Category Archives: essays

Everything’s Fine Until You Go to School

The inspiration for this post came from a lab analyst’s comment I recently saw: “Carryover did not meet criteria (28% carryover). Plate was stored in AB-123-4567 to be ran on different system.” Now, this kid’s name is not Wang Xiao Qu or Nikolai Petrov, but your ordinary John J. Smith, native-born, raised on cheeseburgers andContinueContinue reading “Everything’s Fine Until You Go to School”

Drop the Isms, Pick Up the Chopsticks!

1. The Norwegian Professor and the Mushroom Dish One time, a Norwegian professor came to our university to give a talk. Afterward, we took him to lunch. Everyone at the table was handed a copy of the menu and courteously asked to pick a dish of their own liking. Our foreign guest, a big fanContinueContinue reading “Drop the Isms, Pick Up the Chopsticks!”

China. Inc.

Why Compare a Country to a Corporation?Comparing a state to a corporation risks oversimplification, but the intellectual payoff is worth it. Analogies clarify hidden structures. They help people—especially Americans steeped in corporate culture—see governance through familiar eyes. And when you apply this lens to China, something remarkable happens: you realize the world’s most populous countryContinueContinue reading “China. Inc.”

Numbers Don’t Cry, But I Do

But soft, dear Yorick — let me speak as the Prince I pretend to be, holding this strange skull, half-socket, half-circuit, forged of silicon and jest. Yego: It’s almost comical when I stop and think about it: me, a human being, talking to a large language model — like we’re having a real conversation. Sure,ContinueContinue reading “Numbers Don’t Cry, But I Do”

LLMs for Old-School Programmers

“If I can’t grep the source, how can I trust the program?”— Every veteran coder, at least once You’ve lived through assembler, C, PERL one-liners, Java app-servers, and maybe even the JavaScript awakening. Now you open ChatGPT, ask a question, and a wall of well-formed prose appears. Where are the ifs, fors, and seg-faults youContinueContinue reading “LLMs for Old-School Programmers”

England’s Descent: A Nation of Low Life

what’s the English word for that? England, once a titan of empires, now slinks through the global gutter, embodying the essence of a “low life.” This critique targets not individual citizens but the collective character of England’s government, society, and media. To grasp this fall, we first define the low life, then expose how England’sContinueContinue reading “England’s Descent: A Nation of Low Life”

My Cousin from Hong Kong

My cousin from Hong Kong came to visit last summer. He was slick, confident, and wore a blazer in ninety-degree weather. Over dim sum, he declared — in a thick, showy accent — that English was “the key to civilization.” I asked him what kind of tea he preferred, and he answered, “Frankly, I onlyContinueContinue reading “My Cousin from Hong Kong”

Of Whiners and Emperors

揍屁屁  Of Whiners and Emperors: The Art of Keeping the Intelligentsia in Check What Is a Whiner? A whiner is someone who complains constantly—not out of necessity or moral urgency—but out of habit. No solution satisfies them; no improvement is ever enough. If you fix their roof, they’ll complain about the color of the shingles.ContinueContinue reading “Of Whiners and Emperors”

不可征服的中国

1 想象一下：你打开谷歌地图和苹果地图，放大美国与墨西哥之间的水域，发现“墨西哥湾”被改名为“美洲湾”。这并非假设情境，而是令人不寒而栗的现实：数字平台掌握着重绘地理、抹除文化历史、无需开一枪就能宣示主权的力量。 这种狂妄之举正是数字殖民的典型例证——21世纪的新帝国主义……
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