side notes on reading

查理大桥始建于1357年，是一座哥特建筑和巴洛克雕像的华美融合。它横跨伏尔塔瓦河，有六座拱门桥墩和三座塔楼。查理大桥连接了布拉格城堡与老城，布拉格连接了东欧与西欧。 人上有人人压人，山外有山山连山。为什么生活中总有一种挣扎的感觉？欲求太多而时间和精力有限。 investing 20261001: The 10-year Treasury yield, used as a benchmark for mortgages and other loans, rose to 5.33%, its highest level since 2002. Brent oil futures for November delivery reed relatively unchanged near $103 a barrel. notes 蒙克：北越上校回忆越战、解放军和美国战俘 book: 裴信（Bùi Tín）Bui Tin, Following Hi Chi Minh: memoirs of a north vietnamese colonel 裴信后来担任过越共党报《人民日报》的副总编。他在80年代中期开始对越南战后的腐败和在国际上的孤立感到失望。1990年裴信离开越南开始了在巴黎的流亡生涯。他一直公开表达对越共领导层和越南政治制度不满。 越军前高官眼中的解放军，越战和中越冲突 BBC 2013/10/10 马四维：意义、幸福源于抉择与行动 《维特根斯坦传：天才之为责任》这本传记展示的，是一个把“说清楚”与“活认真”当作同一件事的人：在界限前保持诚实，在实践中寻找明白。这本书对今天人的价值，在于把几个简单而坚硬的命题重新推到面前：幸福从何而来？意义如何安放？当生命遭遇不可承受之痛，是否可以把“理性”化为终局的决定？ book: Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, by Ray Monk, 1990 ...

“Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra” (Do your duty, come what may). investing 0930 price RDDT 143 UNH 366.5 MRNA 145 PLTR 169 TOTAL 117K the first rate hike this month did not stop the spending, both economy and job market seem stable. the quarterly reports in late October should give us some clues about the economy and the job market? the end cause is still the Iran war. so end the war, open Hormuz and let the oil flow. ...

临溪流以静对，访草木以素心。登高极目知天地之大，置己苍茫知寸身之微。 当欲望得不到满足便痛苦，当欲望得到满足便无聊，人生就像钟摆一样在痛苦与无聊之间摆荡。– 叔本华(Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 - 1860) (Life is a constant oscillation between the desire to have and the boredom of possessing. Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.) 杜甫 《登高》 风急天高猿啸哀，渚清沙白鸟飞回。 无边落木萧萧下，不尽长江滚滚来。 万里悲秋常作客，百年多病独登台。 艰难苦恨繁霜鬓，潦倒新停浊酒杯。 “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” – Elie Wiesel the only thing new in the world is the history you do not know. – Harry S. Truman ...

江汉曾为客，相逢每醉还。浮云一别后，流水十年间。 欢笑情如旧，萧疏鬓已斑。何因不归去？淮上有秋山。– 韦应物《淮上喜会梁川故人》 investing Oscar Wilde wrote in his story, The Picture of Dorian Gray, that nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I guess that it is hard to know the value of things. Take the example of stock prices. IMO, there is no such thing of good stocks but over-valued or under-valued ones. the value of a stock is changing that is hard to know. You must be patient to buy at the under-valued price and be patient to hold as long as you could. ...

Rivers, like men, only learn why they were born near their end. – José Saramago (1922-2010) “Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” – W.E.B. Du Bois 乌托邦（utopia）由来已久，其要旨就是用简单的方法解决复杂的问题，其根源就是面对复杂的世界人总是希望可以有一个简单的解释。长久以来，人们知道这是做不到的，却从来没有放弃，总是不断尝试不断失败。因此反乌托邦（dystopia）也会时不时出现。 讲故事应该比乌托邦的历史更久远。一个故事就是对世界或对人生的一个简单解释，让我们多一种理解。这也是源于人渴望对复杂不确定的世事有所明了。讲故事写故事的冲动就是为了构建一个虚拟世界，从而更好地理解面前的现实世界。 世界是复杂的不确定的，而人自己其实也是复杂的变化的，没有人确知世界和自己的未来。 There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. – Milan Kundera ...

The Summer Day Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019) Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. – George Bernard Shaw ...

“It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.” – James Baldwin “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All Don’t just teach your children to read … Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. – George Carlin Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope. – Theodore Roszak, 1933-2011 ...

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. -- W. B. Yeats, the stolen child, 1886 Writing and reading about Fairies some may deem to be mark of a trifling turn of mind. On this subject … dulce est desipere in loco. (It is sweet to be silly in places.) – Thomas Keightley, the world guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and other little people ...

“Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, — what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” – Herman Melville, Moby-Dick ...

“The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.” – Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower “When the mind has a tendency to dream, it is a mistake to keep dreams away from it, to ration its dreams. So long as you distract your mind from its dreams, it will not know them for what they are; you will always be being taken in by the appearance of things, because you will not have grasped their true nature. If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. One must have a thorough understanding of one’s dreams if one is not to be troubled by them; there is a way of separating one’s dreams from one’s life which so often produces good results that I ask myself whether one ought not, at all costs, to try it, simply as a preventive, just as certain surgeons make out that we ought, to avoid the risk of appendicitis later on, to have all our appendices taken out when we are children.” – Marcel Proust ...