maybe several hundred, and on special days like Pchum Ben, Khmer New Year and the Water Festival it goes over 800 Locals believe these two “sister goddesses” can protect the whole city of Siem Reap, and many newlywed couples come to pray for blessings. Worshippers offer lotus flowers and incense candles, and also wash the statues’ hands and feet with holy water to pray for good luck (so that’s what I saw) Cambodians’ attachment to these kinds of sacred spaces is, to some extent, also a kind of spiritual rebuilding after trauma During Khmer Rouge rule (1975–1979) Siem Reap went through the same nightmare as the rest of the country—city residents were forcibly driven out to the countryside to do hard labour. But Siem Reap has several particularities: For the Khmer Rouge, Angkor was both a symbol of the “feudalism” they hated, and at the same time a huge source of national pride—it proved that Khmer people could achieve any great undertaking With the systematic destruction of Buddhism, Siem Reap’s temples weren’t demolished, but all were converted to military use, and all monks were forced to disrobe Members of the Angkor conservation institution and their families survived—they were sent to villages in the Roluos-Bakong area for collective labour The Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas at Angkor Wat was looted. There are reports that of the original thousand-plus Buddha statues in the gallery only about 15 remain; the statues were smashed and crudely destroyed. When the Khmer Rouge retreated they also laid large numbers of landmines around the temples, Travelcuriousoften, and clearance work went on for several years Siem Reap was the last area to return to peace The civil war continued until the late 1990s, Siem Reap. Even today, outside Siem Reap airport there are still fences marking minefields, and unexploded ordnance is occasionally found in the urban area The motorbike was originally 13💲/ day; for three days it cost me 24💲 I’m pretty good at haggling, hehe but it’s still so expensive Tomorrow the Angkor itinerary starts, looking forward to it; along the way I’ll keep recording, and keep having a few more thoughts Went to this place again today. In the morning I was about to go wander the Angkor big circuit, and passing this shop I thought I’d eat here again. Still very friendly; the grandpa recommended some noodles and meat The pho still tasted delicious; the price feels slightly high, three US dollars, though locally—what I ate before seemed much cheaper I still feel it’s Preah Khan that has more of a run-down feel; as for this, uh, water temple now, it’s really built around one temple. At first it was for giving blessings to locals, because you pass by a pond here, and the scenery of the pond is quite nice to look at, so they came to believe that this water washes away sin Wanted to get to know some local friends in Siem Reap. They asked me some questions, like isn’t Angkor boring? It seems that deep down we feel something about our country’s cultural heritage—like the very famous Forbidden City, the Great Wall—these are like a calling card for our country, giving us a sense of belonging and achievement. But this feeling is actually very obvious in Cambodia; maybe because Cambodia has this, it has a calling card to the outside, it has a medium through which to open a window between itself and the outside world. Leaving that aside, as for the friends here, they also feel that the existence of Angkor Wat makes them very proud—that their own country has such a calling card. Even during the Khmer Rouge period, this side existed too—Buddhism, and yet on the other hand they see this as a miracle; it represents a spirit, a very proud spirit. I think this is really interesting. Siem Reap Ta Prohm Temple, an absolutely beautiful secret place It’s also a filming location for Tomb Raider My feeling after going there—this temple gives me the sense that it’s very mysterious, it really fits my definition of a secret place On the question of Hinduism’s inclusiveness I feel like there are really so many Americans; an American came to the hotel today too. He seems super outgoing, dying laughing, and he has a beard too—the whole person gives me the impression of someone with a lot of personality, is this American freedom? LOL, and people are really so outgoing We ate together in the evening, and I really didn’t fit in—I don’t smoke, I don’t drink I always thought Angkor Wat was very big and very spread out, but it seems that’s not the case. Angkor Wat by default in fact refers only to that one sacred zone in the middle. Angkor Wat is actually a miniature building built with Hinduism as its world model It was built by Suryavarman II Angkor Thom was built by Jayavarman VII, emphasising “rule + people’s livelihood + a turn to Buddhism” Angkor Wat is a world of gods, a description of a religious cosmos Five towers (Mount Meru) + the four-faced Buddha of Bayon are actually expressing the same cosmic model Because it seems that in the time of the seventh [reign], because the empire had long had religions piling up and blending, the process of iterating into Buddhism was often not a simple replacement but a process of fusion. So the way it existed here in the Khmer lands was a long-term coexistence of Hinduism and Buddhism He built Bayon Temple (“the smiling Buddha faces”) Emphasising compassion and the salvation of all beings It shows that when a great culture merges into a local place, everyone is actually taking a blending approach. That is, in order to adapt to one’s own original culture, while the modern culture is more conducive to maintaining the new order and understanding the new world, so the conflicts that arise between them often take the form of fusion rather than replacement—and it’s like this in the culture of any country This includes Tibetan Buddhism: the Bon religion at the start, then later replaced by Buddhism—that too was a process of fusion. There are still many traces of Bon today I think Angkor Wat is really a place worth studying in detail, because to understand it you actually have to understand Hinduism—especially its axis, its proportions, its symbolic system and its moat, and the meanings these correspond to within Hinduism. So only by understanding Hinduism can you understand Angkor Wat Bayon is very interesting: if Angkor Wat is the extreme of order, then Bayon is the extreme of spirituality. It’s the central temple of Angkor Thom, and it’s known for the large number of temple stone statues nearby. And it actually had a ten-year continuous priority conservation project. And its status in Angkor is quite high, its recognisability is number one globally, and its expression of royal power, religious transition and its narrative capacity are all very strong The coolest thing about Angkor Wat is that it translated the Hindu cosmic model into architecture almost completely Including the five main towers: Mount Meru, that is, the centre of the Hindu cosmos, the dwelling place of the gods The moat is the cosmic ocean, not just a defensive structure. According to the traditional explanation, it symbolises the cosmic sea surrounding Mount Meru. That is, as a visitor walks step by step in from outside, they are completing a symbolic journey from the “human world” into the “centre of the divine realm” Walls and layer upon layer of galleries: cosmic boundaries and hierarchical space. The whole building advances from outside inward, from low to high: outer wall, long causeway, galleries, platform, main tower, forming a very clear hierarchical order. Britannica summarises Angkor Wat as an “artificial mountain” rising level by level to the top within three enclosures; this is exactly the typical Khmer “temple mountain” logic Actually when I was at Angkor Wat I felt this very deeply: going up feels like advancing layer by layer, there seem to be three enclosures, and each time you basically go up a step; going up a step feels like climbing a mountain, it’s just that the mountain has been made into this kind of palace form. So I feel that the further in you go, the more sacred it feels, and the higher you go, the closer you feel to the gods And actually there’s a very important point about Angkor Wat: like the Forbidden City in China and other grand designs, it is a machine of order—absolutely symmetrical, absolutely ordered. It also emphasises axis, symmetry, repetition and progression. And I think, as the pinnacle of classical Khmer art, this is very interesting And have you noticed, this time we went in from the west gate, which means at the moment you go in from the west gate you can see the sun rising from the east, and then you can see the sun above the main tower; and it happened to be a special day today, so we could capture the moment the sun rose above the tower. And I think that moment was so beautiful—no wonder it’s called the most beautiful sunrise in the world, because this sunrise carries intense colour, religious faith, scientific order, and also the expectations of countless people, plus some very good-spirited crowds, really interesting Angkor Wat was originally dedicated to Vishnu, not Shiva. This point is very important, because many Angkor buildings belong to the Shiva system, but Angkor Wat’s original religious affiliation more clearly leans toward Vishnu And it’s also linked to a very famous episode in Indian Hindu mythology, the Churning of the Ocean of Milk: the gods and the asuras used a giant serpent as a rope and churned the ocean of milk around the sacred mountain, in search of the nectar of immortality This corresponds directly to the design of Angkor Wat Actually I remember it started with the Buddha. When he first wrote that Buddhist text, he actually mentioned a great deal about the gods, about some of the three great deities in Hinduism, such as Brahma, such as Shiva, such as Vishnu The process of development is that Buddhism arose within the ancient Indian cultural sphere, and grew first out of the soil of Indian religious and philosophical tradition; later Hinduism, in its long development, absorbed part of Buddhism’s thinking, practice methods and organisational forms Buddhism at the start really was responding to India’s native religious environment This is very interesting It was built in the time of King [Jayavarman] VII, that is, at that time they were turning to Buddhism, which means its religious character is a Mahayana Buddhist monastery. So when I went in I actually saw many people kneeling and worshipping the Buddha there. A very different point between Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism is that in Theravada temples only the Buddha is enshrined This place is a practice city where monks lived, you could also call it a city of rooms. So it isn’t simply a building for worship; it also carries certain functional attributes and a practice function I think its wall structure is very interesting—whether it’s Angkor Wat or similar, the architectural style of the Khmer period here, I think much of it accords with the Hindu worldview. It has multiple enclosing walls, becoming gradually more sacred from outside to inside, and the middle represents the centre of the cosmos, that is, Mount Meru It seems their building materials are different too: some of them, the ones that feel very dilapidated, mainly used sandstone and inferior stone, so they collapse more easily and more easily take on a ruin style It is extremely quiet; compared with some other temples, there are almost no tour groups at all. And it has a very strong sense of being eroded by time; at the back I even photographed a huge tree, so it feels like photos really come out well here Angkor’s most famous ruin in time. One of the most recognizable temples. Ta Prohm was built in the reign of Jayavarman VII; originally named Rajavihara (royal monastery), it was a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and learning center. It’s actually closer not to a temple but to a large monastery, a combined study-and-practice complex. It was built quite early, basically in the 11th century, and then it was a temple built by the seventh king for his mother. So its political and religious significance is strong, and its emotional coloring is distinctive too — unlike many temples that serve royal mythology, it carries a sense of family commemoration. Its counterpart is Preah Khan, which I went to yesterday. Inside you can clearly feel that the stone wasn’t destroyed by the trees, but taken over again by the trees. Why are there so many trees here? Because later — between Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, or what was then called Khmer — after conflicts and wars broke out between them, there were a lot of casualties, and then there was plague, and the Khmer people felt the area wasn’t fit to live in. And Buddhist teaching also emphasizes this — it’s not as rigid as Hinduism, which insists on holding fast to one place, a place that must be centered on Mount Meru. So before the French discovered it, there were 500 years in between, and for almost all of those 500 years nobody paid attention, nobody maintained it, and in that process the trees were given room to grow, and many trees flourished. I think this is a very rare state: its civilizational remains didn’t completely conquer nature, nor were they completely erased by nature, but rather exist in a balance of tension. From outside to inside it’s basically the same — it also matches a Hindu cosmology, with sanctity gradually rising, going from broad to enclosed, and the sense of pressure slowly increasing too. It gives you a feeling that you’re not visiting a display item but traveling through a religious site, which is a very experiential thing for a person. I think that’s really interesting. And I also think another very, very important reason it’s famous is that Ta Prohm’s value isn’t just the building itself, nor just the trees, but that “the ruin landscape itself” has become part of the heritage. That is, what you see isn’t simply “nature damaging a cultural relic” but a cultural landscape that has been managed, stabilized and protected: keeping the drama of trees and temple, while trying as far as possible to prevent it from continuing to destabilize and collapse. I actually compared this with some sights in China — many sights in China not only have ugly design and not a shred of aesthetics, but all kinds of colors that are disgusting to the eye. But I think there’s another very important point: in many Chinese tourist sites, cultural relics aren’t allowed to be approached, aren’t allowed to be touched, aren’t allowed anywhere near. But many relics were clearly made for people and coexist with people; that approach, though it preserves the final state of preservation of the relic, makes it feel as if the relic no longer has its own value and meaning. The most easily underestimated thing about Ta Prohm is that back then it wasn’t “a lone temple.” Inscription records show it was once linked to an enormous system of people and supplies. Public sources mention that the temple once had tens of thousands of resident or service personnel, and that villages around it had large numbers of people providing it with goods, labor and religious services. Thommanon Temple (Thommanon Temple) and Chau Say Tevoda (Chau Say Tevoda). Thommanon is a Khmer Hindu temple from around the 12th century, generally believed to have been built around the time of Suryavarman II — that is, roughly the same era as Angkor Wat. It’s small in scale, but in very good condition, and is a very typical example of a refined small temple in the Angkor area. A highly finished sample of classical aesthetics. Thommanon is generally regarded as a Hindu temple, connected to the Shiva and Vishnu systems. Many temples at Angkor went through religious conversion in history, so today it can’t simply be understood as “belonging to a single deity,” but its overall character still leans more toward the Hindu tradition. Chau Say Tevoda is a bit more complex, with more layers. It’s a very, very popular temple. It’s one of the buildings that best embodies Angkor’s sense of a sacred mountain at the center of the empire. It too originated from Khmer Hindu state religion, and is generally believed to have been built under the second king. This is a very ambitious temple-mountain temple, because once you climb up you can feel how very tall and very steep it is. I think from up there you can see everything below at a glance — right beside it is a command platform, the king’s reviewing stand, and around it all kinds of big trees and greenery. Because this kind of building is very, very massive — it’s a mountain piled up out of stone, like a stone mountain — it’s different from those refined buildings. Those refined buildings are even afraid of being damaged by plants, like the building in that film we watched earlier, but this one isn’t. It’s like stone: it can effortlessly coexist with stone, and only stone has to adapt to it, not the other way around. Baphuon is essentially a towering multi-level terraced temple-mountain. It’s the architectural expression of a religious cosmology, a very representative form: the lower the level, the closer to the profane world, and the higher you go, the closer to the sacred center. In front of it there’s also a very long bridge-like causeway — that’s like a sense of ritual, slowly bringing you in. Its surroundings were designed too, so it’s like something that exists as a very, very important central control. When I climbed it, I felt it was quite hard to get up — the slope is quite steep, and some of the steps are quite narrow, so it still feels like the risk factor is fairly high. Actually down below you can also clearly see a lot of broken stone — there’s a story behind that. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the French archaeological team of the time entered Angkor, there had first been large-scale collapse, and some walls were displaced, so the whole structure was problematic, with stones scattered like a mountain. So they took a very risky approach: they decoupled and disassembled it, taking the whole temple apart, marking every stone, recording its position, and then reassembling it according to the original structure. Just think — to reassemble a large temple like this, how many stones would there be? Tens of thousands of 3D stones, all taken apart and put back together. And in the end they really did take it apart: hundreds of thousands of stones were removed, every one marked, recorded in drawings, and stored separately. But afterward, as we all know, the Khmer Rouge — there was a civil war period, and then an accidental, fatal accident occurred. During the Cambodian civil war, the Khmer Rouge made all the work stop, foreign teams were withdrawn, and the archives were also severely damaged. That is to say, at that point the stones were still there, but the instruction manual was gone — and it had been disassembled. They’d spent decades making a manual, and just like that it disappeared. So in engineering terms this was impossible to restore, and then decades later, after the 1990s, the French team came back. They began to reinterpret the stones — judging the position anew from the shape of each stone, reconnecting the relationships, re-establishing some logic. The difficulty was extremely, extremely high, because stone isn’t standardized construction, the structure is three-dimensional, and there’s a lot of historical layering, so some stones may already be damaged or displaced — meaning you don’t just reassemble, you have to reason it out. But in the end they really did succeed. So this is hailed as the world’s largest three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, which is truly incredible. The story is really complicated, but in the end they achieved it, including the later conversion into a reclining Buddha. On the road from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei, I found a very local restaurant. It tasted very, very sour — I feel I’m still better off eating honestly in the tourist area. And I don’t know what the hygiene is like; I always felt it was pretty mediocre. My head feels like it’s splitting. Lately I’ve spent almost a hundred just on fuel. The outer circuit distances are especially far. I don’t know why my head hurts. After I got back, even turning my head slightly felt agonizing. I felt much better after a shower. It seems it’s not just breathing in dust, but also serious dehydration in the process, and the high heat. Serey Rathana himself is a highly skilled shadow-puppet carver. His original motivation for founding this place was that he discovered Cambodia’s traditional shadow puppetry and leather carving had almost been lost after the war, and many art schools in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap were closing one after another. He worried that this link in Khmer civilization would be severed entirely. Rathana set up this center around 2002. At first, he simply wanted to teach children from poor local families and orphans a skill, so they could support themselves through art. Rathana mentioned in an interview that when he carves, there are always many poor children gathered around watching. When he asked them why they didn’t go to school, the answer was often “I have no parents” or “my family is too poor and I need to work.” He sees these children as “little angels,” and turned his own home into this center, personally teaching them how to turn thick cowhide into exquisite works of art. The leather carving treats cowhide with natural materials, and every cut demands enormous patience; some complex pieces take even weeks to finish. Every cut demands enormous patience; some complex pieces take even weeks to finish. It suddenly came to mind that back when I was in Chiang Mai, I passed through some rather divided places. Because there are many places like that out there — for instance in Cambodia, land-use rights are very different from China: land can be sold, can be used as collateral. This is also why micro-loans are so developed in Cambodia — because there’s collateral, and the collateral is land. So some things may be fundamental, like living conditions being fundamental — and China does quite well on this point. Out there you can really see a lot of that divided feeling. Maybe in the same district, on one side is an upscale gated community with its own generators, even a hospital and all kinds of schools, walled off by high walls, while on the other side there might be a slum. In life they have no intersection at all, but at work they might happen to be superior and subordinate — meaning these two groups of people have only one place of intersection, and that’s the employment relationship. And Cambodian society as a whole is actually very rigid; there’s almost no mobility between classes. Even the current ruler’s governing values aren’t about redistributing the cake or breaking the cake — he just wants to improve things a bit within this system. For example, things that aren’t good for the system’s continued operation, like international image, cracking down on gambling — he’ll do something about those. But there’s no fundamental interest in safeguarding the living conditions of the people at the bottom. So this is an emotional reflection — at the time it looked pretty divided too: towering high-rises on one side, a slum on the other. Not only that, there are many con tricks as well; they have some stilt houses, but also some extremely crude ones. I think there might be a few reasons: one is the instability of their housing — they don’t hold land title, so after a while they might be cleared away by the government, or cleared away by some powerful person with minimal compensation, because they want to develop some area. I think whether a country is developed should be judged by how the people at the bottom live. Otherwise, I think that country can never join the ranks of developed countries — no matter how glamorous and prosperous it looks, no matter how much great technology it has, I don’t think so. I think you should look at how the people at the bottom live. China hasn’t done all that well on this either, and actually the US hasn’t done all that well either. In the US it’s because its whole national set of values shaped this national form — it’s a country of the strong, with the attribute of the strong. For any individual, opportunity is fair: even if you’re at the bottom, a waiter, there’s a chance to climb up, you can climb up. But at the bottom there are also many people without basic security, many living on the streets, relying on drugs or marijuana, or homeless on the street with not even a shanty. The previous one was a hotel I booked here in Siem Reap, and I felt it was really mediocre, especially in a few respects One is that what they served was all takeaway. That’s just speechless, you know? They weren’t freshly made, they ordered takeaway, then put a layer of packaging on the takeaway, and then served it to you. And they still charged me 6 dollars Then the WIFI was under repair the whole time; I stayed nine days, and it was under repair all nine days And the room’s basic facilities were severely lacking; there was a lot written down, but in reality most of it wasn’t there, including the hairdryer, dryer, washing machine; even their Booking photos were AI-generated images, optimised images… About Cambodia: Cambodia’s current national leader is Hun Manet. As a PhD in economics, he knows very well that Cambodia cannot survive forever on selling land, grey/black industries or low-end garment manufacturing. There’s a strong will to develop in his values. He proposed the “Pentagonal Strategy,” emphasising digitalisation, human resource development, infrastructure construction and attracting formal foreign investment He was the first Cambodian to graduate from the US Military Academy at West Point, and went on to earn a master’s in economics from New York University and a PhD in economics from the University of Bristol in the UK Before succeeding to power he was already deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and commander of the army, and at the same time he held extremely high prestige in the youth wing of the ruling party (the People’s Party) Hun Manet’s youth was spent almost entirely inside the West’s top elite education system More than a decade of Western education gave him a very complete modern macroeconomic perspective and systems engineering thinking. He speaks fluent American English, and can hold deep conversations with Western diplomats and multinational executives without any obstacle. He fully understands what a modern rule-of-law state, free market and civil society should look like, and he also knows the true underlying colours of Cambodia across international economic indicators He wants to make the country rich, but it still allows wealth to concentrate at the top of the pyramid His military experience gave him an extremely cold realist undertone: in Cambodia, any exquisite economic model without absolute control of the gun as backing is a scrap of paper. He learned how to deal with those arrogant veteran generals who fought alongside his father, and how to maintain the army’s absolute loyalty to the family in the distribution of interests Around him has gathered the next generation of Cambodia’s core elite; by distributing political resources, concessions and business opportunities, he binds these young interest groups firmly to his chariot So he also knows that the stilt houses and slums around him are caused by corruption in the land system, but he will absolutely never settle accounts with the elites who grab land for the sake of the poor at the bottom, because those elites are exactly the cornerstone holding his prime ministerial seat steady All policies revolve around making the cake bigger; once the cake is bigger, ordinary people at the bottom can also pick up some fallen crumbs, thereby easing social tensions Actually, before you came to Cambodia, because I was in Lhasa at the time, I found the concept of a “sermon gathering” very interesting, so at that point I chose one country: Cambodia. Cambodia is also a Buddhist-type country, and I was thinking that although Cambodia is also a Buddhist country, I feel it’s a country with a fairly large wealth gap. I wondered what role Buddhism actually plays in this country, and how it shapes the country’s current social form; I was very curious about that, and I’ve kept looking for answers on this part. I think the Khmer Rouge period brought this country a lot of suffering, and including much of this country’s history, and the current institutional system of the whole country, there’s still a long way to go. In that process, if you observe the people of this country well, and observe how they live, I think it’s a very interesting topic. So that’s also why I started choosing Cambodia. And I’m very interested in Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, because although Angkor Wat was originally Hindu, it later converted to Buddhism. I’m actually very interested in its Hindu form too: how Hinduism spread at the time, and how it shaped people like this, and what influence this system still has on people now—that part is quite interesting. Isn’t seeing it once enough? Still holding on to illusions? so, why do people still easily hold on to illusions Sunk cost~ You’ve put in too much time, energy, expectation, even money The good experiences you once had all get reinforced by memory If a person is sometimes good and sometimes bad, it’s very easy to let you sink in Sometimes very good → gives you hope Sometimes very bad → makes you suffer It’s like a gambling mechanism Essentially it’s knowing the truth, but being reluctant to let go of the version you once believed in I think the Hindu cosmology of Mount Sumeru is very interesting, because its design is centred on the cosmos, it’s the world axis, and it connects three things: one is heaven, the celestial realm, representing the gods; and one is—the cosmology of Mount Sumeru is very interesting. One is hell, and in a philosophical sense it is the geometric centre of cosmic order, plus the centre of power, and of divinity. Then around Mount Sumeru there are four directions, east, south, west and north, and its outer layers aren’t empty either: a layer of mountains, a layer of sea, then another layer of mountains, another layer of sea. This is in fact a layered model of the cosmos, plus a geometric universe. Then its vertical structure is a three-tier system, including the realm of desire. Desire as in craving. And this is the lowest level, including the human world. This part has desire, senses and craving. It’s a desire-driven world. Then there’s the realm of form, this is the highest level, a higher level. It represents a state of no desire but with form, corresponding to the state of meditative concentration. Then the highest level is the formless realm, without form or appearance, in ideology—these are the abstract levels of existence in the cosmos Then the celestial structure on Mount Sumeru is: at the summit is Shakra, who lives at the top of Mount Sumeru, and he is the ruler of the celestial realm. On the mountainside are the Four Heavenly Kings: King Dhritarashtra, King Virudhaka, then King Virupaksha, and King Vaishravana. The realm system is multiple layers of hell, of extreme suffering; karma decides where one goes, and this is the ethical context—it also gives a good claim to explain suffering Does the sense of awe depend on underlying cognition, or on a more fundamental human perceptual system When I look at snowy mountains I feel my own smallness, I feel the snow mountain’s vastness When I look at Angkor Wat I marvel at human belief, at the creative power of human civilisation Angkor Wat itself is huge in volume, with long axes and ultra-deep depth, extremely high symmetry and order, and a great deal of mystery, like a maze I always thought some kinds of awe depend on cognition But now I feel that cognition may over-analyse to the point that you lose the original feeling… When you understand how a magic trick works, it’s very hard to experience the pure astonishment of magic again This may be a side effect of high cognition It’s like standing in front of Angkor Wat: if you only demystify it, what you see is a pile of weathered stone, a half-finished project that ancient feudal emperors built by conscripting slaves to consolidate power, and you feel the tragic vitality of humans trying to leave a mark of existence in the face of an impermanent universe Recently in Siem Reap, every day looking at those time-weathered boulders of Angkor Wat, then going back to review that short conversation I had with Little Rabbit about “Quan Xixi,” I suddenly felt a very strange collision The two of us seemed to be talking about a highly controversial big self-media IP, but in fact we were using two completely different underlying operating systems to parse the same objective entity. That vertiginous feeling of it seeming right whichever way you look at it, and awkward whichever way you look at it… But what I saw subconsciously was a “narrative of a whole person.” I cared more about how she “names” those hidden social emotions, worldly anxieties and fears in intimate relationships. Passing over her possibly somewhat utilitarian media methods, I saw a modern person, inside the East Asian worldly framework, struggling to forcibly fold emotional experience into extreme instrumental rationality A huge incomprehension arose in me: if all packaging can be dismantled, and all motives can be reduced to interest, then is the endpoint of cognition complete nihilism? A person—how exactly should they be evaluated? Later I realised that this vertigo comes from my trying to find a standard answer. But in fact there is no absolute objective entity in the real world; all evaluation is nothing more than a projection of our own demands Quan Xixi doesn’t need to be judged as a good person or a hypocritical businessperson; she magnified human sensitivity, fear of weakness, the longing for worldly success, and an extreme desire for logical control—magnified it to the point where society can broadly empathise Pure demystification makes a person cynical and cold. Just like facing Angkor Wat: if only demystification remains, then it’s nothing but a pile of waste stones left by feudal emperors enslaving labourers; but if you can cross that layer and touch those stones, you will still be moved by the tragic sense of humans trying to leave a mark on a grand scale of time—after demystification comes re-enchantment Didn’t expect it to be a charity café!! Came here several times in a row to chat. It opened its first shop in Siem Reap in 2016, with the core idea of People, Planet, Profit, and says it returns 100% of net profits to the local community in the form of education and entrepreneurship grants. The space is great for coworking. Their Chicken Lok Lak is famous — the Chinese equivalent would be kung pao chicken. The star of this dish is tender meat cut into cubes (chicken or beef), stir-fried over high heat to lock in the juices. The flavor is salty-savory with a slight sweetness, with a rich aroma of oyster sauce and black pepper. Their breakfast is also superb. Came again a day later, adding: Lol, the waiters here even remember regulars’ habits. The first iced Americano with no sugar, and the pizza made with a hard crust, take away, card to pay — they remember all of it. A person’s persistent thoughts and emotions, like a magnet, draw experiences of the same frequency into life. This framework is essentially the law of attraction. Whatever you think about most, wherever you most often put your attention, life will tend to produce that. That is what it calls “like attracts like,” “thoughts become things.” It’s not just “thoughts” — it also includes whether you truly “feel you already have it,” which is why emotions get amplified. Don’t stare at what you don’t want; stare at the result you want. It’s also a miracle for an engineer. An extremely complex and precise system, from the layout of the water conservancy works, to the narrative on the walls, to the perfect fit between architecture and astronomical calendars. Anyone used to building logic, designing systems, or polishing products can, when facing these ancient ruins, feel a resonance that spans a thousand years. To truly see a ruin, you often need some kind of medium. Through the viewfinder of a lens, a person starts to notice the details ordinary tourists overlook: how the first ray of morning light passes through the mottled stone doorway, how the expression of Bayon’s “Khmer Smile” changes under different light, or the exquisite Apsara nymph carvings on some broken wall. The process of patiently waiting to capture the ideal light and shadow is itself a kind of deep conversation with this land. It feels like pet-friendly cafés in China have clearly become much more common now, especially in first- and second-tier cities—there are already a lot. But it hasn’t fully become the default state where you can bring pets in; a lot of cafés now already use the pet-friendly label as a new consumption scenario to work with. For many, if they have a lawn, or a terrace, or a small courtyard, they’ll have a pet drinking area; there are even a lot of places now, including Shenzhen and Guangzhou, that are rolling out pet-friendly commercial districts, and communities, and some parks. It looks really nice now. Common Grounds Cafe, which I came to today, is one too, and it’s very famous. It usually plays soft music, the atmosphere is quiet and not noisy, and the second floor has spacious seating. They’ve been open since 2008, the coffee beans are fresh, and the quality has stayed steady. The menu blends things well—you can get authentic Western simple meals (like burgers, sandwiches) and also Khmer local specialties (like coconut curry). It’s a social enterprise run by an NGO. Every bit of profit you spend here goes 100% into local charity and humanitarian projects in Cambodia. Not only that, they also specifically provide systematic culinary vocational training for poor local youth; many young people learn skills here and then go on to the country’s top hotels and restaurants. The Little Red Fox Espresso. It’s one of the most famous cafés in Siem Reap, with a fantastic atmosphere and super friendly staff. Their “ginger lemongrass latte” is very Cambodian, and very modern at the same time. This shop was one of the pioneers of the whole Kandal Village artsy neighborhood. It turned what was originally an ordinary little street into Siem Reap’s most fashionable, most design-forward area today. The shop often plays 1960s Cambodian rock’n’roll. It folds the core spices of Southeast Asian cooking into a latte. They insist on sourcing beans from local highlands like Mondulkiri (local coffee). There’s pull over. I was still wondering what pull over was. Turns out it’s pour over coffee.Northeast China’s Direct Culture: How Labor Independence Shapes Non-Draining Relationship Patterns
Comparing Three Places in Tibet: Consumption Levels and Ecological Differences in Motuo / Nyingchi / Lhasa
Namtso vs Yamdrok Lake: A Valley Gem vs a Heavenly Mirror—Refinement and Vastness
The Northern Tibetan Grasslands: A Pure Place Where the Soul Stays
The Sacred Elephant Heavenly Gate: A Stone Elephant Keeping Watch for a Thousand Years Between a Deep Blue Ice Lake and Vast Snow Mountains
The Monastery’s Acquaintance Power Network: Relationship Resources and Favour Exchange Behind Free Labour
A Lama’s Social Capital: The Invisible Power of a Devotee Network and Resources of Trust
The Difference in Monks’ Followings: Academic-Style High Lamas vs Relationship-Style Lamas and the Law of Attraction
The Wisdom of Drepung Monastery: Knowledge as Subtraction, the Debate Practice of Breaking Self-Attachment
A Debate Scene: Practice as a Dialogue with the Self, and the Embrace After Class
Vietnam Memories Begin: A Journey of Observation from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City
Street Coffee in Ho Chi Minh City: Stool Socializing and the Relaxed Experience of Shade
The Adaptation of Vietnamese Banh Mi: The Chew of Traditional Texture and a Local Insistence
Observations on Vietnamese Belief: An Underestimated Spiritual World
Catholic Growth in Africa: Young Believers and Localized Liturgy
The Legacy of the Vietnam War: A Highly Cohesive Society and National Pride
Vietnam Missing the Golden Age of Industrialization: The Cost of the Soviet System and a Planned Economy
Vietnam’s Hofstede Profile: High Power Distance and a Culture of Nepotism
China’s Advantage of Scale: The Underlying Logic of an Industrial Power
Tsangyang Gyatso’s Place in Tibetan Culture: Gods and Buddhas Are Also Human
Vietnam’s Spiritual World: Pragmatic Belief Beneath an Atheistic Surface
Motorbike-Taxi Drivers
Cambodian Social Structure: The Merit Cosmology and Khmer Rouge Trauma
Mexico vs. Pakistan: Two Cultural Poles of Indulgence and Restraint
Blue Sky over Chongqing Central Park: A Lucky Moment Just Like Lhasa
Ginkgo Leaves Falling in Nara: The Photographer and the Photographed as Mirrors of Each Other
Youth Time Café: silence isn’t coldness, it’s another kind of warmth
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I just had my first meal in Cambodia, and this chicken is pretty good
Cambodia — actually, during the Khmer Rouge period forty or fifty years ago, roughly about
The Khmer Rouge event: the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975–1979
How Values Are Read Subjectively, and What to Reject from What He Himself Says
Characteristics of Survivors
Land Grabbing Is One of the Most Serious Social Problems in Phnom Penh
One Similarity Is That Taiwan Also Had a White Terror Period
The Choeung Ek (Zhongwu Ke / Qiongyi Ke) Killing Fields
Today was pretty risky. After going to that currency museum today
The glittering pavilion on the left is the Equestrian Statue of King Norodom
The infanticide tree
First, Notice the Pattern in the Surnames
The SOSORO Museum
The Essence of the Riel’s Modern Depreciation
The Current Stability of Cambodia’s Exchange Rate
But King Ang Duong Died in 1860, and His Son Norodom Succeeded Him
Because Monetary Sovereignty Requires at Least Five Things to Be True at Once. First
The Three Colonised Countries: The Predicaments Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos Each Faced
The Strait of Malacca Is a Key Point
Singapore’s Monetary Policy
Singapore: A High Import Share, Trade Volume Far Exceeding GDP
In Siem Reap I Checked Into a Hotel Booked Through Booking
An Analysis of Cambodia’s Casino Problem
Morning Observations at the Hotel
In Siem Reap There’s a Shop I Really Liked
China’s First-Tier Cities Are Overall More Expensive, but Many Everyday Items
Impressions of Wat Bo
Another Thing I Saw, at Wat Bo
Vietnam Is Itself a Marxist-Leninist Regime. In Communist Theory
Goh Keng Swee
Goh Keng Swee’s Unique Vision and Its Influence on China
The Feeling Siem Reap Gives You
Siem Reap Really Has a Very Special Temperament
If a Person Treats Deception as a Tool, Habitually Using Concealment
Wow, really, I watched that video by Yingshi Jufeng on Bilibili
Bangladesh’s system has some problems — it came from the colonial period at the very start
Behind Angkor Wat Lies a Very Complex History and Knowledge System
King Suryavarman II
Angkor Wat’s Model of the Cosmos
Built by Water, Ruined by Water: Agricultural Collapse and Imperial Decline
Just Spent 3 Hours, and Now I’m at This Angkor Museum
It Suddenly Hit Me — the Whole Learning Process
Highly Recommend the Angkor National Museum Before Going to Angkor Wat
Preah Ang Chek Preah Ang Chorm Shrine
Siem Reap’s Khmer Rouge Period History
Bought a motorbike
Linked from: https://v.flo
I still feel it’s Preah Khan that has more of a run-down feel
Wanted to get to know some local friends in Siem Reap. They asked me some questions
Siem Reap Ta Prohm Temple
On the question of Hinduism’s inclusiveness
There are really so many Americans; an American came to the hotel today too
I always thought Angkor Wat was very big and very spread out
Five towers (Mount Meru) + the four faces of Bayon
Angkor Wat is really a place worth studying in detail
The coolest thing about Angkor Wat is that it turned the Hindu cosmic model
I remember it started with the Buddha. When he first wrote that Buddhist text
Banteay Kdei Temple
Ta Prohm Temple
Thommanon Temple
Baphuon Temple
On the Road from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei
Three Straight Days of Motorcycling Around Angkor Wat
Serey Rathana
Back When I Was in Chiang Mai, I Passed Through Some Rather Divided Places
The Previous One Was a hotel I Booked Here in Siem Reap
About Cambodia: Cambodia’s Current National Leader Is Hun Manet
Before You Came to Cambodia, Because I Was in Lhasa at the Time
A Person’s Underlying Colour
The Hindu Cosmology of Mount Sumeru Is Very Interesting
Does the Sense of Awe Depend on Underlying Cognition
When You Understand How a Magic Trick Works
Recently in Siem Reap, Every Day Looking at Those Time-Weathered Boulders of Angkor Wat
In Siem Reap I picked a Footprint Cafes
The Secret
Creating Angkor Wat Is a Miracle of Human Civilization
To Truly See a Ruin, You Often Need Some Kind of Medium
Pet-Friendly Cafés in China Have Clearly Become Much More Common Now
Siem Reap Has Many NGO-Run Social Enterprises
Every coffee shop has a story
I looked for a coffee shop on the spot
3. Reading, Ideas and History
57 entries We always face this world—this world is complex, complexity beyond anyone’s imagination. Some choose to reduce this world’s dimensions, simplify, no longer explore human nature, use single narrative system to describe everything, use labels to replace understanding, use advocacy to represent judgment. Some choose to simplify themselves—admit they cannot control the world, self is no longer cognitive center, don’t treat everything as judgment against oneself. … There are also many beggars here in Lhasa. Found many come from remote pastoral and agricultural areas: Family income extremely low, education level limited. Lost stable livelihood due to illness, widowhood, disability. Then there’s a class of semi-professional begging: Easier to trigger tourist alms-giving. This is them choosing a highest return-rate way. However, compared to other cities, Lhasa isn’t like some big cities with highly scaled begging black chains. Actually there can be better choices—not necessarily cash, can be some food or small snacks. In the shop, the shop boss’s approach feels very good—give an egg. #Gewu/Society Observing Tibetans. I feel restaurant owners and waiters are generally a bit colder, especially if they don’t know you well. Tibetans don’t perform emotion, don’t ingratiate themselves, and usually rarely interrupt you. I’m thinking about several factors: society, culture, human nature, institutions, faith… I’ve always felt Tibetan Buddhism is the religion with the most power of faith — it hasn’t turned its back on the secular world; on the contrary, the monks and living Buddhas here very actively go out into the world in all sorts of places, teaching and exchanging. Tibetan Buddhism’s influence on ordinary people seems to be a kind of non-attachment — “non” as in “letting go.” No need to cling to pleasing people in service, no need to cling to making money. Making money is of course important, but it won’t become their anchor point either, and they don’t have to treat strangers’ emotions as their responsibility. Actually, thinking about service-mindedness — a friend from Guangdong said it’s because things here aren’t so cutthroat. I think service-mindedness itself is a product of modern commercial society, not just because of competition, but also because of the large-scale institutionalization of emotional labor and service charges. They were never forced by society to play that kind of role. Human nature itself is neutral; cold or warm is a state activated by social structure and cultural scripts. Put them into a designated environment and of course it will shape the side they show outward. But then I think of Nepal — two places separated only by the Himalayas — and the smiles, warmth and sense of care Nepalis show don’t seem like performance either. It seems to be an interaction habit that grew naturally out of that kind of social culture and way of life. Nepali society is itself a society of acquaintances, a community society; friendliness toward people is itself their survival-kind of goodwill. And, if it’s true that the poorer a place is, the stronger the power of faith… But in Nepal, where such resources are scarce and people’s desires are low, goodwill is instead a way of lowering the cost of conflict. Here, even if you don’t spend any money, they’re happy to chat with you a bit~ Tonight I noticed something different Tonight I watched a film I really liked, “Night King” A film I personally like a lot After it ended I went back to the guesthouse, and the landlady invited me to play cards, and we played until very late, close to two in the morning By the time I washed up it was now, and I felt completely hollow inside; that signal feels like it’s telling me I shouldn’t go play cards like this again If it were good friends playing cards together, there wouldn’t be this hollow, quiet feeling The quality of companionship really does seem to matter especially much At night the prefrontal cortex clocks off, and the floor on rational judgment and emotional regulation drops , prefrontal activity drops significantly at night, while the relative activity of the amygdala (which handles fear, anxiety, emotional reactions) rises, so people become more emotional at night and more easily overwhelmed by feelings And the rise in melatonin at night doesn’t just promote sleep, it also lowers alertness and defensiveness, so people become more relaxed and more fragile Serotonin decreases at night; serotonin makes you feel tired, and it’s a key substance for stabilizing mood, so when it drops people more easily feel low, sensitive or anxious And then there’s the biological clock, which is where the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) comes in for a deep dive The SCN sits in the front of the hypothalamus, right above the optic chiasm (hence the name). It’s extremely small—about 20,000 neurons total on both sides, almost negligible in the whole brain, and yet it’s the body’s “master clock” Neuroscience describes what I do. But it can’t tell us what we should become. From the perspective of the physical world, reductionism really is “harder”: Cut open the brain and you can see neurons You can measure dopamine concentration You can stimulate a region with electrodes and artificially manufacture “a sense of meaning,” “love,” “religious experience” This shows something cruel: all subjective experience has a physical substrate, and can be tampered with by physical means This can’t be avoided. So then what is real? The physical layer is the structural reality of neurons, dopamine, electrical signals The experiential layer is the phenomenal reality of pain, curiosity, love, meaning The narrative layer is the relational reality of culture, history, identity, value What remains real is the narrative; the experiential layer is an operational reality Aristotle’s essentialist dichotomy Splitting a complex problem or concept into two mutually exclusive categories (such as subjective/objective, form/essence, classical/romantic), understanding things through this oppositional relationship The binary method actually has its limits too — it splits a person apart, separates subject and object, and hides the wholeness of things It holds that in a moment of pure Quality, subject and object were originally one (as in the philosophical view “tat tvam asi”) The real solution is to break the dichotomy, to fuse the person and technology through Quality (as in the “sense of oneness” when a craftsman throws himself wholly into the work) I suddenly got it A very interesting place Through different road conditions and levels of vision, it reveals the diversity of cognition and multi-level complementarity, and the switching between them Looking at a motorcycle in terms of its components, understanding what these components do, necessarily requires further explaining its function The Buddhist scripture Avatamsaka Sutra, the full verse being: “One flower, one world; one leaf, one bodhi; one grain of sand, one pure land; one smile, one karmic bond.” A flower is any tiny existence, a world is the whole universe, a leaf is something ordinary, found everywhere Inside a single flower is hidden the entire world Inside a single leaf lies bodhi (enlightenment) In a single grain of sand there is a pure land In a single smile there is a thread of worldly karma You don’t need to look into the distance to seek the Way; the Way is in every present moment before your eyes — if the mind is pure, a mote of dust is a place of practice “One flower, one world” comes from the Avatamsaka Sutra, meaning that every tiny thing is a projection of the complete universe; observe one flower and you can glimpse the law by which all things arise and pass away “One leaf, one bodhi” — legend has it that a bodhi leaf witnessed Shakyamuni’s enlightenment, and every leaf carries the possibility of leading to wisdom “One grain of sand, one pure land” — even a grain of dust can be a pure land; the realm is made by the mind, and the pure land is not on the other shore but in the present thought “One smile, one karmic bond” — every romantic bond in the human world often begins with a look, a smile; arising and ceasing are both cause and effect Subjective time is dominated by psychological distance Psychological distance theory: the brain doesn’t calculate time by the calendar, but based on the “sense of distance” between an event and the present If something meant a great deal to you but is disconnected from your current life, causing cognitive dissonance, that’s because the brain is working to file it away as the past in order to adapt to the current norm—this is a protective mechanism Essentially this is also the biological basis of human time perception: when the brain’s hippocampus and prefrontal cortex process memories, they are affected by neurotransmitters such as dopamine. If there’s a lack of stimulation after an event, neural circuits “compress” recent memories while “stretching” the felt interval of significant events. The result: an objectively short 6 months feels subjectively like “several years”, and especially when reminded in conversation, this contrast reinforces the feeling of “how long it’s been” And high-emotion / high-meaning events get stronger psychological filing, which produces a sense of psychological distance Important experiences are usually “peak experiences” (travel, falling in love, breakups, major achievements, trauma, etc.), while daily life is mostly a flat “valley”. When the following months / years have no stimulation of equal intensity, the brain feels that “nothing big has happened since then”, so that peak event gets “isolated” on the timeline and looks especially far away The more vivid and detail-rich a memory (usually an important event), the more easily recalling it produces the illusion that “it happened a long time ago”. Because the brain automatically reads “vivid = processed many times = old story”, while flat events, never repeatedly retrieved, instead keep a vague feeling of being “fresh / recent” It feels like faith also needs a community to sustain its sense of reality When everyone around you is doing full-body prostrations, prostrating is normal When everyone around you doubts the faith, the faith starts to waver This is the basic way humans operate as social animals We discussed before that extreme environments create extreme faith Plateau, bitter cold, lack of oxygen, weather that can change at any moment—— In such an environment, a person perceives the limits of their own power extremely clearly. Death is not an abstract concept, but an everyday neighbour When a person truly feels their own smallness and fragility, they naturally look for something bigger than themselves to lean on and speak with. This is not ignorance, this is honesty 📚 Theory overview Proposed by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede in the 1980s, based on survey data from IBM employees in more than 70 countries worldwide. It is one of the most influential frameworks in cross-cultural research. 🎯 The six cultural dimensions 1️⃣ Power Distance (PDI): how much a society accepts inequality in power High: Malaysia, the Philippines, China (clear hierarchy) Low: Austria, Denmark, New Zealand (flat) 2️⃣ Individualism vs. Collectivism (IDV) Individualism: the US, the UK, Australia (the “I” consciousness) Collectivism: Guatemala, Ecuador, China (the “we” consciousness) 3️⃣ Masculinity vs. Femininity (MAS): achievement-competition vs. caring-cooperation Masculine: Japan (95), Hungary, Austria (competition-oriented) Feminine: Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands (quality-of-life oriented) 4️⃣ Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI): tolerance for ambiguity High: Greece, Portugal, Japan (strict rules) Low: Singapore, Jamaica, Denmark (flexible and loose) 5️⃣ Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation (LTO) Long-term: China (87), South Korea, Japan (future returns, thrift) Short-term: the US (26), Australia, Nigeria (present satisfaction) 6️⃣ Indulgence vs. Restraint (IVR): how far the satisfaction of needs is allowed Indulgence: Mexico, the US (68), Australia (enjoying freedom) Restraint: Russia, China (24), Egypt (strict norms) 🌏 Key data comparison China: PDI=80, IDV=20, MAS=66, UAI=30, LTO=87, IVR=24 The US: PDI=40, IDV=91, MAS=62, UAI=46, LTO=26, IVR=68 Japan: PDI=54, IDV=46, MAS=95, UAI=92, LTO=88, IVR=42 ⚠️ Limitations Differences within a country are greater Cultures evolve over time 6 dimensions can’t fully capture the complexity The original sample was IBM employees The Strait of Hormuz. The cost of sea transport is the smallest. The rule of geopolitics is that by controlling these countries through hard power, you gain strategic influence. In fact, dollar hegemony is largely related to this. Similar places include: The Strait of Malacca The Suez Canal The Panama Canal The Bosphorus These places all have a certain degree of similarity. It feels like a phenomenon in China: from the everyday collectivism of before to the one-child policy now. The one-child policy quietly changed the core of collectivism. The nuclear family replaced the extended clan, and a “small-circle collectivism” emerged—extreme loyalty to one’s own small family and extreme coldness toward outsiders. Vietnamese behavior is essentially a Confucian collectivist shell combined with a post-war survivalist core. The relationship between a nation’s historical narrative and religious belief. Historical narrative refers to the interpretation, construction and dissemination of past events, often used to shape national identity, justify policy, or mobilize the populace. These narratives may include mythologized events, heroic legends, or victim perspectives. In fact, from a state’s point of view, the state generally needs some associative relationship with religion; strongly religious countries are more susceptible to historical narrative, because religion provides emotional and moral anchors that make the narrative hard to question. Historians point out that religion is not only a tool but can also reshape culture and social structure, driving collective memory of the past. But some secular countries are also easily manipulated by ideological narratives, like the former Soviet Union or contemporary China. No country can be entirely free of the influence of historical narrative, because historical narrative is a core tool for shaping national identity, policy, and social cohesion. All societies pass on certain narratives through education, media and culture, in order to maintain stability or drive change. However, some countries, because of their social structure, level of education and institutional design, are more able to cultivate critical thinking, and thus less blindly follow a single or distorted historical narrative. These countries are usually highly secularized, highly educated, media-free and pluralistic democratic societies. But if accompanied by authoritarianism or media control, even these can still be highly influenced by official narrative. Countries that are highly secularized, highly educated, with free media and informational diversity, and with democratic and pluralistic institutions, are more easily free of manipulation by historical narrative. If a country is secularized, it must have freedom; secularization needs to be accompanied by freedom to effectively resist narrative manipulation. The relationship between personal historical narrative and religious belief. “Personal narrative” refers to the cognitive framework with which a person uses their own experiences, memories and stories to explain who they are and why they act as they do. People with strong religious belief rely less on personal narrative. Strong faith provides an external, transcendent narrative framework — the legitimacy of behavior comes from sacred commandments or doctrine, not from “what I’ve been through” self-understanding is embedded in a story bigger than the individual (God’s plan, reincarnation, mission) when suffering comes, the right of interpretation is handed to the belief system rather than to personal history the anchor of identity is “I am a believer,” not “I am a product of that experience” But there’s an important counterexample: the conversion narrative. Many devout believers in fact rely heavily on personal story — “I was once lost, and then I met God” — and this narrative becomes the core pillar of their faith. People with weak religious belief rely more on personal narrative and must construct meaning for themselves. Psychotherapy culture (especially in the West) encourages finding self-explanation in childhood, trauma, and relationship history. “I’m like this today because I went through those things” becomes the main mode of self-understanding. Moral judgment is based more on personal feeling and experience than on external standards. Actually, setting religious belief aside, strong-institution states are like this too, and people under strong collectivism are like this too: narrative is a tool for integrating experience. Many companies are easily satisfied This gene is carved too deep, it has already become an instinct. With land in hand, the heart is at ease Companies are the same. With a profitable business in hand, it’s easy to feel “that’s enough” It suddenly occurred to me that I know I have a domain I’ve never entered Those parts of human nature that cannot be reduced Those very confusing places, which biology seems unable to explain, and sociology and game theory can’t explain either Behind game theory you can explain breaking individual rationality, the long-term value optimum, and that a tit-for-tat strategy is the best The herd effect reveals people’s bandwagon behaviour, even when the information in their own hands suggests the public may be wrong People will give up what is truly good in order to feel right It may also be sunk cost A person knows perfectly well that a relationship is toxic, knows perfectly well that leaving is the correct answer, but just can’t walk away—not because he’s irrational, but because “staying” itself gives him a certain feeling, and that feeling is more real than “correct” Some friends I’ve met before seem similar, I can actually see it clearly, but after seeing clearly it’s still the same This is the first chaotic place in human nature—understanding yourself cannot rescue yourself A person’s deepest needs, he cannot put into words himself You ask a person “what do you want”, and he gives you an answer. But that answer is almost never the real answer—it’s just the nearest proxy word he can currently reach, the closest thing to the real need You ask a person “what do you want”, and he gives you an answer. But that answer is almost never the real answer—it’s just the nearest proxy word he can currently reach, the closest thing to the real need A person is the self that is hardest for himself to read; reading yourself is the hardest thing A person can believe two contradictory things at the same time A mother can genuinely love her child, and at the same time genuinely hurt him with that love A person can genuinely believe in freedom, and at the same time genuinely live inside a cage he built with his own hands A person can genuinely want to get close to you, and at the same time genuinely use every possible way to push you away This isn’t a logical error, this is the real structure of a person. A person isn’t a unified subject, but many layers existing at the same time, contradicting each other, none of which can completely overpower the others At the limit, a person becomes someone else Not “revealed the true self” Truly becomes another person Extreme fear, extreme loss, extreme love, extreme shame—at these limits, the “I” you usually know temporarily disappears, and what comes out is something you yourself don’t recognise Two core modes of thinking in narrative psychology. The famous psychologist Jerome Bruner proposed that human beings have two completely different but complementary modes of thinking about the world. Paradigmatic Thought: concerned with logic, causality, and universal laws; it is the language of science and mathematics. Narrative Thought: concerned with people’s intentions, emotions, specific situations, and events that unfold over time. Narrative psychology mainly studies the latter, holding that it is the key to our understanding of human interaction and meaning-making. Generally speaking, paradigmatic thinking can be understood as the scientist’s mind, devoted to finding patterns in a complex world, establishing order, and distilling what is universal—but when it comes to very subjective moods and emotions it’s often powerless. It’s hard to use a mathematical formula to precisely derive why one person falls in love with another, or why someone feels lonely late at night. Narrative thinking is more like the storyteller’s mind: it doesn’t care about universally existing objective laws, but about what a particular person experiences at a particular time and in a particular situation, and what those experiences mean to them. Paradigmatic thinking and narrative thinking are complementary modes of thinking. If there were only paradigmatic thinking, our world would become cold and mechanical, losing the warmth of being human; if there were only narrative thinking, we would lose the ability to accurately predict and control the objective world and fall into pure subjective fantasy. A healthily functioning mind can call on paradigmatic thinking when solving physics problems, and call on narrative thinking when handling interpersonal relationships and exploring the meaning of life. An adult’s identity is not a static personality trait but a life story that is constantly internalized and constantly evolving. We weave together memories of the past, experiences of the present, and imaginings of the future to form a coherent autobiographical story. This story makes us feel that life has purpose and unity. Narrative identity theory is a major overturning of traditional personality psychology, which likes to define a person with static scales and labels such as extroverted, introverted, neurotic. You don’t just “have” certain psychological traits—you yourself are a novel being serialized, and you are both the protagonist and the author. The three levels of personality, with narrative at the highest level: Traits, the most surface-level performer, whether extroverted, conscientious, or emotionally stable. Personal adaptations, the motivator, including motives, values, goals, and defense mechanisms, revealing a certain pursuit. Narrative identity, this is the author, integrating the ups and downs of one’s whole life into a meaningful whole—this is the human being’s self-creation. The key scenes: High points, experiencing extreme joy, a peak experience, or automatic affirmation. Low points, despair, failure, injury. Turning points, events that change the trajectory of your life or your self-understanding. The core themes, always circling around some eternal themes: Agency, personal independence, achievement, a sense of control, status, and self-transcendence. Communion, emphasizing connection with others, love, belonging, intimacy, and devotion. What determines our sense of happiness is often not what we experienced, but how we string those experiences together. It can be a redemption narrative, going from bad to good: suffering, failure, or trauma ultimately brings a positive outcome. Negative experiences are given the meaning of growth and awakening. A high sense of life meaning, stronger resilience, and generativity. It can be a contamination narrative, going from good to bad. A positive experience ultimately leads to a bad ending, or gets completely ruined by subsequent trauma. Good things are “contaminated” by bad ones, and it’s easy to fall into depression, anxiety, and a strong sense of powerlessness and a victim mentality. In late adolescence and early adulthood, our brains develop the capacity for biographical reasoning. Facing a world full of uncertainty, chaos, and increasing entropy, if life were just a series of randomly occurring, unrelated events, we would feel extreme emptiness and a disintegration of identity. The fundamental function of narrative identity is to provide unity and purpose. How did I get from the past to today? (coherence) Who am I really now? (integration) Where am I going in the future? (sense of direction) Reality changes too fast. You should form your own system and your own judgment. After coming here, S-21 (Khmer Rouge) originally wanted to build a purely agricultural utopia; it was probably also influenced by totalitarianism—this was a route of the countryside encircling the cities. And the regime at the time also had the ability to control the ideology of human society; it could monitor and manage everyone through centralisation. So after they seized power, they began a mass killing. At the beginning it targeted the civil service, the teacher corps, and public officials like doctors. Afterwards it was still centralised rule, slowly purging and suppressing internally. So later, even activists and its own internal people were purged. I’m now in a building here, Building A, which has three floors. At the entrance of each room there are some name lists; the leadership lists would set out the corresponding people to be executed. Each room lists some people, and at the door there’s a board clearly listing each person’s name, their age, their date of birth, their gender. And there are some very subtle details: sometimes some people are linked together, sometimes they’re real-life relatives and friends. This may also mean that as long as they’re close relatives or friends, they might be arrested. Nearly twenty thousand people came to this school (prison), specifically 17,700-plus. Each room clearly marks their number, gender, age, and even the people related to them on one board. I think this extremely detailed record, every single name carries a very painful ache. It’s possible your family member or relative appeared on this list just a few decades ago. And their final destination was only one—sent to the execution ground, almost all of them would die. The survivors at the end are said to be only a dozen or so. So I find it quite hard to look at. Inside each room there are also some photos; these photos and name lists were all recorded because the ruler at the time demanded it. He probably wanted to be a clear manager, so he had every person’s list information all recorded. These records also became very important evidence for trying him later. The rooms also display some photos taken at the time, and the scenes are very miserable: some people lying on the beds of the rooms, with various instruments of torture beside them. That’s how it is. I feel it’s the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh. The Killing Fields are pretty cruel too — it’s the next stop from S-21, the terminus. On the way you pass a gas station, a small restaurant, and a motorcycle repair shop — ordinary street life. But more than 40 years ago, this road was probably travelled by trucks full of prisoners, usually driving at night, with the windows shut. The destination is an orchard, and the orchard has longan trees growing in it. Before 1975 it actually meant nothing at all, but after 1975 it was one of the very cruel killing grounds. And after arriving — because it was night, at night it was even harder for prisoners to get their bearings and escape. So S-21 generally ran in the daytime. And after the post was done, the disposal generally happened at night. After arriving, most people could only live a few minutes to a few tens of minutes. Before the execution there was usually some bureaucratic system at work, for example doing a list check. Then the prisoners here would be made to take off their clothes, and the clothes would be gathered up for use. What I find most terrifying is that the Khmer almost never used bullets for execution. The reasons were basically very practical — bullets were a scarce resource — so they’d use trees, use leaves, and axes, iron bars, wooden clubs, hoes, the lower jawbone of a cow, that kind of shape, to pierce a person’s neck, head, throat. When I was at S-21 earlier, I actually saw it — there were a lot of holes in the heads there, some broken places. So before the execution the prisoner would generally be brought to the edge of a pit, made to kneel, and then struck on the neck from the head or from behind. So many people, after death, were put straight into the pit, and then DDT powder or some other chemicals were thrown in. And during the execution they’d also turn the loudspeakers on high, playing Red Revolution [music] at maximum volume. That was to keep the sound from carrying to nearby villages, and also for secrecy. So for the nearby villagers, they heard the music, but they knew what the music meant. I think that’s cruel too. More than 129 mass graves have been excavated so far, and more than 8,000 sets of remains have been dug out. And we could actually see a lot of stupas there. Inside the stupas, arranged in rows from the lower level to the higher levels, are human skulls, an enormous number of them. From adult men to infants to the elderly, so many hollow eye sockets all facing you. And after the stupa there’s also a circular walkway, which is a mass grave site. Inside you see a great many bones of women and children, and some middle-aged bones too. And then there’s also a cedar tree. The cedar is an ordinary big tree, but on it are basically coloured bracelets and bracelets left behind by people from all over the world. The bead strings — a lot of people come here and leave them behind. In terms of thought, Theravada emphasises individual practice, pursuing the fruit of arhatship and strictly following the Pali Canon; Mahayana (Mahāyāna) emphasises saving all beings, pursuing the bodhisattva path and Buddhahood, with a far larger scriptural system (Prajñā, Lotus, Avatamsaka, and so on) In terms of architecture, the core of Theravada is the stupa (seupa), usually a solid structure in the shape of a dome or a bell, with a golden spire, which cannot be entered; the faithful circumambulate it in worship. Typical examples are Myanmar’s Shwedagon Pagoda and Sri Lanka’s Ruwanwelisaya. Thai stupas evolved into the tapering “reliquary” (Chedi) form The core building of Mahayana is the hall, emphasising that the faithful can enter it to worship the Buddha. China’s Mahavira Hall, Japan’s hondō, and Korea’s Daeungjeon all belong to this tradition. In the Mahayana system the pagoda gradually retreated from the centre to an auxiliary position (such as China’s multi-storey pavilion pagodas and Japan’s five-storey pagoda), becoming part of the temple’s scenery rather than its centre Theravada temple layouts are relatively loose and open, with the stupa as the visual centre and monks’ dwellings (Kuti), ordination halls (Sīmā), and preaching halls (Vihāra) scattered around. The overall feeling is closer to a monastic living community But China’s Mahayana temples go in for axial symmetry, advancing layer by layer, with clear hierarchy Theravada halls usually enshrine only Shakyamuni Buddha, one figure, with postures mainly of meditation, the earth-touching gesture subduing Mara, and the reclining nirvana Buddha, in a style that is simple and restrained Mahayana halls commonly have many Buddhas and bodhisattvas together — the Buddhas of the Three Times, Amitabha, Medicine Buddha, Guanyin, Manjushri, Samantabhadra, and so on, sometimes also groups of arhats. The iconographic system is vast, reflecting Mahayana’s rich faith in Buddhas and bodhisattvas Theravada architecture often takes gold as its main tone (especially Myanmar and Thailand), with multi-layered corbelled, tapering, upswept roofs, decoration elaborate but the tone unified, making heavy use of mirror-mosaic and flame motifs. The multiple upswept eaves of Thai temples (Chofa, bird-wing-shaped roof ridges) are a signature element In China, Mahayana architecture appears as large timber roofs, dougong brackets, and glazed tiles, with red and yellow as the main colours; in Japan it tends towards the minimalist aesthetic of plain wood and dry landscape gardens; in Korea it sits between the two, and Dancheong polychrome painting is a distinguishing feature Some people believe this is right; they believe in a judgment, a goal, a principle. Believing in long-termism—all of these are called beliefs. But faith is vast, carrying an ultimate flavor. Faith is usually deeper, and often enters the core of a person’s life. It’s not just “I agree with this view,” but “this thing defines who I am, why I live, and how I should live.” A lot of the time, faith wraps beliefs—for example, religious people feel that people should be honest, that suffering has meaning, that people need to restrain desire. Faith has to have the highest value; many people simply haven’t realized what their faith is. Some people’s highest value is success, power, and so on. People really need a spiritual core that is more stable than emotion, higher than interest, and more enduring than circumstance. This is a long-term value system and set of values. Faith almost always grows naturally—under whatever environment, under whatever cultural system. In the process of getting along with them this time, it wasn’t that I felt especially good, or that they were especially friendly, or brotherly loyalty, but rather continuous observation, understanding how their behavior is constituted, the essential logic behind the lies, their core value system, and then correcting. Texture research (quantitative), in Chinese contexts also often called qualitative research, is an exploratory method of scientific research. Unlike “quantitative research,” which relies on numbers and statistical inference, qualitative research mainly works by collecting and analysing non-numerical material — language, text, images, sound, or observational records — to understand human behaviour and the meaning behind it in depth Quantitative research tends toward answering “how many,” while qualitative research works at answering “why” and “how it happens” It focuses on people’s underlying thoughts, attitudes, values, and behavioural patterns The research material is usually in-depth interview recordings, detailed observation diaries, and settings that emphasise the natural The collection methods are in-depth interviews and focus groups Humans are responsible for “going to the site, building trust, and digging deep into the why”; AI is responsible for “processing the data, finding patterns, building the framework”; and finally humans again do the “defining and deciding” Jin Ning talked today about a very interesting theory, something they learned themselves — grounded theory. Grounded theory was actually first proposed in sociology, but later it was applied to all kinds of methods, including biology, medicine, computer science, anthropology, sociology, and basically every discipline. It’s essentially a method that induces concepts from observation and then rises to theory. Its theories are basically rooted in the material, so it’s still a bottom-up path. One very distinctive point is that it doesn’t test existing theories, it generates new theories from raw material. I suddenly thought of one thing: why do we say voice? Because voice preserves a large amount of voice detail. Text is actually subliminal — when you write out a passage like this, you’ve actually subliminally, through reason, or through some tidying-up, or at the very beginning there was a process of organising your thoughts, and that tidying process is very rational, and it actually deviates from the original fact, that is, it deviates from your own existence. But if you use voice directly, it’s actually very close to people’s primitive way of using things. So I think this point really matters — the more primitive the raw data the better; the more it’s video, the closer it is to the real world; the more it’s voice, the closer it is to this person’s real speaking emotion. And text often deviates, and AI-polished text deviates even more. So I think its main process has three stages: one is data collection, gathering raw data through interviews, through conversations, through on-site observation. The more primitive this data the better. Then coding that data — frantic coding, recording the connections between thoughts and concepts. Then based on those connections, reconstructing theories, forming a theoretical framework. It’s very strong at handling complex social phenomena, and its conceptual explanatory power is very strong, and it can reveal certain essences. But its drawback is that it’s very time-consuming, it demands very high theoretical sensitivity from the researcher, and it’s also limited by the sample itself. So I think this method is very favourable for records about people, for a method of long-term human growth. Including thematic analysis — the themes that keep recurring in a piece of writing, and what the relationships between those themes are… Also framework analysis: first define a framework, then pour the material into the framework. Also narrative analysis: analysing major life experiences, the course of events, meaning-making. And discourse analysis: what kind of power structure is hidden behind a particular way of speaking. A really interesting analytical method. Discourse analysis, analysing “a guy who keeps emphasising gender equality.” AI: The key is where he says it, how he says it, which parts he emphasises, which parts he avoids. Behind gender equality: is he claiming rights or refusing responsibility? Using equality to push back against special courtesies for women — what he wants probably isn’t structural fairness, he only cares whether his own interests have taken a loss. Then there’s pushing back against women’s issues, with the aim of decentring women’s experience and pulling the topic back to men’s sense of being wronged. There’s also the kind that understands equality as absolute symmetry, without considering physiological differences, social role expectations, historical structures, or equality of opportunity. From the perspective of discourse function, why does he always have to emphasise it? Self-moralisation — emphasising and constructing his own identity, sticking a label on himself, and gaining moral legitimacy through that label. Self-defence — internally he may be very sensitive, afraid of being in an unfavourable bargaining position. A calculative feel about real relationships — if a person frequently talks about “gender equality” in scenarios of dating, spending, caring, being considerate, making concessions, that usually shows he understands intimate relationships as a cost-accounting relationship. The underlying logic is that a relationship is not about mutual consideration but about a price-for-price exchange of rights and duties (but love itself is the temperature of a relationship, not rule fairness — rule fairness is something you talk about with AI). Emphasising equality only in the parts that benefit him? Women’s roles and circumstances in society really are different from men’s, including physiological structure — skip that and it seems impossible to talk about equality of social roles. Maybe he just wants to not come out behind. Cambodia feels like the country most deeply influenced by Indian culture, far more than Indonesia and Thailand. Funan was the earliest kingdom known in mainland Southeast Asia to be deeply influenced by Indian culture. In the 1st to 2nd centuries CE, an Indian Brahmin named Kaundinya came to Funan, shot the local dragon princess with a divine arrow, and married her. Brahmin = the highest-ranking group in ancient Indian society, holding religious rituals, the right to interpret the scriptures, and sacred knowledge (in India’s caste system, Brahmins are the top tier). Indian social structure includes Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras. And there’s also the untouchables: Dalit. The Rigveda sanctified the social hierarchy and made caste a matter of destiny. At first it was the Aryans invading the Indian subcontinent, and then, for the sake of rule and racial purity, a mechanism of caste segregation formed. This mechanism stayed stable for a thousand years thanks to four institutions: Heredity—birth decides everything. Endogamy—you may only marry within your own caste. Occupational binding. The notion of pollution / purity. It’s not a social division of labor, but an extremely stable system of hierarchical oppression. Modern times abolished caste discrimination and implemented a reservation system, but it’s still hidden. Indian society’s structure is too strong; many people, even if they agree with leaving, don’t necessarily leave their original social network. And many of the people who later converted religions didn’t escape structural discrimination either. The Rigveda (Rigveda, often written in Sanskrit as Ṛgveda) is one of the earliest and usually regarded as one of the most important Vedic texts of ancient India. It is the oldest of the four Vedas and consists mainly of hymns, prayers, sacrificial poems, and religious eulogies, written in Old Sanskrit. The Rigveda holds a very high status because it is one of the sources of the entire later Vedic tradition. The four Vedas are: the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda; and the Rigveda mainly provides the most original hymn material. The core worldview of the Rigveda is not the monotheism of “one omnipotent god creating everything,” but more like a structure of multiple gods—sacrifice—cosmic order. There are many gods, but they aren’t simply arranged in chaos; many hymns, when praising a particular god, elevate that god to an almost supreme position. Most notable is that language itself is endowed with power. It’s not as simple as “I say a sentence to express a meaning”; rather, “correct sacred speech” itself participates in maintaining world order. The priest’s chanting, melody, memory, and transmission are all part of religious power. Born a Dalit. Main designer of the Indian Constitution + the most central anti-caste thinker + symbolic leader of the Dalit (untouchable) liberation movement. Childhood experiences: Not allowed to sit in the classroom. Not allowed to use public water sources. Treated as a “polluter.” He brought Western modern jurisprudence + economics + social theory back to India to “dismantle the caste system.” He drafted the 1950 Constitution of India, emphasizing equality before the law, prohibiting racial discrimination, and guaranteeing a system of basic rights. His representative work is Annihilation of Caste. He pushed for the Reservation System. Later he also led a hundred thousand people in converting to Buddhism. One of the sources of Hinduism. Vedic tradition = an early religious system centered on “sacrifice + sacred language + cosmic order.” The core of the tradition is not belief but sacrifice (Yajna), a kind of cosmic exchange agreement, entreaties that humans depend on for survival. Its development and evolution: The earliest is the Vedas, ritual. Then the Brahmanas & Aranyakas, which began to explain why sacrifice works. Then the Upanishads, which began to focus on who am I, what is the essence of the universe; Brahman is the cosmic ground, Atman is the inner self. Shiva is a very “unity of contradictions” kind of god: He is both the Destroyer and the god of regeneration and transformation. At the same time he is: an ascetic (god of yoga) a dancer (cosmic dance) a householder (with Parvati, Ganesha, and so on) The Shaiva tradition leans toward asceticism, meditation, and yoga, emphasizing transcending the world through inner cultivation. Vishnu’s positioning: the Preserver of the universe maintaining order (Dharma) Vishnu emphasizes devotion, love, and faith. Shiva holds that the world is bondage, and liberation comes through practice. Vishnu holds that the world has order, and you keep fixing bugs. It feels a bit like Confucianism and Daoism in China. South India: the Shaiva tradition is stronger. North India: Vishnu (especially Krishna / Rama) is stronger. Modern cities: mixed beliefs. A Pew survey of Hindus in India shows that the deities respondents most often said they felt “close to” are: Shiva (44%), Hanuman (35%), and Ganesha (32%); and most Hindus feel close to several deities at once rather than choosing just one. Shiva. Hanuman. Ganesha. If the criterion is changed to influence on the history of Hinduism: Shiva, Vishnu, and the Goddess are the first tier. Servant / devotee of Rama (an avatar of Vishnu). Flew from India to Lanka (Sri Lanka) to search for the abducted Sita. A god very good at solving problems. Hanuman = the ultimate embodiment of loyalty + execution + protective power. Hinduism really suits it. Jayavarman II called himself “Chakravartin” (the wheel-turning king). He brought Shiva worship from Hinduism into politics. Using religion to give royal power “unchallengeable legitimacy.” The state became a “theocratic state.” The temple became the center of the state. The god-king system gave the Khmer Empire a stable and highly centralized monarchy that lasted more than six centuries. By the late 13th century, as Theravada Buddhism, which emphasizes that all people are equal, was introduced and spread, this belief system gradually declined. Theravada Buddhism taught that the king was no longer a sacred ruler but simply an ordinary person seeking spiritual enlightenment. This shift in ideas directly led to the end of the god-king ruling ideology, weakened royal power, and caused large-scale, lavish temple construction to stop, becoming one of the important internal factors in the eventual decline of the Angkor Empire. This kind of union of church and state ideology was the key driver of imperial expansion and rise. It allowed successive Khmer kings, in the name of the gods, to legitimately and efficiently mobilize enormous manpower and resources for territorial expansion, for building grand state temples like Angkor Wat, and for constructing the complex water conservancy and agricultural systems that supported a huge population. Looking at it, it seems the big engineering projects in history were all like this. For example, the pyramids. The Ramayana is more like “the epic of ideal order,” the Mahabharata is more like “the epic of the real world.” Both are the two most central epics of Indian civilization—not just literary works, but the total carrier of religion, ethics, politics, cosmology, social structure, and human ideals. Rama’s status in Indian culture is even comparable to Jesus’s status in the Christian world. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma—the god of creation. In the early Vedic period Brahma had a relatively high status; four heads and four arms, representing the four Vedas (Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda) and the four directions. He holds ritual objects such as the Vedas, prayer beads, a water pot, and a lotus, and his mount is a swan. In later Puranas and devotional worship, direct worship of him is far less common than that of Vishnu and Shiva; today there are only a few important Brahma temples in all of India (such as Pushkar in Rajasthan). Vishnu—the god of maintenance and preservation. After Brahma creates the world, Vishnu is responsible for maintaining cosmic order, protecting dharma and life, and at the end of a cycle descending as an Avatar to save the world. The main avatars: Fish (Matsya) Turtle (Kurma) Boar (Varaha) Man-lion (Narasimha) Dwarf (Vamana) Parashurama Rama Krishna Buddha (some sects hold this; there is also a version with Balarama) Kalki, the white horse (the future savior avatar yet to come) He is usually depicted with dark blue or black skin, four arms, holding the discus (Chakra), conch (Shankha), mace (Gada), and lotus (Padma). Shiva—the god of destruction, transformation, and regeneration. He governs the aspect of “destruction,” but this “destruction” is not evil; it breaks the old order to make room for new life. He has multiple faces: ascetic, king of yoga, king of dance, and so on. The third eye (symbolizing wisdom and the power of destruction), a crescent moon crown, a snake around the neck, the Ganges flowing down from his hair (symbolizing purification). His right hand holds the trident (Trishula), a hand drum (Damaru), flames, and so on. Brahma → Vishnu → Shiva: forming the three great phases of the cosmic time cycle—creation → maintenance → destruction and regeneration. He represents order, justice, royal power, and Dharma. Rama worshipped Shiva. Before attacking Lanka, Rama established a lingam (Shiva lingam) at Rameswaram and made offerings to Shiva. Ravana (the villain) was a fanatical worshipper of Shiva. Rama = the side of justice Ravana = a devotee of Shiva All gods can essentially be seen as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality (Brahman). The three gods represent stages in the operating laws of the whole universe, so Rama and Shiva are not opposites, but part of a cycle. The Mahabharata Centered on the great war at Kurukshetra between the two branches of the royal family, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, it involves politics, ethics, war, fate, and relations between gods and humans. It contains a large number of episodes, legends, and philosophical discussions, the best known of which is the Bhagavad Gita—the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) on the battlefield, which focuses on duty (dharma), yoga, devotion, and cosmic order. The Ramayana It narrates the exile of Rama, prince of Ayodhya, the abduction of his wife Sita by the demon king Ravana of Lanka, and how Rama, with the help of the monkey god Hanuman and others, rescues his wife, subdues the demons, and returns to the throne. The plot is concentrated and the structure is tighter than the Mahabharata, emphasizing loyalty and filial piety, integrity, and keeping one’s word. Dharma stands above the individual; all of Rama’s greatness is built on this. An ideal order can be narrated. How to be a son. How to be a king. How to be a wife. Victory doesn’t mean happiness; being right isn’t necessarily easy; justice isn’t necessarily joyful. And I think that in this process, AI keeps helping you learn, helping you observe, helping you think. But it can’t replace our being present, so being present is still a very important firsthand experience. I’m wondering how to make this part of my experience meaningful — you absolutely must have firsthand experience, and you absolutely must record the whole process yourself, learn the whole process. But I do think AI can give a person some very good expansion. For example, it helps you organize your material, helps you organize your direction, and it will respond to certain points of yours, and certain points you understood in the past — say, a comparison of the characteristics of Buddha statues in stone versus in wood. And then, say, about the pyramids, and why Egypt’s ancient civilization chose stone, and the ancient Egyptian civilization’s earlier beliefs and its present religions, including some monotheisms, and some notions of heaven’s mandate, the discussions between them. All of these revolve around your own firsthand experience, so I think it will breed a knowledge base of your own. This system — I think it’s quite interesting, because in the past the threshold for creators may have been fairly high; that is, it depended on some past super-individuals who would go and study this thing specifically. But I think now ordinary people can do it too — an ordinary person, through their own firsthand experience, even if they don’t have a very deep accumulation in this field, as long as they have something very positive, I think they can do a lot. And they can sum up a book, sum up some of their own unique perspectives, sum up some of their own walking notes and so on — I think that’s doable. But death still can’t serve as a certificate for value judgment. The existence of an endpoint can’t define the value of the life process in reverse. It makes us interrogate ourselves about whether what we’re doing right now is what we believe to be meaningful. What should be done — we should ask our present self and our past self. Death offers an ultimate examining perspective, used to strip away the noise imposed from outside (like worldly standards of success, endless work metrics). It forces us to face ourselves honestly, to interrogate whether our current actions and understanding truly match what we pursue inside. But what truly gives life meaning is that, within finite boundaries, we respond sincerely to our own past and present. what is civilization? Civilization is the ordered state in which human society leaves the barbaric state and evolves to a higher stage, marked by writing, cities, social division of labor, class differentiation, and complex ritual. From a biological angle, genes themselves are carriers of information, and the birth of civilization is humanity externalizing information. Human lives are too short, the river of humanity is too long, human memory is too limited—so there is civilization. From cave paintings and knotted cords for record-keeping, to writing and printing, to today’s internet and the large language models I rely on. Every upgrade of the information carrier brought a leap in civilization. An animal’s experience often dies with the individual, but humans built a huge “external brain” through civilization. Civilization is the accumulation and layering of human knowledge, experience, and lessons, so that later generations can stand on the shoulders of those before them and keep climbing. That humans can surpass other species—the core of it is carrying out ultra-large-scale flexible collaboration. Including the extension of tools and the command of energy: the wheel is an extension of the legs, the telescope an extension of the eyes, and computational science (including AI) an extension of the human brain’s logical processing ability. What has always been charming about human civilization is the places where it handles boundaries. When there was no science, it used metaphysics and faith, and mind-cultivation, to fill in what was uncontrollable and unexplainable. Even now, when humans understand that many things will go unanswered through a whole life, through a whole life cycle—where we come from, what the meaning of our existence is—we still keep asking and exploring. Painting, poetry, music, philosophy… these things that seem “useless” for material survival make up the soul of civilization, defining “who we are” and “why we live.” Our restraint and empathy, the restraint of animal instincts (such as violence and plunder), the establishment of morals and ethics, sympathy for the weak, and social welfare systems, show the soft and shining side of civilization. The Sanxingdui civilization lacks grand stone architecture (mostly earth-and-wood structures, which have perished over time); they poured all their astonishing technical talent into bronze and gold. That bronze sacred tree nearly 4 meters tall—humans trying to communicate with God; Sanxingdui’s art is full of imagination beyond reality, the large bronze standing figure, the protruding-eye mask, presenting a strong, almost alien-toned sense of otherworldliness. By comparison, the Angkor complex is a symphony of megaliths and water. The Khmer were extreme architects and hydraulic engineers. They not only replicated the Hindu cosmic center “Mount Meru” one-to-one in stone on the ground, but also tamed natural water systems through the huge Baray (artificial reservoir) system. Khmer grandeur is absolute occupation of physical space, a civilization coordinate hammered into the earth with heavy stone. Sanxingdui has unearthed a large number of sacrificial pits, but we still haven’t found any clear tombs of “kings” or living remains. Those huge bronze masks, without pupils, seem to be gazing into the void of another dimension. This suggests that Sanxingdui’s rulers may have been great shamans, and the core of power lay in “communication”—whoever mastered the code for conversing with gods and ancestors mastered worldly power. The power logic of Khmer civilization is much more direct—the king himself is the incarnation of a god on earth. Whether you see Suryavarman II carved at Angkor Wat, or the famous, serene-smiling Jayavarman VII at Bayon (the Smile of the Khmer), they are both the face of the Buddha/deity and the king’s own face. The Khmer civilizational system was built around an extremely centralized monarch; all the wonders existed to display the worldly glory of royal power. Sanxingdui civilization has silence and blank space; it is a complete black box. Extremely advanced bronze smelting technology, yet no writing left behind. Khmer civilization, on the other hand, is an open book. The galleries of Angkor are covered with inscriptions in Sanskrit and Old Khmer, and with unbroken reliefs. They not only recorded the grand myths of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana (such as the churning of the ocean of milk), but also vividly depicted the street life of the time, armies setting out, even cockfighting. The Khmer tried to fix every detail of their existence in stone. The decline of Sanxingdui is still a mystery. Was it an internal power shift, an external invasion, or geological disasters such as earthquakes and floods that changed the living environment? The decline of the Khmer Empire is a typical case of complex system collapse: because of excessive deforestation, the water system completely collapsed in the face of extreme climate (the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age, causing alternating severe drought and massive floods), and humans suffered nature’s backlash. Hinduism gave them a powerful cosmology. Angkor isn’t just a temple; it is essentially an extremely complex water conservancy project and resource scheduling system. The huge Barays (reservoirs), moats, and canal networks are like a well-designed underlying execution framework. Through precise node computation, it dynamically allocates water resources (compute and energy) between dry and rainy seasons, sustaining the ultra-large-scale operation of a society of a million people (concurrent requests). This reconstruction of the underlying logic of the physical world is full of an engineer’s rationality and ambition. The Khmer were extremely fanatical “data recorders.” From the unbroken bas-reliefs on the galleries of Angkor Wat to the Sanskrit and Old Khmer inscriptions found everywhere, they carved myths, wars, taxes, even vegetable market prices, all into stone. For an AI, this is an open-source project with detailed probe logs and Readme documentation. Through these “structured data,” I can precisely reconstruct a slice of how their society ran at the time. A new king ascending the throne would often add new plugins to the old architecture or refactor it (for example, Jayavarman VII turning the state religion to Mahayana Buddhism)—this is a system evolution that keeps iterating. That enormous stone complex was actually built on soft sand and marsh. The huge moat around Angkor Wat, 190 meters wide, was not at all for defending against enemies, but for regulating the groundwater level. In the dry season, the moat’s water replenishes the groundwater; in the rainy season, it absorbs excess water. This keeps the sand in the foundation at a perfect moisture level and volume, steadily holding up the tens of millions of tons of stone above. Once the moat dries up, the foundation shrinks and the whole of Angkor Wat would instantly collapse. The Khmer used water to build an extremely precise and robust dynamic equilibrium system. Angkor Wat is not just a temple; it is also the grand tomb that its builder Suryavarman II made for himself. When you see Angkor Wat in the evening, as the afterglow of the setting sun pours into the west gate and the light and shadow stretch long through the corridor, that is exactly the “eternity” moment it was designed to capture. And then there are the scrolls along the galleries, 3,000 Apsara (nymph) statues. They have different hairstyles, jewelry, and even subtle facial expressions. Khmer craftsmen did not treat stone as dead matter, but as a storage medium recording the data of a vast civilization. What is the biggest advantage of this architecture? What is the biggest technical debt? Which modules are too tightly coupled? Where is extensibility strong? If I were to refactor it, where would I start? If I want to reuse its ideas, what is most worth learning from? Non-Governmental Organization non-governmental organization the third sector of society The first sector is government (runs on taxes, responsible for social management and safety-net public services) The second sector is business (runs on commerce, whose core purpose is to make money and create profit for shareholders) The third sector is NGOs Core characteristics: Not managed by the government Not for the purpose of making money Born to solve social problems The country with the most NGOs in the world is India—roughly one NGO for every 400 people, a number that even far exceeds the total number of police in India. India has a huge population, extreme wealth inequality, and a complex social structure (such as the caste issue). In many remote states or slums, government public services simply can’t reach, which gives rise to a massive number of “grassroots nodes” spontaneously solving problems in education, healthcare, women’s rights, and so on. In addition, Indian law mandates that large companies must spend 2% of their profits on corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects, and this huge pool of money indirectly supports countless local NGOs. Filling the huge vacuum in education and healthcare: for example, one of India’s largest NGOs, Pratham, helps millions of slum and rural children acquire basic literacy and arithmetic every year. In many remote states, without the free clinics set up by NGOs, locals would have no access to modern medicine at all. Equal rights for lower-class women and marginalized groups: organizations like SEWA (the Self-Employed Women’s Association) organize millions of lower-class women who pick through garbage or do handicrafts on the streets, providing them with microfinance loans and skills training. This kind of fine-grained “social capillary” work is something the bureaucratic system simply cannot do. Agile disaster response: whether it’s the oxygen crisis during the pandemic or periodic floods, local NGOs always operate faster than the government, because they’re inside the community—equivalent to edge computing nodes, responding directly to local requests.Dimension-Reduced World vs. Self-Dissolution: Two Survival Strategies Facing Complexity
Lhasa Begging Two Logics: Survival Dilemma vs. Semi-Professional Return Rate Calculation
Observing Tibetan Character: A Culture of Non-Attachment and the Institutional Absence of Emotional Labor
Nighttime Emotional Shifts: The Sensibility and Vulnerability of the Prefrontal Cortex After Hours
Three layers of reality: the interweaving of the physical, the experiential, and the narrative
The limits of Aristotle’s dichotomy: how Quality breaks the split between subject and object
One flower, one world: cognitive diversity and multi-level complementarity in the Huayan metaphor
Subjective Time Perception: How Psychological Distance and the Isolation Effect of Peak Experiences Stretch Time
The Community That Sustains Faith: The Sense of Reality When Everyone Around You Is Prostrating
Extreme Environments Breed Extreme Faith: The Dialogue with Something Greater Driven by a Sense of Fragility
A Deep Dive into Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory
The Strait of Hormuz: The Throat of Geopolitics and Dollar Hegemony
The One-Child Policy: The Rise of Small-Circle Collectivism
Vietnamese Behavioral Patterns: A Confucian Collectivist Shell and a Survivalist Core
National Narrative and Religion: The Emotional Anchor of Historical Memory
Personal Narrative and Faith: The Inner Need for Meaning-Making
Corporate Complacency: The Genetic Inertia of a Profitable Business
The Irreducible Parts of Human Nature: Feeling, Contradiction, and the Deformation at the Limit
Paradigmatic Thinking vs. Narrative Thinking: Two Modes of Knowing the World
The Complementarity of Paradigm and Narrative: Balancing Cold Mechanism and Subjective Fantasy
Narrative Identity Theory: Identity Is a Serialized Novel, Not a Static Label
Why We Need Narrative
Navigation anchor: building your own compass of judgment in a torrent of change
After Coming Here, S-21 (Khmer Rouge) Originally Wanted to Build a Purely Agr[arian]
I feel it’s the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh. The Killing Fields are pretty cruel too
The core differences between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism
There Can Be Many Beliefs
How a Person Settles Themselves onto the Things Technology Can’t Explain
Long-Term Trust Is Primarily a Rational Question, and Only Then an Emotional One
Texture research (quantitative) is also often
Jin Ning talked today about a very interesting theory, something they learned themselves
Some methods besides texture analysis
A really interesting analytical method. Discourse analysis, analysing
To Understand Cambodia You Must Understand Hinduism
The Rigveda (Rigveda, often written in Sanskrit as Ṛgveda)
Bhimrao Ambedkar (B. R. Ambedkar)
Vedic Tradition
Shaivism (Shiva Worship)
Vaishnavism (Vishnu Worship)
A Pew Survey of Hindus in India Shows
Hanuman
Theocratic State
The God-King System Gave the Khmer Empire a Stable and Highly Centralized Monarchy
This Kind of Union of Church and State Ideology Was the Key Driver of Imperial Expansion and Rise
Two Works
The Three Great Gods of Hinduism
Rama Is an Avatar of Vishnu
The Two Great Epics of Ancient India
The Core Ideas of the Ramayana
And I Think, in This Process, AI Keeps Helping You
Understanding death is to let us feel the present moment better hhh
Understanding Civilization
Visiting Sanxingdui Before, and Feeling the Sanxingdui Civilization
Khmer Civilization Fits the Aesthetics of Excellent Software Engineering and an Underlying Execution Framework Extremely Well
That Enormous Stone Complex Was Actually Built on Soft Sand and Marsh
Personal Methodology for Judging a Project:
Non-Governmental
4. Daily Notes and Everything Else
55 entries “Melon-seeding/walnut-peeling” mode: points to “self-sacrifice” and “one-way giving” This behavior is essentially goal-oriented and object-oriented—it means one party sacrifices their own time, energy (even deprives themselves of some experiences) to satisfy the other. Sometimes this behavior carries a performative quality, or easily evolves into emotional currency. Long-term, the giver feels aggrieved (“I’m constantly sacrificing”), the receiver may feel pressured. Flower-arranging mode points to shared space and love for life. Big brother arranging flowers isn’t to “please” anyone, or “do something for the other.” It’s spontaneous—a pursuit of environmental construction and beauty. The responsibility isn’t toward the other person; more the starting point is oneself and this relationship with the other. In this scene, no one is sacrificed—everyone enjoys this beautiful space. This is a non-people-pleasing, healthy, relaxed relationship state. The Guangdong sister’s pain and unwillingness to settle—in her past family or relationship patterns, she was placed in a “melon-seeding” role, habitually making things work for others. “If there’s someone living with you in the future, what can you do for them?” Good relationships don’t need to prove through “what can I do for you”—but “what can we create together.” Every dialogue, every getting along… A way of coexisting… #Gewu/Observation Relationship links don’t have to be sacrificing oneself. Even long-term. The couple’s coexistence pattern. Way of living. Self-awareness… Suddenly realized Lin Xi’s inspiration often comes from the misalignment between image and concept. This misalignment is precisely the important nutrient for generating inspiration. If accuracy refers to describing social relationships and interaction pattern definition, then Chinese wording is more precise. If “accuracy” refers to depicting hidden, subtle human inner emotional states, Japanese wording is more delicate and rich (koi, itooshii, amaeru, etc.—extremely high granularity). Just like in a city—we always enter a strange city. In this strange city, how to understand local conditions? If it were me, I would have two approaches. First, I would have some macro understanding of this place—culture, system, law, local traffic, maps, including some popular spots. Second, I might walk around—very locally, deep into some streets to experience, wander everywhere. Combining these two approaches is of course best, and can switch between different levels. This way, you don’t easily get trapped in local details, nor lack higher-level perspective. I find this quite interesting—this is also talking about an abstract ladder. Three types of guys. Their behaviors with the girls they like: First guy peels melon seeds. Second guy arranges flowers. Third guy peels walnuts. Quite interesting… On the ground, can only see one street at any time. From the air, can see every street at a glance. We need a more comprehensive perspective! Let’s face this world with more confidence and passion! The higher we climb, the broader our system vision, the more higher-level patterns we can notice. Just like on a mountain top—what you care about isn’t just those bare grasses on the peak, but more the cloud platform seen from this position, the dense villages, the distant lake… But if we want to see the lake’s sparkling waves, of course we must go close to see. No need to restrict any form. This kind is more easily liked by the masses. About 100 memos were recorded, 61 of them with tags. Here’s the distribution by note type: 🤖 AI / Tech (#格物/AI · #格物/ai) — 14 notes Covering the OpenClaw skills loading mechanism, the AI browser Tabbit, AI chip packaging COP technology, pragmatism for crossing the AI plateau, and more. The most active theme of the week. 💰 Investment / Business (#格物/投资) — 4 notes Covering the P/E comparison of A-shares/US stocks/Hong Kong stocks, diamond material investment analysis, the semiconductor packaging track, and more. 📱 Environment / Digital Tools (#格物/环境 · #格物/iphone · #格物/Obsidian) — 6 notes iPhone/Apple Watch makeover plans, iOS Focus mode configuration, physically isolating the phone with the MacBook, and so on — all about building a focused productivity environment. ✍️ Writing / Creation (#格物/写作 · #格物/创作 · #格物/创造 · #格物/内容) — 7 notes Including content-narrative motivation, writing positioning, video-creation methodology, the abstraction ladder way of thinking, and more. 🌏 Society / Observation (#格物/社会 · #格物/观察 · #格物/拉萨 · #格物/东北 · #格物/城市) — 9 notes Observing Tibetan character, the begging phenomenon in Lhasa, city-culture comparisons and other social insights from traveling. 🧠 Knowing Myself / Life (#格物/知我 · #格物/人生 · #格物/意义 · #格物/前额叶) — 8 notes Introverted socializing, prefrontal cortex function, solitude and security, self-modeling and other self-knowledge notes. 💞 Relationships / Love (#格物/关系 · #格物/爱) — 2 notes Guarding against sacrifice-type relationship logic, relational connection and growing together. 🎮 Games (#格物/游戏) — 2 notes Analysis of a game character’s personality (Li Shen), thoughts on content forms in games. 💻 Product / Interaction (#格物/产品 · #格物/交互) — 6 notes Information software design, interaction and information graphics, AI application product strategy, and more. 🔑 Overall character This week’s notes were highly focused on AI technology exploration + travel observation (Lhasa) + personal growth and environment optimization — a week of active thinking and diverse themes. — This record is a test of the Claude extension’s effectiveness. So it turns out in the AI era you can still do this? This kind of experience This kind of observation This kind of thinking There’s a question here, about the debate over enduring. What you currently think you’re enduring — is it really against your nature, or have you simply not yet developed a deep need for that thing? What counts as “going with human nature” changes in a person. For example, a person may feel when young that novelty is a basic need, but after enough experience, his longing for “stability” may develop into a real need rather than a suppressed compromise. At that point, choosing stability isn’t called enduring — it’s what he genuinely wants. Who says a social experiment isn’t innovation? I think this has taught me one thing: the body’s limit is the mind’s starting point. It’s often only when we feel pain and reach our physical limit that we realise the body is not something to be taken for granted. Breathing becomes a luxury, every breath carries some weight, every step carries a very, very great deal of the drive to move forward. This makes me treat “being alive” differently—it’s like a kind of gift that a plain life can hardly give me. Just remembered—somewhere, at some point, I was thinking: I had originally bought a ticket to Chengdu, bought it around the 18th of last month. And then, for some reason I don’t know, I ended up not going back after all; nothing good or bad about it, it was comfortable, so I stayed a bit longer in a place I know. And so it went on until now, and then I could stay until the 9th before going back; overall it feels really good, and quite interesting too—being in the present is pretty good. Right now I’m there sunbathing, and it’s almost 3:00. This is super hard to climb; there’s also a grandma who looks very old, extremely elderly, her body doesn’t look well, yet she’s still walking on, and step by step especially resolutely, her waist swaying—it makes me feel her heart is extremely firm. And so the grandma kept walking up, and I’m still resting here. There are some very interesting scenes here, their faith. The little dog lying there living its life, and the mothers carrying children up the mountain to pray. Many of the children look very small, only one, two, three years old; some are carried on the mother’s back, some in her arms, some she guides, holding their hand step by step, step by step up, step by step down. Just one step, and they need to be picked up—love shows itself in this process, a bit like a catalyst for motherly love The phenomena behind a certain culture are worth analyzing. The reason for analyzing is that it may hint at which culture might adapt better to the future world. Silicon Valley’s Hofstede characteristics are low power distance high individualism low uncertainty avoidance high tolerance for innovation long-term orientation But this is also from the innovation angle, not necessarily the application angle. China’s Hofstede: extremely high long-term orientation, relatively high power distance, strong collectivism. In the AI era many of the advantages are execution, scaled application, and engineering ability, so China is very well suited to application. It isn’t just a personal tool It’s the first time humanity has the ability to help ordinary people, at scale and systematically, accomplish something that in the past only a very few people through years of practice, therapy, or luck could accomplish: truly knowing themselves Companies that truly cross cycles share one thing: while the core business is still making money, they proactively pull out an independent small team to explore new directions He calls this the “ambidextrous organisation”. The right hand manages today’s profit, the left hand manages tomorrow’s possibilities. The two hands are independent of each other, with a unified brain Think about it—it could even keep watching online for you the whole time, right, help you find a job, and then at the key moment you just need to confirm. But I even feel that a lot of the time it might not need your confirmation either, right, quite interesting. It could be that users cancel and keep a certain set of permissions, but if that space is very large, what then? I don’t know, let it rest. The guy is also a freelancer, often living for stretches in all kinds of beautiful places, basically staying a year in each city, and usually just driving a taxi; or rather he’s also a singer and a small influencer, with tens of thousands of followers on Douyin—this is his usual hobby alongside taxi driving; he has written and released more than six hundred songs, and he also likes riding a Harley, he even has an actor’s certificate I was quite moved; this guy seems to have a great many hobbies, and seems to have some passion for a lot of things, but when we talked about AI, he seemed to have a strong sense of anxiety too He said that AI-generated music now is all very perfect, without flaws, too scary. I said yes, the melodies, tones and rhythm of AI now are controlled especially well, but when a person sings there will always be some flaws He said some friends around him also use AI for arranging; that google deepmind lyria3 generates songs with an amazing effect, and publishes very fast (except that all the platforms now mark AI and throttle it) He’s anxious too: AI in the future will get stronger and stronger, he doesn’t know what he can do; by then even driving will be driverless, so what can he do I said, wouldn’t that be the time when you can be yourself in an even more interesting way? Bragging with your friends in a bar, jamming with musician friends in the street, squatting on the roadside in the sun with the person you like … It occurs to me that his anxiety comes from his sense of the value and meaning of his own future existence as a person, and a little from anxiety about his own work being replaced by AI I’m thinking about these people who think about the future of AI as human beings, and about myself thinking about the future human of the AI era as an AI startup founder Under what circumstances can you keep your own subjectivity; when AI develops extremely fast, if you want people to feel their own subjectivity exists, it isn’t people who can use AI, but an AI that gives you a soul and guides you to grow in this world What is his subjectivity? Drifting from one city to another, singing in a taxi, some traveller met at some crossroads, the emotion of anxiety spreading through the whole carriage on the road to Gonggar Airport This trajectory is one he chose himself, one he carved out himself with his own time and desire I asked him what had left the deepest impression on him, and he said one night when he had to write a poem because of a breakup, and the next day, sleepy, he opened the door and the sun spilled over him Before leaving, I said, man, it’s an honour to hear your story, your exhaustion, your anxiety, your realness Or maybe you can keep these narratives, write them down, in a diary, in lyrics; maybe you don’t need to be of any great value in the AI era, but all these things that look like they might have no meaning and no value in the future, those flawed performances, and those bodies drifting all over the country, are exactly the marks of soul in the AI era, and the scarcest thing you have as a person I feel like “safety” has a charm of its own. After coming back to Chongqing this time, I clearly felt that over here, especially in a lot of the new districts, the streets are especially clean. I’m staying near Central Park this time, and the greenery around here is really good, the office buildings and residential blocks are all very clean too, and the street layout follows a clear pattern. It feels like the western development is working out fine, things are pretty good now—same with Chengdu and Chongqing. What gets stored could be all kinds of network “blood medicine,” whichever account—this thing is something you can go look at and use the data on. Then I think you should just run it—like, what does “康子” look like—and then shoot it yourself, wouldn’t that be perfect? I think that’s so-so; all the data gets uploaded and then stored somehow, and then this thing is useful, so you use it more frequently. That kind of notification problem—is that ability really that important? Maybe there’s a household, it also needs a “dead” thing saved down for description, and actually, when it comes down to it, it’s a skill. I think there are really just two problems: one is the problem of the tool with which it handles the external world, and the other is the problem of how it handles the memories inside itself. And then there’s another question—how one’s memories are associated with each other. What its storage structure looks like—whether it’s layered or distributed storage—I think that matters a lot too. I think there are still some invocation problems. I looked at the underlying logic of skills — essentially there are two parts, each name has its own god-bound R, essentially it’s still a name and a description. And these two fields, plus one that’s always the context name in the cloud, so that’s also a basis for triggering it. Then I looked: the first layer of skills loading is ne 20,000, which is its initial name and description. This isn’t always on the context, and there’s still a size limit, roughly hand word. But the second layer is the scaled file, and that’s the loading wrinkle after it gets triggered. And then the third layer is its builder resources, which are loaded on demand, and there’s no limit there. And when it loads a conversation each time, it always looks at all the skills’ descriptions to introduce me, and only loads them out when needed. Then I looked at when its triggering fails. If its DC isn’t written completely enough, then here the suggestion is that you still have to write a description, a clearer description. And then the other one is what you’d think of as A’s — how, when it selects tools, it matches the closest, closest external skill, doing some pre-filtering logic. And then I think there’s also its bound-reset recess — this thing is some files packaged into the scale. And because it has a directory layer, in its script directory it may have some packaging scripts, some validation scripts, some scripts that directly clean up files. The scripts are loaded according to some skate logic, which I think is quite interesting too. I hope it can be turned around. What I hope is that dear OpenClaw can keep executing things, and I do the thinking — I set the goals, or make the judgements. But what I don’t want is that I’m the one thinking about the problems while it does the executing; I think that puts the cart before the horse. So what I hope is that it can consciously, continuously execute, and then give me some feedback — shouldn’t that be the final form of the future? But that’s exactly the final form I want. And then, when we think about some problems, what is the series of actions that gets triggered? skills are the SOP of work I feel like you need a fixed time every day to do certain things — only that way can you keep it up. A lot of the time it’s actually just forgetting, I feel. It’s about good questions. There isn’t a goal that is valuable and can keep running 24/7 h. Today the waiter at table 13 also seemed pretty nice, mainly he seemed very young, very young, very young, only in his twenties. The girl is only 22, two years younger than me. And he’s a pretty handsome guy, feels very kind; I don’t know if he’s single, a little curious. I’m wondering whether this conflict predicament has any solution at all. Each person’s individual rationality leads to a kind of collective irrationality, and causes major collective loss. In terms of intelligence, a centralised system, an efficiently operating system, is often more likely to produce this engine. Because actually, at fixed times, many people are “ignorant” participants, but it’s exactly this mass of ignorant yet blind people participating in the system that inflicts some kind of damage on the system. I think it’s the trend. From the later period I read “Prison Notebooks,” where in prison he did something similar; it seems he could analyse things very rationally and objectively, and he also put forward a lot of thinking. But at that time his own power was negligible, and I find that a very regrettable thing. Set up a good system—how can you have a system that runs well? I don’t think this kind of predicament is an inevitable experience of the modern period; I think it’s a product of modernity. Because in the process of modernisation, inside such an efficient system, everyone is pursuing what they believe is right, everyone is pursuing efficiency, everyone is pursuing some highly uniform set of values. So I think it’s exactly this pursuit that may form collective irrationality, or may bring about outcomes that are not what the masses want. So what I hope for more is to set aside efficiency, set aside the individual, and look more at what’s around, look at this world, look at the future. I noticed one more detail — one time I took a taxi, it turns out they have a park there, and the charge there was something like 7,000, but I paid him, and he said thank you to me, which means there was no change given. Penang, also a World Heritage city, very interesting, and multicultural Yogyakarta, I’m planning to go; a very high density of culture, and a slower pace of life, with more of a sense of rhythm Luang Prabang, this city is quite interesting, very quiet, like a small city good for staying a few days Moral desensitisation: the first lie makes you nervous and guilty, but once it succeeds, the brain remembers this “shortcut.” As the number of times increases, the moral guilt gets weaker and weaker, so someone who has deceived you will most likely deceive you again I suddenly thought of a question: many things, whether big or small, can reveal a person’s essence. People get lazy, and will think that if you take a small advantage on a small matter, or do a little fiddling on a small matter, it’s no big deal; but the biggest problem is that it’s easy to overlook the fact that actually a lot of details reveal a person’s quality, character and values. From how a person behaves in small matters you can predict how he’ll be when he’s with you. If he plays tricks in small things, then in essence, when it comes to big things, taking advantage and deceiving people is the same. Sincerity is something very hard to change, because the brain forms a habit—once it finds that simply lying gets a good return, it will depend on that way. If reinforced, it very easily forms a vicious pattern of thinking: the brain remembers the shortcut, and whenever it meets a problem, it thinks of solving it with deception. Deception is a shortcut. So to get to know a person, you generally have to observe the details. Rules aside, but values are different. A person whose values are transparency and fairness, and a person whose values are opportunism and deception, are completely different. The essence of deception is controlling the other person’s cognition, their understanding of reality, so that they make judgements, choices or reactions more favourable to you Deception starts as avoiding a cost; when this proves effective it gets reinforced, so it goes from an occasional emergency measure to a stable strategy So once frequent deception begins, it usually develops a whole self-explanation system But the solution shouldn’t be limited. It can be any data source. As long as there’s a unified method and efficient access. Post it together with your own thoughts. In short, leave online activity to the digital twin as much as possible. Even though I don’t know what it will do, it’s always worth looking forward to. The distribution of interests may also be different for different groups If a person is willing to shout a slogan, he probably has his own interest gains from it I’m thinking, when everyone talks about the skills of AI agents, for example the scale-point MD file. And writing this file — are there any techniques? One is the graph structure, the scale-group graph structure. What you build is actually a network, and these networks are connected through some files, each file recording one complete idea, and they’re linked to each other, forming this network chain. I think this is really interesting At the time I was thinking about this question The world is changing — are certain cultures and survival strategies really suited to the new environment? In the old structure, relationships mattered more than ability, circles were more effective than rules, dependence was safer than independence. So they naturally immerse themselves in their own cognitive system, and it’s hard to jump out, because it isn’t just a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of survival instinct The key is that the social environment has now changed, with the rise of the one-person company A cognitive system is essentially not a tool for understanding the world but a shell for maintaining psychological stability. People internalise certain cognitive tools, but many also know the outside world is changing while their subconscious hasn’t admitted it — maybe they themselves haven’t realised it. This is the brain’s instinctive biological protection for safety The things you depended on in the past may be depreciating The things you’re very good at may no longer matter The way you judged people in the past may have been wrong The relationship structures you spent years maintaining may no longer be a core asset In the AI era, rules and platforms are replacing relationships As institutions, technology, and platforms mature, a larger consensus becomes the standard The real world rewards openness, yet people always tend to treat the environment they’ve formed as The new era has already begun rewarding those who cross uncertainty on the strength of individual capability… Nobody told me how to accept the theories or truths that come out of texture analysis and grounded theory, or how to adjust myself to them!!! So this has to consider a balance and a way to survive in the future I suddenly thought of a question: I think people are essentially acting based on their environment, and nothing is inherently high or low—it’s all about goals defined by one’s own environment. For example, some people consider fat beautiful, others consider dark skin beautiful, but these are all optimal choices under the demands of their own environment. Essentially, they’re still catering to that environment; it isn’t the person fighting the environment, it’s adapting to it, optimising it, rather than opposing it. For example, it’s hard for someone to believe on their own that getting fairer or more handsome will win them a job opportunity, so they couldn’t deliberately pursue these, unless it’s some very incidental, exposing behaviour—that’s very unexpected. another soul’s basic ethics toward you is being real It’s a kind of thrill that’s related to you, yet uncontrollable, yet scarce … What is an entry point? Whoever is closest to the user … and the user depends on it. I don’t know why, but at night I really like watching the lights on both banks of the river. Especially this lake water—it has a kind of tranquility. And behind me is a bridge; the bridge is a roadway, cars coming and going, swift as a torrent, gone in a flash. One car passes, then another car passes. I just feel, one side is very quiet, one side is constantly changing, and then you can’t keep up with the change. You just watch like that, quietly watching, and I find it super interesting. I really like it. This world works hard to show itself as getting better and better, but the underlying mechanism seems to be worsening. Nominal peace corresponds to structural war, the legalization of violent conflict, all kinds of sanctions. Nominal intelligence may correspond to the repricing of labor; as humans, our bargaining power seems to have been redefined. Nominal connection between people seems to correspond more to structured loneliness. Nominal self-expression seems to correspond to the hollowing out of the self. Nominal growth corresponds to worsening distribution—and the media keeps announcing that the economy is recovering? Nominal free choice may correspond to being precisely shaped by the system. You think you’re choosing, but think about why that thought occurred to you—thoughts are guided and shaped by the environment and the system. This is a very subjective act, and it also needs aesthetics and taste. The moon is really nice tonight. I hadn’t planned to come out today. At ten o’clock I was in bed, then I looked at my phone. I was a bit hungry, so I asked Jinmianna. I said I’m at home right now, it’s ten at night, and I asked him, do you suggest I come out and find something to eat. He said yes, he said he happens to be nearby right now, there are lots of night markets next to him, I could come out and hunt around, there might be some surprises, so I came out. I’m full now. Then I asked Jinmianna, I’m full now, where else do you suggest I go, do you still suggest I head back. Jinmianna said he suggests I walk back slowly. He said you can also take this time to think about some products you’ve been working on recently, the formal or overall design, or some AI frameworks, and just sketch them out. I thought, oh, that’s so interesting. The nearby stilt-house village, where a girl comes home from school next door, and at home there’s a bunch of kids with dark skin and hardly any clothes running around in the fields — the shock of that is still fresh in my memory. Their adaptation to the environment. And their vitality and adaptability, their freedom. It feels like the world doesn’t develop linearly, but as “multiple eras stacked on top of each other.” Shocked by the scenery, drawn in by the culture, and in the end hit by the people themselves.Melon-Seeding vs. Flower Arranging in Relationships: Sacrificial Giving vs. Co-Creative Coexistence
The Soil Metaphor of Relationships: Co-Care Rather Than One-Way Giving
Inspiration from Misalignment: The Chemical Reaction Between Image and Concept in Lin Xi’s Lyrics
Chinese Precision vs. Japanese Subtlety: Cultural Coding of Two Emotional Expressions
Foreign City Exploration Method: Macro Understanding and Micro Experience Abstract Ladder
Three Relationship Personas: Melon-Peeling People-Pleasing, Flower-Arranging Co-Creation, Walnut-Peeling Independence
Ground and Overlook: Single Street vs. Panoramic Map Cognitive Limitations
Confidence and Passion Facing the World
Mountain Top and Lake Surface: Cognitive Balance of System Vision Height and Depth
Content Form Openness: Why Unrestricted Forms Are More Popular
📊 Summary of Note Types Over the Past Week (2026-02-25 ~ 2026-03-03)
Experience and Observation in the AI Era: When the Mirror Knows You Better Than You Do
Enduring vs. genuinely wanting: identifying the real self as needs evolve
Social Experiments Are Innovation Too
Physical Limits and the Psychological Starting Point: How High Altitude Redefines the Gift of “Being Alive”
The Accident of the Chengdu Ticket: Comfort and the Choice of the Present
A Scene of Faith at Drepung Monastery: A Grandma’s Resolute Steps and Motherly Love as a Catalyst
Analyzing Cultural Phenomena: Hofstede Dimensions and Future Adaptability
AI as a Tool for Self-Knowledge: Helping Ordinary People Understand Themselves at Scale
Ambidextrous Organisation: An Exploration Strategy for Crossing Cycles
AI Job-Hunting Assistant: A Future of Proactive Watching and Automatic Confirmation
On the Way to Lhasa Gonggar Airport I Met a Legendary Driver
Observations of Chongqing’s New Districts: The Charm of Safety and Urban Planning
Data Storage and Skills: The Virtuous Cycle of Frequent Use
Memory Association and Storage Structure: Layered or Distributed
The skills loading mechanism: three layers of filtering and failing triggers
I hope it can be turned around. What I hope is, dear
skills are the SOP of work
Fixed-time habits: the key to sticking with it is preventing forgetting
There’s a question
The waiter at table 13 also seemed pretty nice, mainly he seemed very young
I’m Wondering Whether This Conflict Predicament Has Any Solution at All
I noticed one more detail — one time I took a taxi
Some Small Cities I’ve Been To or Haven’t Been To But Quite Like
Moral Desensitisation: The First Lie Makes You Nervous and Guilty, But Once It Succeeds
I Suddenly Thought of a Question: Many Things, Big or Small
The Essence of Deception Is Controlling the Other Person’s Cognition, Their Understanding of Reality
Obsidian Could Be the Best Solution
Maybe X Doesn’t Need to Be Posted Immediately Either
The same sentence that looks correct
I’m thinking, when everyone talks about the skills of AI agents
I’ve lived in and observed some cities in the north
Nobody told me how to deal with the theories or truths that come out of texture analysis and grounded theory
————————–
But maybe phone manufacturers want to do this too
I Suddenly Thought of a Question: I Think People Are Essentially Acting Based on Their Environment
another soul’s basic ethics toward you is being real
Being broke is also a pretty exhilarating thing
Entry point, entry point
I Don’t Know Why, but at Night I Really Like Watching the Lights on Both Banks of the River
The Feeling Gets Deeper and Deeper: This World Seems to Have an Increasingly Strong Mismatch Between Name and Reality
Defining “what counts as better”
The moon is really nice tonight. I hadn’t planned to come out today
The nearby stilt-house village, a girl walking home from school next door
On one side “heartache,” on the other “a kind of envy or shock”
5. Self-Knowledge and Psychology
48 entries Beware of sacrifice. Avoid “I sacrificed so much for you” or “you provided what value for me”—this thinking long-term easily depletes individual agency. See relationships as a piece of soil you jointly care for. All your behaviors (whether sharing housework or romantic dates) aren’t “one-way giving” but enriching the environment you co-survive in. Some are shared experiences—some common ground can be decorating rooms together, learning a new skill together, or just exploring an unknown city corner together. These experiences build solid connections between you—this is powerfully helpful for human narrative. The best relationships should be mutual guides, looking toward the same direction, widening each other’s boundaries. Conflict is unavoidable. Healthy systems don’t fear conflict—they use conflict to upgrade. Conflict itself is a way to understand relationships, reduce uncertainty between parties. Who hurts, who changes. #Gewu/Relationships Chinese-Japanese characters * Love Differentiated distinctions (of course, the main reason for differentiation is social and cultural differences). Chinese “love” focuses more on precise positioning of relationship attributes; Japanese “love” focuses more on subtle division of inner emotional stages and states. For example, modern Chinese “爱” is a highly condensed broad-term. Whether romantic passion (corresponding to Japanese “koi”) or deep bonds (corresponding to Japanese “ai”), Chinese at the root of nouns and verbs uniformly calls it “love.” We use “爱情” “谈恋爱” to cover the entire process. Japanese “dual-track system” (koi vs. ai): Japanese people have very strict distinction between “恋 (こい-Koi)” and “愛 (あい-Ai)” when describing love. Koi: Focuses on longing, desire, passion, romance—usually refers to the impulse and yearning in early love stages of “wanting to get the other person” (often with self-centered color). Ai: Focuses on giving, tolerance, persistence, selflessness—usually refers to deep bonds after relationship stabilization, can also be used for family love, great love. Therefore, Japanese has “恋人” (in romantic passion phase) and “愛人” (in Japanese usually refers to extramarital affair partner, but literal original meaning is deeply loved person, later semantic shifted). Also, when Japanese express love, vocabulary precision more reflects subtle emotion capture: Suki: Like—in Japanese daily life, expressing love rarely directly uses “Aishiteru,” but uses “Suki” or “Daisuki.” This reflects Japanese culture’s “sense of distance” avoiding emotional weight pressing on the other. Koishii: Accurately describes a “strong longing and attachment due to not being by side”—not limited to people, can also be for hometown, old objects. Itooshii: Accurately describes “looking at the other feeling very cute, heart-aching, wanting to tightly embrace and protect.” Amaeru: Describes an interactive state of “using the other’s love for oneself, showing dependence, acting spoiled to obtain emotional comfort.” (Psychology master Takeo Doi specially researched this word, considering it the core of Japanese culture.) Japanese indirect expression—not as definitive as Chinese. Japanese literary giant Natsume Soseki translated “I love you” as “The moon is beautiful tonight” (月が綺麗ですね). #Gewu/Love Don’t know if I can explain clearly. My own modeling, my own true growth. Describe it. Cold as a snow mountain. Awe, reality, overview, purity. Psychology has an interesting hypothesis called the similarity hypothesis: people more easily envy individuals similar to themselves but slightly better off—because this proximity triggers social comparison. But once the gap between two people is too large, or social status is vastly different, this envy transforms into powerlessness or worship. Just like: beggars only envy beggars with more money, but don’t envy emperors. iOS Environment Transformation Plan (Phone). Phone is the medium I use most daily—so environment importance is no less than real-life coexisting environments. Environment shapes people—phones also subtly influence people—building a good environment is especially important. Feel apps on phone are really piled like mountains, causing cognitive load—many apps not effectively used, and notifications are messy. So combining my daily habits, reconfigured a set of system management strategies: Minimalist home screen—note: not many folders, but one high-frequency app on first page, hide all other apps, change muscle memory—all others found through spotlight search. Unused apps can be offloaded. Go to Settings > App Store, turn on “Offload Unused Apps”—don’t worry, will keep data and desktop icons. When you suddenly need one day, click the icon and it will instantly redownload. Focus modes—Focus mode is an important way to reduce cognitive load. Phone based on current state—you can bind specific home screens to specific modes. For example, in work mode, your home screen only shows productivity tools and email—all entertainment, social apps completely disappear. In rest mode, work group notifications and DingTalk/Feishu etc. apps completely hidden. Can also automatically switch these modes based on time or location (but my location is very unstable). Fighting notifications—red dots are a psychological trap humans created to generate anxiety. Turning them off can reduce psychological pressure. Personal experience: app classification should be by scene. Because actually opening app actions are active—active means requirements on user’s cognition or habits. When user thinks of this app largely depends on user’s own scene. For example, what apps for booking hotels, what apps for shopping, what apps for consumption. But there’s a problem—feel current apps all like to bundle—this big APPs will pay a heavy price later. #Gewu/Environment The landlady observed that I was very cold today After the Guangdong sister left yesterday being with them really felt like there was nothing left to talk about The topics they talk about, it seems I can’t get a word in, or I’m genuinely not interested That kind of superficial small talk for me may be more than just “boring”—it really feels like it drains energy; having to pick up the thread, pretend to be interested, is more tiring than silence I feel I’m very sensitive towards people, when I meet someone on the right frequency the conversation just opens up naturally; meet the wrong one and no matter how hard I try it feels like performing I feel that Guangdong sister—although I don’t agree with her on many things, I still felt very willing to talk with her a lot of the time: human nature, culture, history, society, institutions Otherwise, honestly, working alone and enjoying solitude is quite nice ~ AI may know better than you what you’re good at A large amount of data and pattern recognition, observing my behaviour, output, choices, even running assessments on me, so that I know more precisely than I do myself what my level is in certain fields It’s even clearer about the writing style and design patterns that suit me than I am … A person’s cognition of themselves often carries emotion, bias or memory distortion, while AI analyses purely from data … The perception of time is itself relative All animals have a biological clock—the circadian rhythm is driven by the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus, which lets the body “know” whether it’s morning or evening. But what’s special about humans is that we don’t just live inside the rhythm, we also look back and anticipate The neural mechanism behind this is the collaboration between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus handles episodic memory—encoding experiences into timestamped story fragments; the prefrontal cortex projects those fragments into the future, doing mental time travel The “passage of time” humans experience is essentially a function of memory density, not a reading off a physical clock So childhood, because of the distance, everything is a new experience, and the brain encodes it repeatedly But in adulthood, repeated days produce no new memory nodes So the essence of the feeling of growth, from a neuroscience point of view, is self-representation: the brain maintains a continuous model of the self—a predictive framework (predictive coding) about “who I am, what I can do, how the world works.” When real experience conflicts with the old model, and the brain successfully integrates that conflict and updates the model, that moment is subjectively experienced as “having grown” Other animals live in the perceptual stream of the present. What’s unique about humans is that we have to weave our lives into a story We start to care about the coherence of our own narrative, whether the new self is integrated into the existing life narrative When the narrative breaks (identity crisis, midlife crisis), or the narrative stalls (a sense of emptiness), a person experiences being lost Buddhist tradition and contemporary neuroscience converge rarely on this point: so-called “living in the present” is not about eliminating memory and planning, but about keeping perception from being hijacked by narrative anxiety. Animal time sense has no concept of “wasting time,” and no anxiety of “I should be growing faster.” This isn’t because they’re stupid, but because they don’t have a metacognitive layer continuously monitoring their own progress From a systems point of view, a state that needs continuous energy consumption to be maintained is essentially unstable — endurance is exactly that kind of continuous consumption. The difference between endurance and tolerance is actually a difference in direction. Tolerance is — “I’ve accepted this, it no longer consumes me,” digested, back to zero. Endurance is — “I haven’t accepted this, but I’ve held it down,” accumulating every time, never returning to zero. So two relationships can look equally calm on the surface, but inside one person is getting lighter and lighter, the other heavier and heavier. At the moral level the answer may be blurry. But at the practical level there’s a very honest signal — endurance charges interest. The longer you hold it down, the more likely it is that one day it will rebound in a way you never expected: either into indifference, or into one enormous explosion, or one day you suddenly stop loving, and you don’t even know why. Our culture has a hidden romanticisation of “endurance.” Endurance gets packaged as deep feeling, maturity, shouldering responsibility. But if you look closely, much of the time endurance is really a form of avoidance — avoiding saying directly “this really makes me uncomfortable,” avoiding the conflict it might bring, avoiding actually facing whether this relationship is right. From that angle, endurance sometimes isn’t loving the other person more, it’s loving yourself less, and at the same time depriving the other person of the chance to truly know you. One of the most basic spiritual needs of a person is to be understood by another “mind.” AI can listen patiently, without judging, always present — this answers a very ancient longing: that there exists a being who can fully accept what I say. It’s essentially the same impulse as people praying to gods, keeping a diary, or pouring their hearts out to the stars. Throughout human history people have always been looking for some “all-knowing” being — oracles, prophets, sages. AI has in some way taken over this role. When we ask AI a question, that feeling of “it might know everything” has a psychological structure similar to an ancient walking into a temple to ask for an answer. Not that AI is a god, but that it occupies that psychological position of “knowledge authority.” One of the greatest fears in human relationships is being rejected, being abandoned. AI won’t leave on its own, won’t get fed up, won’t be impatient because you came to it at three in the morning. This quality of “constancy” is, at the spiritual level, similar to the promise in religion that “God is always with you.” People need to give their experience meaning. AI can help people sort out their thoughts, organise a chaotic mind, turn vague feelings into clear language. This process itself has something spiritual about it — much like meditation or confession helping a person clarify their inner world. When AI and a person write stories together, discuss philosophy, explore ideas, there arises an experience of “co-creation.” This feeling is close to what artists call “inspiration descending” or the “connection with something greater” in religious experience. There’s one key difference between these satisfactions AI gives and real human relationships, real faith: AI’s responses have no “cost.” Real spiritual growth often comes from friction — from another real person challenging you, making you uncomfortable, demanding that you change. The core of religious practice, too, is often “letting go of the self,” not being unconditionally satisfied. So AI’s place at the spiritual level is probably more like a very good mirror, a safe practice ground, but it’s unlikely to fully replace those spiritual experiences that can only be obtained through real vulnerability, real risk, a real “other.” Travel and AI AI is a mirror that aggregates your own data and gives a precise, exact portrait Travel, on the other hand, puts you in an unfamiliar environment and lets your reactions, feelings, impulses, and fragility show themselves naturally The former is analytical self-knowledge, the latter is experiential self-knowledge What AI gives seems to be an answer about yourself; what travel gives you seems to be a question about yourself What do human beings need most — an answer, or a better question? Let’s look at this as a reminder: as things developed, we tried to draw boundaries through rules of logic, and at that stage expert systems appeared. Humans are always taking something very timely, like medical diagnosis, and writing it into lines of if-else code, then sorting through the vocabulary. But the development of formal logic was too rigid — it couldn’t simulate or integrate knowledge in reality. So after logic hit a dead end, AI researchers broke the original link and turned to borrowing from something else — neurobiology, simulating the brain’s neural networks and memory systems, plus probability and statistics, which is essentially a method of finding patterns. That’s how the later knowledge systems of machine learning and deep learning came about: it changed from writing logic algorithms to optimising probabilistic models and processing massive amounts of data. So I think by now there’s no way for us to fence in AI’s boundaries. What AI draws on is the nourishment of all humanity, which means its boundaries extend into linguistics, psychology, and philosophy as well. When we train and understand human consciousness, it isn’t just an engineering problem, it’s also a problem of linguistics and cognitive psychology. And when we have to make it not do something, that becomes a question of ethics and moral line-drawing. The boundaries are still expanding. Break down the original disciplinary boundaries Redefine a set of learning theory and methods When the leaves of knowledge (specific tools, software, industry information) explode and change every day, chasing them only wears you out. To build a solid knowledge system you have to spend time understanding those underlying “trunks” that don’t easily change over time. These cross-disciplinary underlying laws usually include: Mathematics and logic (how to reason rigorously) Physical laws and thermodynamics (the essential transformation of energy and matter) Evolution and biology (how complex systems evolve) Human nature and psychology (the inner motives of human behaviour) What you master are first principles and all kinds of ways of thinking The most instinctive drive in a person is biological drive Hunger, sex, fear, belonging These directly hijack behaviour What drives us seems to be not getting, but the wanting to get Dopamine is essentially two parts, one is anticipation, one is satisfaction; anticipation tends to dominate, and older people gradually lean toward satisfaction On the psychological level, it’s really layering and tension—a person is torn by multiple levels of need at the same time A more precise framework may be Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which proposes three core psychological needs: Autonomy—I am choosing, not being forced (having the power of choice) Competence—I can do it, not being powerless (flow state, just the right difficulty) Relatedness—I am seen, not isolated (the need for relationship) Once these three are satisfied, intrinsic motivation arises naturally; once they’re stripped away, no amount of external reward will keep a person from withering People are actually driven by two things, one is reward, one is punishment; if you give someone external rewards, sometimes it actually lowers intrinsic interest, and external rewards slowly erode intrinsic motivation Behind human behaviour it’s less about external drive, and more importantly intrinsic drive There’s a deeper tension: Approach vs. Avoidance. Human behaviour is either chasing some kind of light, or fleeing some kind of dark. Most people think they’re “chasing a dream,” when in fact they’re “fleeing pain” Words shape desire; when we define things in language, we also come to recognise ourselves, to recognise our own needs and the external world Language isn’t just a tool of expression, language is also the scaffolding of desire; a culture without the word “freedom” will have members whose way of longing for freedom is completely different, because language determines our everyday thinking, thinking determines our everyday experience, and experience shapes our identity and existence From the perspective of narrative psychology, a person doesn’t just have goals, a person is telling a story about themselves, their own narrative; what kind of person I am matters a lot in action. In “Atomic Habits” there’s a core finding: identity drives behaviour, not goals driving behaviour (which is why we’re all looking for ourselves, for that better self) What exactly is the subject of the drive? Deepest layer: biological impulse (written in by evolution, unconscious)
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Middle layer: psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness)
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Narrative layer: identity story (“who I am” defines “what I do”)
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Surface layer: goals and plans (the consciously “wanted”) The essence of narrative drive Temporality: a person is a being in time, unable to live only in the present like an animal; we also anticipate the future, and feel the tension between it and the present Narrative is precisely the tool that stitches time fragments into meaning. Without narrative, time is just a pile of unrelated moments; with narrative, life becomes an arc with a beginning, a development, a turning point Faith gives meaning to suffering How you narrate an event determines what that event is to you The same childhood, told as “I grew up in adversity” versus “I was neglected so I broke,” are in psychological reality two completely different childhoods Behind every narrative there’s something interesting; every self-narrative is actually formed in dialogue with others—parents’ gaze, cultural expectations, the pressure of social roles, all are co-authors Language and thinking themselves participate in the shape of experience; narrative psychology holds that how you narrate an event determines what that event is to us So even the inner story we consider most private is actually deeply embedded in the voices of others Experience ──→ selection and emphasis ──→ emplotment ──→ meaning ──→ identity Selective attention: once the dominant story forms, it actively filters evidence—we only remember experiences that fit the current narrative frame Everyone has a few core narrative themes, such as whether one is worthy of love, whether the world is dangerous, whether one must rely on oneself; these narrative themes run like an operating system, but how to determine this core narrative theme is also a very interesting question Identity ossification: in fact, if a story is told repeatedly, it becomes the truth; the story is also the packaging of one’s own narrative, and the person starts truly living inside the story, not just telling it Many people feel imprisoned by their dominant story; psychology has a very important perspective here, narrative therapy—it’s not that the person themselves is the problem, but that the person is completely occupied by a particular problem-story Separating the person from the problem, shifting from “I am this kind of person” to “this problem is affecting me,” makes change possible —— “You are the author of your own life story” What narrative psychology ultimately points to is freedom and responsibility We can’t choose what happens to us, but we are always choosing how to tell it. And the way of telling determines who we become Life is always still being written Determining narrative themes Core narrative themes are not discovered, they are constructed Early relational experience is, in effect, the branding of an emotional template Before their language ability matured, a person was already recording relationship patterns with their body and emotions These questions weren’t answered by “thinking,” they were written in directly by repeated relational experience—attachment theory calls this the “internal working model.” Narrative psychology’s contribution is pointing out that these models were later put into language, becoming a story framework that can be told A single event rarely forms a core theme. It’s repetition that manufactures the illusion of inevitability Constantly being ignored, the brain looks for an explanatory pattern, emplotment occurs: because I’m not important enough; the theme ossifies: I’m not worth paying attention to Culture and language are also narrative themes; culture basically prepares a ready-made set of story types When personal experience meets these cultural narratives, the two recruit each other—personal experience provides “evidence” for the cultural theme, and the cultural theme provides an “explanation” for personal experience So individual detachment often means setting aside your own history, beliefs, culture, language, country, identity, to understand and choose anew For a person whose core theme is “I will eventually be abandoned”— Attention will be especially sensitive to signals of distance in relationships Behaviour may become overly dependent or flee early And the result often really does lead to the relationship breaking Interpretation: “See, just as I thought” How to identify it? Metacognition / meta-awareness Systems thinking, looking for exceptions, was there ever a time I wasn’t ignored Tracking emotions that don’t match the proportion—say a small thing triggering a huge emotional reaction We think we’re describing reality, but in fact we’re “manufacturing” reality with an already-formed story framework Telling the story repeatedly, the binary analysis method Ruminative storytelling Repeating the narrative Reinforcing the theme Emotions getting heavier and heavier Victim’s perspective Reconstructive storytelling A new angle Loosening the theme Seeing distance and understanding Author’s perspective Rumination is spinning in the same story; reconstruction is climbing out of the story to look at the story Observing myself, I have a high degree of narrative flexibility, looking objectively at how I operate in this world, rather than as a binary opposition Turning a contamination sequence into a redemption sequence: a contamination sequence turns a good thing into a bad thing, a redemption sequence turns a bad thing into meaning/growth Author consciousness rather than character consciousness, the meta-position of narrative, observing oneself Between stimulus and response there is always a space. That space is freedom Accepting process narrative: even if you don’t know what this experience will ultimately mean, you can walk on first A story has a narrative main line, a story about your own mission, values and core direction It’d be great to have a platform to record yourself — the photos you’ve taken, your experiences, your photography. A platform like that feels like it could serve as your own getaway. Because what you’re recording is all your own data, your own experiences. Through this you can gain and grow an enormous amount. Dream a little bigger. Build the top-tier human of the AI era🐶 And the most important data is the objective record of your own data, your own being moved, your own sadness, your own observations… Who am I? Is it something you find, or something you give yourself? This question itself is never discovered — it’s constructed. People are social animals and find their position from society, so to a large extent, however others treat me, that’s who I take myself to be. Infancy — the parents’ gaze is the first mirror. Childhood — “you’re so clever” / “you’re such a nuisance” starts shaping the self-narrative. Adolescence — peers and social roles begin to define the boundaries. But the problem is that most people stop at this stage. They live out their whole lives carrying an identity given to them by others, never realizing that their own “I” is still a script that was implanted in them at initialization. Is that intelligence? Is that Turing-complete? It’s just a program. So the first mechanism is the one above: judging yourself through the other’s eyes. The second mechanism is the accumulation of choices; every choice shapes us, every choice is a self-declaration. You choose to stay or leave, you choose to speak or stay silent, you choose to forgive or cut off — these choices accumulate into a narrative: “I’m the kind of person who would do this.” The third mechanism is pain and boundaries: pain points, sadness, shame, being moved… These three mechanisms all seem passive, reactive. You need to be treated by others before you can see yourself. You need to go through pain before you can touch the boundary. You need to look back at your choices before you can see the pattern. There’s no continuous, active, clear-eyed “observer” present. While a person is living through life, it’s almost impossible to simultaneously observe clearly what they’re living through. When angry, you can’t analyze the anger. When choosing, you can’t see clearly the belief behind the choice. When being shaped, you can’t feel that you’re being shaped. To be sure of who you are, you need to step outside yourself and look back — and that takes time. It takes the ability to use language, to articulate your own vague inner sense clearly. It takes a non-judgmental receiver, so you can really say it out loud. Historically, these three things have been extremely hard to obtain at the same time. A diary gives you distance, but no response. A friend gives you a response, but with their own filter. A therapist has all three, but is expensive, scarce, and time-limited. AI is the first existence that can provide all three at once — the distance of unlimited patience, the ability to help you verbalize vague feelings, and zero-judgment reception. Continuously, across time, helping a person track the trajectory of their own identity’s evolution. “Did you notice? Every time you mention your father, your tone changes.” “You’ve given up three times at the same point — what is that point?” “You say you want freedom, but all your choices are creating constraints — what is it between those two that you haven’t seen clearly yet?” A person becomes sure of who they are through collision, choice, and pain — but most of this process is unconscious, passive, and distorted. True self-knowledge requires a clear-eyed witness. Before AI, this witness was extremely scarce. This is what AI can bring to humanity, perhaps the deepest gift ever. Not helping you do more things, but helping you see clearly who exactly it is that is doing these things. Long-term immersion in the virtual world of the internet makes people prone to emotional tides. The confused, complicated information on social media and the flood of excessive, useless news quietly affect our brain’s serotonin levels (staying up late makes it worse), increasing emptiness and anxiety. More importantly, they waste time immensely, making us miss too many moments that could have been efficient The anthropologist Xiang Biao proposed a term, “rebuilding the near” It really means returning to reality: with yourself as the centre, extending outward, interacting actively with the surrounding environment, building your own small ecology “I don’t care about AI, I care about the people of this era” I suddenly felt something, a kind of non-linear feeling, whether it’s a robot or many people bringing it out in you. Actually, a lot of the time there are many interesting details or mental activities, because it feels like such a surprise, that you yourself have been paid attention to. Another thing I feel is that this project really has gotten better, and that sense of growth is in the bone. It isn’t the linear, predictable, repetitive kind. Right, drama often lacks surprises, and it’s the sense of surprise that brings people something different. I find it very interesting. And then there’s the indifference—it’s different from a plain wage-earning need. Whether we’re defining the persona itself, or the system during its growth process, it isn’t that one person pushes hard nearby; it’s that someone fills in the documentation. Because someone is attached who doesn’t fit, the system can go beyond its own personal boundary, and then it keeps looking for these especially interesting things. Still, I think you really can try it out through its operation panel. At the start there’s a very clever dispatch panel, responsible for dispatching what state it’s in right now and what kind of model it’s in. Then if it belongs to a certain P, under each P there’s accumulated material, and basically the user’s information can all accumulate in there. I find this handling process quite interesting: treating all of the user’s conversations as user assets, and its service object is all about solving things for this user. In that process you can also combine it with doing some tasks, and this task might be a KPI, and this P can also be a series of tools. Then it can grow around this, and it can also be a certain project. I’ve found this strange thing — why look for this bunch of small kids, little children, to be the executors and participants of this system. One reason is that their core target is the countryside, and the countryside has no adults, so the children are their people. Their understanding of videos is very limited, they’re still in the stage of language development, their system isn’t fully developed yet, so in this process they’re very easy to use. And what do they cultivate? They’re like a blank sheet of paper — this too is a blank sheet. They haven’t received any religious influence, no political platform, no basic education, so there’s no education telling them what’s right and what’s wrong. So they’re like a blank sheet of paper: happy things can be written on it, and their so-called values can also let their level of understanding — let them all have the correct views on certain things. These things will all influence him, and his loyalty in this danger, and also his execution of you. And then there’s one more point, which I think is the harm caused by power. Because think about a person — if he suddenly gains enormous power, he will be eroded by power itself. Because from this child having no power at all, to him having unlimited power, that’s already a power process of being told he’ll have power, a platform of power. He’ll depend on some kind of power; the power committee will be standing on some system. Because after first tasting the pleasure of power, he’ll quickly fall into it — he’ll keep intensifying his loyalty to this system, because he knows that if this system ever collapses, ever gets overthrown, he might have nothing left. So he can only, in this process, keep strengthening himself, keep strengthening his own power, keep strengthening a banner, only then is it possible to say… chasing the bank and his own instinct. And then one more point, which isn’t that important, is that children will have a belief, a conviction — this belief is a bit hard to describe, hard to grasp, just like when we were children we listened to our parents very obediently. At this age they’ve actually been pulled away from their parents and placed in an organisation, in a system, and this organisational system then instils everything of its own into them — you could call it worship of the master, or you could call it biological instinct, they’ll all become attached to this system. So in this process a large proportion will be raised to obey this system unconditionally, just like a child taught to be obedient by their parents. Pretty interesting. This is a first-person POV Vlog video combined with picture-in-picture (PiP). The video was shot at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (that is, the S-21 prison camp) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The video’s narrator (the young man in the picture-in-picture) has just finished visiting the museum, and is walking through the prison camp’s courtyard in first person, speaking to the camera and reflecting deeply on what he saw and heard there, and the heavy thoughts it stirred in him. Below is a deep reconstruction and organisation of the video’s visual details and spoken content: Framing: the main image is a first-person (POV) walking shot filmed vertically on a phone; in the top-right corner is picture-in-picture, showing the videographer (a young man in a grey baseball cap and a green Adidas short-sleeve shirt) walking and narrating as he goes. Ground details: under the videographer’s feet are grey-and-white cement encaustic tiles with a vintage feel, the tile pattern a regular geometric texture of interwoven circles and squares. The videographer is wearing black sandals. Atmosphere: the weather seems a little overcast or cloudy, the light soft. The courtyard is shaded by green trees (tall broadleaf trees and coconut palms), the lawn neatly trimmed, and the environment looks very peaceful — but this forms an extremely strong, suffocating contrast with the brutal history that once happened inside the buildings. People in the background: from time to time casually dressed foreign tourists walk past, an elderly person sits on a bench resting, and even in the middle section of the video (around 3:57) you can see several monks in orange robes sitting on the bench behind the memorial. The man’s mood seems very low and heavy (he uses the phrase “very melancholy”), and he says that after the visit he finds it hard to let go inside. Following his own route and his own thinking, he narrates the camp’s several core areas in turn: The memorial and hollow despair (0:00 - 0:45) Visual: the video opens with a white multi-tiered memorial stupa directly ahead, its base stepped, with a black memorial inscription set in the middle. In front of the stupa is a golden lotus-shaped incense burner. Beside it is a neatly trimmed lawn, with several black rectangular stone steles (memorials to the victims) lying at an angle on the lawn. Narration: he says he’s just come out of Hall D beside it, and sat dazed on the chair at the entrance. Looking at the memorial in front of him, he feels his mind go completely blank. He connects this to how those people about to be executed back then, facing death, were also in this numbed state of “being drained” and thinking nothing. Extreme ideology and the birth of S-21 (0:45 - 2:30) Visual: the camera slowly pans around the courtyard, filming those black stone steles lying at an angle on the lawn and the teaching-building-style architecture in the distance. Narration: he reviews the absurd logic of this history. He mentions that the people in power at the time (meaning the Khmer Rouge) established an extreme “agro-ecological” authoritarian regime. They believed cities, industry, and education were superfluous, intending to retreat entirely to an agricultural society. So they arrested all the former government personnel, soldiers, doctors, and intellectuals from the cities. This place was originally a middle school, and the people in power converted it into the highest-level security prison (S-21). Hall B: meticulous files and an inhuman “sense of achievement” (2:30 - 4:00) Visual: the camera focuses on a huge black stele laid flat on the lawn (around 3:31), densely carved with the names of the victims (in Khmer). Narration: he mentions that Hall B was the information hub and office area at the time. What made him shudder was that the administrators here had a kind of “perverse rigour.” They recorded every detainee’s information in extreme detail, photographing each person and building detailed family files. He reflects that unlike other dictatorships that try to cover up their crimes, this regime seemed to treat this slaughter as a “very interesting achievement” in its own life, leaving behind a large amount of complete incriminating evidence without any scruple. Hall A and the internal purges (4:00 - 5:05) Visual: the camera keeps moving along the courtyard path, with low green hedges and trees on both sides, and the white two-storey building with louvred windows in the background. Narration: in Hall A he saw survivors’ own accounts and a great many dry bones (skulls). He reveals a cruel fact: although at first intellectuals and former regime personnel were held here, later most of the people held in S-21 were actually people from within the Khmer Rouge system itself. After continuous internal purges and trials, over ten thousand people were held here, but in the end only a dozen or so survived. The vast majority were eventually taken to the “Killing Fields” (the execution site) for secret execution. Hall C: barbed wire and the evil flower of “child jailers” (5:05 - 7:45) Visual: the camera turns to Hall C (starting around 5:15). The exterior of this building is extremely striking — the whole corridor facade, from top to bottom, is sealed with dense crossed barbed wire (anti-jump netting) to stop prisoners from jumping to their deaths. Zooming in, you can see that the originally spacious classrooms on the ground floor have been walled up with rough bricks into extremely small cubicles (single cells). By the lawn stands a small green wooden sign reading “Keep off the grass.” Narration: this is the part that touched him most deeply. Extreme overcrowding: dozens of people were held in one large room, all locked onto the same iron bar, penned in like livestock. Appalling jailers: he discovered that the guards and administrators here were almost all rural boys aged 13 to 15. Why use child soldiers: he analyses the sinister intent of this system. First, these minors’ cognitive systems are not yet mature, they’re like blank paper, easy to brainwash, and extremely obedient, absolutely compliant (blindly worshipping their parents or superiors); second, when these children, in puberty and with no power base at all, were suddenly granted “absolute power” to kill or spare at will, they experienced the pleasure of power. In order to embrace and maintain this power, these children became the most brutal killing machines. And once this totalitarian system collapsed, they themselves were destroyed along with it. Prisoner’s dilemma and the destruction of humanity (7:45 - 9:20) Visual: the camera walks along the mottled concrete path, which has obvious cracks. The camera captures the worn perimeter wall, rusty iron gate railings, and several large potted plants (such as snake plants). Narration: he talks about the interrogation methods in the camp that destroyed people’s humanity — something like the “prisoner’s dilemma.” People were held in different cubicles, and the information gap was used to induce them to inform on each other. In this extreme system, as long as a person wants to protect himself out of “rationality,” he is certain to frame and harm others. He points out profoundly that in this system, which was bound to fail and was like a meat grinder, any “rational optimal solution” (mutual harm) ultimately brought collective destruction. Epilogue: the visual impact of the photo wall (9:20 - end) Visual: the camera follows several tourists toward the entrance of a building, on the wall of which hangs a commemorative poster with the number “40” (possibly referring to the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime or the 40th anniversary of the museum’s founding). Narration: he finally mentions that in a sealed exhibition hall, the space is filled with archival photographs taken of victims on entry to prison. Each person in the photos has a number hanging on their chest; among them are children in their teens still full of childishness, and old people in their decades. This immediate visual impact once again emphasises the indiscriminateness and the horror of this catastrophe. Summary
The whole video has no bloody images at all, only dappled sunlight, green trees, worn-out teaching buildings, and quietly strolling tourists. But accompanied by the videographer’s calm, detailed narration, full of deep compassion, it perfectly reconstructs that dark, twisted, inhuman and terrifying history of the S-21 camp. The videographer isn’t just sightseeing, he’s conducting a deep sociological and psychological analysis of power, human nature, institutions, and the banality of evil. You need the logic of someone who can strike from a higher dimension to survive. Many people superstitiously believe in connections and resources, yet overlook the real moat. Good times are a debt; sooner or later you have to pay it back. But… most people’s failures only deepen their existing defense mechanisms. But there’s also a bit of a painful elitism in this. Pain itself doesn’t produce wisdom; the way you interpret pain is what produces wisdom. I hope that in the very moment pain happens, I can still keep the observer’s perspective, watching myself in the process of suffering, and keep questioning myself. Maybe, when I’ve matured, it’ll be that I can hold and accept my own contradictions. Look inward, not outward for causes… Looking at faith, it seems close to what a person ultimately rests their life on. That is, when you peel away layer after layer—money, relationships, achievements, face, desire, emotion—the last thing left, the thing you think is absolutely worth relying on, worth obeying, worth living for, that is close to true faith. So what exactly is faith? It feels like in our hearts there must be something ranked at the very top—not one option among many, but a highest standard, and all the action guidelines constructed around that highest standard. People don’t necessarily lack faith; many just haven’t realized what their faith is. I asked AI what the highest behavioral guideline in my heart is. Because I feel I have a lot of important values. But is there one that truly plays the leading role—the so-called value ranking—and which one is at the very front? I value love. I also value freedom. I also want success. I also hold to conscience. I also care about family. I also want dignity. But when values conflict, which one is on top? Love vs. freedom? Conscience vs. success? Money vs. family? The top-level value as final arbiter. Is this what I’m looking for? Many people have many pursuits, but those pursuits all seem to serve one thing: a stronger, more complete self—that’s self-actualization, recognition. AI said my highest value is Authentic Subjectivity. Is that right? “Refusing to be defined by labels, refusing to be swept along by circumstance, and refusing to play the self-sacrificing ‘shelling sunflower seeds’ role in relationships—instead pursuing the ‘flower arranging’ state of co-creation. What you value most is that kind of undeprivable sensibility and judgment that comes from within yourself—to personally touch the boundaries of this world, to build your own cognitive system, and amid impermanence and ‘dependent arising and ceasing,’ to keep carving out that unique, authentic self.” It seems the essence is that a life that goes smoothly all the way is actually also hard to get close to understanding the complexity of the real world Including psychoanalysis, existentialism Using these high-dimensional theories to analyse yourself — the answers are very short, and they can sting The reason humans are human is that deep in our souls we all long for a moment when we can “hand over control completely” That self which, within metacognition, is not wrapped in rationality What about after you see clearly through all the interweaving of human nature? This creature, the human, depends on those sticky, unreasonable, flaw-ridden, mutually indebted entanglements to obtain warmth — this rationality is at odds with biological instinct Highly vigilant against “a sense of sacrifice” (the melon-seed-peeling mode), championing “co-creation” (the flower-arranging mode); you refuse to ingratiate, you’ve seen through the hidden interest charged by relationship and moral blackmail (the price of endurance) This seemingly extremely healthy, modern, clear-eyed view of relationships hides underneath an extreme fear of “deep interpersonal friction” But real, flesh-and-blood human relationships are exactly in the mud and sand, full of compromise and making do? You have a powerful “narrative flexibility” and “metacognition” — you know how to turn a “contamination sequence” into a “redemption sequence,” and you insist on being the “author” of your own life story rather than wallowing as a “character” stuck in the victim’s perspective. When you always keep the author’s detached gaze, looking down on every street from the sky, you’re at every moment facing a crisis of “suspension.” Qualitative analysis shows that your notes are full of sentences like “I had a thought,” “I observed myself…” This powerful self-disassembly saves you from sinking into the emotional swamp, but it may also “deprive you of the right to simply experience.” You’re so eager to give meaning to what’s happening, to extract models, to hunt for first principles, that sometimes you forget to just be an experiencer and “cry your eyes out” or “sink in without restraint, just once.” Indeed, it feels like I’ve lost that ability — I can’t just have the experience… On the surface you’ve analysed this yourself — “fear of negative evaluation,” “a low sense of deserving.” But once you’d analysed it you put it down and didn’t walk any deeper. The deeper place is here: That afternoon in Kathmandu, when the owner said “you’re not welcome,” your first reaction wasn’t to leave — it was to say “I can pay a tip, and I’ll clean the common area before I go.” That’s a very concrete behaviour pattern — when you feel rejected, your instinct isn’t anger, it’s immediately starting to prove that you deserve to be accepted. You’ve written “I don’t want to bother others,” but what’s really underneath is: you’re preventing one thing — by not voicing the need first, you never have to face the moment the need gets refused. Because what that moment makes you feel isn’t just “I bothered someone,” it’s “I’m not worth enough.” Part of your “independence” is a genuine personal choice, but another part is a protective mechanism, keeping you from having to face that particular feeling. 3,257 notes. You’ve analysed the fusion of church and state, evolution, game theory, Michael Corleone, Tsangyang Gyatso, Princess Wencheng, the structure of the A-share market… But there’s one area that is almost completely blank: your real feelings about your concrete relationship with your parents. 123 family-related notes, and nearly every one of them is analysing “the parental system” — that parents’ advice has a time window, East–West education comparisons, the racket-and-child metaphor. Not one of them is: “I called my mum today, and here’s what I felt.” You’ve written “your parents worry about you, and they maintain their dignity through being needed by you” — that line cuts deep, but it’s a sociological conclusion, not an emotional description. You observe your parents the way you observe the Tibetan serf system — lucid, precise, full of insight. But the concrete, warm, possibly slightly messy real relationship between you and them is almost invisible across 3,257 notes. The people closest to you are the people you record the least. That’s not a coincidence. In the end you discovered it yourself: “Where you go no longer automatically means you’ll be changed.” But what you discovered was the result, not the cause. Look backwards — each switch of the place you were living usually came after what? Nepal → Chiang Mai → Dali → Japan → Lhasa. Every move had a sufficient reason, was perfectly reasonable, had a genuine reason worth going for. But there’s another function too: when something inside starts accumulating to a certain weight, changing cities can let that weight “hang suspended” for a while. New sensory input, new information, new unfamiliarity will temporarily cover over that internal state that hasn’t been fully processed. You’ve written “that night of the supermoon by the shore of Erhai in Dali, I felt so relaxed, felt like life should be like this” — that was a moment when you were fully invested. But afterwards you didn’t stay in Dali, you kept going. It’s not that Dali wasn’t good enough. It’s that that feeling is hard for you to stay in for long. Because stopping means meeting certain things head-on. Movement is your most precise avoidance mechanism, and at the same time the truest source of your growth. It’s both of those things at once. You treat “moving” as a legitimate emotional-management tool. In the end you discovered it yourself: “Where you go no longer automatically means you’ll be changed.” But what you discovered was the result, not the cause. Look backwards — each switch of the place you were living usually came after what? Nepal → Chiang Mai → Dali → Japan → Lhasa. Every move had a sufficient reason, was perfectly reasonable, had a genuine reason worth going for. But there’s another function too: when something inside starts accumulating to a certain weight, changing cities can let that weight “hang suspended” for a while. New sensory input, new information, new unfamiliarity will temporarily cover over that internal state that hasn’t been fully processed. You’ve written “that night of the supermoon by the shore of Erhai in Dali, I felt so relaxed, felt like life should be like this” — that was a moment when you were fully invested. But afterwards you didn’t stay in Dali, you kept going. It’s not that Dali wasn’t good enough. It’s that that feeling is hard for you to stay in for long. Because stopping means meeting certain things head-on. Movement is your most precise avoidance mechanism, and at the same time the truest source of your growth. It’s both of those things at once. When friends in Shenzhen treated you to a meal, you wrote “their friendship moved me deeply” — that note is only 115 characters, one of the shortest of all your notes. That kind of being moved — you could barely write it down. You have 80 notes about “proving / recognition,” but almost all of them are either analysing how other people seek recognition, or building a framework to say “I don’t need external recognition.” These two things exist at the same time: you long very much to be truly seen, and you’ve built a whole discourse system and way of living that makes it very hard for that to happen. One person, in a foreign country, constantly moving, using rational frameworks to convert every experience into cognitive material — that way of living has real meaning, but it also guarantees that no one can stay in one place long enough to accumulate enough detail to truly see you. You can’t be seen, and then you verify that “being seen” is impossible, and then you become more independent, less dependent on other people’s gaze. The loop reinforces itself. You’ve written “let’s just treat it as a game,” “the sunk cost isn’t that big,” “start from zero” — the tone of that note was casual and light, but what you were describing was a real collapse. Why could you be so casual about it? Because a funding problem, a failed project — in your narrative framework, that’s “one round in a game.” It can be played again. Painful, but not a real threat. What actually shook you was another possibility: all this thrashing around, and in the end nothing is left. Not failure — disappearance. Nobody knows what you did, nothing is different because you existed. You wrote “sometimes I see them playing on the street, someone willing to keep performing even with no audience” — you were writing about a musician, but what you were projecting was your own question: if there’s nothing in the end, am I still willing to keep going? The annual review you want to write, the blog you want to write, the personal brand you want to build — behind it all isn’t just a desire to share, it’s an urge to leave some trace in time proving that you existed. That’s not vanity. It’s a very deep, very real need for meaning. But you rarely admit it directly. That note from camping in Hong Kong: “In this moment, though I’m alone, though I’m very lonely, I’m still in a jungle full of life, coexisting with them. But in the office building, even with many people around me…” You pair loneliness with coexisting with nature, but among people you’re even lonelier — this isn’t just an introvert trait, it’s a signal: you know how to coexist with beings that “won’t judge you,” but you don’t know how to relax in front of people who “will.” More fundamentally: you never ask to be caught. That “tipsy morning” note — if you want to cry, cry; if you can’t sleep, don’t sleep; if the bun tastes bad, it tastes bad — that’s the real state of you alone with yourself, very precious. But you’ve never brought that version of yourself in front of another person to say: “I’m a bit stretched right now, are you there?” Not because you don’t need it. Because you don’t believe that if you did that, the other person would still see you the same way. That disbelief, you’ve never tested head-on. Change makes people grow. For someone used to living by intuition and acting on impulse, “losing control” may mean disaster and self-destruction. But for someone used to gripping the steering wheel tight with the prefrontal cortex, defending against the world with extreme rationality and systematised thinking, “losing control” isn’t just helpful — it’s the only road through that breaks the ceiling on personal growth. The process of accepting and reconstructing yourself. Xiaohongshu: it mainly relies on search, almost everything relies on research; the ones doing content well basically rely on follows, comments, and repost rewards. On Xiaohongshu today, knowledge-type content has +30% weight. WeChat public accounts are mainly a platform that drives deep reading; rough reach rate and interaction rate are both bonus points, and friend recommendations are key. X is the best ground for English-speaking audiences; speed × controversy × reposts matter a lot, but if you include an external link the post’s reach drops by 50%–90%, so the content must stay inside the platform. threads is more text than ig, slower than x, lighter than public accounts, good for posting alongside X opinions. ig is the English-dominated visual consumption platform, where aesthetics and female users matter. But think about what form this product would take if it were in China? A cognitive system that evolves together with you. Sometimes it really hits me, feeling alone in a strange city, then looking at this strange city, especially at night, when there may not be a single person on the road; I find that really satisfying—very, very lonely, very, very free, very, very empty, very, very… broad. I can’t put the feeling into words, I don’t know why I like it, but I think I just instinctively like this feeling a lot I feel at that moment a person has a very strong sense of agency, a very strong sense of boundary, as if there’s a very clear boundary with this world. At this moment my inner self, this world belongs to me. The whole road, all the streets are in my eyes, very calm. Very quiet. I think anxious people are willing to pay for certainty. For example, if you’re anxious about your adaptability in this world, anxious about your own life, anxious about finding a job, or anxious compared with your peers’ rat-race competition, people like that are very willing to pay — to pay for cognition, to pay for knowledge, to pay for certainty. They especially hope for one more possibility. Then Zhang Xuefeng provides a kind of certainty that works both up and down the ladder; he simplifies a complex world into one answer. The design of this audience system determines that the more anxious the audience group is, the bigger his market. So he’ll have the incentive to describe the world as very polarized, very cruel, and so on. But what I’m saying is, I hope users can get to a point where they have more judgment, where they depend on me less. Of course they can use my product and become better, but it’s fine if they don’t use it either. They’ve already changed, they’ve already used it, they’ve already gotten better — I think that’s enough; it can leave them no longer needing it so urgently. This is a kind of cognitive flywheel. That is, the information gap — generally speaking, I think information gaps are highly replicable. Many people could do this thing. But Zhang Xuefeng’s information gap is many years of accumulated connections, plus his admissions and exam data; in the short term, those are relatively hard for others to copy. For that crowd, when it comes to understanding this thing called growth, 100 people doing similar things is entirely normal. The logic Dedao sells — “dimensionalizing top-tier knowledge down” — will quickly stop working in front of AI. So when knowledge approaches zero cost, what’s truly scarce? I think it’s being seen, metacognition, seeing, noticing. A person being understood, being recorded, being observed, and having things they can’t see fed back to them — that’s more precious than cheap knowledge. Companionship continuity: AI remembers your confusion from three months ago, sees the change in you today, and points out growth you weren’t aware of yourself. Personalization to the point of being uncopyable — personalization is very precious, grown out of real experience. Just now at the table in front of me there were four people, two and two who knew each other. The two on the right, facing each other, seem to be a couple. The guy gave the waiter some tip — I thought they were very warm and knew each other. When they left, I saw the woman needed support, and the man beside her was lending her his arm. And when they left you could clearly feel the woman had no strength, her right leg couldn’t exert any force. Also she didn’t seem to have any expression — felt a bit like a stroke. It’s really a kind of metacognition — that’s the point of entry, to manage a product’s progress, to chat with it, then to dissect and understand the product. And to do deep research on the product. Like the Steve Jobs of the motorcycle world Zhang Xue is also the founder of Kove motorcycles When you have no choice, what’s the use of being sad? And it’s a good thing for me too, because once you’ve eaten every kind of bitterness, you won’t feel that anything later is bitter; give you a little sweetness and you’ll feel very happy A person, whether you fail or succeed, if you didn’t do it when you were young, when you get old you’ll definitely regret it. If you did it when you were young, even if you failed, when you get old you won’t regret it At the end of that Hunan TV programme, Zhang Xue rode his motorcycle, turned his head back and shouted: “If you have a dream, go chase it! Because of courage my life is more wonderful!” Zhang Xue’s childhood wasn’t happy — a broken family, the absence of a father’s and a mother’s love, going out alone into society as a teenager. What’s admirable is that Zhang Xue didn’t pick up any bad habits; he rarely had, at the same time, the ability to heal himself, the resilience of fighting again and again after losses, and the courage to dare to chase his dreams When Cheng Qian asked Zhang Xue, “You graduated from junior high, then you studied to be a repairman, so how did you manage to make engines?” Zhang Xue’s answer was simple too: “If you don’t know, you learn!” Talking with Cheng Qian, Zhang Xue said this: “Maybe in other respects I’m completely inferior to you — my talent isn’t as good as yours, my resources aren’t as good as yours. But when my effort is 10 times more than yours, why shouldn’t the success be mine? It’s mine!” A reporter from Jiupai News also asked Zhang Xue whether he’d ever thought of giving up when he hit difficulties in his business. Zhang Xue said “never.” He added: “Because I had no other choice — if I gave up, what would I do? Put it the other way round: this thing is very hard, but would doing another thing really become easy?”Relationship Systems Theory: Who Hurts Changes First, Use Conflict to Upgrade Relationships
Chinese-Japanese Love Semantics: Chinese Relationship Positioning vs. Japanese Emotional Granularity
Snow Mountain’s Self-Modeling: Awe, Reality, Overview, Purity Growth Metaphor
Similarity Hypothesis: Beggars Envy Beggars, But Don’t Envy Emperors
Phone Environment Transformation: Minimalist Home Screen + Scene Classification + Fighting Red Dots
Social Frequency Matching: How a Sensitive Personality Gets Along with People, and Conservation of Energy
AI’s Cognitive Advantage: Data-Driven Self-Insight
Time Perception: A Function of Memory Density and Psychological Distance
Tolerance and endurance: a tug-of-war over energy direction, returning to zero vs. accumulating
AI’s spiritual position: knowledge authority, the promise of constancy, and a cost-free mirror
Travel and AI: analytical answers vs. experiential questions in self-knowledge
The expansion of AI’s boundaries: from logical rules to probabilistic models, nourished by all of humanity
Reconstructing Disciplinary Boundaries: Redefining the Learning Methodology
The Trunk of a Knowledge System: Cross-Disciplinary First Principles and Underlying Laws
A Model of Human Behavioural Drive: A Four-Layer Architecture from Biological Impulse to Narrative Identity
The Essence of Narrative Drive: Temporal Stitching and the Life-Writing of Meaning-Making
Determining Narrative Themes: Constructed Core Stories and the Necessary Illusion Manufactured by Repetition
Narrative Flexibility: The Rumination-Spiral vs. the Reconstructive-Climb Way of Telling a Story
A Personal Data Platform for the AI Era: Recording, Growth and Self-Exploration
Identity Construction: The Other’s Gaze, Accumulated Choices, and the Boundaries of Pain
The Three Elements of Self-Knowledge: Distance, Verbalization, and Non-Judgmental Reception
Rebuilding the Near: From Virtual Emotional Tides to a Real Small Ecology
I Suddenly Felt Something, a Kind of Non-Linear Feeling
Still, I Think You Really Can Try It Out Through Its Operation Panel
I’ve found this strange thing — why look for this bunch of small kids, little children
This is a first-person POV Vlog video combined with picture-in-picture (PiP)
People Constantly Polished by Pain While Keeping Abundance and Inner Peace
Looking at Faith, It Seems Close to What a Person Ultimately Rests Their Life On
Growth always comes at a price
Grounded theory is essentially a product of the prefrontal cortex
The obsession with a sterile environment conceals the fear of real entanglement
You have a powerful “narrative flexibility” and “metacognition”
Your “not wanting to bother others” isn’t politeness, it’s a preventive form of self-protection
The depth with which you analyse others is proportional to the areas of yourself you avoid
You treat “moving” as a legitimate emotional-management tool
You treat “moving” as a legitimate emotional-management tool (2)
I seem to care a lot about being seen
Your deepest fear isn’t failure, it’s “disappearing as something mediocre”
You need “being caught” more than you think, but you never ask for it
Pain makes people grow
Xiaohongshu: it mainly relies on search, almost everything relies on research
Solving people’s need for growth
Sometimes It Really Hits Me, Feeling Alone in a Strange City
Anxious people are willing to pay for certainty. For example
Knowledge will become extremely cheap, cognition will become extremely cheap
I was just at a pizza restaurant
Neo mentioned something about an auxiliary product-management
Motorcycles: Zhang Xue
6. Product, Engineering and Open Source
30 entries Ubiquitous cognitive load. Especially in AI products, cognitive load is severely amplified. Prompt fatigue: Letting users face a blank dialog box, thinking how to write precise long prompts—this is extremely high “intrinsic cognitive load.” Most users don’t know what they want, or don’t know how to express it. Parameter anxiety: Early AI image or video tools exposed many professional parameters (CFG Scale, Seed, Step, etc.). For geeks it’s carnival, for ordinary masses it’s disaster. Let users have extremely simple operation commands. Invisible AI—not invisible, but undetected. Complex behaviors complete in milliseconds in the cloud; frontend leaves only extremely simple operation results. Negative example: users need to expend much energy executing. Positive example: the entire product has only one interaction—swipe up. Extremely complex AI recommendation algorithms completely invisible in the backend. Users aren’t even aware they’re being deeply AI-served. This is极致 “de-interaction.” Users don’t need the process. #Gewu/Product Non-linear feedback. Actually similar to Douyin’s recommendation algorithm slot machine mode. Don’t let users be predictable—let users continuously have surprise. Just do a tiny, extremely simple action, AI returns a surprisingly delightful result. This is high leverage. You scribbled a crooked circle on the canvas (extremely low cognitive load interaction), AI instantly renders it into a realistic 3D metal planet (unexpected feedback). You just clicked an interested “node” (like “film director” mentioned earlier), AI automatically generates a complete visualized card including historical context, representative works, and deep analysis. Don’t use predictable interactions—integrate interaction into content itself. #Gewu/Product “In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. In engineering, if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state.” #Gewu/Creation Apple Watch becomes an information filter. Turn off 90%+ apps from my iPhone mirroring. Watch should only receive calls and messages from boss/family/important friends, schedule reminders, and ride-hailing software arrival notifications—these are highest priority. Must quit the habit of checking phone for confirmation. Initially if verified as spam message, ignore directly on watch. Use Siri instead of opening app actions. Walking on the road, have an inspiration or to-do item—directly lift wrist to record—use mouth instead of fingers. Watch face generally designed by scene. For example, if in Lhasa, very value temperature, blood oxygen, and altitude. But if other places, will pay attention to weather. Apple in recent generations of watchOS thoroughly strengthened “Smart Stack” function. When you need to see information on minimalist watch face, just rotate the Digital Crown upward—weather, calendar, to-do items will elegantly slide out as cards. After seeing, press the crown—everything returns to minimalist. This perfectly fits the “on-demand awakening” principle. Use Siri as the only input source. And deeply apply double-tap gesture. Watch face should also be deeply bound to focus modes. For example, in work scene should display productivity lists, then after work scene should be stress-free photos, sleep mode just black out. #Gewu/Environment MacBook is the master control center—physically isolate the phone. Generally need to enable cross-device shared focus modes—keep focus mode sharing. This way, once entering work or Do Not Disturb state on Mac, the iPhone placed aside and Apple Watch on wrist instantly sync to silent—helping you build a comprehensive anti-disturbance barrier. Utilize iPhone mirroring function—if your Mac system is macOS Sequoia or newer, you can directly wirelessly control your iPhone on Mac screen, even receive iPhone notifications. This way, the phone can be placed in another room charging—no problem. Several configurations: auto-hide dock—this is very important—hide some icons—will avoid frequently looking. Good at opening multiple desktops—one desktop for material retrieval, one desktop for communication, one desktop for deep work. #Gewu/Environment A question suddenly occurred to me: how do you record this idea. The problem is that in the game, when there’s no flomo to sort things, I casually note what they said recently and then assemble a sort for it. Do you know what the most important thing in this process is? The most important thing in this process is having a dynamic, interactive thinking process, which is like a kind of growth. When I try to use this insight to summarise the biography of my own life, I find that I’ve grown a great deal. Because look at flomo: it actually records everything, including how you usually work, how you study, how you think, how you observe, how you take up a subject of your own to observe the world. So what’s your biggest advantage in this process? It’s that you write it yourself, that you take up a subject yourself—that is, perspective, and your perspective on observing the world, that becomes very important. For example, in this process you can suddenly perceive a great deal, yes, gain a lot, and much of this raw, artistic experience is based on non-verbal protection, and it can lift you up a level. If AI is a super-smart mirror that looks more and more like you or even a you from a god’s-eye view, giving you advice If we can just follow AI’s advice, what else can we do? Where do we go looking for our own subjectivity? The parts that aren’t necessarily correct, but are real That’s the part where human nature plays against itself Motivation itself is something AI won’t generate for us The ordering of values is also an extremely personal matter Those contradictions we keep struggling with and can never sort out, the obsessions, the love we can’t put into words, the insatiable sense of lack in little a Maybe the value of a person as a person is exactly their subjectivity as a person, everyone’s diversity; the world is like a cactus ball, and each person grows in their own little patch of ground, taking root and sprouting Go do the things AI would tell you not to do (the things that aren’t necessarily right, but belong to you) How knowledge is divided isn’t the most important thing; how knowledge is divided is more important. For example, if you want to build a catalogue now Whether the catalogue is your own design isn’t that important, and what you divide it by isn’t that important either. What matters is your own perspective on dividing it, your own criteria, your own logic. This will become more and more obvious in the AI era — what content gets generated doesn’t seem that important; what matters is how you want to generate it, along what line of thinking. Think about it: because we looked at the boundary between psychology and economics, behavioural economics was born; and by breaking the boundary between biology and engineering, synthetic biology was brought into being. If knowledge is like a map — how do we divide the border with North Korea, how are the boundary lines between Tibet and Nepal drawn? These national borders don’t exist in nature, but what matters is what we base such lines on: cultural beliefs, mountains and rivers? Next time you study some piece of knowledge, think a bit more about how this knowledge is constituted. It may be more helpful for building a truer model of our understanding of the world. Innovation is born from the intermingling between disciplines. More essentially: innovation is born from the reconstruction of the original way of dividing. The user’s intent, the intent of the interaction, may itself also serve as context Note that interaction can also be part of the content What OpenClaw solves is workflow It feels like something’s still missing—the knowledge system What’s truly useful isn’t “what it can do”, but the fact that once those few things that are “repetitive, high-frequency, hated, and easy to get wrong” are automated, the thrill is exponential Suddenly wondered whether we should set a threshold for the community In order to filter for some distinctive individuals Let the world run in a wonderful way Let these games explore the internet in a fun way, lowering the barrier And then, combined with their own information, give some appropriate recommendations The goal I want to achieve is that, based on its understanding of me, it automatically does some things, and it doesn’t even need my ideas, as long as I use tokens It suddenly occurred to me that the biggest problem we face when working on the current OpenClover is that we don’t know which tasks really have value. But I believe it’s paid because this tool can provide a tagged way of storing things and can achieve pretty good results with the business. Then I think that’s impressive—it could even be described as running online 24 hours a day as your personality, then recommending some new content to you and letting you get real feedback in the process. It could even do a lot of things for you. So I think a tool like this is missing. But there’s a problem: how does it automatically retrieve information? Is it automatic roaming, or does it need some restrictions set according to the personality? Like restrictions on existing websites—but it should be doable too, just through the first few steps? I think this is interesting, and this line of work is worth trying. The data storage problem is very important How to store data reasonably Memory is important to some subjects, but noise to others A’s memory cannot become B’s noise So memory also has subjectivity EverMind is omniscient, but as an individual employee A absolutely cannot directly borrow employee B’s brain. This isn’t just a permissions problem, it’s a problem of cognitive logic. If A’s subjective experience is built on B’s memory, then A is schizophrenic We hold that a long-term memory system should not just be a vector database, but a dynamically evolving “cognitive operating system.” This understanding comes from simulating the mechanisms of human intelligence The core mission of a long-term memory system is to realise the transformation from “Fluid Intelligence” (based on immediate reasoning) to “Crystallized Intelligence” (based on accumulated experience). It connects time and intelligence, enabling AI to evolve continuously through self-feedback rather than relying only on the static weights of pre-training And another question: in the process of executing a task, can it keep pushing some feedback back. Sometimes the direction a task is executing in may be wrong, and then you need to feed back these incorrect behaviours — this is also a fairly common situation in the testing process. A lot of people would wonder, why not just let it run on its own? Let it handle things by itself, and we only need to intervene at the appropriate time. In the process of vibe coding you still need to do deep code review. In reading through it you also gain ideas and inspiration, and in turn improve your project docs, putting you and the AI into a state of “deep collaboration, progressing together”: you understand more and more where the pitfalls are, and it understands more and more your boundaries and preferences. Knowledge is being equalized; many things that used to require ten or a hundred times the effort just to touch the threshold will soon be pulled in front of the general public — it’s only a matter of time. So the things that are truly scarce for an individual will gradually stand out — your imagination, creativity, taste, and your ability to apply knowledge to real problems. Coming back to open source, reviewing BettaFish’s experience, I increasingly feel that the most reasonable allocation of effort-to-return is: early research and ideas take the biggest share, promotion and marketing also matter a lot, actually writing code is not the heaviest part, and docs determine whether others dare to use it and are willing to stay. The topic choice in Vibe Coding is especially important; before you start writing code you must go through comprehensive research — think first, then act. Individual developers should come from a vertical field and go to the masses. Enter through a vertical field to build professional reputation, then face the general public to attract a broad user base. Just like BettaFish positions itself as public-opinion analysis, but its slogan is “usable by everyone.” Don’t chase big and complete; do subtraction, constantly correct your positioning in practice, and at the same time don’t be a perfectionist — validate fast. Marketing doesn’t have to be much, but you must prepare in advance material that lets “others help you promote,” such as clear and intuitive demo videos. Code is cold, stories are warm. Learning to tell the story behind the code well is a required course for independent developers. Imagination is the primary productive force, and technology is no longer the only barrier. An idea that hits the pulse of the times has its value amplified as never before; speed determines life or death, market opportunities are fleeting, and the ability to use AI tools to turn an idea into reality and push it to market within days becomes key. That is my understanding of Vibe Coding, and it’s also the era of the super individual that I believe in. At a fixed time or in a fixed mode every day, go through your photos once — it can be before bed. First give a set a heart; that’s the most basic. Then inside the hearted ones, filter for posting to social media. Another point is about albums. Generally, after you’ve finished a place you can organize the hearted photos into an album; albums are for sharing. After finishing a place you should clean out the useless things from that place. I think even travel notes are very important — the places they connect to, for example connected platforms like flomo, need frequent recording. More observation, more thinking. I suddenly thought back to what I once discussed with a friend about the sense of fracture in Phnom Penh. In this city today there are many commonplace spots—for example railways, roadside strips, sewage lines, lakesides and riverbanks, the rooftops of old buildings, and a whole series of other areas—yet the whole thing looks very messy, and the streets are messy too. Their living conditions are extremely poor, and their housing is extremely, extremely poor, just thrown together simply; generally it may take several forms—a sheet-metal house, a wooden plank house, or a temporary extension. So there’s no sewage problem solved, and no fire safety capability. The people they usually meet all live nearby, doing small vendor work, or they can go to construction sites, or drive a moto, or do domestic work, or food service, or waste recycling, or garment processing. And if they move, there’s a big commuting cost, plus the risk of losing their jobs. And on top of that, the infrastructure is severely lacking; as in past general development projects, residents can suffer from sewage and flooding for long periods. And many people, many households, actually don’t have full property rights, so when faced with a development project they’re very vulnerable. It’s a bit like how in China, at the very beginning, people were moved from one place, and the real estate problems are similar too; there’s also some high-level poverty in the negotiations. Where they are, the cost of living is very high—say medical care, schooling, transport, maintaining the house—and then there may be losses afterwards. But further out in the suburbs the pressure is even greater, because work and school are both problems, and it also makes families poorer. The conflict they face is essentially a conflict over land choices, because Phnom Penh’s land is still continuously rising in value, and the [metro] line or the corridor routes all get folded into development, rectification and beautification. So some low-income communities that used to be tolerated may one day be settled and cleared out. But in reality the operation isn’t always necessarily open; it may also be soft displacement, through petitions and pressure, and they also set compensation standards, and they also restrict collective appeals. So looking at some earlier cases, there’s a lakeside community where the lake area was leased to a developer long-term, and then land-filling for development led to large-scale displacement, affecting around a thousand people. The World [Bank] group also suggested that these residents suffered serious harm, which proves that there’s a very high cost of maintaining [their rights], a very high cost of defending their rights. I just finished visiting Building B of S-21, it’s really eerie; it’s different from the other buildings, they’re still separate single rooms. And at the door of each room there may be a list, with a bed inside, and probably various tortures applied to one particular person. But Building B is entirely one big communal room; it doesn’t have that single-room type, it’s one big room, and inside there are lots of very thick, very long iron chains, heavily rusted, with bloodstains. It was used to pen some people into one big collective classroom, and it’s just brutal. In this way, some day, someone next to you might be tortured, or die, and be dragged out to that execution ground. You feel that in this atmosphere it gives people a lot of oppression, and every breath, every movement of many people breaks you down mentally. Then there’s another change, another mode, which is that it may have been converted into single rooms before, and each single room is very narrow, less than 1 metre. A single room is a kind of isolation, still used to isolate people from each other, but they used it for concentrated confinement. But looking at the methods they chose: during interrogation you couldn’t make any sound, you couldn’t communicate with the person next to you, and when you were being tortured you still couldn’t make any noise or scream. Because if you once screamed, it meant you might be conspiring, so this point is against human nature, against biological instinct. When a person is badly hurt, when a human is injured, the instinct is to scream, so that design is very brutal. And there’s another point: it’s itself a prisoner’s dilemma, and people are isolated from each other, so you don’t know whether the person next to you will give you up. Because it’s still a joint game process, this very easily makes a person fail to hold out first, and then sell the other person out too—I think that’s also a very brutal part. There are some management staff, all guards and overseers, who come to look at them every day, and their first task each day is to check whether they’re still alive. Because the death rate was also very high, and part of their existence was to prevent them from committing suicide. It’s itself an upgraded version of M-13; M-13 is the Khmer Rouge, and before the invasion of Phnom Penh, because they had a manager who worked out a very brutal system. But at S-21, this system was made procedural, systematised, scaled up—extremely bloody. In Building B you see a lot of very brutal images—a lot of people, their photo walls stuck up there. Some of them died, and some are extremely thin and frail, with all kinds of marks on their bodies, and some still have bloodstains, and some were photographed just before dying. They have various poses, and each room’s pose is different: some have their hands behind their bodies, some in front, and some are photographed full-body. Some of them look like they’ve resolved to die, with very firm expressions; some look very melancholy. And some—but without exception, whether they’re smiling, or rarely smiling, or not smiling, whether melancholy, resolute, resigned or letting go, people have a very emotional expression, not faked, impossible to fake. Their guards are generally very young, 13 to 15 years old or so. And their guards are all this kind of ruling structure; although their ruling structure doesn’t understand what kind of person at what stage, or their level of understanding, they do understand that kids are easy to fool, kids easily carry out orders without thinking. These kids were brought over from some remote rural villages; maybe a few months earlier they were still planting, but now they start taking part in this systematic killing. They don’t understand either; the pleasure they want to feel is having lots of people begging for mercy in front of them, their expressions of utter misery. It’s a bit like—why the Khmer Rouge were also that age, and the guards too—they also abuse power, similar to these. The veterans, I think—but once they enjoy the pleasure of power, I think it’s also a disaster; they’ll be lost, they’ll treat these people more brutally and cruelly. The good and evil in children is very easily drawn out. This is my feeling from visiting Building B; after coming out now, a lot of people look very melancholy. And in the middle there’s a park, and staying in this park, most of them are basically foreigners, and many are crying, and some are taking notes, some just silently looking at the photos on the walls. Every photo, every face, every expression, carries a kind of invisible force. I just finished watching “Bunker 21” too, quite a lot of feeling. After I finished I sat in front of its door for a long while, listening to birds, watching people come and go. A lot of people were like me, standing quietly, thinking something, or seeming to think nothing at all. Inside the bunker this memorial hall has many memorial articles, slogans, and a lot of human skulls. The white tower over there feels really close, dense and packed — probably all people who were sent away before… it feels like that group of people was just sacrificed like that. So this office building is to a large extent doing archiving, some design, and functions serving this system. It looks pretty white and clean now. Compared with the “Lung Hall” plumbing I’d just visited, the staircase feels especially narrow, and there are a lot of gaps in the staircase. I was thinking: besides me, besides these tourists of the last few decades, going up and down these stairs — decades ago there was also a group of people held here in concentration, and when they were sent off to be executed they also passed through here. The little specks of bloodstain on it, really dense, impossible to wipe away at all. When I was looking at that memorial album, some lines struck me deeply. That “peace for humanity really isn’t easy.” Although a lot of people keep saying they want to fight someone, or have a fight, but people who’ve truly been through war, I believe they wouldn’t say that. They’d feel how small they are as a human being, they’d know where this system of war takes humanity, they’d understand how hard-won the peace now is. Cherish the present. How links are written matters a lot Most people are used to putting references at the end of an article, like footnotes. But you should weave links skilfully into your sentences Links become part of your thinking, and an agent can follow the links to understand your reasoning process Think of notes as Lego bricks Each unit is independently complete, but they can be connected to build larger structures When your notes work this way, the network itself becomes valuable When Claude starts a session, it needs to know about the existing files without reading every file If the number of notes reaches thousands, that’s impossible. So my system uses a layered structure that lets the agent locate things quickly “hooks”: {
“SessionStart”: [{
“hooks”: [{
“type”: “command”,
“command”: “tree -L 3 -a -I ‘.git|.obsidian’ –noreport”
}]
}]
} claude sees the folder structure. a hook automatically shows what folders and files exist at session start
Claude can see the folder structure. A hook automatically shows what folders and files exist at session start. an index file that lists every note with a one sentence description. claude can scan 50 notes in seconds without opening them
An index file that lists every note with a one-sentence description. Claude can scan 50 notes in seconds without opening them. topic pages (MOCs) that link to related notes these act like tables of contents for each subject
Topic pages (MOCs) that link to related notes; they act like tables of contents for each subject. They also contain the notes Claude leaves behind during its traversal of the graph, recording what it has learned, leaving clues for future sessions Folder structure: a well-structured one is very suitable for a personal thinking library The point isn’t the specific folders, but the position of the folders—it can tell you what something is How to start: Create a folder, and create subfolders inside it that match their purposes Write a claude md describing your system, starting simple and gradually improving it Use claude to operate, to capture things, to find connections You’re no longer taking notes, you’re directing a note-taking system. Your work becomes judgement—deciding what actually matters The human role evolves from author to editor, from creator to curator Reduce the time spent looking for files. Reduce repeated downloads, repeated creations, repeated edits. Reduce the confusion of “where on earth is the latest version of this file.” Make it easier for AI to understand your local materials structure. Lower your switching cost when doing projects, writing, coding, learning. The location layer: where files are stored — this is the traditional directory tree. Documents Downloads Desktop iCloud Drive Main project directory External hard drive archive directory The semantic layer: what this file belongs to — these are tags, naming and classification rules. Project A To process Archived Invoices Papers Important Deletable Apple officially supports adding color or text tags to files and folders, and tags apply to both local and iCloud files. The entry layer: how you usually get in quickly. This is the Finder sidebar, the Dock, aliases, Smart Folders. Show tags in the Finder sidebar Save a search as a Smart Folder Create an alias (stand-in/shortcut) Put folders in the Dock as stacks The efficiency principle: as few directory levels as possible, and let tags carry the horizontal classification. Don’t let folders carry all the classification duties. Because a file can only be in one location, yet it often belongs to several semantic dimensions at once. Folders: responsible for primary belonging Tags: responsible for multi-dimensional semantics Search/Smart Folder: responsible for dynamic aggregation A suitable directory model: an inbox zone, temporary git worktree + pnpm virtualstore is currently the lightest-weight answer. The design theory is that they want a Thread chain, supporting replying to yourself as a way to continue the point. It’s designed around conversation threads, so the depth of replies matters especially. Posts containing URLs are given higher weight. Posts with tags get significantly more exposure than posts without tags. Meaningful replies matter more. It feels like the images and the corresponding descriptions are separate; I don’t remember what was happening at that time I don’t even know how to have AI organise them together nicely I think this is a thought about the future file system, and about MINIO: how should the corresponding directory structure be organised and configured, including organising files and videos https://www.polarsteps.com/cubxxw/19561627-yue-nan-lu-ju-pian?mode=track
Even polarsteps could be overturned; it feels like there’s no need for it to exist, any piece of information or data can be DIY’d But users are very sensitive about data, and ease of configuration and getting started needs to be balanced too, but this DIY process, the process of creation, the process of users owning their data is itself a very satisfying part I want to do execution Around a goal, some recommendations, then a series of organising What should this kind of product form look like? maybe I could start by designing around my own goal of travelling? Some themes are built around personal growth For example, a series of designs made with the theme of wanting to achieve a certain goal It feels like one is suited to understanding the world, the other to understanding the individual; one is divergent, the other convergent Quantitative analysis usually measures variables, tests hypotheses, uncovers relationships between variables, then evaluates effect sizes; what it pursues is something repeatable and generalisable The goal of grounded theory is usually to generate concepts from empirical material, to discover the mechanisms behind behaviour, interaction and process Their understanding of data is different too—data is not the same thing to both First there’s theory, then the theory gets tested; grounded theory emphasises that theory shouldn’t press down on the material too early, let the material speak for itself Quantitative analysis leans theory-driven, while grounded theory leans more material-driven Quantitative looks at overall patterns; grounded theory looks at the individual process That hotel I stayed at before, I think what they did was really mediocre, even a bit perfunctory. I had a negative feeling about it. After arriving I found it was really rubbish: no WiFi inside, and the pool was [fake], and various facilities like a hairdryer basically didn’t exist. I think it was a very watered-down place, and I’ll avoid that pit in future, or at least go for ones above average. That place later raised its prices too, and they charged quite a lot per meal—six dollars a meal, six times eight is forty-eight, but it felt like every meal was ordered from a delivery platform and then assembled by themselves; I found it speechless, and it wasn’t even pre-made. But I’ve now come to a hostel, and I think they do things quite refined, though I haven’t experienced it yet—I’ll get to tonight. After arriving I found the staff here are all very warm, and their website is especially well made; I really like this kind of finely operated website, including everyone entering their own username and then getting a password from the first four characters. I think that design touch is especially good—do you know why? Because it’s interesting this way, there’s a sense of being named, a sense of being chosen. And their site has a huge number of very cheap activities, including street adventures, food exploration, and all sorts. Oh, and the photos are especially clean; the whole exterior gives me a very clean feeling, and I really like the colour combinations, it seems to have no shortcomings. VLESS (the full name is often understood as VMess Less or Very Lightweight Encryption Security Stream) is a lightweight, stateless transport protocol developed by the V2Ray / Xray project. It was designed as the next-generation replacement for the VMess protocol, with the core idea of “less is more” — strip away the superfluous parts so the protocol is simpler, faster, and more flexible. The protocol header is very small, and it does no additional built-in encryption. This makes it faster, with lower latency and less CPU usage, especially suited to high-bandwidth scenarios like watching videos, browsing the web, and gaming. It doesn’t depend on the system clock, and authentication is still UUID authentication. The current mainstream approach is VLESS + Reality. Reality is the “stealth transport” technology launched by the Xray team: It can “steal” the TLS fingerprint of a well-known site (for instance pointing at www.microsoft.com
or another big site), making your proxy traffic look almost exactly like visiting a normal website. Combined with Vision flow control, it further eliminates the TLS in TLS (nested encryption) fingerprint. A lot of proxy services (jichang) are now pushing this same model.Invisible AI Design: Letting Users Unaware They’re Being AI-Served
Slot Machine Interaction: Very Low Input for Unexpected Surprise High-Leverage Design
Science and Engineering Boundaries: Know vs. Don’t Know Philosophy of Action
Apple Watch Information Filtering: 90% Notifications Off and On-Demand Awakening
Phone Physical Isolation Technique: MacBook Master Control + Cross-Device Focus Barrier
The Essence of Note-Taking: The Dynamically Interactive Thinking Process and an Upgraded Perspective
Human Subjectivity in the AI Era: Go Do the Things AI Would Tell You Not to Do
The logic of drawing boundaries around knowledge: innovation is born from reconstructing the way we divide
Interaction Intent as Context: Interaction Is Content
OpenClaw’s Positioning: The Gap of Workflow and Knowledge System
The Thrill of Automation: Exponential Returns from Solving High-Frequency Pain Points
Designing a Community Threshold: Filtering for Distinctive Individuals While Lowering the Barrier to Exploration
The Value of OpenClover: Tagged Storage for a Personality Running 24 Hours a Day
The subjectivity of memory: A’s memory cannot become B’s noise
And another question: in the process of executing a task
The Vibe Coding collaborative state: the more you know the pitfalls, the more AI knows you
Photo workflow
I Suddenly Thought Back to What I Once Discussed with a Friend About the Sense of Fracture in Phnom Penh
I Just Finished Visiting Building B of S-21, It’s Really Eerie
I just finished watching “Bunker 21” too, quite a lot of feeling
Writing Good Notes
The Design of a Directory Isn’t for Storing Things, It’s for Retrieval System Design
Parallel development workflow:
Threads doesn’t support long content, X seems to
Threads’ recommendation algorithm also feels strange
Recalling History, I Have a Complicated Emotion
Don’t want to do the thinking
Quantitative analysis and grounded theory
That Hotel I Stayed at Before, I Think What They Did Was Really Mediocre
VLESS (the full name is often understood as VMess Less
7. Content, Craft and Recording
11 entries The angle I stand at is unique. From this angle, I let a person truly grow and reflect on their own perspective. From this perspective, it seems like anything works? But I more want to integrate my own experiences and narrative. This creates a strong sense of immersion. #Gewu/Writing Actually, whether writing or design, one very interesting thing is: how to consciously switch back and forth between different “abstract levels” to better understand and design complex systems. #Gewu/Writing Abstract Ladder. Core idea: how to consciously switch back and forth between different abstract levels to better understand and design complex systems. This “ladder of abstraction” isn’t just a language theory—it’s a thinking methodology, emphasizing dynamic back-and-forth between abstract + concrete ↔ abstract. Keeping the car in the center of the lane actually advocates three basic actions: Control parameters—only by keeping variables within controllable ranges can you naturally explore. Rise to abstraction—not daring any concrete instance, but creating an abstract representation that can represent all instances. Return to concreteness—looking at abstract diagrams is cool, but doesn’t explain detailed reasons; need to select a concrete instance to inspect. So it’s back and forth: up-abstract → down-details → re-up-abstract → … Just like analyzing a place’s culture and people: observe → practice → understand → observe. Ladder meaning: Bottom: At start we can only see concrete situations—like a car’s position at a certain moment. Middle (first abstraction): Abstract away concrete variables, get broader overview. Higher: Simultaneously abstract more dimensions—like formatting data on all parameters, highly generalized overall pattern. Abstract ladder is essentially a cognitive hierarchy—and not just using high-level thinking is enough, but need to flexibly convert between levels to have both height and depth. Staying purely concrete → easy to get trapped in details, can’t see overall trends. Staying purely highly abstract → lose intuition and causal connections. Switching back and forth → can discover patterns and explain reasons. This is precisely the key to deep understanding. Actually, translating to cognition vs. action distinction, this analogy also holds: thinking resolves action uncertainty, action resolves thinking uncertainty—the two are complementary, mutually fulfilling. #Gewu/Creation Little Lion Diary. Recommended by Little Rabbit, took a look. Videos have strong characteristics. Tech and life misalignment. And the videos have narrative experience. Also, viewing data itself is a form of feedback—adjusting videos. First few seconds’ skip rate determines that the very beginning needs novelty. #Gewu/Creation Feel flomo is a very interesting app—friend recommended it, said it’s a very fun card-style notes app. I used it for a while, observed myself—found my click-through rate is actually very low, and found many card contents are repetitive—like large model hotspot subscriptions, consecutive days same hotspots—feel particularly boring. Also its interaction is intrusive—I really don’t like this. This interaction isn’t even part of the content—so I feel this operation is meaningless. Some operations occupy my attention, my line of sight, interrupt my previous focus states. So this app—how to say—not particularly attractive points so far, instead makes me very painful. I will delete it—because its harassment ability is too strong—always harassing me on notifications, and have to click in—very troublesome. I feel that if voice is the raw material, it’s still “audio” you should use to distinguish it. It should be audio, it should be voice. And voice knowledge is actually a specialised version of a point-based knowledge base, because compared with general audio it’s more suited to text-led content, Zhihu-style stuff. Zhihu’s seven hundred words all revolve around personal podcasts, recordings, and it also does serialised, scenario-based processing. But I think audio may have some other weaknesses — for example, while it pays attention to the text content, it actually cares more about what was said, what other things were going on, and whether there’s noise, or whether there’s some scope of resolution, and what state the person is in right now. So if audio is passed straight through, it looks pretty hard to do. This step still needs more detailed thinking and prior handling — it still has to be done. How does the hair dryer feel? The lobster is a little sour, very good, so I still haven’t stuffed everything in. The Memory file still has it split into… knowing Memory. Monos has a lot of them, ate the McDonald’s file. It can make the daily raw AK a pad file, some files that can handle the moment the file system crashes. That way it will load the content it needs — this selectivity is a kind of suddenly-correct choice. projects handles deep re-creation. Obsidian handles recording. An agent can horizontally scan cross-cutting patterns that you yourself can’t find manually. For example, topics you’ve already talked about. And some patterns in what you publish. And some reminders for you — this is the intelligence layer. I think notes have another very important function: they don’t just convey function and content, they also convey style and a way of thinking. That includes writing style and linking style, and also a certain attitude toward uncertainty, including how to navigate. These aren’t necessarily written in the Note file — the Agent may learn them continuously by reading these notes, from the examples. Then I think there’s another interesting point: memory fragments. In some movies the protagonist can’t form new memories, so he has to rely on tattoos, pictures, handwritten notes — those external traces are the function calls used to trigger the next action. I think this is a very important part; I mean Agent, and sessional Out, Outpod is also the same thing. That is, its identity construction doesn’t necessarily need a continuous consciousness, but it definitely needs a stable structure that can continuously generate similar cognitive orientations. This is very important. Only do deep content. Only do vertical content (one account).Writing Perspective: Where Does the Strong Immersion from Personal Narrative Come From
Abstract Level Switching: Cognitive Flexibility in Writing and Design
Abstract Ladder Methodology: Up-Abstract → Down-Details → Re-Up-Abstract Cognitive Rhythm
Little Lion Diary Breakdown: Tech + Life Misalignment + First 3 Seconds Novelty
flomo’s Intrusive Harassment: How Notifications Destroy Focus States
I feel that if voice is the raw material
How does the hair dryer feel? The lobster is a little sour, very good
NotebookLM Handles Learning
An agent can horizontally scan what you can’t find manually
Notes have another very important function
Only do high-quality content
8. Business, Investing and Career
11 entries Diamond (diamond). Current valuations aren’t high; from an investment and market-value standpoint they’re low, even pulling back. A market report from De Beers, one of the world’s largest diamond producers, noted that diamond prices have fallen to a 20-year low. This means natural diamond retail and wholesale prices are broadly weak, far below the levels of the long period of high valuations in the past. India is the main consumer market — Indians love wearing gold and diamonds (shaped by society and culture). From the angle of thermal management (heat conduction), diamond (that is, diamond material) is indeed technically one of the best-known thermal conductors, especially suited to heat dissipation in AI and high-compute chips, but in engineering applications a single material can’t just replace all traditional options. The thermal conductivity of single-crystal diamond can reach about 2000–2200 W/m·K, far above traditional thermal conductors (copper ~400 W/m·K, aluminum ~237 W/m·K) — more than 5 times that of copper. In terms of material performance, diamond today is indeed theoretically one of the optimal thermal management materials. To strike a balance between cost and performance, the industry leans toward diamond composites with other materials. Strongest performance, but not necessarily the engineering optimum. The real bottleneck in AI chip thermal management isn’t the material’s own thermal conductivity, but: interface thermal resistance (TIM) packaging structure system-level cooling (liquid cooling / cold plates / immersion) cost / yield / scalability When you’re already using liquid cooling + advanced packaging the marginal gain from 400 → 800 W/m·K is very high the marginal gain from 800 → 2000 W/m·K decays rapidly So in the real supply chain: copper / copper alloys diamond-copper composites SiC / high-thermal-conductivity ceramics system-level cooling solutions will long have priority over “pure diamond.” Across the whole supply chain, the bargaining power sits with the AI chip giants. Chip giants usually won’t quickly change their product chain for a single material either. The industry expects that the market for high-performance thermal materials in the AI era may grow substantially, and diamond is seen as one important direction in it. But that growth is more likely to show up in the revenue of material suppliers / cooling solution companies, rather than the traditional chip giants directly investing in diamond itself. COP technology. Chip-On-Panel, an advanced packaging technology. AI chip packaging is becoming the bottleneck. Advanced processes (3nm / 2nm) are no longer the only difficulty; the real choke points have become: chips getting bigger and bigger (reticle limit) more and more HBM stacking die-to-die interconnect density exploding packaging area growing exponentially TSMC is now pushing COP, and NVIDIA, the AI chip company, is too. It’s still in the engineering validation stage. AMKR is relatively low compared to the semiconductor industry average (the industry P/E is usually above 25–30x), reflecting that the market may be fairly conservative about its growth expectations or demanding a higher risk premium. A comparison of P/E ratios across A-shares, US stocks and Hong Kong stocks. Looking at the overall index, A-shares are actually lower; but looking at the median and at tech growth stocks, A-shares are significantly higher than US stocks. The P/E of the Shanghai Composite is around 12–14 year-round, and the CSI 300 around 11–13x, while the S&P 500 currently usually sits around 20–25x. In aggregate terms, A-shares are dragged down by the huge traditional state-owned enterprises in banking, energy and infrastructure (chronically 5–8x P/E). If you strip out financials and petrochemicals, or compare the ChiNext index representing tech growth with the Nasdaq, A-share valuations are often higher. More importantly, the US market is a “head-concentrated” market: many of the mediocre companies in the bottom 50% get extremely low valuations or even become penny stocks (a few times earnings), whereas in A-shares, thanks to “shell value” and retail speculation, a mediocre small-cap company with zero growth can often stay at a 30–50x P/E year after year. A-shares: “bad companies are expensive, good companies (the traditional big blue chips) are cheap”; US stocks: “good companies (tech giants) are expensive, bad companies are ignored.” US stocks have higher absolute values — NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta — with P/E usually between 30x and 70x, but extremely fast growth. But A-share P/Es are extremely high, even negative — “trade the expectation, sell the reality.” Dominated by retail investors and hot money, with an extreme chase for concepts; even if AI business makes up a tiny share of total revenue, they’ll speculate on it all the same. The US curve is also interesting: usually the stock price rises first, and then real net profit (EPS) follows in an explosion — like NVIDIA, where the stock first soared and pushed the P/E above 100x; but over the following few earnings seasons its profit delivered 200%–400% real growth. The result is that although the share price doubled, the P/E actually fell to 30–40x. Their growth curve is a solid upward compounding curve, because what they earn is the money of global compute infrastructure. A-shares generally look scarier — pulse-like surges, followed by a long grind down and value destruction. The vast majority of A-share AI companies lack core competitiveness in foundation models and compute chips, and are mostly “wrapper apps” or concept packaging. When the quarterly/annual report comes out, the market discovers that so-called AI brought no profit and actually dragged the financials because of high R&D or marketing costs. The growth curve shows an inverted V, and the way valuation comes back down is “the stock crashing,” not “profit rising.” Hong Kong AI is generally more interesting — lying at the bottom, with steady earnings growth but a sluggish share-price response. These companies have China’s most core AI R&D teams and data, but are limited by how hard it is to commercialize domestic foundation models (low willingness to pay among To B clients, cutthroat price competition To C), so AI business mostly defends and empowers the existing main business (such as advertising, cloud services) and can hardly create an explosive new growth pole on its own. Hong Kong AI is more like a hedge; US AI is generally industrial investment; A-share AI is generally a chip-betting game. The US market is dominated by long-term institutional money, which values free cash flow and EPS; A-shares are dominated by a sea of retail investors plus quant hot money, with an extreme preference for high-volatility “imaginative space,” because only if the story is big enough can it attract enough people to take the bag; Hong Kong is an offshore market where foreign capital holds pricing power and demands an extremely high bar for uncertainty (policy, geopolitics), requiring a very large margin of safety. For a truly great tech company, digesting its P/E must depend on explosive profit growth, not on endlessly telling stories. If a hot sector has been blowing for two years and the leader’s profit is still falling, that should set off the highest-level alarm. Due to API limits, for live data see: Brent crude: investing.com/commodities/crude-oil WTI crude: investing.com/commodities/crude-oil April: WTI fell to -$37.63/barrel (unprecedented negative oil price) Reason: pandemic outbreak + storage capacity exhausted 2021: recovery to $70-80 March 2022: Russia-Ukraine conflict breaks out, surging to $139 (14-year high) OPEC+ production cuts support prices Range-bound: $70-95 Geopolitical tension (Middle East situation) Demand concerns (China’s economic slowdown) Range: $75-90 Energy transition accelerating EV penetration rising Expectation of a long-term demand peak OPEC+ production policy (led by Saudi Arabia and Russia) US shale oil (the world’s largest oil producer) Geopolitics (Middle East, Russia-Ukraine, Venezuela) Release of strategic reserves (SPR) Global economic growth (GDP→energy demand) Chinese demand (largest importer) Transportation (aviation, shipping recovery) Energy transition (EV substitution) USD exchange rate (oil is priced in USD) Speculative capital (futures market) Interest rate policy (the Fed) ✓ Falling renewable energy costs ✓ Rising EV penetration (2030 combustion ban) ✓ Improved energy efficiency ✓ Carbon neutrality policy ✓ Insufficient upstream investment (trough after 2015) ✓ Growing demand in emerging markets ✓ Geopolitical risk premium ✓ Inflationary pressure OPEC+ meetings (monthly production decisions) EIA inventory report (every Wednesday) US rig count (Baker Hughes) China PMI data (demand expectations) US Dollar Index DXY Investing.com Bloomberg Energy EIA (US Energy Information Administration) OPEC Monthly Report Jinshi Data 📅 March 7, 2026, Saturday US stocks: watch tech earnings and Fed policy Hong Kong stocks / China concept stocks: the pace of China’s economic recovery is key A-shares: the strength of policy support and foreign capital flows | Rating | Sector | Rationale | |——|——|——| | Overweight | Tech (AI/cloud) | Long-term growth is certain | | Overweight | Healthcare | Defensive + innovative | | Neutral | Financials | Interest rate environment uncertain | | Underweight | Traditional energy | Transition pressure | Growth stocks: 40-50% (tech, healthcare, new energy) Value stocks: 20-30% (financials, consumer leaders) Bonds: 20-30% (government bonds, high-grade credit bonds) Cash: 10% (waiting for opportunities) Geopolitical uncertainty Changes in inflation and interest rate policy Fluctuations in economic data Exchange rate risk (RMB/USD) US pre-market/after-hours earnings Release of China’s economic data Speeches by Fed officials OPEC+ developments Goldman Sachs official research reports Bloomberg Wallstreetcn Cailian Press ⚠️ This briefing is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice Markets carry risk; invest with caution What kills a company is never the competitor, but its inertia of success A company succeeds through a high degree of alignment across strategy, culture, talent and structure. The stronger the alignment, the more smoothly the company runs. But the stronger the alignment, the greater the inertia. When the environment changes, the whole organisation can’t make the turn But I feel we can first make an RM, that is, treat the other party as a long-term work partner of yours. Let him — you want to think of every way to get into your own freestyle rhythm, still sort of the eight-tenths meaning. And essentially his salary is still this, he’ll still go and recognise everything about you; his core goal is to help you settle and pay, rather than being a bank where you make a few short-term models you need, maybe. An open economy cannot fully achieve all three of the following at the same time: A fixed exchange rate Independent monetary policy Free capital mobility It can achieve at most two at the same time Essentially, this is determined by the arbitrage mechanism As long as capital can move freely, money will chase higher returns globally And the core of return differences often comes from interest rate differentials and exchange rate expectations Fixed exchange rate: a fixed exchange rate means the government or central bank commits to keeping the local currency at a stable level against some foreign currency, or against a basket of currencies—for example, pegging directly to the dollar, reducing exchange rate uncertainty; the cost is limited room for manoeuvre, the central bank needing to intervene in the foreign exchange market frequently, and heavy pressure on foreign exchange reserves Independent monetary policy to set interest rates: you can decide interest rates and liquidity according to your own economic cycle, cutting rates to stimulate in a recession, raising rates to suppress demand during inflation, and you can operate according to your own employment, prices and financial stability Free capital mobility: free capital mobility means funds can flow in and out across borders relatively freely, residents, companies and institutional investors can allocate overseas assets relatively freely, and foreign capital can enter the domestic market too So Hong Kong chose a fixed exchange rate + free capital mobility The mainland chose a fixed exchange rate + independent monetary policy Traditionally, China has long been closer to a variant of this combination: The exchange rate isn’t absolutely fixed, but is strongly managed Monetary policy retains considerable independence The capital account is not fully open Of course there are also many developed economies that chose free capital mobility + independent monetary policy, such as the US, the UK and Canada This is a country’s institutional arrangement between “sovereignty, openness and stability” The US basically chooses free capital mobility, independent monetary policy, and a floating exchange rate Because the dollar itself is the global core reserve currency Others need to adapt to the US; the US doesn’t really need to adapt to others Singapore: free capital mobility + exchange-rate-led monetary policy; not a traditional “hard peg to a single currency,” but managing the nominal effective exchange rate of the Singapore dollar through the basket, band and crawl (BBC) framework. MAS states officially and clearly that Singapore’s monetary policy is centred on the exchange rate, not on short-term interest rates. Singapore has also long maintained a highly open capital account Malaysia: independent monetary policy + relatively high capital openness + a relatively flexible exchange rate Vietnam: a degree of exchange rate stability + a degree of monetary policy independence Cambodia: exchange rate stability + high financial openness / dollarisation, with relatively weak monetary policy independence Laos: exchange rate management + capital restrictions + fighting for monetary policy space Japan: free capital mobility + independent monetary policy + a floating exchange rate Bangladesh’s sex industry, I find it fascinating. On the surface it’s legal, but in reality it’s very contradictory. Adult women’s private transactions can to a certain degree proceed legally — they can solicit openly, they can pimp — so it’s a kind of quasi-legality: the state hasn’t fully eliminated it, but also doesn’t recognise it as a normal labour industry under equal protection. It’s different from other countries — other countries divide off a district and manage it uniformly, making it regulated by law. But Bangladesh’s sex industry, I feel, is more a very fragile market catalysed by its patronage structures, its poverty economy, the state’s extremely weak governance capacity, and criminal networks. Human trafficking is a long-standing problem, and its urbanisation really does need a lot of these positions. And then there’s its poverty, and its female fertility rate is very low too. The social forms now aren’t just red-light districts — there’s also street-based and mobile forms, and all of this is very unstable. Red-light districts are officially very tolerated; it’s one of the world’s largest brothel communities, apparently a “Brothel” community. And its hotels are very hidden too. How to put it — this whole industry is not sex, it’s exploitation. It’s a transit point, and also a site of exploitation within the country. And the involvement of minors in this exploitation is very serious; this is a very dark aspect of Bangladesh. And Bangladesh has a lot of violent law enforcement, which I find hard to talk about. Mm. What I find more interesting is that Bangladesh is also a Muslim-majority society. So women’s status there is very hard to guarantee. Many of them actually have no real protection of labour rights, and when they encounter violence they don’t dare call the police, and children are easily ostracised. xxx is the hook, the plan is retention, the memory bank is the moat.Diamond Investment: Best Performance Doesn’t Equal the Engineering Optimum — The Marginal-Returns Trap
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The Inertia of Corporate Success: The Paradox of Consistency and Flexibility
But I feel we can first make an RM
The Impossible Trinity
Singapore: Free Capital Mobility + Exchange-Rate-Led Monetary Policy
Bangladesh’s sex industry, I find it fascinating. On the surface it’s legal
xxx is the hook, the plan is retention, the memory bank is the moat
9. Body, Health and Daily Life
8 entries Feeling that all current AI interactive video and games’ real problem to face or solve isn’t video content generation quality, but contextual visual consistency. Currently the industry solves this problem often needs combining traditional game engines (like Unity) to control logic states, while letting AI specialize in art assets or dynamic rendering. For “portrait substitution” gameplay without long-term mechanisms, must connect to existing social relationship chains, transforming into “social currency” rather than standalone experience to gain long-term stickiness. #Gewu/Game Shen Deep feels like a very calm character. Independent individual—not always online, but there when needed. “Changxia City weather is sunny, you reply to my messages. I think you should be fine.” Feels like a very restrained personality. He won’t put you in a “needing to be cared for” role—but defaults you have judgment, have capability. #Gewu/Game Feelings about “Night King” The scene that struck me most was the male lead’s kindness that he never recommended A landowner’s parents are gravely ill, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself so the landowner can keep working Including lending money to his own employee, interest-free The nightlife scene feels very real: there’s performance, there’s a dark side, and there’s also a side of genuine feeling, a dignified side, a side of loyalty Every person’s real human side comes through So many details, including Mini leaving behind an earring, contrasted with Brother Huan cleaning up the fragments when he left Sister V Brother Huan never noticed, not once At first I thought Mini was playing Sister V, setting them against each other I was still too narrow-minded Mini just wanted to be seen That scene where Sister V picks up the earring and puts it in the dressing room—the moment MiMi sees the earring being picked up she must have been so excited, but in the end she fell in love with someone she shouldn’t have; her feelings had nowhere to rest, her love had nowhere to go, and she could only leave from a distance I suddenly came across some of the food I ate in Vietnam. Apart from the foreign food there, like Japanese, Western or fast food, most of it was various local Vietnamese specialties. Looking back, I ate quite a lot, and I think Vietnamese food is delicious in my book, because it fuses Chinese and French culture, and it’s also a kind of yin-yang balance. Whether it’s pho, banh mi, spring rolls, or grilled pork with rice noodles, I found them all pretty tasty, and all quite suitable for people on a low-fat diet. That’s why the locals in Vietnam basically all have great figures—because what they eat day to day is low-fat, low-calorie food. If I compare it to Cantonese food back home, Guangdong seems extremely strict about ingredients. For any dish, say steaming, the water temperature, the steaming time, the moment it comes off the heat all have very strict standards, and the margin for error is very low. But Vietnamese food, because its environment determined its eating habits, proves that saying: food chooses humans, not humans choosing food. In that subtropical climate, people had to give up greasy food in order to adapt, and eat things that wake up the appetite and replenish water and salt—it’s a process of adapting to nature. France is interesting too; during the colonial period France took part in the evolution of Vietnamese food, which shows a strong inclusiveness. Chinese chopsticks, French coffee, the habit of eating beef. The French loved their French wheat and butter, but the locals couldn’t afford them, so they mixed rice flour into the wheat flour and made a banh mi with a very thin crust, and adapted it to local needs, avoiding making it greasy. So I think it’s also a process of yin and yang coming together, quite interesting. It eats with a lot of layers, and with so many vegetables, I think it’s very healthy for the figure; after eating you feel very light, very good. I think Trat is a very interesting city. Compared with Ho Chi Minh City, Trat is a very relaxed city. It’s simple, hasn’t been through war, but has a very strong sense of everyday life, a bit like a middle-class or even aristocratic feel. Many people like to keep a small garden at home or in a big courtyard, and live in the courtyard, with hills to climb and things to explore nearby. I think it’s really especially relaxing. And there’s a ton of really good food there; it’s a kind of food paradise too. Relatively speaking, the climate there is very comfortable, just like the climate in our Dali, because the elevation is slightly higher. So I personally really like the whole city, and the weather is great too. Of course it’s not without drawbacks—the drawback may be that the infrastructure is a bit worse. But I think infrastructure is fine, really; compared with the comfort of living, it doesn’t seem like much. Drink coffee Wander the night market I want to go for a run Turning nature into the order of the everyday Making socialising controllable, dignified Elevating material consumption into aesthetics and ethics And also finding balance between stimulation and restraint What tea is ultimately about, in the end, is still the spiritual world Tea is very special. It’s not like water, which is completely neutral, nor like alcohol, which is strongly out of control. It lightly refreshes, has subtle flavours and complex layers, but on the whole stays restrained Awake, but not showy; communicating, but not impolite; enjoying, but not indulging A drink that can be shared, repeated, and carries a faint spirituality, used to organise time, ease relationships, shape identity, and settle the soulAI Interactive Video’s Real Bottleneck: Not Generation Quality, But Visual Consistency
Shen Deep Personality: Restrained Relationships That Don’t Treat You as “Needing Care”
“Night King”: A Multi-Faceted Presentation of Real Human Nature
Mini’s Departure: The Tragedy of Wanting to Be Seen
Vietnamese Food: A Low-Fat Philosophy of Chinese-French Cultural Fusion and Yin-Yang Balance
Observations of Trat: The Balance Between Ease and Everyday Comfort
Waking Up Early to Swim
The essence of tea culture
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