the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2025 feels like one of those rare hinge years—the kind that only become obvious in hindsight, but which you can feel while you’re living through them. Eighty years after the end of World War II, the world order born from that moment is quietly, then loudly, falling apart.ContinueContinue reading “2025: The Year the Postwar Order Broke”
Category Archives: essays
China-Hating Chinese
Three Types of China Haters Who Are Ethnically Chinese Over the past decade, I’ve encountered a strange breed of Chinese people—not dissidents, not reformists, not critics motivated by genuine concern, but China haters who are ethnically Chinese—people who are visibly Chinese, whose wealth, education, and career were made possible by China, yet who resent andContinueContinue reading “China-Hating Chinese”
洋人的乏走狗
1. 我有时候去那个野树林子里走一走，满眼看见的都是树，大多笔直挺拔，有的则是歪八斜扭。我就想，为什么大多数树林子里的树，都是笔直挺拔，而有些树，天生下来就是歪的，骨子里就是坏的？世上真的是有坏种这种东西吗？
我刚上大学的时候，有一天……点击文章标题👆阅读全文 ->
多少百年债条!
“中华人民共和国中央人民政府今天成立了！”
1949年10月1日，毛泽东主席的宣告响彻天安门广场，也震动了世界。但许多人不知道的是，这句话背后还带着一个石破天惊的行动——人民政府宣布：废除所有自鸦片战争以来西方列强强加给中国的不平等条约，所有这些条约带来的外债，我们一概不认！
你知道这笔被甩进历史垃圾堆的债务究竟有多庞大吗？让我们看看这些触目惊心的数字……点击文章标题👆阅读全文 ->
指名道姓
我们公司刚雇了一个项目经理，名字叫做 “Craig Lose”。每次一路过他的办公桌，看见他的名字，心里就纳闷：“为什么好端端的，非要把自家叫做 “要输”；就不会叫个 “要赢” 吗？”
……点击文章标题👆阅读全文 ->
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”
Yego’s Chronicles 