“I think we all wear armor. I think those who don’t are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I’ve learned anything from those fools, it is that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are.” – Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals
对美与真理的执着追求，本身就是一种积极且富有创造力的精神表现；这种精神，又必然要求人们不断建立并更新与之契合的价值体系。… 对美国人而言，评判一切价值的唯一标准是其现实可行性。这种生活态度在哲学上表现为实用主义，其根本命题可以概括为：“凡是在实践中行得通的，便是真理。”… 技术与经济活动同样为创造性天赋提供了空间：天才能够突破机械规则的限制，使之获得自由的发展和更新。… 凡是在精神与艺术领域真正践行这一理想的人，便不再需要其他任何人生目标，因此，他也不可能为自己设定除不断的创造性发展以外的终极追求。正如歌德所言：“谁拥有科学与艺术，谁便拥有宗教;谁若不具备这二者，那就让他信宗教吧。” – 生活的理想类型, 原载1925年4月28日布宜诺斯艾利斯《新闻报》，收录于《爱因斯坦全集》第14卷文件479。
无论宗教、艺术还是科学，其最深层的价值都不在于服从某种既定权威，也不在于获取财富、声望或权力，而在于一种持续不断的“创造性发展”。科学不仅是一种知识，艺术不仅是一种趣味，宗教也不仅是一套教义。它们在最深处，都指向同一种东西——人超越狭隘自我、不断创造与成长的能力。
Voices from Lemnos: IV
Book: The poems of Seamus Heaney, P.395
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
And lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
The poem is from the end of A Cure at Troy. About the Trojian war and it’s aftermath. Seen as a metaphor for the conflict in ireland.
investing
be patient and do your home work to analyse. no one could predict the future. everyone is guessing the price and its movement. is it reasonably cheap? this could be answered from your analysis. how low will it be? and how high will it go? that two questions are hard to guess. set your target and risk limit.
news
20260602 (Tues. Rain for a second day): the war of Iran continues and the peace is expected but who knows when. the oil price remains high with its ups and downs by the Iran war news. the inflation stays. Futures of major index and bitcoin ($67,000) down today. crazy HPE up 30% to $62 from $47 premarket. Gold around US$4,500. Oil down but above $90.
20260603: House approves war powers resolution to halt military action against Iran. The vote was 215-208. Will Trump admin stop the war?
20260604: Oil price down a bit. Gold (above $4,500), silver, and copper up. Natural Gas future up. At the same time, Bitcoin is down about 4,700 to $62,000. S&P (-0.4%) and Nasdaq (-1.2%) down while Dow (0.8%) is up. Broadcom (AVGO) is down 15% premarket due to Q2 result. Will the high inflation lead to the worry of economy downturn even if the Iran war stops now?
20260605: what a day? Nasdaq down 4%, S&P500 down 2.6% and Dow down 1.3%. Gold down to $4,350 and Bitcoin down to just above $60K. Oil just above $90. Job data is good. Inflation is high. Then there is no way for Fed to cut the rate in the near future.
when will this AI bubble burst?
ChatGPT was released in November 2022 by OpenAI. The IPO of OpenAI is scheduled in November 2026. Another Anthropic’s IPO in October 2026.
the persistent high inflation would lead to the rate raise by the Fed, and this raise may trigger the burst.
where is the return of LLM or AI investment?
will the war trigger an oil crisis? the block of Hormuz strait. the oil reserve depletion. then the real short of supply leads higher price of oil. that is the oil crisis.
dot-com bubble
the dot-com (tech: internet + telecom) bubble was developed during the late 1990s and peaked on March 10, 2000. the Nasdaq index fell 78% from its peak by October 2002. the September 11 attacks happened in 2001.
historical tech booms: railroads in 1840s, automobiles in 1900s, radio in 1920s, television in 1940s, transistors in 1950s, home computers and biotech in 1980s.
On Friday March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaked at 5,048.62. However, on March 13, 2000, news that Japan had once again entered a recession triggered a global sell off that disproportionately affected technology stocks. Soon after, Yahoo! and eBay ended merger talks and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%, but the S&P 500 rose 2.4% as investors shifted from strong performing technology stocks to poor performing established stocks.
April 3, 2000: Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his conclusions of law in the case of United States v. Microsoft Corp. (2001) and ruled that Microsoft was guilty of monopolization and tying in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This led to a one-day 15% decline in the value of shares in Microsoft and a 350-point, or 8%, drop in the value of the Nasdaq. Many people saw the legal actions as bad for technology in general.
On Friday, April 14, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite index fell 9%, ending a week in which it fell 25%. Investors were forced to sell stocks ahead of Tax Day, the due date to pay taxes on gains realized in the previous year.
The September 11 attacks accelerated the stock-market drop.
Investor confidence was further eroded by several accounting scandals and the resulting bankruptcies, including the Enron scandal in October 2001, the WorldCom scandal in June 2002, and the Adelphia Communications Corporation scandal in July 2002.
Between 1995 and 2000, the Nasdaq index experienced a five-fold increase, peaking in March 2000 before plummeting by nearly 77% by October 2002. Companies like Amazon, eBay, and Priceline managed to survive the crash.
crypto-currency bubble
notes
Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016
Amanda Askell, 1988-
Amanda is Anthropic’s in-house philosopher and the lead author of Claude’s published constitution. The Wall Street Journal put it: her job is to “teach Claude how to be good.”
James Beard, 1903-1985, an American chef
Slavish obedience to a recipe robs one of the license responsible for its creation. — James Beard
who inherits the power? what is power?
is money or property power? is language, history and institutions power? recent news about new anchors: “60 Minutes” veteran Scott Pelly fired by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss on June 2, 2026 and Stephen Colbert completed his last episode of the Late Show on May 21, 2026 on CBS.
three ways to get paid
There are three ways to make a living:
Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
Goethe
“He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion!” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Xenien
A better word would be ‘piety’ or ‘faithfulness’ instead of ‘religion’.
叔本华：“人虽然可以为所欲为，但却不能得偿所愿。”
Arthur Schopenhauer on the freedom of the will
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms: “Ein Mensch kann zwar tun, was er will; aber nicht wollen, was er will.” (A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.) original: “Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.)
Einstein: “科学没有宗教是跛足的，宗教没有科学是盲目的。”
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Abraham Pais. Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. OUP Oxford. 25 August 2005. Or: Einstein, Albert (1956). “Science and Religion,” Ideas and Opinions. New York: Citadel Press, p. 26.
“For science can only ascertain what is but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.” Albert Einstein, Science and Religion, 1939
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” Albert Einstein: the human side, Princeton, 1981
“Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.” G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930) p. 372-373.
“My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.” Holton, G. J. and Yehuda Elkana (1997). Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Dover Publications, p. 309.
文化尤其是主流文化一直都是权利的工具，中俄如此，美国也不例外
中俄两国路径惊人一致：大崩溃（苏联解体1989、文革结束1976）催生大反思文学（雪崩与伤痕），但挽救崩溃的努力——俄罗斯的“强国梦”重建、中国“稳定压倒一切”的改革——让文化迅速回归传统集体主义、官方叙事。
反思文学只是权力的工具而已。
1978年前后，中国“伤痕文学”如雨后春笋。刘心武的《班主任》（1977）、卢新华的《伤痕》（1978）等作品，首次公开控诉文革对人性的摧残，引发全民共鸣。古华的《芙蓉镇》、张贤亮的《灵与肉》等，进一步挖掘“极左政治在普通人心灵留下的伤痕”。这些作品与俄罗斯解禁文学高度相似：都是在极权崩溃边缘，用真实苦难刺破官方谎言，唤醒人性与反思。一时间，文学成为拨乱反正的利器，知识分子相信：通过文学，能完成民族性格的重构，走向人道主义与现代化。然而，1983年“清除精神污染”运动、1987年“反资产阶级自由化”浪潮，以及后续的意识形态收紧，让伤痕文学迅速被纳入官方叙事框架。文革被定性为“十年浩劫”，但批判必须限定在“四人帮”个人错误，而非制度根源。
高峰期在1990-1993年。厚杂志发行量一度创纪录，读书成为街头巷尾话题。索尔仁尼琴1994年回国演讲时，观众泪流满面，视其为“俄罗斯良心”的化身。乌利茨卡娅、阿列克谢耶维奇等后起之秀也在这一氛围中崭露头角，首先，90年代初的休克疗法带来恶性通胀、寡头掠夺和社会崩溃。书价飞涨，普通民众先顾肚子，再顾灵魂。“自由+反思”在大众眼中直接等同于“国家耻辱和苦难”。当面包比《古拉格群岛》更紧迫时，揭露历史成了“添堵”而非救赎。印刷成本暴涨，文学期刊发行量雪崩式下跌，商业侦探、言情和西方畅销书迅速占领市场。其次，政治力量迅速填补真空。
some links of artists on Bluesky
books
book: Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026), by Molly Crabapple
book: Jefferson’s Wolf, by Christa Dierksheide and Nicholas Guyatt
“That Jefferson managed to evade the scrutiny of white Americans for nearly two centuries tells us a great deal about the power of enslavers to bend reality to their will.” (p. 100)
Geirangerfjord, Norway
book: The Biology of Collapse: Lessons from Nature on Growth, Power, Extinction and Rebirth, by George Tsakraklides
book: Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (2026), by Heather Ann Thompson
book: Classics: A very short introduction, Mary beard and John Henderson, 1995
book: SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015), by English classicist Mary Beard (the senate and people of rome)
book: Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old (2026) by Mary Beard
book: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World (2023) by Mary Beard
The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words, 2023 by Mary Beard
《我的人生观》，爱因斯坦著，方在庆编译 (the world as I see it, albert einstein, Mein Weltbild, in German)
Chen Ning Yang, Interview by Bill Moyers in Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas, Doubleday, (1989). (楊振寧與莫耶斯的對話《科學文化評論》第4卷第4期, 2007)
Chen Ning Yang, Albert Einstein: Opportunity and Perception. Speech at 22nd International Conference for History of Science, Beijing, 2005. International Journal of Modern Physics, A21, 3031 (2006), World Scientific.
愛因斯坦：機遇與眼光 — 第22屆國際科學史大會報告《科學文化評論》,第2卷第4期(2005)
link: 杨振宁出版文章与书籍列表，英文与中文
link: 欧亚系统科学研究会