Personal Renewal by John W. Gardner and others

Notes: John W. Gardner was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, an activist and author, and recipient of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom. This speech was delivered to McKinsey & Company on November 10, 1990. Speech Transcript I’m going to talk about “Self-Renewal.” One of your most fundamental tasks is the renewal of the organizations you serve, and that usually includes persuading the top officers to accomplish a certain amount of self-renewal. But to help you think about others is not my primary mission this morning. I want to help you think about yourselves. ...

March 3, 2025 · 20 min · un01s

no-std Rust and others

ugly code Perfect code doesn’t guarantee success if you haven’t solved a real problem for real people. Pursuing elegance in a vacuum leads to abandoned side projects or frameworks nobody uses. By contrast, clunky but functional code often comes with just the right compromises for quick iteration. And that in turn means a lot of messy code powers products that people love — something that’s a far bigger challenge. Are you shipping a product and racing to meet user needs? Or are you building a reusable library or framework meant to stand the test of time? ...

February 20, 2025 · 3 min · un01s

Enron trader, quantitative research, and others

Enron story Enron was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 in Houston, Texas. It started in energy, commodities and services. The company filed for bankruptcy on Dec 2, 2001 while employing about 20,600 staff with a revenue of $100B in 2000. Enron scandal was the biggest audit failure. John Arnold was born in 1974 and growed up in Dallas Texas. He graduated in 1995 from Vanderbilt University with a degree in math and economics. He was former Enron executive. He made three quarters of a billion dollars for Enron in 2001 and was awarded a bonus of $8 million. His firm, Centaurus Advisors, LLC, was a Houston-based hedge fund specializing in trading energy products that closed in 2012. ...

February 15, 2025 · 4 min · un01s

how venture capital works

how VC works? where VCs get their money, a high-risk asset? The job of fund managers is to ensure that giant pile of money grows. At the lowest end, it needs to grow in line with inflation, 9% annually in US for example. VC is spread-betting across a large number of startuos. They are trying to deploy a fund into a set of startups that matches their hopes, dreams and ambitions. Ultimately, there are just two goals. The lowest possible goal is to return the fund. ...

February 10, 2025 · 3 min · un01s

some quotes on truth, time, and others

“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.” – Friedrich Schiller “The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.” – Baltasar Gracian “Conquer yourself rather than the world.” – Rene Descartes “One should use common words to say uncommon things.” – Arthur Schopenhauer “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms – you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.” – Seneca ...

February 7, 2025 · 2 min · un01s

20250206

How to use an captcha image as a sing-in and verification button without JavaScript? <input_type="image"> this image supplements the <input type="submit"> element. Click the image submits the form with two query parameters included: ?x=32&y=48. Using CSRF tokens, the server knows where it put your open circle. Other sites implement the Captcha in other creative ways. One uses an <input type="range"> to position an image to the correct place. The most impressive one uses a series of checkboxes positioned in the exact same place. When a checkbox is checked, that box is hidden and the next one is shown. Based on what box is checked, images are repositioned with CSS. You then type the parts of the URL that have stars covering them in the scrambled image — another anti-phishing strategy. ...

February 6, 2025 · 1 min · un01s

20250201

当一个人口众多的国家,个人行动全凭儒家简单粗浅而又无法固定的原则所限制,而法律又缺乏创造性,则其社会发展的程度,必然受到限制。即便是宗旨善良,也不能补助技术之不及。1587年,是为万历十五年,丁亥次岁,表面上似乎是四海升平,无事可记,实际上我们的大明帝国却已经走到了它发展的尽头。在这个时候,皇帝的励精图治或者宴安耽乐,首辅的独裁或者调和,高级将领的富于创造或者习于苟安,文官的廉洁奉公或者贪污舞弊,思想家的极端进步或者绝对保守,最后的结果,都是无分善恶,统统不能在事业上取得有意义的发展,有的身败,有的名裂,还有的人则身败而兼名裂。因此我们的故事只好在这里作悲剧性的结束。万历丁亥年的年鉴,是为历史上一部失败的总记录。《万历十五年》 在美国读书和打工时,我常被在中国的痛苦回忆所折磨,不时陷入沉思。后来当教师,拿着麦克风站在五百名大学生面前,无法立即解释:为何康有为失败了,孙中山失败了,袁世凯失败了,张作霖失败了,陈独秀失败了,蒋介石失败了,而毛泽东也失败了。为使我的讲课内容前后一致又有说服力,唯一的方法就是说,中国的问题大于上述人士努力的总和。中国文明将和西方文明融合的说法,是人类历史上空前的事件。上述不同阶段的失败必须被视为阶段的调试,以达成一致的终点。对我们这些有后见之识的人来说,这点很明显,但舞台上的演员看不到。《黄河青山》 Notes: The tariff announced by Trump admin was a “trump tax” on Canada, Mexico, and China. The only thing left is to fight this bully to the end. “严沧浪云:‘诗有别才,非关书也;诗有别趣,非关理也;然非多读书,多穷理,则不能极其至。’卓哉是言乎。" 诗,AI 可以解读评论,却难创作。

February 1, 2025 · 1 min · un01s

Critique of Marx's Capital by Robert Wolff

video the thought of Marx lecture01 Jan 15, 2011 lecture02 Jan 16, 2011 lecture03 Jan 17, 2011 lecture04 Jan 19, 2011 lecture05 Jan 24, 2011 lecture06 2011 lecture07 2011 the thought of Karl Marx part 10, Jan 28, 2011 blog Karl Marx (1818-1883): the theorist of capitalism, the historian of economic theory, a great economic theorist. dialectical materialism was Engel’s idea. Analytical Marxists: Gerald Cohen, KARL MARX’S THEORY OF HISTORY, Jan Elster, MAKING SENSE OF MARX Robert Wolff: Marx considers the philosophy of a society to be a part of its ideological superstructure, along with its religion, law, and art, among other things. Moral judgments are a part of the philosophy and law of a society, hence ideological and superstructural as well. The fundamental principle of bourgeois justice is that equals be given for equals in a free and open marketplace where men [it is always men] meet one another as legal equals, none compelled by law or custom to enter into bargains with another. The ideal capitalist, Marx argues, pays a fair price for the labor he employs. He pays a price equivalent to the reproduction cost of that labor, which, as he and Ricardo would say, is equal to the labor value embodied in that labor. Now, to be sure, capitalists do not play fair. As Marx tells us in the great chapter on The Working Day, capitalists try such underhanded tricks, in their effort to extract more value from their workers, as fiddling with the clocks in the factory so as to make the workers labor for a bit longer than the contracted for ten or twelve hours. But this is not exploitation. This is just cheating. ...

January 25, 2025 · 10 min · un01s

2025 lists

radio, tv and music BBC orbit radio garden TV garden book list Time Shelter, Georgi Gospodinov, Translated by Angela Rodel 回忆反而导致失忆,时间在避难所中逐渐失去意义 The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith Technofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis, 2023 Tim O’Brien, The things they carried, 1990 this is a war story (VietnamWar) like All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI). It talks about truth. the things they carried are their hope, their fear, their guilt, and themselves. Norman Maclean, A River run through it, Novel and movie ...

January 21, 2025 · 1 min · un01s

reading and others

our real work Our real work Wendell Berry, 1983 It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come to our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. the following is all about reading “If you think about it, the very best books are really just extremely long spells that turn you into a different person for the rest of your life.” ...

January 16, 2025 · 4 min · un01s